It’s not every day that two states with similar societies and international alignments break into an open cold war, but this is what is happen between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Here’s what you need to know.

1. Black Gold Meets Cold War In The Desert  

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are neighbours and the similarities do not end there. Both are heavily reliant on energy exports in order to fund their lavish domestic economies.  Both practice similar forms of Salafist Islam and both countries have been the traditional enemies of secular Arab states, notably Syria. Both countries are sponsors of terrorism including of al-Qaeda and ISIS at various times.

Although the states are arguing over their differences, it is their similarities that are the real root of the crisis.

With experts predicting that oil prices will never recover as non-OPEC members continue to produce more energy and as China becomes a pioneer in green energy production, Saudi Arabia is feeling the economic sting and is trying to isolate a regional energy exporter.

Oil prices rose after Saudi and others made the announcement that they were breaking off relations with Qatar. However, the bigger question is: will the prices go back down? Most experts say yes, something which will embolden the deeply un-creative Saudi regime to take even more aggressive measures, even against neighbours with similar ideologies.

Although Saudi Arabia and Qatar had a somewhat similar spat in 2014, the current issue is far bigger.

Saudi has managed to convince many more countries to join in the boycott and has also moved to shut down state-owned Qatari media, notably Al Jazeera. Saudi has also shut the border to Qatar as well water access to its neighbour. Flights from the state airlines of Saudi Arabia and its ally the UAE to Qatar have all stopped. Furthermore, Saudi is now demanding that Qatar change the name of its Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque, named for the spiritual father of the Saudi ideology.

It really is as if the Saudis and the UAE are building a kind of invisible but deeply unambiguous Berlin Wall around Qatar.

2. Qatar Diversifies Its ‘Geo-political Portfolio’ 

Qatar has long been attempting to subtly and at times overtly shift its international alliances in order to differentiate itself from Saudi and carve out a unique niche as a ‘separate but equal’ despotic Gulf state.

Most notably, Qatar has made overtures towards Iran just as Saudi’s habitually anti-Iranian stance goes into overdrive. The proximate cause of the dispute are now deleted Tweets from Qatar’s state-run news agency wherein Qatar’s supreme ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani spoke warmly about Iran and even praised the Lebanese Resistance Hezbollah, a Shi’a party that is an ally of Iran but one considered a terrorist group by Saudi Arabia and the US.

Although Qatar continues to insist that the Tweet was the product of a hacking hoax, the Saudis are not buying it.

Qatar is by no means pro-Iranian, but pragmatism has led Qatar to seek possible business opportunities, especially in respect of gas deals with the Islamic Republic. The idea that a fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member might have any positive relations with Iran goes against everything Saudi Arabia and the United States stands for.

3. What about Egypt? What do they have in common with Saudi Arabia? 

The short answer is that apart from the kinds of Saudi business dealings that proliferate throughout the entire world with the exceptions of countries like Syria and Iran, Egypt has little practically to do with Saudi.

Egypt is a secular, multi-faith state that has recently been under attack from Salafist terrorist groups like ISIS which are supported by both Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

However, unlike Saudi, Qatar supports the illegal group  Muslim Brotherhood which briefly ruled Egypt between 2012 and 2013 after Barack Obama’s United States abandoned its traditional ally, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Now that secular rule has been restored, Egypt is particularly angry with Qatar for funding and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

That being said, most Egyptians have very negative views about both states as do most moderate Sunnis and virtually all Shi’a Muslims and Christians.

The real shame is that Egypt which was the undisputed leader of the Arab world under the leadership of President Nasser, is now simply following in Saudi’s bleak shadow.

4. Saudi Arabia Accused Qatar of Sponsoring Terrorism…YES THAT Saudi Arabia 

Nobody said that the Saudi regime was honest, even though this time they’ve really gone for it. Saudi Arabia is by any estimation, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. Qatar is also a state sponsor of much of the same kind of terrorism. Saudi Arabia is correct when it accuses Qatar of sponsoring terrorism, but this doesn’t mean that Saudi Arabia is suddenly on the side of the righteous. It means that Saudi Arabia is simply as hypocritical as it has always been.

In other words…pass the popcorn.

5. The Syrian Connection 

It is widely known that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are fighting on the same side in Syria, using their mutual terrorist proxies who receive funds and arms from both states. This includes groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as other Salafist terrorist groups.

Secular Ba’athist Syria has no relations with either Qatar or Saudi Arabia and this is unlikely to change in the immediate future.

However, with Saudi and Qatar now at loggerheads, it could mean that terrorists will have to pick which country they are loyal to and in the process they may lose one of their two main cash cows.

Furthermore, with Syria set to win the war against Qatari and Saudi funded terrorism, Qatar’s plans to build a gas pipeline to Turkey, running largely through Syria, may never happen. This was one of the main reasons Qatar sought to overthrow the legitimate government of the Syrian Arab Republic. It might also be a reason why having more or less given up on the Syrian pipeline, Qatar is embarrassingly (for Qatar) turning to Iran, which as everyone knows is fighting Qatari terrorists is Syria along side Iran’s partners against terrorism, The Syrian Arab Republic and Russian Federation.

Russia and America have remained neutral on the dispute as has Pakistan, an ally of both Saudi and Qatar, which depends greatly on investment from both countries.

This dispute will not immediately change the war in Syria, but it could lead to some fracturing in the loyalties and funds of jihadists.

Featured image: visitqatar.qa

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O “desarmamento” nuclear de Gentiloni

June 6th, 2017 by Manlio Dinucci

A cena da multidão em pânico na praça San Carlo, em Turim, na Itália, com dramáticas consequências, é emblematica da nossa situação. A psicose do atentado terrorista, difundida com arte pelo aparato político-midiático com base num fenômeno real (do qual se esconde, porém, a verdadeira causa e finalidade), fez com que se desencadeasse de modo caótico o instinto primordial de sobrevivência. Esse está, ao contrário, adormecido pelo blacaute politico-midiático, quando deveria ser suscitado de maneira racional em face daquilo que põe em perigo a sobrevivência de toda a humanidade: a corrida aos armamentos nucleares.

Em consequência, a esmagadora maioria dos italianos ignora que está para se realizar nas Nações Unidas, de 15 de junho a 7 de julho, a segunda fase das negociações para um tratado que proíba as armas nucleares. O esboço da Convenção sobre as armas nucleares, redigido depois da primeira fase de negociações em março, estabelece que cada Estado parte se compromete a não produzir nem possuir armas nucleares, nem a transferir ou receber direta ou indiretamente.

A abertura das negociações foi decidida por uma resolução da Assembleia geral votada favoravelmente em dezembro de 2016 por 113 países, com 35 votos contrários e 13 abstenções.

Os Estados Unidos e outras duas potências nucleares da Otan (a França e a Grã Bretanha), os demais países da Aliança e os seus pricipais  parceiros – Israel (única potência nuclear no Oriente Médio), o Japão, a Austrália, a Ucrânia – votaram contra.

Também manifestaram parecer contrário as demais potências nucleares: a Rússia e a China (abstenções), a Índia, o Paquistão e a Coreia do Norte.

Entre os países que votaram contra, na esteira dos Estados Unidos, está a Itália. O governo Gentiloni declarou, em 2 de fevereiro, que “a convocação de uma Conferência das Nações Unidas para negociar um instrumento juridicamente vinculante sobre a proibição das armas nucleares, constitui um elemento fortemente divisor que oferece o risco de comprometer os nossos esforços a favor do desarmamento nuclear”.

A Itália, sustenta o governo, está seguindo “um percurso gradual, realista e concreto na medida certa para conduzir a um processo de desarmamento nuclear irreversível, transparente e verificável”, baseado na “plena aplicação do Tratado de não-proliferação, pilastra do desarmamento”.

Os fatos demonstram de que modo a Itália aplica o TNP, ratificado em 1975. Apesar de que este obriga os Estados militarmente não-nucleares a “não receber de quem quer que seja armas nucleares, nem exercer o controle sobre tais armas, direta ou indiretamente”, a Itália pôs à disposição dos Estados Unidos o seu território para a instalação de armas nucleares (ao menos 50 bombas B-61 na base de Aviano e 20 em Ghedi-Torre), para cujo uso são treinados pilotos italianos.

A partir de 2020 será deslocada para a Itália a B61-12: uma nova arma de first strike nuclear, com capacidade de penetrar no terreno para destruir os bunkers dos centros de comando. Uma que o deslocamento da B61-12 seja iniciado em 2020 (mas não está excluído que seja antes), a Itália, formalmente um país não nuclear, será transformada em primeira linha de um ainda mais perigoso confronto nuclear entre os EUA/Otan e a  Rússia.

Que fazer?  É necessário obrigar a Itália a contribuir para o lançamento do Tratado da ONU sobre a  proibição das armas nucleares e o subscreva e, ao mesmo tempo, pretender que os Estados Unidos, com base no vigente Tratado de não-proliferação, removam qualquer arma nuclear do nosso território e renunciem a instalar a nova bomba B61-12.

Para quase todo o “mundo político”, o argumento é um tabu. Se falta a consciência política, não resta outra coisa senão recorrer ao instinto primordial de sobrevivência.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo em italiano :

Il «disarmo» nucleare di Gentiloni

Publicado em Il Manifesto.

Traduzido por José Reinaldo Carvalho para Resistência

 

Manlio Dinucci é geógrafo e jornalista.

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A CEA anunciou que receberá familiares de pessoas desaparecidas e de repressores para iniciar “um percurso de trabalho sobre o tema da reconciliação no contexto da cultura do encontro”.
Avós da Praça de Maio manifesta sua profunda preocupação com a ideia de “reconciliação” entre vítimas e perpetradores do terrorismo de Estado que a Conferência Episcopal Argentina (CEA) está impulsionando, chefiada por seu presidente, Dom José María Arancedo.
O CEA anunciou, em sua reunião plenária, que receberá familiares de desaparecidos e repressores faltando para iniciar “um percurso de trabalho sobre o tema da reconciliação no contexto da cultura do encontro”.
Diante desta informação, dizemos novamente: não existe diálogo que seja possível com aqueles que sequestraram, torturaram e desapareceram com nossos filhos e filhas; com aqueles que negam informações sobre seu destino final; com aqueles que sabem onde estão os mais de 300 netos e netas que ainda são escravos de mentiras e, a 40 anos de sua apropriação, continuam vivendo sob uma falsa identidade.
Parte da igreja foi cúmplice dos desaparecimentos; com dupla moral endossaram as torturas e omitiram informação para o encontro dos nossos filhos. Através do Movimento Familiar Cristão foram disfarçadas como “adoções” que, na verdade, foram apropriações de pelo menos duas das nossas netas.
Em abril de 2015, após a visita de Estela de Carlotto ao Vaticano, o Papa Francisco ordenou a abertura dos arquivos secretos da Igreja Católica; cerca de 3 mil cartas e documentos preservados no Episcopado, na Nunciatura Apostólica e na Santa Sé, com ordens que chegavam à igreja para saber o paradeiro dos detidos e desaparecidos além da reivindicação de investigação junto às autoridades.
Embora tenha sido decidido que durante a Assembleia da CEA será revelado o protocolo para se ter acesso a esses documentos, a informação indica que só poderão solicitá-los as vítimas e familiares, ou os juízes e promotores que os requeiram durante a investigação de casos envolvendo crimes contra a humanidade. A este respeito, esperamos que se se reveja  esta decisão que restringe o acesso a documentos que, há 40 anos, temos exigido.
Finalmente, com a proposta de “reconciliação”, as Avós da Plaza de Maio reafirmamos que continuaremos lutando até que o último dos responsáveis ​​seja julgado e condenado, até que apareçam os restos de todos os nossos filhos e filhas desaparecidos, até o último neto apropriado tenha recuperado sua verdadeira identidade. Porque não há amor na mentira; não há reconciliação sem arrependimento; não há perdão sem justiça.
Por essa razão, voltamos a conclamar todos os paroquianos a quebrar o silêncio para que não sejam cúmplices da apropriação, e tragam informações que nos permitam encontrar nossos netos e netas roubados há 40 anos.
Edu Montesanti
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Especialistas equatorianos procurados pela reportagem analisam a campanha presidencial no Equador, os desafios do novo governo para seguir com as conquistas da Revolução Cidadã e a importância da vitória de Aliança País para a América Latina

Lenín Moreno assumiu a Presidência do Equador no último dia 24 para o período 2017-2021, sucedendo Rafael Correa que esteve à frente da Revolução Cidadã desde 2007, a qual promoveu a denominada Década Ganha na nação andina após uma sucessão de governos neoliberais desastrosos que, apenas entre o final dos anos de 1990 e início de 2000, levou cerca de um milhão de equatorianos a deixar o país, de um total de 10 milhões de habitantes à época de uma das piores crises econômicas de sua história que mergulhou o país na miséria e nos mais altos índices de violência da América Latina.

“Sou presidente de todos, é minha obrigação para com todos e respeito a todos”, afirmou na solenidade de posse Moreno, diante de dezenas de chefes de Estado, prometendo mais subsídios para os pobres e um importante programa social de construção de casas que criaria milhões de empregos. “Vou trabalhar para que absolutamente ninguém seja esquecido”.

O novo presidente equatoriano e seu companheiro de chapa por Aliança País, o vice-presidente Jorge Glas, venceram uma campanha suja perpetrada pela direita e pela grande mídia local em segundo turno realizado no dia 2 de abril, com 51,16 por cento de votos contra 48,15 por cento do sufrágio em favor do banqueiro Guillermo Lasso do movimento CREO-SUMA (o que representa apenas 600 mil votos de diferença), apoiado pela direita venezuelana e também preferido de longa-data de Washington, segundo revelações de cabos secretos da Embaixada dos Estados Unidos em Quito liberados por WikiLeaks. Ao final do pleito houve, uma vez mais, amplo reconhecimento internacional ao sistema eleitoral equatoriano enquanto os partidários de Lasso prometiam agredir fisicamente os adversários e atacar órgãos públicos do país.

Enquanto Lasso prometia uma volta ao passado, isto é, a privatização em larga escala, cortes drásticos nos investimentos sociais e abertura da economia e das riquezas naturais ao capital estrangeiro, as promessas de Moreno centram-se no seguimento às políticas de seu antecessor através de um Estado atuante baseado em políticas inclusivas, e ao avanço da agenda de direitos humanos e de integração latino-americana.

Moreno traçou um esquema de atenção social e de apoio ao desenvolvimento produtivo, que inclui saúde e educação gratuitas, a geração de 200 mil empregos para reaquecer a economia, e o oferecimento de créditos preferenciais a jovens empreendedores e empresários que se invistam em setores estratégicos. Além do mais, o governo Moreno manterá o asilo político a Julian Assange na Embaixada equatoriana em Londres, já que Quito tem considerado a luta do jornalista australiano fundamental em favor da liberdade de expressão e liberdade de imprensa, enquanto Lasso prometia expulsar Assange dali tão logo assumisse a Presidência.

“A eleição de Lenin Moreno desfaz o discurso do ‘fim da era progressiva na América Latina’, incentivando tanto os movimentos sociais progressistas internos quanto regionais para que continuem fazendo com que o Estado mantenha sua razão de existir”, afirma a esta reportagem a equatoriana Gina Chávez Vallejo, doutora em Direito, Ciências Políticas e Criminologia pela Universidade de Valência na Espanha, e decana do Centro de Direitos e Justiça do Instituto de Altos Estudos Nacionais, sediado em Quito.

Porém, os desafios não são poucos para o novo presidente do Equador diante de uma longa e acentuada crise econômica mundial, da vertiginosa queda do preço do barril do petróleo, do terremoto de 7,8 graus na escala Richter em abril do ano passado, maior tragédia dos últimos 70 anos no país andino que matou 671 vidas, destruiu milhares de residências e espaços públicos e causou prejuízos econômicos de mais de 3,3 bilhões de dólares, fazendo o país decrescer 0,7 por cento economicamente. E mais: tudo isso dentro de uma economia sem moeda nacional, dolarizada desde janeiro de 2000.

Quem é Lenín Moreno

Administrador público e escritor de 64 anos com estudos em Medicina e Psicologia, como vice de Correa entre 2007 e 2013, Lenín Moreno, criou o programa Manuela Espejo, padrão mundial, para atender pessoas portadoras de deficiência física, com doenças paralisantes e menores contagiados pelo vírus HIV. Moreno também promoveu a entrega de moradias a este setor da sociedade e a aprovação de uma lei que obriga as empresas a contratar pessoas com necessidades especiais.

A missão solidária Manuela Espejo levou Moreno a ser o enviado especial do secretário-geral das Nações Unidas para Deficiência e Acessibilidade, de onde o então vice de Correa fez com que os países assinassem a Convenção sobre os Direitos das Personas com Deficiência, um marco nesta área ao exigir a garantia à acessibilidade, à liberdade de movimento, à saúde, à educação, ao emprego, à habilitação e reabilitação, à participação na vida política, e à igualdade e à não discriminação.

Nascido em Nuevo Rocafuerte, região amazônica do Equador e criado em família de docentes, Moreno tornou-se paraplégico em 1998 devido a um tiro após ter sido assaltado na cidade equatoriana de Guayaquil. Desde então movimentando-se apenas em cadeira de rodas, Moreno tem ministrado palestrar motivacionais sobre deficiência física, além de todos os trabalhos práticos reconhecidos dentro e fora do país. Um de seus livros leva o título Ser Feliz É Fácil e Divertido, de 2012, o que lhe valeu indicação ao Prêmio Nobel da Paz no mesmo ano.

Campanha Suja à Direita

“Em cerca de 30 anos após o retorno à democracia no Equador, não se sentia tanta tensão e expectativa em relação às eleições presidenciais, nem se sentia tanta virulência e agressividade em discursos e estratégias de campanha [por parte da direita]”, ressalta Gina Chávez, apontando um cenário eleitoral bastante familiar dos países latino-americanos nestes últimos anos, no que diz respeito à direita do espectro político regional.

Tanto a doutora do IAEN quanto outros especialistas procurados pela reportagem como Diego Pérez, doutor em Ciências Políticas pela Universidade de Belgrano de Buenos Aires e mestre em Relações Internacionais pela Universidade Andina Simón Bolívar de Quito, e também docente do IAEN, além do economista e ex-presidenciável Alberto Acosta consideram que o nível da campanha foi baixo de todos os lados no que diz respeito ao debate de propostas. “A disputa apresentou muito barulho e pouco conteúdo por parte da oposição, predominando denúncias de fraude amplificadas pela mídia, claramente forças tentando tirar proveito de um estado de alarme”, diz Gina, quem acrescenta que a cidadania desempenhou importante papel, apesar de certa apatia e disputa de emoções mais que de propostas”.

Por parte de Lasso, dono do segundo maior banco do Equador – o Banco de Guayaquil – a precariedade foi além dos limites dadas as promessas irrealizáveis e, como nem poderia ser diferente, sem apontar meios de alcançá-las, tais como a de gerar um milhão e meio de empregos – sem dizer como e com um detalhe: o número de desempregados entre cidadãos economicamente ativos no Equador, país com menor taxa de desemprego na região (5,4%), é de 410.411.

Publicamente, o candidato neoliberal negava a prioridade em privatizações enquanto a página 48 de seu plano de governo previa a privatização da saúde e a 47, da educação. Enquanto isso, Lasso acusava a oposição governista por dizer que se eleito presidente privatizaria exatamente as áreas mencionadas em seu plano de governo. O candidato dos banqueiros cortaria em 150 por cento os investimentos públicos em saúde, 80 por cento na área da educação, privatizaria áreas verdes, a serem entregues ao setor privado enquanto Lenín Moreno sempre insistiu que elas pertencem ao povo, que a biodiversidade é um recurso estratégico e não para uso de uns poucos.

A Constituição equatoriana aprovada no primeiro ano de Correa no Palácio de Carondelet garante exatamente educação, saúde e os recursos naturais do país como direito, mas o preferido de Washington insistiu em se referir a seus usuários com clientes, e às áreas mencionadas como negócio segundo a lógica de livre-mercado irrestrito. Lasso ainda prometia eliminar 14 impostos e despedir cerca de 200 mil servidores públicos entre policiais, professores, médicos, etc. Quanto à sede da Unasul em Quito, o candidato pró-Washington também propunha fechar e vender o edifício.

Além de Lasso ter comprado os institutos de pesquisas Cedatos e Participação Cidadã que, seguidos pela mídia comercial do país, maquiaram os números desde o primeiro turno até à boca de urna no segundo turno, comprovado documentalmente, e fraudado o sufrágio em diferentes zonas eleitorais no primeiro turno, houve muita agressão verbal, física, uma ameaça de morte – contra a candidata a deputada transexual Diane Rodríguez por Aliança País, e a carta-bomba à parlamentar governista Gabriela Rivadaneira, conforme abordado por Caros Amigos em entrevista com a deputada.  “O que aconteceu de 2 a 8 de abril demonstra que o objetivo do ex-candidato Lasso era vencer a qualquer custo: preparou uma estratégia orquestrada entre certos canais de TV, 4 e 8, concretamente, e pesquisadores, Cedatos e Participação Cidadã, concretamente, que atuaram de forma coordenada para declarar às 17h, após o encerramento da votação, o triunfo do Lasso”, observa Gina.

Os institutos de pesquisa comprados pelo candidato do CREO-SUMA chegaram a apontar margem de vitória de até oito pontos do candidato banqueiro, enquanto os grandes meios de comunicação bombardeavam a opinião pública concedendo muito mais espaço a Lasso, sempre exibido através de imagens rodeado de gente sorrindo, enquanto Moreno era sempre focalizado sozinho – grande parte dos meios equatorianos ainda são privados, mesmo com a Lei de Comunicação aprovada em 2013.

No dia da votação em primeiro turno, em 19 de fevereiro no qual Moreno deixou de se tornar presidente sem necessidade de segundo turno por apenas 0,7 do total de votos – mais um fator que pode muito bem revelar a integridade do Conselho Nacional Eleitoral (CNE) equatoriano -, o vice de Lasso, Andrés Páez apareceu diante das câmeras de TV denunciando uma suposta cédula falsa: uma aproximação televisiva mostrou ser, contudo, um documento de identidade.

Lasso, contra quem na reta final acabou provada a posse de ao menos 49 empresas em paraísos fiscais, desde o início da campanha disse que não aceitaria os resultados que não lhe dessem vitória, e quando se confirmou a eleição de Moreno, incitou a violência de seus partidários nas ruas do país e a recontagem de votos, logo aceita por Aliança País e pelo CNE: o banqueiro acabou negando-se a participar da recontagem pública nos dias subsequentes à realização do segundo turno, que apenas confirmou a vitória governista. E as promessas do candidato banqueiro de agredir seus opositores em caso de derrota, cumpriram-se violentamente por todo o país.

Sobre os gritos histéricos da direita de que houve fraude, Gina aponta que eles foram absolutamente evasivos. “Tratou-se de uma estratégia agressiva contra a democracia e a coesão social do Equador orquestrada pela direita nacional, tanto local e que se refugiou em Miami, com ligações à direita internacional, setores empresariais muitos deles beneficiários das políticas públicas, mas que veem ameaçados seus privilégios com políticas de redistribuição, os meios de comunicação mercantilistas e certos setores sociais cujos líderes mantiveram acordos eleitorais com Lasso”.

O pleito presidencial equatoriano contou con mais de 200 observadores eleitorais de diferentes organismos, nacionais e internacionais, “o que revela uma democracia em pleno e cabal funcionamento”, pontua Gina. “Isso é consequência de dez anos de estabilidade democrática, quando se desenvolveram dez processos eleitorais que incluem três consultas populares sem que nenhuma força política coloque, objetivamente, em dúvida a transparência e a eficiência do sistema eleitoral”. Para a missão da Unasul, cujo chefe foi o ex-presidente uruguaio Pepe Mujica, o pleito equatoriano deste ano foi, seguindo os padrões anteriores, exemplar apontando para a impossibilidade de fraude, assim como a ONU manifestou não ter identificado nenhuma anomalia no processo..

Questionada sobre a polarização existente na sociedade equatoriana hoje, Gina é enfática ao apontá-la como subproduto da oposição de direita em seu país. “É o novo estilo político das direitas a nível global que abandonam o campo da política, para disputar a liderança do caos – o caos das redes sociais e das pessoas que estão dispostas a dar corda a suas mesquinhas paixões. O objetivo é colocar em xeque aos governos que propuseram uma revolução permanente, através de uma estratégia de geração de caos permanente. As guarimbas na Venezuela e a Primavera Árabe são expressão mais clara dessa estratégia”. Para Pérez, a polarização decorrente do estado de tensão desenvolvido pelos atores políticos poderia ter sido evitada também pelo governo e seu candidato.

Gina considera que a vitória de Lasso desmontaria o eficiente Estado equatoriano, levando-o de volta a um neoliberalismo que deterioraria os serviços públicos e privatizaria os setores mais rentáveis para o país, tais como o de hidrocarbonetos, o setor elétrico com as hidrelétricas construídas pelos governos Correa que exportam energia a países vizinhos, seguridade social, educação, saúde e segurança nacional.”Neste sentido, o projeto neoliberal de nova geração é ainda mais agressivo que o implementado nas décadas de 1980 e 1990, e no meu modo de ver aponta não apenas à apropriação do Estado e dos recursos públicos como também à destruição da coesão social para governar no caos social”.

Para a docente, a agressividade reacionária contra políticas sociais nestes tempos supera à do fascismo no século passado. “A direita está demonstrando uma intolerância contra o social não vista nem sequer no fascismo, que aplicou uma estratégia de extermínio de caráter racial mas não social. A construção da sociedade, do cidadão como inimigo, é a aposta política mais desequilibrada e atemorizante que já se experimentou até os dias de hoje”.

Para a socióloga equatoriana Carol Murillo Ruiz, através das últimas eleições presidenciais “o mundo está vendo que no Equador, não há ditadura”.

Os Governos Correa

“Cheguei em 2001 ao país. Encontrei um país completamente desmoralizado, decomposto, desesperançado.Causava muita frustração ver o que estava acontecendo, ver no país como se davam as medidas… absolutamente equivocadas, não em função do bem-comum, não em função do país, mas em função dos grupos de interesses: dos banqueiros, pelos politiqueiros, da burocracia do Banco Central, das burocracias internacionais. Talvez a melhor palavra que defina a situação que encontrei o país é ‘decomposição'”, afirmou Rafael Correa no documentário Ecuador, Diez Años Después.

Correa, desde os primeiros dias no Palácio Carondelet, denunciou o neocolonialismo norte-americano. “O que os Estados Unidos oferecem é a ditadura do neoliberalismo”, sempre insistiu o mandatário. Quando o antecessor de Moreno elegeu-se presidente pela primeira vez em 26 de novembro de 2006 com 56,6 por cento dos votos em segundo turno, disputado contra o direitista Álvaro Noboa, o Equador era um dos países mais pobres da América Latina, e onde os índices de criminalidade eram muito altos. O país praticamente não existia no cenário internacional para hoje, através da estabilidade e do crescimento econômico com forte inclusão social e garantia dos direitos humanos, ser coluna vertebral da América Latina. Segundo Correa, havia ao menos cinco canais de televisão no país andino diretamente relacionados aos grandes bancos nacionais. Era necessário modificar as estruturas do poder”, afirmou o novo presidente.

Logo, Correa desfez dívidas com FMI e Banco Mundial – o representante deste último, expulso do país conforme promessas de campanha: “Não aceitaremos chantagem de ninguém”, disse Correa. Expulsou também a base militar estadunidense de Manta: “Não há nenhum problema em ter uma base militar norte-americana no Equador, perfeito! Podemos dar permissão para que instalem essa base, sempre e quando nos derem permissão para instalar uma base militar em Miami; se não há nenhum problema, vão aceitar!”. Na América Latina hoje, há mais de 80 estadunidenses instaladas devido á permissão de regimes locais fantoches de Tio Sam.

Correa também expulsou a embaixadora estadunidense Heather Hodges de seu país em 2011, pois segundo cabo secreto emitido pela Embaixada norte-americana em Quito naquele ano, liberado por WikiLeaks, a “diplomata” tratava de influenciar o chefe de policia através de factoides de que havia corrupção generalizada na corporação.

Foi igualmente revelada ingerência da CIA na Embaixada dos EUA, quem controlava servilismo em determinados setores da Inteligência e nas Forças Armadas equatoriana através do pagamento a funcionários mercenários, além de ter usado ONGs, uma das quais a Fundamedios, financiada pela USAID, Segundo as revelações WikiLeaks, houve também reuniões em Miami entre banqueiros para conspirar na tentativa de golpe e magnicídio contra Correa em 30 de setembro de 2010, quando o então presidente equatoriano foi sequestrado e a oposição ocupou espaços públicos tais como a Assembleia Nacional, o aeroporto, estradas e outros locais públicos.

Sobre a postura anti-imperialista de Rafael Correa, considerou o renomado analista norte-americano Noam Chomsky: “Trata-se de medidas significativas nas relações internacionais, o destino da América do Sul realmente tem mudado”. Não sem motivo, logo a grande mídia, equatoriana e em todo o mundo sustentada exatamente pelos grandes bancos, pela indústria petrolífera e grandes corporações internacionais, passou a atacar o governo de Correa, tachando-o de “fascistoide”, “autoritário”,”totalitário”, “contrário aos direitos humanos” e outras qualificações mentirosas que, curiosamente, não gera o mesmo espanto midiático quando se trata de aliados dos Estados Unidos, tais como Arábia Saudita, Israel, Colômbia etc.

Questionado em entrevista à TVE da Espanha sobre suposto cerceamento à liberdade de expressão no Equador, o que realmente não existe, o então presidente equatoriano respondeu diante de uma irritada e claramente tendenciosa jornalista ibérica; “Vocês se creem donos da opinião pública, mas não são; são donos da opinião publicada. Donos da opinião pública são nossos povos e a eles devemos responder, não a vocês”.

Sobre isto, Gina aponta que a grande mídia substituiu os partidos políticos em crise, principalmente nos anos de 1980. “Por suas ligações com setores de atividade e financeiros, locais e globais, e para manter esses mesmos interesses econômicos, não apenas a mídia atua como porta-vozes dos setores de interesse como os grandes meios funcionam também como verdadeiros atores políticos, defendendo, orientando, dirigindo e conduzindo o debate político e a construção de atores políticos, e mantendo um estado de opinião favorável a seus próprios interesses e aos interesses que representam”.

A pesar da crise do capitalismo mundial, durante a Revolução Cidadã o PIB equatoriano cresceu em média 3,9 por cento entre 2007 e 2015, comparado com os 2,9 por cento da América Latina segundo a Comissão Econômica para a América Latina e o Caribe (Cepal). Isso permitiu que o governo tenha investido cerca de 9% do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB) em investimentos sociais, o dobro do período dos dez anos anteriores aos governos Correa. Neste período, o salário mínimo mais que dobrou no país andino, e a qualidade dos serviços públicos foi melhorada significativamente.

Em 2009 e 2013, Correa venceu esmagadoramente as eleições presidenciais já no primeiro turno enquanto fazia do Equador referência mundial em políticas inclusivas, direitos humanos e esforços pela integração latino-americana. Através da Constituição de Montecristi aprovada através de referendo popular em 2008, a Revolução Cidadã estabelece o cidadão como sujeito da história, a igualdade em todos os segmentos da sociedade e leva o Equador a ser o primeiro país do mundo a reconhecer, constitucionalmente, os direitos da natureza, livre da exploração do ser humano em nome do desenvolvimento econômico.

Neste sentido, Correa enfrentou nada menos que a multinacional petrolífera Chevron Corporation, segunda mais importante dos Estados Unidos e sexta do mundo, denunciada por múltiplos casos de contaminação ambiental em diversos lugares do planeta. Em setembro de 2013, a Chevron foi expulsa da região amazônica equatoriana exatamente pela degradação ambiental – segundo Correa, a multinacional era “inimiga do país”, tendo sido obrigada a pagar uma indemnização de 9,5 bilhões de dólares por ter causado um dos maiores desastres ambientais do mundo no país andino, entre 1964 e 1990.

A soberania nacional, então, passa a ser o norte da política equatoriana, e o país andino desempenha agora papel cada vez mais importante na integração latino-americana especialmente através da Unasul, da Alba, da Celac e do Banco do Sul. Logo Correa também rejeitou o Tratado de Livre Comercio com os Estados Unidos.

O Equador tinha os piores sistemas viários da região antes da Revolução Cidadã; hoje, graças aos investimentos sociais, possui os melhores e entre os destaques mundiais, de acordo com o World Economic Forum. Segundo o Instituto Nacional de Estatística e Censos do Equador, a pobreza caiu de 62 por cento para 44 por cento da população entre 2007 e 2016, e a pobreza extrema caiu seis pontos percentuais no mesmo período, ficando em 10 por cento em março de 2016. Os fortes investimentos em saúde levaram o Equador a ser o único país da América hispânica a possuir hospitais públicos reconhecidos internacionalmente, especialmente pela Accreditation Canada International.

Para a Unesco, o Equador é o segundo país que mais avançou educação na região, e não sem razão: é o que mais investe em educação superior em toda a América Latina. Em 2006, um professor recebia um salário que variava entre 90 e 200 de dólares por mês; hoje, varia entre 600 e 1.600 dólares. Entre as escolas de ensino básico, 53 por cento possuem biblioteca: em 2011, essa porcentagem era de 13 por cento. Foi estabelecido um sistema de crédito e certificado universitário ocasionando o fechamento de 17 universidades que não cumpriam as normas exigidas. Isso tudo evidencia que o governo equatoriano está preocupado com qualidade, mais que com quantidade. Atualmente, mais de 4.200 docentes cursam mestrado nas melhores universidades do mundo. No período de 2007-2015, foram oferecidas bolsas de estudo para mestrado dentro do país para 14.276 estudantes, diante de 237 que conseguiram entre 1995 e 2006, além de 11 milbolsistas de graduação no exterior. Certamente como consequência destes fortes investimentos em educação somados à melhora na qualidade de vida e à maior eficiência da Polícia nacional, mais bem equipada e com salários muito melhores em comparação a governos anteriores, os índices de violência no país baixam consideravelmente, sendo o Equador hoje uma das nações mais seguras de toda a América Latina

Questionado no documentário Diez Años Después sobre do que trara o Socialismo do Século XXI, Rafael Correa respondeu: “O Socialismo do Século XXI pode ser resumido em justiça, justiça em todas as dimensões: justiça social, justiça de gênero, justiça étnica, justiça intergeracional, é o que mais precisa o mundo, acredito eu, e especialmente a América Latina, região mais desigual do planeta. Não vejo outro caminho para a América Latina. O neoliberalismo do ‘salve-se quem puder’, da liberdade dos neoliberais, da não-intervenção: quando você tem gente no topo de cima com todas as oportunidades e todas as capacidades, e outros tantos na parte inferior que nunca tiveram nada… isso é um massacre. O Socialismo do Século XXI trata da não-dominação, e lutamos passa isso: que ninguém seja dominado, para que todo mundo goze da plena e verdadeira liberdade”.

Em matéria de direitos humanos, o Equador tem sido premiado constantemente pelos mais diversos organismos internacionais, valendo destacar: o reconhecimento do Comitê contra os Desaparecimentos Forçados da ONU em março deste ano, pelo esclarecimento de Quito em relação aos casos de desaparecimentos forçados ocorridos durante as décadas de 1980 e 1990 no país, além do esforço em se localizar outras vítimas de desaparecimento; em outubro do ano passado, o brasileiro Roberto Caldas, presidente da Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos destacou o Equador como exemplo em boas práticas de direitos humanos: “Eu diria que as mudanças da justiça convertem o Equador em um dos países que mais mudou no mundo em termos de justiça nos últimos tempos”, afirmou então Caldas.

Em termos de ajuda humanitária, os governos Correa também colecionam exemplos, sendo que os mair recentes envolvem as torrenciais chuvas no Peru que, em março deste ano, deixaram 70 mortos e 100 mil desabrigados; em favor das vítimas de incêndio no Chile  em janeiro, que causou 11 mortes e 3 mil feridos; para as vítimas do terremoto de 7, graus na escala Richter no Haiti em janeiro de 2010.

Levando-se em consideração que do período que se estende de 1997 a 2007 o Equador teve nada menos que dez presidentes, apenas o fato de Correa ter permanecido dez anos no Palácio de Carondelet cumprindo os dois mandatos do início ao fim, retratam inequivocamente a estabilidade política no país. Recentemente, o Conselho Econômico e Social das Nações Unidas nomeou o ex-presidente equatoriano Rafael Correa melhor presidente do mundo em 2016.

Contudo, entre intelectuais de esquerda os governos Correa também são motivo de críticas, como no caso do economista Alberto Acosta, um dos formuladores da Constituição de Montecristi e candidato à presidência equatoriana em 2013 através de uma aliança entre movimentos sociais, incluindo indígenas.

O economista critica fortemente o que aponta como leniência excessiva do governo de Quito com a corrupção, o uso da força para abafar movimentos sociais críticos à sua administração e considera que, ao optar pelo neodesenvolvimentismo, isto é, a utilização da tecnologia exaustiva para a exploração dos recursos naturais promovendo uma sistemática ação depredatória da natureza, o governo tem traído os princípios do Bem Viver contido na Revolução Cidadã e na Constituição de Montecristi que, projetado exatamente por ele e outros intelectuais locais ao propor uma alternativa ao modelo econômico desenvolvimentista, levou Rafael Correa à Presidência do Equador.

Em um caso pontual, o economista e ex-presidenciável aponta a corrupção das empresas brasileiras Odebrecht e a estatal Petrobras em seu país: através de uma reunião entre Correa e Lula, ambas saíram impunemente do Equador.

Acosta, contudo, não acredita que Moreno possa superar a crise global e retomar o crescimento econômico sem explorar a natureza, devido ao que considera falta de preparo do novo presidente.

Outra deficiência reconhecida amplamente no Equador inclusive por governistas, já mencionada nas entrevistas com o economista Jorge Orbe e com a então presidenta da Assembleia Legislativa do país, Gabriela Rivadaneira, a reforma agrária não saiu do papel, e não há propostas concretas para efetivá-la.

Perspectivas

Para Pérez, a prioridade de Moreno deverá ser a recuperação econômica. “Como os preços do petróleo não atingiram os valores anteriores, o Equador enfrentará um período de ingressos restringidos, com a contração dos intercâmbios econômicas renda habitual. A situação vai levar o presidente eleito Moreno a ter que ser criativo com as medidas para uma provável recuperação econômica”.

Para o cientista político, o grande desafio é colocar em prática os investimentos sociais em prática, dada a atual conjuntura internacional desfavorável. Gina concorda, ressaltando que “cumprir essas promessas terá impacto, entre outras coisas, sobre a qualidade do ensino superior se a percentagem da despesa pública não for aumentada das provisões até o momento”. E acrescenta: “Também impactará as finanças públicas e obras públicas se nenhuma receita do governo aumentar. E ainda maior impacto sobre a credibilidade social, se algumas dessas promessas não forem cumpridas, não só porque o governo do presidente Correa é caracterizado por cumprir o que diz, mas porque a oposição não parece recuar da contender com o novo governo”.

A eleição de Moreno significa a manutenção de organismos como Alba, Celac e Unasul e reconfiguração do cenário geopolítico latino-americano diante do agressivo avanço imperialista norte-americano, apoiado sempre nas entreguistas elites nacionais e em uma baixa guerra comunicacional. A América Latina, ainda região mais desigual do planeta exatamente pelas políticas neoliberais impostas pelo suposto “Consenso de Washington, sobre o que Correa aponta, “que consenso sem que a maioria dos líderes regionais o tenham aceitado?”. Por outro lado, a região tem sido considerada pela ONU a que proporcionalmente mais avançou combate à pobreza, graças aos governos progressistas já que tal consideração das Nações Unidas coincide com o momento histórico que essas forças entraram em cena na América Latina, em cada um de seus países com amplo apoio popular.

“Talvez o elemento mais importante na eleição de Lenin Moreno neste momento histórico da América Latina é a preservação de um projeto de esquerda em um momento em que, depois do que aconteceu na Argentina e no Brasil e do bloqueio institucional na Venezuela, possa exercer pressão sobre projetos progressistas iniciados em 1998”, pontua Pérez. E acrescenta: “No sentido simbólico, abre-se um período de esperança mas também da possibilidade de opção, que permite a projeção do Equador como líder regional no projeto político que conseguiu sobreviver a uma ampla gama de adversidades”.

Internamente, apesar de algumas poucas mas profundas divergências e diante de todos os desafios que se colocam, alguns deles bastante delicados, certamente mais esta vitória da Revolução Cidadã proporciona novo alento às políticas inclusivas locais e aos direitos humanos, sem dúvida outra importante conquista do povo equatoriano em face das mesquinhas classes dominantes, locais e internacionais.

Edu Montesanti

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Il «disarmo» nucleare di Gentiloni

June 6th, 2017 by Manlio Dinucci

La scena della folla presa dal panico in piazza San Carlo a Torino, con drammatiche conseguenze, è emblematica della nostra situazione. La psicosi da attentato terroristico, diffusa ad arte dall’apparato politico-mediatico in base a un fenomeno reale (di cui si nascondono però le vere cause e finalità), ha fatto scattare in modo caotico l’istinto primordiale di sopravvivenza. Esso viene invece addormentato col black-out politico-mediatico, quando dovrebbe scattare in modo razionale di fronte a ciò che mette in pericolo la sopravvivenza dell’intera umanità: la corsa agli armamenti nucleari. Di conseguenza la stragrande maggioranza degli italiani ignora che sta per svolgersi alle Nazioni Unite, dal 15 giugno al 7 luglio, la seconda fase dei negoziati per un trattato che proibisca le armi nucleari.

La bozza della Convenzione sulle armi nucleari, redatta dopo la prima fase negoziale in marzo, stabilisce che ciascuno Stato parte si impegna a non produrre né possedere armi nucleari, né a trasferirle o riceverle direttamente o indirettamente. L’apertura dei negoziati è stata decisa da una risoluzione dell’Assemblea generale votata nel dicembre 2016 da 113 paesi, con 35 contrari e 13 astenuti. Gli Stati uniti e le altre due potenze nucleari della Nato (Francia e Gran Bretagna), gli altri paesi dell’Alleanza e i suoi principali partner – Israele (unica potenza nucleare in Medioriente), Giappone, Australia, Ucraina – hanno votato contro. Hanno così espresso parere contrario anche le altre potenze nucleari: Russia e Cina (astenutasi), India, Pakistan e Nord Corea.

Tra i paesi che hanno votato contro, sulla scia degli Stati uniti, c’è l’Italia. Il governo Gentiloni ha dichiarato, il 2 febbraio, che «la convocazione di una Conferenza delle Nazioni Unite per negoziare uno strumento giuridicamente vincolante sulla proibizione delle armi nucleari, costituisce un elemento fortemente divisivo che rischia di compromettere i nostri sforzi a favore del disarmo nucleare». L’Italia, sostiene il governo, sta seguendo «un percorso graduale, realistico e concreto in grado di condurre a un processo di disarmo nucleare irreversibile, trasparente e verificabile», basato sulla «piena applicazione del Trattato di non-proliferazione, pilastro del disarmo».

In che modo l’Italia applica il Tnp, ratificato nel 1975, lo dimostrano i fatti. Nonostante che esso impegni gli Stati militarmente non-nucleari a «non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari, né il controllo su tali armi, direttamente o indirettamente», l’Italia ha messo a disposizione degli Stati uniti il proprio territorio per l’installazione di armi nucleari (almeno 50 bombe B-61 ad Aviano e 20 a Ghedi-Torre), al cui uso vengono addestrati anche piloti italiani. Dal 2020 sarà schierata in Italia la B61-12: una nuova arma da first strike nucleare, con la capacità di penetrare nel terreno per distruggere i bunker dei centri di comando. Una volta iniziato nel 2020 (ma non è escluso anche prima) lo schieramento in Europa della B61-12, l’Italia, formalmente paese non-nucleare, verrà trasformata in prima linea di un ancora più pericoloso confronto nucleare tra Usa/Nato e Russia.

Che fare? Si deve imporre che l’Italia contribuisca al varo del Trattato Onu sulla proibizione delle armi nucleari e lo sottoscriva e, allo stesso tempo, pretendere che gli Stati uniti, in base al vigente Trattato di non-proliferazione, rimuovano qualsiasi arma nucleare dal nostro territorio e rinuncino a installarvi le nuove bombe B61-12. Per quasi tutto il «mondo politico», l’argomento è tabù. Se manca la coscienza politica, non resta che ricorrere all’istinto primordiale di sopravvivenza.

Manlio Dinucci

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Global Research Mobile Site

June 6th, 2017 by The Global Research Team

Dear Readers,

As some of you may have noticed, we have had to take down the mobile version of Global Research while we resolve a technical issue.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this and can assure you that we will be reinstating it as soon as possible.

The website is still available via your mobile devices, but it will be the desktop version which displays at the moment rather than the mobile version.

With thanks,

The Global Research Team

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One has to wonder why terrorists like those who struck on Saturday night in London, and earlier in Manchester, launched their attacks now. It is difficult not to infer that their violence was timed to influence the UK election this coming Thursday.

Those behind the attack – whether those carrying it out or those dispatching the terrorists – want to have an effect. Terrorism is the use of indiscriminate violence for political ends. It has a logic, even if it is one we mostly do not care to understand.

So what do these terrorists hope to achieve?

Based on prior experience, they will assume that by striking now they can increase fear and anger among the British population – intensifying anti-Muslim rhetoric, justifying harsher “security” responses from the British state and shifting political support towards the right. That is good for their cause because it radicalises other disillusioned Muslim youth. In short, it brings recruits.

Islam is not exceptional in this regard. This is not a problem specifically of religion. As experts have repeatedly pointed out, disillusioned, frustrated, angry (and mainly male) youth adopt existing ideologies relevant to them and then search for the parts that can be twisted to justify their violence. The violent impulse exists and they seek an ideology to rationalise it.

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Timothy McVeigh (Source: Time Magazine)

Once Christianity – the religion of turning the other cheek – was used to justify pogroms and inquisitions. In the US, white supremacists – in the Ku Klux Klan, for example – used the Bible to justify spreading terror among the black population of the Deep South. White supremacists continue sporadically to use terror in the US, most notably Timothy McVeigh, who was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Terrorists can exploit secular ideologies too, on either the far-right or far-left. Just think of the Baader Meinhof Gang or the Symbionese Liberation Army, back in the 1970s. The latter famously made a convert of Patty Hearst, granddaughter of publishing empire magnate William Randolph Hearst (aka Citizen Kane). After she was taken hostage, she quickly adopted the group’s thinking and its violence as her own.

The Islamic terrorists of our time believe in a violent, zero-sum clash of civilisations. That should not be surprising, as their ideology mirrors the dominant ideology – neo-conservatism – of western foreign policy establishments. Both sides are locked in a terrifying dance of death. Both believe that two “civilisations” exist and are incompatible, that they are in a fight to the death, and that any measures are justified to achieve victory because the struggle is existential. We use drones and “humanitarian intervention” to destabilise their societies; they use cars, guns, knives and bombs to destabilise ours.

The dance chiefly takes place because both sides continue it – and it will not be easy to break free of it. Our meddling in the Middle East dates back more than a century – especially since the region became a giant oil spigot for us. The tentacles of western interference did not begin in 2003, whatever we might choose to believe. Conversely, a globalised world inevitably entails one where a century-long colonial battlefield can easily come back to haunt us on our doorsteps.

The solution, complex as it will need to be, certainly cannot include the use by us of similarly indiscriminate violence, more “intervention” in the Middle East, or more scapegoating of Muslims. It will require taking a step back and considering how and why we too are addicted to this dance of death.

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.

Featured image: Bryce Edwards | CC BY 2.0

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Note: This paper was prepared and presented in part for a panel at the Left Forum held at John Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY) on Sat. June 3, 2017. The panel was hosted by the United National Antiwar Coalition where the author serves as an administrative committee member. Other panelists included Margaret Kimberley, Editor and Senior Columnist for Black Agenda Report BAR, Ajamu Baraka, National Organizer at Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and Joe Lombardo, Co-Coordinator of UNAC.

With the ascendancy of President Donald Trump to the White House a strong focus has been placed on his role as a promoter of racism, national oppression domestically along with warmongering abroad.

We observe keenly the escalation of tension in the Korean peninsula with the placement of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system. The president’s posture in relationship to the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) threatened the full resumption of an unresolved war just several weeks ago.

There has been increasing aerial attacks against purported al-Qaeda targets in Yemen while the people in this Middle Eastern state, the least developed in the region, are suffering immensely from the Pentagon-coordinated war involving Saudi Arabian and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) bombings which have continued on a daily basis since March 2015 killing an estimated 12,000 people and prompting widespread outbreak of cholera impacting over 60,000.

The deployment of the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) in Afghanistan represented a new level of warfare in that Central Asian country which has been the focus of U.S. policy since at least 1979 when the Islamist forces were unleashed against the Soviet-backed socialist government then in power. Since 2001, the Pentagon and NATO have laid waste to the country further where thousands of foreign troops continue to occupy the area.

Somalia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Libya and Beyond 

Although the Trump administration’s foreign policy towards Africa has gained far less attention by the western media, there has been the continuation of already existing hostilities on the African continent. Somalia was singled out when Trump ordered the escalation of Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel being stationed in this Horn of Africa state. A U.S. Navy Seal soldier was killed by al-Shabaab guerrilla units several weeks ago while they were embedded in the American and European Union (EU) backed Somalian National Army (SNA).

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Protest in Michigan (Source: iacenter.org)

Although the administration claimed that it was doing away with the supposed restrictions on military actions in Somalia by former President Barack Obama, the interventions by the U.S. in Somalia go back as far as the late 1970s when it encouraged an invasion by the government of then President Mohamed Siad Barre against the Ogaden region of Ethiopia when another Democratic leader Jimmy Carter was in the Oval Office. The waning days of the presidential tenure of George H.W. Bush, Sr. was marked by the invasion of 12,000 Marines in Somalia in the failed “Operation Restore Hope” beginning in December 1992, a plan inherited by Bill Clinton which ended in disaster when the people rose up against the occupation.

Since 2006, the U.S. then under President George W. Bush, Jr. has encouraged and sponsored the intervention into Somalian national affairs. First by seeking to empower warlords to subvert the efforts of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and later after 2009, by recruiting elements of the UIC into the interim federal regime, Washington sought to guide the political events in the oil-rich state.

Several neighboring states have been drawn into the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) which now has approximately 22,000 troops from Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Burundi and Uganda. Police officers from Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria are also a part of the mission.

In the Southern African nation of Zimbabwe since 1998, the former British colonial power, the U.S., the EU among others, have imposed sanctions on the government of the Zimbabwe African National Union, Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) led by President Robert Mugabe. When in 2000 legislation was passed granting the right of the African people to radically redistribute land to the people, the sanctions and other forms of hostile propaganda was enacted.

During the period of 1998-2000, the administration of President Bill Clinton was in power. The same sanctions continued through the entire two terms of the Bush White House. When Obama took office in January 2009, his regime continued and intensified the punitive measures against the ZANU-PF ruling party and various political officials including President Mugabe.

Both Britain and the U.S. attempted to persuade the Republic of South Africa while former President Thabo Mbeki was in office to impose a blockade on Zimbabwe. Britain drew up plans for an evacuation of its settler population which held United Kingdom (UK) passports as well. These suggestions failed and through the assistance of successive African National Congress (ANC) governments, the support of the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the People’s Republic of China, the country has been able to remain afloat.

This of course was not the case in the North African nation of Libya, where under the Jamahiriya system headed by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, the oil-rich country had attained the highest standard of living anywhere on the continent. It was the Democratic administration of Obama with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State which coordinated a war of regime-change and genocide that destroyed Libya as a viable state. Gaddafi was driven from the capital of Tripoli in August 2011 and later captured and brutally murdered by imperialist agents on October 20 of the same year.

Image result for war in libya

Civil war in Libya (Source: Sputnik/ Andrey Stenin)

Today Libya is a major source of instability and human trafficking internationally. Thousands have died off the coast of the country in the Mediterranean in attempts to flee the chaos and impoverishment in Libya and throughout other regions of Africa and the Middle East. There are at least three identifiable regimes in Libya which often engage in deadly military struggles for political and economic authority. The country has gone from being Africa’s most prosperous to dire poverty and balkanization. Numerous attempts by counter-revolutionary elements backed up by the White House, EU member-states and the United Nations to form a viable government have failed.

The situation in Libya is a direct result of the foreign policy of Barack Obama towards the African continent. Since the launching of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008 under Bush, the presence of U.S. military forces on the continent has increased substantially. Obama announced just two years prior to leaving office that his administration would deploy in excess of 3,500 Special Forces and military trainers across 36 nations. A military base in the Horn of Africa state of Djibouti has been expanded where it houses thousands of U.S. troops at Camp Lemonnier.

Imperialism in Africa today is at a critical stage impeding the capacity of nation-states to direct the future of their countries. Despite Africa’s vast mineral, agricultural wealth and labor power, a renewed debt crisis compounded by Pentagon, CIA and State Department interference is reversing the gains that have been made in previous years.

U.S. Foreign Policy After World War II

Some of the most intense fighting during WWII took place in North Africa during the period of 1940-1943. Italian and later German military forces sought to establish a firm military base of operations in Egypt and Libya. They were defeated by the British and U.S. military in a series of battles over a period of nearly two years.

U.S. forces were deployed in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria in Operation Torch which bolstered allied occupations in North Africa. Italy had secured Libya as a colony in 1931 after the two decades-long war of occupation. The Wheelus Air Base was seized from the Italians by Britain in 1943. The large military facility in Libya, after the Italian and German losses, became the principal hub for the U.S. military in the region.

After the war with the rise of the National Liberation Movements across the continent, U.S. foreign policy was largely supportive of the colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. In Algeria an armed revolutionary struggle was waged during 1954-1961 leading to the independence of the French colony which Paris had occupied for 130 years.

Although the State Department often claimed that it was in support of the right of colonial nations to self-determination and independence, the strategic alliances the U.S. maintained through the post-WWII North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took precedence.

For example, in regard to the Portuguese role in waging a war to maintain its colonies during the 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. did not interfere with Lisbon as it bombed civilian areas in efforts to halt the advances of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in Guinea-Bissau. Other colonies in Mozambique, Angola, Sao Tome and Principe, the Portuguese ruthlessly suppressed independence efforts. Even after independence was won in Mozambique and Angola, counter-revolutionary elements tied to Portuguese intelligence were deployed against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).

With specific reference to legislative and State Department initial institutional responses to African liberation struggles, there was the establishment of the African Affairs Bureau under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Senate Foreign Relations Sub-Committee on African Affairs which was chaired by the-then Senator John F. Kennedy. The Massachusetts Senator made comments that appeared to be supportive of independence movements against France in both Algeria and Vietnam.

These efforts by Kennedy in 1959-1960 served to position him for his successful bid for the presidency. Kennedy criticized the Eisenhower administration for not being supportive of the aspirations of Africa people.

Nonetheless, after taking power in January 1961, Kennedy upheld the U.S. policies toward the former Belgian Congo whom first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba had been overthrown with the assistance of the United Nations. Lumumba had been placed under arrest, tortured and executed with the full complicity of Washington in the final days of the Eisenhower administration.

Although Kennedy invited more than two dozen African leaders to the White House during his presidency from 1961 to late 1963 when he was assassinated, Washington continued its Cold War efforts designed to undermine and limit the influence of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba in Africa. In October 1962, Kennedy welcomed the newly ascended Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella to the White House. However, the administration warned Ben Bella not to visit Cuba after leaving the U.S. due to a purported plot to shoot down his plane in route to the revolutionary Caribbean island-nation.

Image result for kennedy + ben bella

John F. Kennedy and Ahmed Ben Bella (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Later the U.S. would back a Moroccan invasion into Algeria designed to overthrow the new National Liberation Front (FLN) government. During this intervention the Cuban government under Prime Minister Fidel Castro sent in military advisers and pilots which assisted in the defeat of the western-backed coup attempt.

Conclusion: Imperialist Policy on Africa Continues Through Successive Administrations from Both Capitalist Parties 

These illustrations of U.S. foreign affairs provide a glimpse of the ongoing efforts by Washington and its NATO allies to dominate post-colonial Africa. Socialist-oriented African states have been the principle focus of destabilization by the State Department and CIA.

Although President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana visited the U.S. in the early days of the Kennedy administration to discuss the crisis in Congo after the assassination of Lumumba and his two cabinet members, the unofficial policy of the White House and State Department was to remove the First Republic Government led by the Convention People’s Party (CPP). Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, oversaw the overthrow of the CPP and the First Republic in February 1966.

Accounts from both the State Department and the CIA have proved conclusively in subsequent years that it was the machinations of the U.S. that removed the Nkrumah government. Former Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, set the stage for the Ghana coup when he sent a memorandum to the ambassador from Accra criticizing the publication of Nkrumah’s landmark book entitled “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism” released in October 1965 just four month prior to the coup which utilized lower-ranking military officers while Nkrumah was on an external mission to end the Vietnam War.

To quote from Nkrumah’s work:

“No one would suggest that if all the peoples of Africa combined to establish their unity their decision could be revoked by the forces of neo-colonialism. On the contrary, faced with a new situation, those who practice neo-colonialism would adjust themselves to this new balance of world forces in exactly the same way as the capitalist world has in the past adjusted itself to any other change in the balance of power. The danger to world peace springs not from the action of those who seek to end neo-colonialism but from the inaction of those who allow it to continue. To argue that a third world war is not inevitable is one thing, to suppose that it can be avoided by shutting our eyes to the development of a situation likely to produce it, is quite another matter.”

Nkrumah concludes the book by saying:

“If world war is not to occur it must be prevented by positive action. This positive action is within the power of the peoples of those areas of the world which now suffer under neocolonialism but it is only within their power if they act at once, with resolution and in unity.”

Featured image: cp-africa.com

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The West’s War on Free Speech

June 6th, 2017 by Tony Cartalucci

With a name like the “National Democratic Institute” (NDI) one might expect the US State Department-funded, corporate-financier chaired front to be the premier proponent of freedom and democracy worldwide. And although it poses as such, it does precisely the opposite. It uses principles like free speech, democracy, press freedom, and human rights as a facade behind which it carries out a politically motivated agenda on behalf of the special interests that fund and direct its activities.

In a recent Tweet, NDI linked to a New York Times article titled, “In Europe’s Election Season, Tech Vies to Fight Fake News.” It claimed in the Tweet that the article featured:

A look at some of the projects aiming to use automated algorithms to identify and combat fake news. 

The article itself though, reveals nothing short of a global effort by US tech-giants Google and Facebook, in collaboration with the Western media, to censor any and all media that fails to align with Western-dominated narratives.

The article itself claims:

The French electorate heads to the polls in the second round of presidential elections on May 7, followed by votes in Britain and Germany in the coming months. Computer scientists, tech giants and start-ups are using sophisticated algorithms and reams of online data to quickly — and automatically — spot fake news faster than traditional fact-checking groups can. 

The goal, experts say, is to expand these digital tools across Europe, so the region can counter the fake news that caused so much confusion and anger during the United States presidential election in November, when outright false reports routinely spread like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter.

The article then explains that once “fake news” is spotted, it is expunged from the Internet. It reports that:

Source: news.softpedia.com

After criticism of its role in spreading false reports during the United States elections, Facebook introduced a fact-checking tool ahead of the Dutch elections in March and the first round of the French presidential election on April 23. It also removed 30,000 accounts in France that had shared fake news, a small fraction of the approximately 33 million Facebook users in the country.

Were foreign government-linked tech companies purging tens of thousands of accounts ahead of elections in say, Thailand or Russia, it is very likely organizations like NDI and media platforms like the New York Times would cry foul, depicting it as censorship.

In determining what is and isn’t “fake news,” the New York Times offers some clues (emphasis added):

Using a database of verified articles and their artificial intelligence expertise, rival groups — a combination of college teams, independent programmers and groups from existing tech companies — already have been able to accurately predict the veracity of certain claims almost 90 percent of the time, Mr. Pomerleau said. He hopes that figure will rise to the mid-90s before his challenge ends in June.

In other words, “fake news” is determined by comparing it directly to narratives presented by establishment media platforms like the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and others who have notorious track records of serial deception, false reporting, and even war propagandizing.

Nowhere does the New York Times explain how these “verified articles” have been determined to be factually accurate, and instead, it appears that all these algorithms are doing is ensuring all media falls in line with Western narratives.

If media in question coincides with Western-dominated media platforms, it is given a pass – if not, it is slated for expunging as described elsewhere in the New York Times’ piece.

Thus, the National Democratic Institute, who claims on its website to “support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government,” finds itself promoting what is essentially a worldwide agenda of malicious censorship, manipulating the perception of the globe’s citizenry, not supporting or strengthening it’s participation in any sort of honest political process.

To answer the question as to what the NDI is referring to when it claims other nations are “censoring” free speech and press freedoms, it involves defending local fronts funded by the NDI and its parent organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) who merely repeat Western propaganda in local languages and with local spins. When foreign nations attempt to deal with these instances of “fake news,” US fronts like NDI and NED depict it as censorship.

While the West poses as the premier champion of free speech, citizen participation, openness, and accountability, the New York Times article reveals an unfolding plan to utterly crush any narrative that deviates from Western media talking points, thus controlling citizen perception, not encouraging “participation,” and ensuring that the West alone determines what is “opened” and held “accountable.”

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Big Brother is a fiction character/leader in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

No worse scenario can be referenced in human history or even among human fiction than plans to determine for the world through automatic algorithms and artificial intelligence almost in real time what is heard and read and what isn’t. It is even beyond the scope and scale of George Orwell’s cautionary dystopian “1984” novel.

In a truly free society, an educated citizenry is capable of deciding for itself what is “fake news” and what isn’t. Because of the rise of alternatives to the West’s monopoly over global information, many people are doing just that – determining that Western narratives are in fact deceptions. At no other point in modern history has the Western media faced as many alternatives, and as much skepticism on this scale, as well as an ebbing of trust domestically and abroad. It is no surprise then, to find the West resorting to outright censorship, even if it cushions mention of it with terms like “fake news.”

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image: New Eastern Outlook

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London Terror to Complete Brexit Coup d’Etat

June 6th, 2017 by Prof. John McMurtry

Within hours of completing an analysis of how the June 8 UK General Election is a fix to lock in a phony one-off referendum to leave the European Union unsupported by a vast majority of British voters, the Saturday night London terror struck on cue.

The 24-point lead for new PM Theresa May and the Tories over grass-roots Labour and Jeremy Corbyn had free fallen to less three points.

The public was awaking to the lavishly dressed mock-up of Maggie Thatcher as a phony, and the rising Jeremy Corbyn as a near unique leader in British politics, an honest man.

He was not only trustworthy, which none denied. He showed himself over a year capable of standing up to a non-stop corporate media barrage of officious  loathing in which war-criminal Tony Blair and his ‘New Labour’ ilk led – barking out front, ostentatiously resigning from cabinet, tearing apart the new up-from-the-ground reclamation of the Labour Party from the corporate boardrooms where it had become Blair’s Murdoch-press lap-dog and a neo-liberal shell.

The reason Corbyn was and remains an official enemy is that he unapologetically stands for traditional socialist values. His program is not contaminated as elsewhere by trendy post-modern cultural collapse into saucy relativism and politically correct diversions from economic life substance.

Even worse to official media-and-political culture and its submergence in capitalist globalization with no alternative, Corbyn and his politically grounded movement actually stands for British workers’ interests, the public sector, social services, and environmental safeguards – all of which are on the chopping block across the world.

The problem is that majority of citizens in the world support these long-developed and popular social infrastructures and standards. So the only way of continuing to defund, privatize and erase them is by pretending there are much more modern and flexible marketable versions for corporate and bank profit.

One way or another, and there are many ways, this process of historical reversal and laying waste to over a century of social evolution and life standards is the sum and substance of all establishment political parties in power.

It is the Great Coup d’Etat of Globalization which has increasingly spread and ruled the world. All the degenerate trends of extreme inequality, private money power over all, rising youth unemployment, pervasive state corruptions, massive dispossessions, override of long-established workers’ rights, and multiplying ecocidal production and products – the list is a vast profile of one-way degeneration of social systems across borders  – are put on fast-forward by corporate and bank globalization.  And all remain unconnected in the mass media and avoided by governing political parties.

So it may seem that the erupting new ‘nationalist’ movements in US and Britain, Eastern Europe and Russia, and so on, are the great swing back against corporate and bank globalization. This is the Great Illusion of our time.

What is hardly yet seen is that, in fact, these ‘nationalist’ movements, as in Trump US and Tory Britain racing ahead today, do nothing to connect or to solve any of these life-and-death social system problems and the cumulative pollutions and razzings of organic, social and ecological life organization across the globe.

They are only a speed up of the global ecogenocidal proceses under the pretexts of new national recovery and freedom.

One can always tell this by whether or not the ecocidal processes and products are effectively ruled out rather than accelerated in fact, and whether or not societies are so governed that more citizens become better off in life work security and free development rather than the opposite in fact.

This is where the facts as opposed to pervasive system rhetoric and claims show only systemic degeneration and dispossession in human and ecological life terms. Seek exception in scientific fact. Seek anywhere that Tory or Republican rule recognises or meets even one of these problems rather than diverting from them in endless ways led by Islamic terrorists as the ever-recurring Enemy to be waged war against – and typically during election campaigns when the popularity of the ruling party is dangerously low.

London Terror Spectacle 5 Days before Election as Brexit-Tory Polls Collapse  

The June 3 massacre of innocent and unarmed Saturday revellers on iconic London Bridge and Borough Market came just in time.

London Terror Attack Kills 7, Leaves Nearly 50 Injured

Police operate a cordon on the North side of London Bridge as forensic officers work after last night’s terrorist attack on June 4, 2017 in London, England. Police continue to cordon off an area after responding to terrorist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market where 7 people were killed and at least 48 injured last night. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Source: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

PM Theresa May and Tory party polls for the snap June 8 national election were in free fall as Corbyn Labour support unexpectedly and dramatically rose by over 20 points from the surprise Spring date that the new and secretively advised PM May had called against all prior commitment and earlier schedule of May 7 2020.

Although only 7 people died – in Moscow at the same 9 people were murdered without much notice – the absolute panic of the central city of London and Europe was unprecedented.

A white van ran over people on London Bridge’s festive and pub-crowded Saturday night, and many were seriously injured – though fewer than in US drone or air strikes happening in Arab countries on a regular basis.

Tthe modus operandi was quintessentially monstrous in action. It could have come from an ISIS video – of which there has been many with no evident interruption by the immense counter-terrorist operations, advanced electronic capabilities, and ever-rising budgets for war upon ISIS terrorists.

The three soon-dead men were maniacal as if drugged, but no drug tests were ever reported. They not only viciously ran over s many people as they could with the signature white ISIS van in the 10 PM Saturday night happy hour, but they leapt out of this careening kill van with long Arab stabbing, cutting, slitting throats, multiply stabbing one young women, and-  in short  embodying the most murderous nightmare conceivable on all in London and around the world soon watching the globally televised aftermath including the dead bodies.

Strangely, the suicide murderers wore fake suicide vests, never explained, but perhaps it was theatrical to fit the stereotype of terror in complete perfection for both side. No-one in all the total coverage everywhere ever mentioned the abundant evidence of US-led funding, arming and orchestration of ISIS – although the mystery still remained of how their original appearance in spanking-new white vans lined to the horizon waving machine guns could have escaped the notice over the endless parade in a highly surveilled open desert area not far from Israel’s borders.

In any case, the horrific downstream event and mysterious origins and orchestrated funding, training and arming of the very same terrorist organization perpetrating one atrocity after another with uninterrupted e-video broadcasts and propaganda over years were all unmentioned in all the allied analysis from the major networks across the globe. Only the international outrage and absolute denunciation pouring in and out from every quarter continued around the clock for days all the way to the two days left before the election.

Since the main question was and remains how to stop these horrible terrorist spectacles, there was no time for causal analysis. Somehow the evidentiary matters of including who funded, armed, trained and orchestrated them –  especially when their propaganda, columns of ferocious operatives, video killings, and never mentioned strange coincidence of attacks with falling popularity of state leaders – kept happening in full view of television and internet audiences around the highly militarized Western world.

It did not seem to help undertanding when the murderous terrorists were known and identified immediately afterwards, from the 9-11 bombings on. How they were and are identified very quickly, even after such an historic surprise attack as 9-11 and  even when the bodies of the alleged terrorists have been completely incinerated, how and why are these issues never raised?

Cui bono? – the first question of forensic justice – is never posed of anyone after the murderous terrorist spectacles. Failing parties and leaders who benefit enormously from such show-stopping distractions which put them in far more command of popular support and power than before the attacks, are never exposed even slightly to this question.

It is taboo. Not even opposing politicians dare to ask it. This gives us the clue to why all the other issues are not raised.  No such basic forensic question is ever posed because it cannot be asked without public opprobrium from every ‘media of record’ and ‘loyal citizen’ accusing the questioner of folly or menace, thus perfectly diverting the issue again from the ruling taboo subject.

There is no evident way through this closed circle. It is foolproof. So it follows that this is well known in ruling circles as well as by those interested in truth. Why would it not be used by a national regime whose public support is falling just before an election?

Free-Falling Tory and PM May Polls and the London Terrorist Attack

Scientific hypothesis looks for disconfirming evidence more than confirming evidence in order to test it. This is why science works when it does. It takes all the relevant facts into account, forms an hypothesis, and tests it against the best possible counter-evidence. (Corporate science and regime propaganda do the opposite. They look only for what confirms their claims to profit them.)

Source: YouGov/True Publica

So coming just 5 days before the snap British general election which her regime called when it was 24 points ahead in the polls – now continuously falling days before election –  this  regime has very good cui bono reason to re-set the polls upwards.

The known best way to do this with no questions asked is for a terrorist attack to occur on the regime. A terrorist attack usually guarantees a spike of citizen solidarity with national government, from France to Turkey to 9-11 Bush US.

No-one dare pose the cui bono? Question in any case. It is known that a grisly terrorist attack, and a strong condemnation of it from the regime in power, along with allied regimes in unanimity, will produce a significant rise in the next poll.

In this case, the poll of the June 8 British general election comes less than 5 days later.

This does not mean that the front political leader, now- PM Theresa May, the longest Home Affairs minister in memory, plans the terrorist attack, or even knows about it.

It would be better that she did not, so as to carry through without compromise or leak. But she knows the territory of Home Affairs very well and the dark state’s capabilities, as well as British public opinion over many years as a cabinet minister.

If her polls are suddenly collapsing, as the polls of the long-belittled Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn rise just as fast, it makes very good sense for her regime to find a terrorist attack incomparably useful just before the election.

She can stand tall and resolute as the lead warrior of the British people, like Margaret Thatcher against the Generals of Argentina over the Falklands. But here the enemy is far more immediate, visibly evil and mass murderous before our eyes – the archetypal enemy of Islamic terrorism, threatening and murdering Britons inside the very celebrating centre of their most populous and globally popular city, spreading mass panic to thousands in a barbarously brutal killing and wounding rampage that no-one will ever forget.

It also provides the ideal opportunity to excoriate the poll-closing Jeremy Corbyn and Labour, who can be insinuated into the terrorist menace by his connection of terrorism to past government actions.

PM May Leaps to Attack Democracy as the Unseen Brexit Coup Closes In

PM May has all the credentials and image to rise to this occasion, and to pull off what no-one has really yet seen –the greatest reverse of British social and environmental standards and law in history that is about to be locked in by the June 8 election. The half century of evolved EU workers’ rights, life-protective laws, and scientific environmental norms is about to be overthrown.

The London terror massacre occurs on June 3 as Tory and PM May polls  relentlessly slide down and the turning-point snap election is just hours away.

State authority is restored in a blinding flash of action. Police command people “to run for your lives and hide”. They  command people to lie down in the areas they control, and to hold their hands over their heads as they are herded in large obedient numbers. Loud explosions are heard all over the place where there are no terrorists, and it is only 8 minutes before the terrorists are all dead for all to see on TV.

Dead men cannot speak. PM May is strict and aggressive to rally the masses against the Enemy – – and to reverse the Labour opposition’s rising polls. Election campaigning is suspended. PM May accuses those who sought have causal understanding of the terrorist attacks as showing “far too much tolerance”.

She warns that there is “a new trend in the threat we face” – – although there is  none evident, except raising the indisputable facts of its causation, as Corbyn had done just before his polls began to overtake her.

PM May scolds,

“Enough is Enough”.

The same old circle of blame-the-enemy while doing nothing effective to stop it is redrawn deeper than before. But she darkly  warns others that things “cannot continue as they are”. She suggests that “pluralistic British values” are at fault.

She leaves the cause of the endless terrorist spectacles behind to accuse the free internet itself, demanding once again the new Tory policy of sweeping new state regulations across citizens and borders, rather than honing in on ISIS and other long scot-free channels.

“There is”, she says, “to be frank, far too much tolerance of extremism in our country”.

“So we need to become far more robust in identifying it”, she proclaims in police-state code, “and stamping it out across the public sector and across society”.

Public sector? Across society? Is this a declaration of war against those in the public sector who dissent from the program? Is this a foreshadowing of the social- sector stripping to come with the Brexit coup d’etat? Where does the attack end?

It does not. There are no definitions, no criteria, no evidence. There only more insinuations of who must be labelled and stamped out as ‘too tolerant’. There are only more demands for more state powers diverting completely from every issue involved not only in terrorist killing, but in the end of EU rights and laws in Britain.

Most of all and most profoundly, every word and position of PM May, the Tory party and the forces behind them have distracted from the ultimate geostrategic game afoot that the London terrorist spectacle has diverted from and covered up.

What could the huge and unexamined stakes be here that none discuss? Who alone stands to benefit from every step since PM May was promoted?

Why Brexit?

credits to the owner of the photo

There has been endless commentary on Britain’s “Stay or Leave the EU” referendum and the narrow victory of the ‘Leave’ side after 44 years of partnership in which Britain’s GDP, human and workers’ rights,  and environmental protections have only increased, and by far more than the US.

Even in gross market money terms, the record is clear in fact. In a letter to the London Times one year ago, Oxford researchers Professor Sir David Hendry, Professor Doyne Farmer, and Dr Max Roser refuted with no reply the Leave EU campaign led by financial and political playboy Boris Johnson.

“Since 1973, the  year in which the UK joined the EU, the per capita GDP of the UK economy grew by 103%, exceeding the 97% growth of the US. Within the EU, the UK edged out Germany (99%) and clobbered France (74%). The UK’s growth has exceeded the US while tracking it, even since the crisis of 2008”.

Yet Leave the EU still narrowly won the UK referendum a year ago with nothing to go on except propaganda, and its very dubious result is about to be cemented into British government and history by the June 8 election in 3 days.

On every level on which we analyse this decision now being led by PM May and the Tory state, it is a fails every smell test. But the real motive force and private money-party interests behind it are all but invisible to the public – not only in Britain, but around the world.

There is virtually no recognition that the snap June 8 election in three days is going to reverse every life-serving law and regulation that has lifted Britain up over half a century from the doldrums of the early 1970’s when Britain was regarded as ‘the sick man of Europe’ in economic performance.

How could this happen?

To begin with the referendum itself, the original wording of the ‘Brexit’ referendum was (italics added) “Britain should remain in the EU – Yes or No”. Few observed that this framing of the Tory question appeals directly to the tidal wave of popular resentments that have built up against transnational trade treaties and mass immigration everywhere, Britain included.

“Should remain” is re-set to “Leave” as the dominant choice in this negative social context with, in fact, no connection to life co-ordinates.

On the surface, the visible movement of foreign-speaking cultures into everyday rural Britain for new benefits and low-wage competition with British workers has widely inflamed anti-passions, as anyone familiar with British culture knows.  The near daily featuring of Islamic ‘terrorist attacks’ has stigmatized the EU system along with such continuous disorders as the torturous financial ruin of Greece.

Leave on the ballot in a mysteriously well-funded and media-captivated campaign triggered enough of a primordial anti-EU sentiment that a very slim majority was won. It did not matter that false claims and demagogic showmen were given immense publicity in the Leave campaign in which the most important issues were completely out of the discussion.

Nor did it not matter that the Leave vote was mainly rural England, nor that remaining Scotland was thereby propelled into breaking up Great Britain itself. There were no editorials exposing the facts that the new-PM Theresa May had herself warned UK voters that Brexit was “dangerous” and could have seriously damaging effects on the economy, the security, and the survival of the United Kingdom.  There was no media memory that she had said that leaving the EU would be “fatal for the Union with Scotland” and that she had formerly proclaimed “as Home Secretary [that] remaining a member of the European Union means we will be more secure from crime and terrorism”.

Nothing seemed to matter except the new fait accompli of Britain ending its half-century partnership in the European Union on the flimsy basis of a referendum for which the overwhelming majority of citizens did not vote or approve.

Minority Brexit Vote = Massive De-Regulation of Finance and Food 

No-one seemed to report that this Leave vote itself (17, 410,742) represented only 37% of the total electorate (46,500, 001) as enumerated by the Electoral Commission. No mainstream media featured the 12, 948,018 voters left out of the count, over two-thirds the number of those who voted Leave. Only one source clearly reported that those whose votes were not cast in the single June 23 event voted 2:1 against leaving once the results were known http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/10/24/brexit-is-not-the-will-of-the-british-people-it-never-has-been/.

Most deeply and unspeakably, there was no hint of media attention to the first question of forensic inquiry, cui bono or who stands to gain most from British government leaving the European Union all its common regulation? Even up to June 2,  no-one has joined the dots that show the Leave EU referendum and vote has been an ideal political bludgeon to force Britain’s departure from the historical European Union just as its long-evolved Directives are in the process of enforcing policies and regulations on all-powerful London private banks and finance, and on industrial Big Agriculture and GMO-contaminating crops and fake foods.

Agrochemical (credits to the owner of the photo)

What no-one has evidently understood is that Brexit ensures that the very same dominant financialization forces that have hollowed out Britain’s working people, the productive economy and its green environment since 1979 are now freed from any EU regulation or accountability just as effective new financial oversight mechanisms as well as organic agricultural and food policies are due to be further implemented, monitored and enforced.

This is the undertow historical meaning of the near-hate campaign that has been waged for endless months on the ‘EU bureaucracy’ larded in selective anecdotes without principled substance.

Such is the standard method of big-money campaigns against public regulation for the public life good. If more private profit is not fixed into the new regime, it is relentlessly attacked and denounced as ‘suffocating red tape’ and a ‘ruinous burden on business’.  This is the signature demand and condition of transnational corporate rule.

Cui Bono? Remembering the Past to Now

The rootless global money party centred in London has long run Britain with flagrant Thatcherite governance for transnational banks and corporations, overthrowing the post-War labour-capital settlement in Britain.

Big London money backed by the Murdoch press was then consolidated in Blair’s ‘New Labour’ capitulation to corporate power through Gordon Brown Labour-light to the election of financier-scion David Cameron. PM Cameron then took the Brexit spectacle as the occasion to resign to avoid, insiders say, the outing of his unexposed financial fraud as PM.

Now the government of Great Britain is in the hands of a secretively advised Theresa May. Although as Home Secretary she was unequivocally anti-Brexit, something happened. Despite the very dubious results of the leave-the-EU referendum, she reversed field from support of the EU once in the PM office, and was instantly re-branded as full-square behind Leave as “Brexit is Brexit” and “the irreversible decision of the British people”.

Now-PM  May has led official erasure of the fact that the winning vote was only by (official Electoral Commission tally) 37 % minority of voters. In the same vein of memory-hole command, PM May and her backers  ignored the LSE scientific survey reporting that non-voters polled 2-to-1 against Leave once they learned the outcome. The reigning protocol, as with Trump with whom she became bonded in ‘the special relationship’ of the US and the UK that runs British politics, is to annihilate life-protective regulations as new freedom, and enforce follow a bigger corporate tax-cut than Reagan or Trump to a 10% level.

Where did the mandate come from for such radical hollowing out of government capacities to govern on behalf of the common interests of society, citizens and their environment? There has been no mandate, but only a one-off 37% popular referendum result with no legally binding force until it is locked into the ‘Great Repeal Act’ and June 8 UK election to legitimate it with no public understanding of the meaning.

The die had been cast behind the scenes. A 37% vote against the considered will of the majority to stay in the EU was going to be used as a no-alternative mandate for massive deregulation and de-taxation of big money powers across the UK without public debate on these issues or even recognition of them.  An Orwellian erasure of facts and totalitarian silencing beneath conscious choice continued right up to the election without anyone evidently knowing it.

The PR cover-up since the ever-more lavishly suited Theresa May became PM  has been to brand her office in Maggie-2 resonance as a resolute and honourable defender of the democratic will  of the British people and an anchor of stability to steer Britain’s new future.

PM May and advisers have accordingly changed the 2017 general election –she had committed to 2020 before her behind-the-scenes management took over – to an ad hominem vote over her character as PM, not about the radical de-regulation of finance, the environment and the tax code to, in essence, serve the rich while dispossessing the great majority of their labour, social and environmental protections and rights.

It is the sort of action from the top that the original Magna Carta stopped by regulating an out-of-control King, only now the unaccountable ruler is bank and corporate money profit seeking even more unequal and total rights over the soon- to-be rump England. The money party cares nothing for nation including  Great Britain except as it fits their divide-and-rule agenda over the trillions of dollars they control daily in play for more asset control over the world.

Now firmly in the supreme office with cabinet and media support, PM May’s office has masterfully managed transition to doing the opposite of what she formerly stood for. The Brexit program for private money control over public forces and rules of how society is to live has remained unflagged by even the Opposition and radical left voices.  None see through to the ultimate ruling party behind political scenes, nor to the ultimate fact that it is not economically efficient or even productively capitalist.

Its hidden financialization forces and anti-labour-and-ecological agenda of radical de-regulation are, in principle, counter-productive, parasitic and self-multiplying against the common interest of its social and environmental life hosts.

The Unasked Question: Who Wins Now?

On the PR face of it, Theresa May is the clergyman’s daughter soundly risen to PM office. But she is, more deeply, the perfect foil behind which to sneak a Brexit end to the threat of EU regulation of the most life-destructive private money powers of Britain.

Brexit is in sinister parallel with the life-blind deregulatory forces of the Trump/Republican forces letting the ruling money party run free to become multiply  richer while stripping scientific environmental regulations, monitoring and prevention of cumulatively ecocidal externalities of global financialization and environmental toxification.

Theresa May vs. Jeremy Corbyn (credits to the owner of the photo)

The difference is that the English financial and factory-food lords are far stealthier and unseen in their demonstrable strategic plan to Leave the EU because it leads the world in scientific method, life-protective regulation and implementation. No-one seems yet to recognise this in the UK, unlike the rising US awareness of at least the Trump-Republican threat to the US and global environment and – more specifically – the Environmental Protection Agency and even the century-evolved and world-leading US national parks.

“Making America great again” excludes the life ground.

When PM Theresa May now hard-presses Leave the EU even when formerly opposed to it – most of all because of its weakening of Britain’s defences against terrorism – who can doubt something has re-motivated her to reverse the agenda.

The tell-tale avoidance of truth is seen when she lashes Jeremy Corbyn for even  connecting the terrorist operation of Manchester back to the facts of Britain’s war-waging in poor foreign nations from which the suicide bombers come.

“Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services,” Labour leader Corbyn  observes, “have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries, such as Libya, and terrorism here at home”.

Joining the dots is taboo.

In such closure to facts, PM May implicitly justifies government actions on the basis of the legitimacy of past state actions which are war-criminal under international law, and – beneath notice again – stopped Libya specifically from its gold-dinar Bank of Africa plan based on oil revenues to lend to other African countries without the debt enslavement long coveted by London-connected private financing of states (including the British government itself).

Who do these actions of repression of war-criminal facts and seizure of other people’s assets serve?

In this light, consider PM May’s capacity to carry Leave the EU as PM compared to its most charismatic leader on the ground, Boris Johnson. Although he has long been London finance’s man as Mayor as well as leader of the Brexit campaign, the master plan cannot go forward with him any further because, as a known liar and bounder, he is completely unfit as a credible finisher in PM office.

Those who lead here know very well how to rule behind effective public relations to keep their control acceptable on the public stage– as Wall Street has done with one elected US president after another. This is why the known libertine and shameless US-born self-promoter Boris Johnson was – however charming and useful – stopped for the job of ‘Prime Minister of Great Britain’. He might indeed provoke cross-party reaction against pushing a onetime minority poll into a reversal of modern British history which took away the EU passports and future opportunities of England’s young professional classes.

There is much to cover up here that needs a steady woman ruler with a better manner and more socially just in bearing. So Prime Minister Theresa May it was. Thus the sole regulatory powers in place keeping the private financial superpower of London in check against another 2008 emptying of the public treasury and pensioners’ incomes – not to mention the deregulation de-greening of England by an industrial factory frankenfood system – escaped the public’s attention.

To credibly cover up what nobody knows while believing in her mission is made-to- order for PM May, and so the Trump-like mega de-regulation and de-tax agenda has gone all the way to days before the June 8 British general election with far less fuss.

Boris was meanwhile made Foreign Minister to insult the EU onto their heels in England’s revolution backwards for the unproductively and villainously rich. Few noticed that all these political shenanigans served a unifying function. The new EU financial regulations on London’s big banks could not be implemented, monitored or enforced with Brexit stopping it all in its tracks.  EU Organic Agriculture Regulations protecting the environment and natural ecosystems from genetic contaminations and industrial clearances of green life was simultaneously terminated with hardly any notice.

That foods themselves are released from safe and scientific EU standards has remained a non-issue. For poignant household example, British demands for hygiene standards to be changed to US rules so as to permit chicken meat sanitized only by chlorinated water, to allow beef raised with growth hormones, and to free genetically engineered substitute foods or GMO’s from production and label restrictions have all been stopped dead by Brexit.

With London finance as well as industrial agriculture and false foods freed from codified norms of responsibility to the common life interest long evolved, tested and instituted within Britain and the European Union, the most predatory and counter-productive forces in Britain are allowed to run free with no public notice before the June 8 general election.

EU labour rights (eg., 48-hour week), human rights (e.g., employees’ and prisoners’ rights), financial oversight of any independent kind (as we have seen), and virtually all environmental standards developed beyond the US model, all  are discontinued by  the Great Repeal Act.

With no evolved EU standards of economic, social or environmental protection legally obligatory and enforceable any more, the June 8 election will lock it all into the future with no way back that can be reasonably relied on without electoral reversal.

With all the historical bearings and force of precedent, independent adjudication and law left behind by Leave, a US-UK deregulation and de-taxation orgy can proceed as ‘democratic’ if PM May wins the election. This is why PM Theresa May as the first head of state to visit the White House came out of their private meeting holding hands with Donald Trump.

Demonstrating its confidence in the liberated financial rule of Britain as the Great Repeal Bill proceeded, Goldman-Sachs simultaneously committed to a $500-million headquarters in central London.

London Finance with Goldman-Sachs Escapes All EU Financial Regulation

The very definition of the EU Central Bank’s mandate to investigate and supervise “the business model, risk management, and capital, liquidity and funding” of private-profit bank and financial institutions including London  (via a rigorous Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process by elite teams of professional accountants)  is anathema to the long unregulated US-UK financial system.

London finance like Wall Street is very used to increasingly devouring public treasuries, pensions and savings to become 40% and rising of the entire economy. They have done this through the global financial meltdown they have caused to multiply their money-demand control of the planet in a myriad of algebraically concealed ways with no oversight supervision, no independently verifiable standards, and no real reforms.

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European Central Bank (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The European Central Bank has finally moved to institute common standards across the Union – what was done after the Great Depression but has been reversed since. Private London-Wall Street banks and finance will do anything to stop this regulatory reform to protect their many trillions of assets and liabilities running free to continue unimpeded in the greatest unearned and still rising transfer of wealth to the rich in history.

The economic stakes are unprecedentedly high, and so the silencing of any notice of the reforms to regulate them has in the UK been total in the mass media and even in Labour policy recognition. Consider the vast treasure involved. “Existing financial rules” in London banks have been officially judged by independent experts as “woefully inadequate”, and all of London’s foreign currency trading (globally dominant and largest in Euros) remains unregulated and untaxed.

Vast investment banking, cross-border sales of securities, Euro liquidity to clearing houses, non-performing loan recognition, coverage and write-offs also escape independent regulation by Brexit and the Great Repeal Act.

Revenue-cap norms on skyrocketed financial pay to executives, standards of internal audit, deferred tax assets and credits masked as capital, capital adequacy, liquidity requirements and ability to pay liabilities are all also blocked by post-referendum laws.

Unnoticed too are overdue binding norms on regulating the competence of new members of management and key function holders (say, Boris Johnson) and oversight of  collective investments in transferable securities by captive states and unilateral tax advantages gained by their public issue and sale for profit.

In sum, the Capital Requirements Directive and Regulations are set on fire by the Great Repeal of European Union obligations, now to be locked in by the June 8 election.

What are boasted as ‘elegant and sophisticated innovations of investment instruments’ and so on, are in fact systemic methods of fraudulent diversion with no qualified, independent accounting authority allowed into check their schemes fixed to maximally profit powerful private financial dealers against transparency and liability, elected government accountability, and the common interests of everyone else.

The Great Silencing

This whole joining of fateful dots has been covered in silence. Big London bank and finance has so far got away with veiled abolition of all the overdue EU financial rules, monitoring and enforcement to regulate them after the 2008 financial meltdown in which an estimated $26 trillion of public money has been swallowed by the transnational private banking system led by Wall Street and London.

In faint contrast, there has been a slight exposure of the Brexit reverse of evolved  EU environment protections, monitoring sciences, directive laws, and feed-back enforcement  processes.

But here too any information has occurred only in fragments, with no connections to the EU’s life-protective binding rules on industrial farming, GMO products, and industrial chemical pollutions and toxins.

For example, you will not see in any government press release or corporate mass media any mention of the European Union’s world-leading environmental protection by its Organic Agriculture Regulations setting out “the principles, aims and rules of food production and labelling”. No-one mentions in the media or government that these regulations are precisely what are eliminated from monitoring, feedback and enforcement in Britain once the Great Repeal Act is legitimated by the June 8 election.

In similar vein, there is a white-out of pre-and-post-Brexit reference to EU’s historic and definitive Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH). It is by far the most advanced environmental and human health protection system scientifically validated in existing government and the world. But it too is made invisible in the ruling discussions and debates.

Such jam-it-through strategy with no public understanding and almost all the primary life-protective common legislation effectively concealed has been shrouded throughout in the pervasive media image of PM May vs. hapless Corbyn Labour. This is the only issue raised for voters in the June 8 election.

Mainstream Media (credits to the owner of the photo)

The global media too have consciously or unconsciously collaborated in making this most important election in British history in financial and environmental terms, a non-issue.

Yet even all this has not been enough for the great cover-up still in motion. There has been a Lobbying Act to stop informed NGO’s – but not any of the London-based big transnational banks and corporations – from lobbying before the June 8 election, a new law which has frightened them into silence with Greenpeace already  convicted and fined.

What Does Not Fit the Life-Blind Program?

One underlying principle governs beneath the political scenes, speeches and choral commentaries on stage. It also governs the UK-US ‘special relationship’ and Wall Street-London axis at the same time, in different ways:

De-fund and de-regulate all life-protective laws, agencies and enforcements that cost public and corporate money, and subsidize instead the unproductive or counter-productive private money party’s multiplying growth.

The method is the same at base. Private Wall-Street and London banks behind the scenes print the world’s money by debt issue for maximum profit to the top while producing nothing but multiplying their private money demand over all that exists.

Transnational corporate money sequences funded by the banks, in turn, strip and pollute life bases on all levels to produce and sell profit ever more commodities priced for maximum private profit with few or no life standards to govern their extractions, productive processes, products, wastes and life-destructive externalities.

For all its faults, the European Union has gone much further than any other unified jurisdiction in human and ecological regulations of these material phases, and the financial drivers behind them. This is ultimately why the UK private money party, especially its non-productive and counter-productive investors, have repudiated EU regulations of them on other pretexts.

In general, the connected global forces of life and life means destruction are screened out by the established framework of meaning which is in principle life-blind.  In consequence, private financial and corporate forces are released from what modest public regulation has developed to protect organic, social and ecological life systems, and the systemic despoliation of global life-organisation  continues to run down biodiverse energy capacities on all levels.

The UN Paris Agreement on ‘climate change’ is intended to meet the most dangerous consequences of this system. But it is selective, and ‘climate change’ euphemises hydrological-cycle destabilization and pollution that is the baseline force of world life and life means destruction. Again unifying principles and concepts are screened out of public discussion as well as silo disciplines.

Jeremy Corbyn’s back-to-the basics Labour movement is hopeful in that it is not bound like Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ to the dominant Murdoch media and big corporations controlling the agenda via government committees and PFI’s.  And this is why Corbyn’s grass-roots leadership is pervasively belittled in the dominant media, and also why the while historic stakes of the June 8 election have been systematically blinkered out.

The ruling framework of meaning presupposes the life-blind system, rules out what does not conform to its money-value logic, and attacks what seeks to reform it.

So as the stakes keep getting higher as June 8 approaches, they are kept out of the discussion. There has been a systemic blocking out of all the momentous issues in the campaign before ‘Brexit’ and after it to today. The meta program is mind-locked, and compulsively proceeds even when its political leaders have no legitimate ground to proceed, but only a transient minority vote for Leave the EU in a largely apathetic and cynical referendum with no binding force.

The Great Repeal Act of  EU regulations follows in lockstep fulfilment of the meta program, and an unscheduled snap election while Tory polls are still far ahead is set to cement it all in before the public wakes up to the meaning.

Thus proceeds the greatest system-wide reverse and financial boondoggle in modern English-speaking economic history and social-ecological evolution.

There is No Alternative

The re-grounded Labour movement does the best it can for the working people and dispossessed across Great Britain, the only organised institution to do so in the country. But this too is ridiculed and condescended to in the corporate press. And still the deeper and historic issues remain completely out of view.

In recent days, nonetheless, Labour has stood for returning the looted national railway system and other privatized utilities to a productive public direction, for taxing the rich more to fund falling public services, and for connecting Britain’s terrorist problem to its armed-force actions in other countries.

This has given a spike in the polls to Corbyn labour. Yet still the profound major issues of ‘Brexit’ itself remain covered over. The dots of the essentially phoney Leave the EU referendum are not yet joined. The holus-bolus financial and environmental deregulation by the Brexit scheme remains undefined. The basic outline for the historic hoax has remained undetected into June.

“There is no alternative” has thus been reconstituted into the 2017 election. The underlying driver to cement the unaccountable private money power demanding ever more into a de-regulation bonanza remains unnamed.

Not even the master slogan of ‘Brexit’ is deconstructed as a public relations mask of the greatest backward move in life-protective norms in historical record: all to serve life-means destroying or unproductive money-party powers that are fronted by photogenic leaders on all planes.

The rationally self-maximizing growth of private-profit power over all existing assets is built into the meta program. But it is not comprehended. It exactly follows the inner logic of ruling economic, military and strategic game theory in models and calculations, but there is no linking across the simultaneous phenomena which are life blindly forming the future.

The conversion of organic, social and ecological life organisation into more money demand for fewer is now being rapidly instituted into place.

Summary

The June 8 British election is set to lock in the big-money coup against long- evolved regulations and norms protecting human, social and environmental life.  The crisis is incomprehension of the meaning.

A corrosive cynicism of EU capacity to govern for the public interest (Greece the continuous demonstration), media-debased public perceptions suppressing the historic stakes involved, a US presidency demonized in all the corporate media,  NATO-supported Nazism in Ukraine as Western freedom, and other degenerate trends have not been connected in their unifying pattern – within which UK money-party reversal of post-War socio-economic evolution is taking place.

PM Theresa May is the political face of the great leap backwards.  So far the ruling politics of one distracting spectacle after another has worked right up to the June 8 election, fortified by a diabolical terrorist attack on London 5 days  before the vote. y.. Yet there is a growing intuition of the fast slippage of social and ecological life order into chaos with no human centre of gravity in charge.  The British public may still see through to the underlying radical program of government de-regulation, de-taxation, and de-funding to further empower the financial looting and life-despoiling forces at work.

Joining the dots behind the scenes reveals the emerging plot of meaning. The Great Brexit:

(1) stops the EU Central Bank Regulators and Supervisors from finally checking out the models, risk culture methods, inadequate reserves and so on of big London banks involved including Goldman-Sachs in the 2007-8 financial collapse, and

(2) eliminates the binding force of all the long-evolved and scientific EU regulations structured to prevent, in particular, the corporate industrial food system’s polluting and despoiling US-led methods undermining the British people’s health and environment.  

Brexit’s Great Repeal Act and PM May’s snap June election is the only way to achieve (1) and (2) without negotiation or exposing public issue.

London financial accountability has most of all been silenced as an issue. Its growing trillions of nano-second fast-dealing to enrich the already rich by unregulated methods and calculations remain immune from any independent oversight.

Similarly, the very aims and principles of the binding, monitored and still developing Organic Agriculture Directive are anathema to Britain’s US-led Big Agriculture and Food lobbies, not only around GMO restrictions – which US trade authorities and British GMO ‘science’ have made war on for over 15 years – but around every EU restriction on pesticides and herbicides to clear-cutting environments for monocultural factory methods to commodity motor rackets and pollutions to norms of licensed “food quality” in the corporate market.

The very governing EU objectives of “biodiversity”, “animal protection”, and “organic natural systems and cycles” are a threat to Big Food production and products when attached to exactly defined, inspected and enforceable life standards. Long used to pervasive public relations sales pitches of “feeding the world” in place of accountable, life-protective environmental and nutrition standards, this very powerful British lobby is next to London Big Finance as the covertly moving major profit-first force behind the Brexit coup d’etat.

Both are in principle life-blind in their mechanical financial models. Both are governed only by self-maximizing private money sequencing in exponential growth with no life-coherent ground or norms to stop their march across the world through organic, social and ecological life hosts. Both have led the Great Repeal of developed EU life standards beneath the radar of media coverage, parliamentary diagnosis, and academic silos.

It is not an exaggeration to observe that the UK chooses more than its own life future in the June 8 2017 general election.

John McMurtry is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and his work is published and translated from Latin America to Japan. He is the author and editor of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his most recent book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: from Crisis to Cure.

Featured image: Getty images

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Remembering the U.S.S. Liberty

June 6th, 2017 by Philip Giraldi

There has been a lot of media coverage mostly written by Israelis or American Jews regarding Israel’s “victory” fifty years ago during the so-called Six Days War directed against its Arab neighbors but I have yet to see an account that mentions the fate of the U.S.S. Liberty. Nevertheless, the Liberty is not forgotten.

This Thursday at noon at Arlington National Cemetery there will be a small gathering for the annual coming together with the survivors and friends of the most decorated ship in the history of the U.S. Navy, a victim of a particularly brutal and unprovoked attack by Israel that has been covered up for half a century by the powers that be in Washington. The moving service will include reminiscences by surviving crew members plus the ringing of a ship’s bell for each one of the thirty-four American sailors, Marines and civilians that were killed in the deliberate Israeli air and sea onslaught that sought to sink the intelligence gathering ship and kill all its crew. Present will be a number of veterans like myself and other Americans who are committed to ensuring that the story of the Liberty will not die in hopes that someday the United States government will have the courage to acknowledge what actually happened on that fateful day.

The Liberty survivors who will be present in Arlington on Thursday will be fewer than usual because the crew is having its own 50th anniversary commemoration in Norfolk, Virginia, home of the U.S. Atlantic fleet. In truth the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, has almost faded from memory, with a younger generation completely unaware that a United States naval vessel was once deliberately targeted and nearly sunk by America’s “greatest friend and ally” Israel. The attack was followed by a cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States even back nearly fifty years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country.

It was in truth the worst attack ever carried out on a U.S. Naval vessel in peace time. In addition to the death toll, 171 more of the crew were wounded in the two-hour assault, which was clearly intended to destroy the intelligence gathering vessel operating in international waters collecting information on the ongoing fighting between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Israelis, whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up so Egypt could be blamed, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and with gunboats from the sea. When one Israeli pilot hesitated, refusing to attack what was clearly an American ship, he was instructed to proceed anyway.

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Commemoration service at the USS Liberty memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, 2015 (Source: The Unz Review)

The most disgusting part of the tale relates to how U.S. warplanes sent to the Liberty’s aid from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean were called back by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acting under orders from President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who declared that he would rather see the ship go to the bottom of the sea than embarrass his good friend Israel. Ironically, the first ship to reach the Liberty and offer assistance was from the Soviet Union, an offer that was declined.

Johnson was reportedly feared Jewish influence over Congress and in the media, which might work together to block his “Great Society” legislative initiatives, not to mention his expected reelection bid in 1968. It was an early manifestation of the power of the Jewish lobby in American politics and foreign relations. One has to hope that both LBJ and McNamara are currently burning in hell.

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Lyndon Baines Johnson and Robert McNamara (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The incredible courage and determination of the surviving crew was the only thing that kept the Liberty from sinking. The ship’s commanding officer Captain William McGonagle was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic role in keeping the ship afloat, though President Lyndon Baines Johnson broke with tradition and refused to hold the medal ceremony in the White House, also declining to award it personally, delegating that task to the Secretary of the Navy in a closed to the public presentation made at the Washington Navy Yard. The additional medals given to other crew members in the aftermath of the attack made the U.S.S. Liberty the most decorated ship based on a single engagement with hostile forces in the history of the United States Navy.

The cover-up of the attack began immediately. The Liberty crew was sworn to secrecy over the incident, as were the Naval dockyard workers in Malta, and even the men of the U.S.S. Davis, which had assisted the badly damaged Liberty to port were ordered to be silent. A hastily convened and conducted court of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain acted under orders from Washington to declare the attack a case of mistaken identity. The inquiry’s senior legal counsel Captain Ward Boston, who subsequently declared the attack to be a

“deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew,” also described how “President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

The court’s findings were rewritten and sections relating to Israeli war crimes, to include the machine gunning of life rafts, were excised. Following in his father’s footsteps, Senator John McCain of Arizona has used his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to effectively block any reconvening of a board of inquiry to reexamine the evidence. Most of the documents relating to the Liberty incident have never been released to the public in spite of the 50 years that have passed since the attack took place.

The faux court of inquiry and the medals awarded in secret were only the first steps in the cover-up, which has persisted to this day, orchestrated by politicians and a media that seem to place Israel’s interests ahead of those of the United States. Liberty survivors have been finding it difficult even to make their case in public. In April 2016 a billboard that read “Help the USS Liberty Survivors – Attacked by Israel” was taken down in New Bedford Massachusetts. The billboard had been placed by the Honor Liberty Vets Organization and, as is normal practice, was paid for through a contractual arrangement that would require the billboard company to post the image for a fixed length of time. It was one of a number of billboards placed in different states. Inevitably, Israel’s well connected friends began to complain. One Jewish businessman threatened to take his business elsewhere, so the advertising company obligingly removed the billboard two weeks early.

After fifty years, the dwindling number of survivors of the Liberty are not looking for punishment or revenge. When asked, they will tell you that they only ask for accountability, that an impartial inquiry into the attack be convened and that the true story of what took place finally be revealed to the public.

That Congress is deaf to the pleas of the Liberty crew should surprise no one as the nation’s legislative body has been for years, as Pat Buchanan once put it, “Israeli occupied territory.” The Lobby’s ability to force Congress and even the presidency to submit to its will has been spelled out in some detail by critics, first by Paul Findley in They Dare to Speak Out, later by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in The Israel Lobby, in Alison Weir’s Against Our Better Judgment, and most recently in Kirk Beattie’s excellent Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East.

credits to the owner of the photo

Government willingness at all levels to protect Israel even when it is killing Americans is remarkable, but it is symptom of the deep corruption that has generated a tendency to go to bat for Israel reflexively, even when it is damaging to U.S. interests and to the rights that American citizens are supposed to enjoy. I note particularly legislation currently working its way through Congress and numerous statehouses make it illegal for any federal or state funding to go to any entity that supports the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, better known as BDS. BDS is a way to put pressure on the Israeli government over its human rights abuses that is both non-violent and potentially effective. Israel’s supporters have labeled BDS as anti-Semitic and have had some success in making any criticism of Israel labeled a “hate crime.”

So the treatment of the U.S.S. Liberty should surprise no one in a country whose governing class has been for decades doing the bidding of the powerful lobby of a tiny client state that has been nothing but trouble and expense for the United States of America. Will it ever end? As the Israel Lobby currently controls the relevant parts of the federal government and much of the media, change is not likely to happen overnight, but there are some positive signs. The BDS movement is growing in spite of the pressure it is experiencing and will not go away. And opinion polls suggest that the American people are finally waking up to realize that they are sick and tired of the entire farce playing out in the Middle East under Israeli direction. Israel, which aggressively spies on us, kills our citizens and takes billions of dollars of our tax money which could be better spent here, is no friend of the United States and never has been. Just ask anyone who served on the U.S.S. Liberty.

Featured image: The Unz Review

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Megyn Kelly: President Putin, you have repeatedly and passionately denied that Russia was behind the interference with our American presidential election, including on stage at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

But as you know, the consensus view in the United States is that you did. That’s what the 17 intelligence agencies concluded and that’s what the Republicans and the Democrats on the Congressional oversight committees who have seen the classified report have said. Are they all lying?

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: They have been misled and they are not analysing the information in its entirety. I have not once seen any direct proof of Russia’s interference in the presidential election in the USA.

We have talked about it with former president Obama and with several other officials. No one ever showed me any direct evidence.

When we spoke with President Obama about that, you know, you should probably better ask him about it – I think he will tell you that he, too, is confident of it. But when he and I talked I saw that he, too, started having doubts. At any rate, that’s how I saw it.

I have already told you, and I can say it again, that today’s technology is such that the final address can be masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.

Modern technology is very sophisticated and subtle and allows this to be done. And when we realize that we will get rid of all the illusions. That’s one thing. The other thing is that I am deeply convinced that no interference from the outside, in any country, even a small one, let alone in such a vast and great power as the United States, can influence the final outcome of the elections. It is not possible. Ever.

Megyn Kelly: But the other side says is it was only 70,000 votes that won Trump the election, and therefore influencing 70,000 people might not have been that hard.

Vladimir Putin: The Constitution of the United States and the electoral legislation are structured in such a way that more electors can vote for a candidate who is backed by fewer voters. And such situations do occur in the history of the United States. True, isn’t it?

Therefore, if we were to discuss some kind of political and social justice, then probably that electoral legislation needs to be changed and bring a situation where the head of state would be elected by direct secret ballot and so there will be direct tabulation of votes that can be easily monitored. That’s all there is to it. And there will be no need for those who have lost the elections to point fingers and blame their troubles on anybody.

Now, if we turn this page over, I will tell you something that you most likely know about. I don’t want to offend anyone, but the United States, everywhere, all over the world, is actively interfering in electoral campaigns in other countries. Is this really news to you?

Just talk to people but in such a way (to the extent it is possible for you) so as to convince them that you’re not going to make it public. Point your finger to any spot on the world’s map, everywhere you’ll hear complaints that American officials interfere in their political domestic processes.

Therefore, if someone, and I am not saying that it’s us (we did not interfere), if anybody does influence in some way or attempts to influence or somehow participates in these processes, then the United States has nothing to be offended by. Who is talking? Who is taking offense that we are interfering? You yourselves interfere all the time.

Megyn Kelly: That sounds like a justification.

Interview to NBC.

Vladimir Putin: It does not sound like justification. It sounds like a statement of fact. Each action invites appropriate counteraction, but, again, we don’t need to do that because I did not tell you this without a reason, both you personally and other members of the media, recently I was in France and I said the same things.

Presidents come and go, and even parties come to and away from power. But the main policy tack does not change. So by and large we don’t care who will be at the helm in the United States. We have a rough idea of what is going to happen. And in this regard, even if we wanted to it wouldn’t make any sense for us to interfere.

Megyn Kelly: You had said for months that Russia had nothing to do with the interference of the American election, and then this week you floated the idea of patriotic hackers doing it. Why the change and why now?

Vladimir Putin: It’s just that the French journalists asked me about those hackers, and just like I told them, I can tell you, that hackers may be anywhere. They may be in Russia, in Asia, in America, in Latin America. There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can’t you imagine such a scenario? In the middle of an internal political fight, it was convenient for them, whatever the reason, to put out that information. And put it out they did. And, doing it, they made a reference to Russia. Can’t you imagine it happening? I can. Let us recall the assassination of President Kennedy.

There is a theory that Kennedy’s assassination was arranged by the United States special services. If this theory is correct, and one cannot rule it out, so what can be easier in today’s context, being able to rely on the entire technical capabilities available to special services than to organise some kind of attacks in the appropriate manner while making a reference to Russia in the process. Now, the candidate for the Democratic Party, is this candidate universally beloved in the United States? Was it such a popular person? That candidate, too, had political opponents and rivals.

Megyn Kelly: Let’s move on. A special counsel has been appointed to investigate contacts between your government and the Trump campaign. You have said that your ambassador Kislyak was just doing his job. Right? So, what exactly was discussed in those meetings?

Vladimir Putin: There were no sessions. You see, there were no sessions. When I saw that my jaw dropped.

Megyn Kelly: No meetings between Ambassador Kislyak and anybody from the Trump campaign?

Vladimir Putin: No clue. I am telling you honestly. I don’t know. That’s an ambassador’s every day, routine work. Do you think, an ambassador from any place in the world or from the US reports to me daily as to whom he meets with and what they discuss? It’s just absurd. Do you even understand what you are asking me?

Megyn Kelly: Well, you’re his boss.

Vladimir Putin: Listen, his boss is the foreign minister. Do you think I have the time to talk to our ambassadors all over the world every day? This is nonsense. Don’t you understand that this is just some kind of nonsense. I don’t even know with whom he met there. Had there been something out of the ordinary, something remarkable he of course would have advised the minister and the minister would have informed me. Nothing of that happened.

Megyn Kelly: Since it happened have you gone back to speak with the ambassador about what was in those discussions he had with Jared Kushner, with General Michael Flynn, with anybody else from the Trump campaign?

Vladimir Putin: No, I haven’t.

Interview to NBC.

Megyn Kelly: Aren’t you interested?

Vladimir Putin: No. Because if there had been something meaningful he would have made a report to the minister, and the minister would have made a report to me. There weren’t even any reports. Just every day, routine work that doesn’t mean anything that may not even have any prospects.

It’s just that someone decided to find fault with it and, you know, select it as a line of attack against the current President. This isn’t for us to get into, these are your domestic political squabbles. So you deal with them. Nothing to talk about.

There was not even a specific discussion of sanctions or something else. I just find it amazing how you created a sensation where there wasn’t anything at all. And proceeded to turn that sensation into a tool for fighting the sitting president. You know, you’re just very resourceful people there, well done, probably your lives there are boring.

Megyn Kelly: I am sure you have heard by now that one of the things they are looking into is the fact that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, reportedly discussed with Ambassador Kislyak in December establishing a back channel for communications between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And the suggestion was, by Mr Kushner, that they could do this at a Russian embassy or a Russian consulate. That they could use Russia’s communications gear to make those communications happen so that the United States intelligence service could not hear. Does that strike you as a good idea?

Vladimir Putin: Russia had no channels of communication with neither campaign, the campaigns of the US Presidential candidates. None whatsoever. Russia did not set up and did not have any channels with anyone. There may have been official contacts with the campaigns of all the candidates, which is a standard diplomatic practice.

Megyn Kelly: This is a proposal, a proposal by Mr Kushner.

Vladimir Putin: I am not aware of such a proposal. No such proposal ever reached me.

Megyn Kelly: Did you know General Michael Flynn? He came over here for a dinner a photo of which has been widely circulated in the American media. What was the nature of your relationship with him?

Vladimir Putin: You and I, we have a much closer relationship than with Mr Flynn. You and I met up yesterday evening. You and I have worked all day together. We are meeting yet again at this moment. When I came to the event at our company, Russia Today, and sat down at the table, next to me there was a gentleman, and someone else was sitting down on my other side.

I made a speech, then we talked about something else, then I got up and left. Afterwards, I was told, ”You know, that American gentleman, he used to do this before, used to work in the special services. And now he does this.“ ”Great,“ I said, ”Are you working with him somehow?“ “No, we just invited him as a guest, one of the guests.” And I replied: “Well, good for you!” And that’s it.

I almost did not talk to him. I said hello, we sat next to each other, then I said goodbye and left. This sums up my entire acquaintanceship with Mr Flynn. If Mr Flynn and I had this kind of interaction, while you and I, we have spent an entire day together, and Mr Flynn was fired from his job, you then should be arrested and put in jail.

Megyn Kelly: Many Americans hear the name, Vladimir Putin. And they think, ”He runs a country full of corruption, a country in which journalists, who are too critical, could wind up murdered, a country in which dissidents could wind up in jail or worse.“ To people who believe that, what is your message?

Vladimir Putin: I want to say that Russia is developing along a democratic path, this is without question so. No one should have any doubts about that. The fact that, amidst political rivalry and some other domestic developments, we see things happen here that are typical of other countries, I do not see anything unusual in it.

We have rallies, opposition rallies. And people here have the right to express their point of view. However, if people, while expressing their views, break the current legislation, the effective law in place, then of course, the law enforcement agencies try to restore order.

I am calling your attention to something that I discussed recently when on a trip to France and in my discussions with other European colleagues. Our police force, fortunately, so far, do not use batons, tear gas or any other extreme measures of instilling order, something that we often see in other countries, including in the United States.

Speaking of opposition, let us recall the movement Occupy Wall Street. Where is it now? The law enforcement agencies and special services in the US have taken it apart, into little pieces, and have dissolved it. I’m not asking you about how things stand in terms of democracy in the United States. Especially so that the electoral legislation is far from being perfect in the US. Why do you believe you are entitled to put such questions to us and, mind you, do it all the time, to moralize and to teach us how we should live?

We are ready to listen to our partners, ready to listen to appraisals and assessments when it is done in a friendly manner, in order to establish contacts and create a common atmosphere and dedicate ourselves to shared values. But we absolutely will not accept when such things are used as a tool of political struggle. I want everybody to know that. This is our message.

Megyn Kelly: There have been questions in America about Donald Trump’s finances. He hasn’t released his tax returns. There have been questions about this secret Russian dossier, which he says is fake, but which purports to have blackmail information in it generated by the Russians. There have been questions about the communications between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, all of which has Americans asking, ”Do you have something damage on our president?“

Vladimir Putin: Well, this is just another piece of nonsense. Where would we get any information about him? Did we have some kind of special relationship with him. There was no relationship whatsoever. Yes, he visited Moscow in his day. But, you know, I never met him.

Many Americans come here. There are representatives of 100 companies from the US, who have come to Russia. Do you think I have met each and every representative of those American companies? You probably saw me walk into the conference hall, where our colleagues were sitting. I consider them all to be our friends. They are all working in Russia and many of them have been doing it for many years. They are investors. They are the CEOs of major US companies. They are interested in joint work. And that’s great! And we will welcome each and every one of them. And we will consider each of them our friend.

And we will help them implement their plans in Russia and will try to steer things in a direction so that they can work here successfully and make a profit.

And should they all be arrested for it afterwards? Have you lost your minds there or something? What about the freedom of economy? What about human rights? Do you think we are gathering dirt on all of them now? Are you all right in the head, all of you there?

Megyn Kelly: Last question. We have been here in St Petersburg for about a week now. And virtually every person we have met on the street says what they respect about you is they feel that you have returned dignity to Russia, that you’ve returned Russia to a place of respect. You’ve been in the leadership of this country for 17 years now. Has it taken any sort of personal toll on you?

Vladimir Putin: I hope not. Do you know what I feel? I feel this live, direct connection to this land, to its history, to this country. You have said that you have been in St Petersburg for several days. Yesterday, I had a conversation with Indian Prime Minister. He had visited the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery, where almost 400,000 residents of Leningrad were buried, most of them civilians. They died during the siege of Leningrad. They starved to death. And buried in one of those graves is my older brother whom I have never seen. And I will never forget that, just like I will never forget the state in which this country was in the early 1990s.

You and I have had a debate today in the course of our conversation. However, in this country, since 2000 – and we have many problems, and recently even the poverty threshold has become a little worse than we planned – the situation will recover, I am confident of that, and yet our population’s real wages have grown manifold. And so have pensions.

Our economy has become completely different, on the whole. The size has changed. The economy has almost doubled in size. And the quality is changing, not as fast as we would like it to, but the structure is changing.

Our Armed Forces are completely different today from what they were, say 15 years ago or so.

All of this, including our great history, great culture, all of this, not just what we see today, is what makes the vast majority of Russia’s citizens feel proud for their country.

Megyn Kelly: Mr President, thank you very much.

All pictures in this article are from NBC.

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Saudi Arabia and the Doctrine of Global Islamist Terror

June 6th, 2017 by Adeyinka Makinde

Much has been remarked about a picture taken by United States President Donald Trump on his recent visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Alongside Trump, are the monarch of the Saudi state, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. All three men were captured placing their hands on a luminescent sphere. In the dimmed surroundings, the contrast between the set of glistening supraorbital ridges and pallid glow of fleshy cheeks on the one hand and the darkened, seemingly sunken eye sockets on the other produced an effect on each man’s countenance that was both striking and startling.

If it reminded some of a pagan rite in which the participants were attempting to summon the forces of darkness, such an analogy would not be misplaced for it is an image which evokes the nature of the unholy alliance between the United States and the kingdom. Further, the fact that the event was held at an establishment which the Saudis name the ‘Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology’ also captures the diabolical cynicism of the Saudi state whose Wahhabi ideology is the underpinning factor of the phenomenon of global jihadism. This puritan mutation of Islam serves as the inspiration for a network of extremist Sunni terror militias that includes al-Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and Boko Haram.

The age-long rivalries and ancient hatreds which inform Saudi foreign policy; namely those related to regimes reflecting secular nationalist and pan-Arabist thinking as well as to Persian-majority Iran, the bastion of Shiadom, have produced a situation in which Saudi Arabian geo-political objectives coalesce with those of the United States and Israel. This has meant that the Saudis have been involved in both covert and overt efforts aimed at destabilisation and balkanisation in the Middle East and North African area and beyond; a central tactic that has involved the use of Wahhabist terror groups.

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Former President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser (Source: britannica.com)

The rulers of Saudi Arabia, the oil rich kingdom situated on the Arabian peninsula, have for long seen themselves as being far more than the custodians of the holy relics of Islam. They have sought to be the undisputed leaders of the Arab and Muslim world; in the past battling with the secular, pan-Arab philosophy espoused by Gamal Abdel Nasser for the heart and soul of the Arab world, and, in more recent times, contending with Shi’ite Iran for regional influence.

However, this global scale reach for power and influence over a period of many decades has resulted in a state of affairs in regard to which the following inexorable conclusion cannot be avoided: that Saudi Arabia bears the greatest responsibility for the spread of militant Islamic ideology and remains the largest sponsor of Islamist terror groups.

A leaked email written by Hillary Clinton in January 2016 included an excerpt from a private speech she had made in 2013 in which she acknowledged that

“the Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth over the course of the last 30 years.”

And a classified 2009 cable signed by Clinton while serving as US Secretary of State admitted that

“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

In July of 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism, the governing doctrine of Saudi Arabia, to be the main source of global terrorism.

The Wahhabist strain of Islamic theology lies at the heart of the creation of the Saudi state. Based on a demand that Muslims return to the pure and austere faith practiced by Prophet Muhammad and his early companions in Medina, Wahhabist-thinking rejected practices such as consuming tobacco, wearing silk clothes, the adorning of gold jewelry by men, and dancing to music. It forbade the building of gravestones and mausoleums or other edifices or practices which were viewed as encouraging idol and ancestor-worship; all of which detracted from complete subservience to God. It also considered the culture and philosophy accumulated by a thousand years of Muslim civilization to be heretical. This is known in Islamic parlance as Bid’ah.

The original followers of Ibn Abdel Wahhab were Bedouin folk who felt pride in an uncomplicated puritan mode of living which stood in satisfying contrast, as they saw it, to the decadent influences which permeated the practice of Islam among the more ‘sophisticated’ city dwellers in places such as Mecca and Basra. It was also a reaction against the opulent lifestyles of the Egyptian and Ottoman nobility.

The Wahhabist gospel preached a merciless creed of proselytizing via the sword. The takfiri doctrine designated as infidels not only those who were non-Muslim, but also Muslim adherents to the Shia and Sufi sects, and even Sunnis who did not fulfill to the letter, Wahhab’s teachings. Those who did not adhere to his teachings effectively forfeited their right to their lives and to their property. He wrote the following:

Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated.

The relationship between the Sauds, a Bedouin clan, and Wahhabism go back to their antecedent Muhammad al Saud, a chieftain from the Nedj, a highland area of central Arabia. Al Saud combined his military prowess with the fervour engendered by Wahhbist thinking to create what is often referred to as the first Saudi state. Among his conquests were Mecca and Medina. The Shi’ite city of Karbala was also invaded and desecrated.

The license given to pillage outlying communities was an aspect of the Wahhabi doctrine which wedded with Bedouin culture. Saud showed no mercy as he went on to establish what came to be known as the Emirate of Diriyah until his defeat in 1818 by an Egyptian Expeditionary force sent by the Ottoman rulers who took him to Istanbul where he was beheaded in front of St. Sophia. His severed head was thrown into the Bosphorus.

However, the early part of the 20th century saw the beginning of the rise of another Saudi state under a young chief of the Saud clan named Abdelaziz. Utilising the services of a Bedouin cadre of pastoralised warriors known as the Ikhwan, Saud began a series of conquests over a period of several decades which covered much of the Arabian peninsula. The survivors of Ikhwan conquest were subjected to a political and social regime which strictly enforced the tenets of Wahhabism. Saudi expansion was limited largely by the colonial presence of the British who aided Abdelaziz in destroying the Ikhwan, elements of whom rebelled against what they saw as Abdelaziz’s compromises with European infidels and the encroaching modern world fuelled by the discovery oil and its attendant wealth.

Palmyra liberated: First images of ancient heritage site freed from ISIS (PHOTOS)

Palymira, an ancient heritage site liberated from ISIS (Source: Mikhail Voskresensky / Sputnik)

That is the history through which one can comprehend the motivation of groups such as Islamic State in destroying Roman architecture in Palmyra and of Boko Haram putting whole communities to death. Both groups have outraged the world with their treatment of females who have been subjected to concubinage and forced marriages; acts which amount to mass rape. Hostility to modern culture and its underpinning ideas are reflected in the name Boko Haram, a faux amis which stands for “Western education is a sin”. It was given by Hausa-speaking residents of the area of north-eastern Nigeria from where the group originated.

But how did the Wahhabist creed expand beyond the Arabian peninsula after the fall of the Ikhwan and the halt of the military advances of the clan of al Saud?

There are arguably two pivotal events which shaped the beginnings of what we now understand to be global jihadism. One concerns an anti-House of Saud insurrection in 1979, which is known as the ‘Siege of Mecca’. It was led by a descendant of a prominent member of the Ikhwan. The other is the role played by Saudi Arabia as part of the anti-Soviet alliance in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

On November 20th 1979, the first day of a new Muslim century, hundreds of gunmen led by a preacher by the name of Juhaymon al-Otaybi seized control of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca. Otaybi declared that the Mahdi or “redeemer of Islam” had arrived in the form of one Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani.

Otaybi and his group of insurgents had the objective of overthrowing the House of Saud on the grounds that the rulers of the Saudi state had compromised the strict tenets of the Wahhabi creed which had been central to the formation of the country. They called for the expulsion of Westerners, the abolition of television and the ending of education for women. The siege lasted for two weeks. After obtaining the blessing of Wahhabi clerics, the Saudis used a detachment of French special forces to enter the Grand Mosque and flush out the rebels.

But it all came at a price. Following consultations with the class of influential fundamentalist clerics, many of whom agreed with the grievances of the rebels, the Saudis set about ‘correcting’ those areas where ‘liberalisation’ had strayed beyond acceptable limits including the media and the school curriculum. The clerics also extracted from the Saudis a commitment to pumping money into the coffers of Sunni missionary organisations with the objective of spreading the Wahhabist doctrine in Islamic universities and madrassas around the Muslim world. It is a policy which became institutionalised and continues to this day.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, occurring like the siege of Mecca in 1979, was the second critical event. The outrage felt by the Muslim world included the declaration of a fatwa by Abdelaziz Bin Baz, who later became the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia. The rulers of Saudi Arabia then became involved with ‘Operation Cyclone’, one of the longest and most expensive covert operations undertaken by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Masterminded by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US National Security Advisor during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, the Saudis provided a large amount of funding for the local Mujahideen as well as the bands of non-Afghan jihadis who flocked in from parts of the Muslim world. Among the multi-ethnic force of migrant warriors, the so-called ‘Afghan Arabs’, was a young, wealthy Saudi Arabian named Osama bin Laden.

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1977. President Jimmy Carter with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski (Source: history.state.gov)

It is from this endeavour overseen by the Americans and heavily funded by the Saudis that the rise of al Qaeda and global jihadism can be traced. The template of Operation Cyclone would be used by the Americans with the aid of the Saudis in future conflicts ranging from the one in Bosnia and Kosovo to the present insurrection in Syria. While funding has come from state and private sources among the Gulf states including Qatar, a country with which the Saudis have a rivalry over dominance in the Sunni world, it is safe to assume that the bulk of financing has come from Saudi sources.

A well-worn method of funnelling money and weapons to jihadist causes is through a network of Saudi-sponsored ‘charities’. It is estimated that the Saudis funded the Bosnian Mujahideen to the tune of approximately $150 million from both state and private sources. The Saudi government was reputed to be the largest donor to the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), which served as a conduit for both finance and arms for the Mujahideen, an arrangement which broke an arms embargo.

Saudi funding for militant Islamist groups continued into the era of the so-called war on terror commenced after the September 11 attacks on American soil by what were claimed to be al-Qaeda cells. Most of the alleged 19 hijackers were identified as Saudi citizens although confusion over the identity of a number of them persists until this day.

While the United States claimed that it would wage war against Sunni Islamist groups of the sort that are claimed to have carried out the terror attacks in the name of al-Qaeda, this has not prevented it from utilizing such groups in attempting to overthrow secular Arab governments who have stood in opposition to American policy. This has invariably been pursued with the help of Saudi Arabia.

The administration of President George Bush recalibrated its policy in providing support to Sunni militant groups in achieving the end of overthrowing the Alawite-dominated government of Syria, with the Saudis playing a key role. Writing about this ‘re-direction’ in the March 2007 edition of the New Yorker magazine,  Seymour Hersh gave the following explanation of how Washington would put pressure on Hezbollah through the use of militant Lebanese Sunni groups:

In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shi’ite organisation that is backed by Iran. The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to al-Qaeda.

Four years later, this strategy would be taken to another level on Syrian soil under cover of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. The introduction of armed jihadist mercenaries to act in concert with homegrown anti-Assad militias, the majority of which have a jihadist agenda, has produced an insurgency which has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands and left millions internally and externally displaced.

The Saudis have continued to feature in exposes relating to the funding of these rebels. For instance, the British Daily Telegraph edition of March 8th 2013 reported an airlift of arms through Zagreb destined for Syrian rebels. According to the report,

“the shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours.”

Saudis buy arms for Syrian rebels from Croatia

Saudi Arabia buys Yugoslavian guns for the Syrian rebels, according to NYT’s sources. (Source: worldbulletin.net)

An earlier report in the New York Times of 25 February 2013 headlined “Saudis Step Up Help for Rebels in Syria With Croatian Arms” was more definitive about Saudi involvement:

Saudi Arabia has financed a large purchase of infantry weapons from Croatia and quietly funneled them to antigovernment fighters in Syria in a drive to break the bloody stalemate that has allowed President Bashar al-Assad to cling to power, according to American and Western officials familiar with the purchases.

This was not an isolated episode. In addition to the aforementioned leaked emails of Hillary Clinton, in another communication dated in 2014, Clinton cited Western intelligence sources as asserting that United States allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar supported ISIS. She wrote:

We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistical support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region

But Clinton is not the only senior American political figure to have alluded to Saudi financing of the terror militias in Syria. Referring to “our allies in the region” in regard to which he specifically mentioned “the Saudis”, the then serving US Vice President Joe Biden, in a speech at the John Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in October 2014, revealed the following:

They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world

The Saudis have also not been averse to directing the machineries of internal control to serve as instruments of state terror as relates to the actions taken against Shia dissenters in Qatif, a governorate within the largely Shia eastern province. Its military have also undertaken brutal interventions in neighbouring countries. It invaded Shia-majority Bahrain in 2011 to suppress demonstrations by those opposed to the rule of the Sunni al-Khalifa family.

The actions of the Saudi military in its current intervention in Yemen -albeit as part of a coalition of Arab and African states- is not premised as an operation of benevolent peacekeeping. While fighting against the Shia Houthi rebels, who Saudi Arabia claim -without providing evidence- are being aided by Iran, the Saudi military has implemented a campaign of terror directed at the civilian population. This has included airstrikes on residential complexes and market places as well as the deliberate destruction of infrastructure: health centres, farms and agricultural industry.

These all amount to war crimes. The Saudis are signatories to the additional protocol of the Geneva Conventions of August 1949 which provides the following:

It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as foodstuffs, crops, livestock…for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population…whatever the motive…

Saudi actions have led to what a top United Nations relief official described as a “humanitarian catastrophe”. A United Nations News Service report in July 2015 noted that eighty percent of the total Yemeni population of 26 million were in need of some form of humanitarian assistance. The threat of long-term famine is a real one.

It is important to note that the Saudi role in fomenting terrorism by waging proxy wars or interventionist wars of the sort that Yemen is, has continually been facilitated by Western powers, most notably Britain and the United States. British arms supplies and British military advisers are key components in this war. Both the CIA and MI6 were central in facilitating the transaction involving the previously mentioned airlift of arms from Zagreb to Syrian rebels in their efforts to overthrow Assad; an endeavour which according to Roland Dumas, a former French foreign minister was planned years in advance, with key input by Britain.

Saudi collusion with Nato powers fits into the historical context of Western use of militant Islam in the furtherance of geo-political objectives. Both the United States and Britain have had an enduring relationship with extremist Islamist movements and militias including the Egyptian-originated Muslim Brotherhood. For the Americans, this goes back to at least the time of the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s while Britain’s relations with the Brotherhood go further back in time to the period following its creation in the late 1920s.

Britain’s specific relationship with the ruling House of Saud has been a long-lasting one. In the early part of the 20th century, the resurgent Saudi emirate was used by the British as a means of weakening Ottoman power in the Arabian Peninsula despite Winston Churchill’s misgivings about Ibn Saud’s followers being “bloodthirsty” and “intolerant”. The logic that Saudi Arabia is a worthy ally because of its oil wealth and geo-strategic position is one which underpins its relations with Britain.

This also applies to the United States. The assessment by British policymakers in 1947 of Saudi oil as “a vital prize for any power interested in world influence or domination” captures the essence of America’s ties with the Saudi kingdom.

The relationship between both nations, one self-avowedly democratic and republican and the other an absolute monarchy, steeped in medieval-era feudalism, is one which is riddled with contradiction and hypocrisy.

At its heart is the supply of Saudi oil which President Franklin Roosevelt explained would be the determining factor in shaping the alliance. It is one which is predicated on a series of Faustian-like bargains. In 1971, with the aim of propping up the faltering dollar after taking the United States off the gold standard, President Richard Nixon negotiated a deal whereby the United States would guarantee to militarily protect the Saudis in return for the Saudis guaranteeing the sale of the oil they produce in US dollars. The aim of this pact is to assure the survivability of the US dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency.

The relationship has evolved to encompass collusion in the arming and training of jihadi militias pursuant to each country’s hegemonic objectives: for the Americans global economic and military dominance and for the Saudis, dominance in the Arab and Muslim world.

The question of terrorism has at various junctures served to complicate Saudi relations with both America and Britain. For instance, in 2016, the Saudis threatened to dump billions of United States assets in retribution if a bill by American lawmakers holding Saudi Arabia responsible for the September 11th terror attacks was passed. It stemmed from the revelation that 28 pages had been redacted from a report on the atrocity.

In the case of Britain, a long-term supplier of arms and who like the Americans have played a key part in training the National Guard, the issue arose when the Saudis threatened to withdraw from security cooperation with British intelligence agencies over a decision by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to commence an investigation into allegations of bribery involving members of the Saudi royal family and government officials in an arms deal between BAE Systems and the Saudi government.

After pressure from the highest levels of the government of Tony Blair, the investigation was discontinued. A subsequent judicial review by the highest court in Britain accepted the argument by the government that the threat issued by the Saudis, which the British government claimed would have led to an increased threat of terrorism in Britain was a relevant consideration to be taken into account by the head of the SFO in making the decision to abort the investigation.

Court papers revealed that the rulers of Saudi Arabia had threatened to make it easier to attack London unless the inquiry was stopped. Secret files described how investigators were told that Britain would be faced with “another 7/7” and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if the investigation was not discontinued. The threats to withhold information related to potential suicide bombers and terrorists were claimed to have been made by Prince Bandar, when head of the Saudi National Security Council, on a visit to London in December of 2006.

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Tony Blair with Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Source: express.co.uk)

The irony was that Tony Blair, to whom Bandar must have voiced such threats, had five years earlier described Saudi Arabia as “a good friend in the international coalition against terrorism”.

This hypocritical disconnect from reality has for long typified the Western relationship with the Saudis. Blair’s predecessor, Margaret Thatcher once claimed that the Saudis “never used arms irresponsibly”; a statement which jars today given the use of British-supplied arms by the Saudi military in the present conflict in Yemen. Thatcher’s 1981 declaration that “the hearts of the free world” were with the Afghan Mujahideen must also rankle those aware of the mutation of several of its component parts into al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The frequent claims by contemporary British and American political and military leaders that Iran is the “the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism” does not stand to scrutiny. All the major acts of terror carried out in the West in the name of Islam have emanated from Sunni and not Shia militants. It is a bias which extends to criticisms leveled at Iran’s electoral process while Western politicians say little or nothing about the lack of democratic institutions in Saudi society.

Saudi Arabia’s quest for dominance in the Muslim and Arab world is not based on spreading enlightened values. There are no features in its society which would for instance encourage movements designed to develop civil society or the intellectual critique of episodes in Muslim and Arab history as pertain to the issues of slavery and genocide. Its human rights failings are well documented and the problems of discrimination in relation to the ceiling faced by female, Shia and black Saudi citizens remain largely unaddressed.

It is clear that the “shared interests and values” claimed by Donald Trump on his recent visit to Saudi Arabia to be at the basis of the partnership between the Americans and the Saudis are not predicated on what could be termed universal moral and ethical standards of behaviour. It is a partnership which is primarily based on the determined acquisition of power and domination which has been guided by an ends justifies the means ethos.

This in the final analysis is the reason why Saudi Arabia, with the complicity of its Western backers, will not escape history’s judgement as the greatest purveyor of fundamentalist-based Islamic terror.

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based writer. He can be followed on Twitter @AdeyinkaMakinde.

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The Arab American Left and Palestine: The Untold Story

June 6th, 2017 by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

President Donald Trump has twice tried to institute a travel ban on all refugees from six or seven Muslim-majority countries. During the presidential campaign, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” slated to last “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” His Muslim ban has been struck down by two courts of appeals and may be headed to the Supreme Court.

With his mean-spirited bans, Trump aimed to capitalize on fear of Muslims fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and exacerbated since by the U.S. government and the corporate media.

Long-standing prejudice against Arabs

This anti-Muslim sentiment is a continuation of long-standing prejudice against Arabs that reached its zenith during the last third of the 20th century. In her provocative book, “The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight Against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s-1980s,” Pamela Pennock traces the trajectory of Arab American leftist activism in the United States over a series of key decades.

Pennock writes about the enduring portrayal of “Arabs as variously exotic, erotic, savage, uncivilized, and incapable of autonomy.”

Indeed, media critic Jack Shaheen’s book and 2007 film, “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” document negative stereotypes of Arabs depicted in American movies.

“All aspects of our culture project the Arab as villain,” Shaheen says in the film.

He includes lyrics from the opening music of the Disney film “Aladdin”:

“Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels grow, where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”

“Aladdin” has been seen by millions of children around the world.

Anti-Arab prejudice has also been fueled by Hollywood’s depictions of Arab women as

“highly sexualized belly dancer[s] … inspired by early images of the Orient as the place of exoticism, intrigue and passion,” Shaheen notes. More recently, however, “this image has dramatically changed: The Arab woman is now projected as a bomber, a terrorist.”

Events that politicized Arab Americans

These stereotypes are racist, sexist and patently false. Many Arabs came to the United States to study. Once here, they were moved to activism primarily by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Author, Pamela Pennock (Source: mondoweiss.net)

As Pennock observes, the single biggest factor that galvanized Arab Americans was the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs occasioned by the creation of the state of Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territories.

In order to establish Israel as a Jewish state in 1948, nearly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their homes and their land. They call it the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic.

A second catalyzing event occurred in June 1967, 50 years ago this month. Israel, with help from the United States, invaded Egypt, Jordan and Syria and seized the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.

Later that year, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242, which refers to

“the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

Nevertheless, Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territories it acquired in 1967.

In addition, the 1967 war stoked anti-Arab sentiment in the United States.

“While anti-Arab prejudice became especially pervasive and damaging after September 11, 2001, the stigmatization heightened in the aftermath of the 1967 war when many Americans increasingly grouped people of Arab heritage together, regardless of their citizenship or whether they resided in Arab nations or in the United States, and viewed them as threatening and suspicious,” Pennock writes.

The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

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Sirhan Sirhan (Source: Wikipedia)

One event intensified anti-Arab prejudice in the United States and made it difficult for Arab Americans to “dissociate from stereotypes of terrorists,” according to Pennock: the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by Palestinian American Sirhan Sirhan.

Sirhan was 4 years old when he and his family were forced by the Israeli military to flee their home in Jerusalem. That trauma informed his perception of Israel. Sirhan was disturbed by U.S. support for Israeli policies. During the presidential campaign, Kennedy vociferously backed Israel. For the 24-year-old Sirhan, who suffered from mental illness, Kennedy’s words intensified his pain.

Attorney Abdeen Jabara, a member of Sirhan’s defense team, told Pennock that this confluence of events supported a diminished-capacity defense to the murder charge. Sirhan ultimately was convicted of murdering Kennedy and condemned to death. His sentence was later converted to life without possibility of parole when the law changed in California.

The Munich Olympics murders

Four years later, in an attempt to free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, the Black September faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

As a result of the 1972 massacre, the Nixon administration increased surveillance and investigation of Arab Americans, in a program called “Operation Boulder.”

Operation Boulder

“[B]ecause the Arab visa checks and investigations of Arab Americans were publicized in the American media as constituting the U.S. government’s reaction to the Munich massacre,” Pennock observes, “the government had in effect stigmatized all Arabs as suspect in the public’s mind.”

But the investigations

“never detected a single case of terrorist or espionage activity among Arabs living in the United States,” she reports.

Operation Boulder, which officially ended in 1975, lasted only two years. But the U.S. government continued to monitor Arab Americans for many years thereafter.

Many leaders in the Arab American community thought the real aim of Operation Boulder was

“to suppress Arab Americans’ legal political expression, particularly their pro-Palestinian activism … it was a program of political intimidation” that “also sought to ‘divide and conquer’ Arab American communities by making them suspicious of one another,” Pennock writes.

Jabara, one of those investigated during Operation Boulder, later wrote that the program could

“only be understood against the background of the definite pressure that [has] been brought to bear by Israel and its supporters in the U.S.”

Jabara told Truthdig,

“The matrix of the prejudice was part and parcel of the ‘unswerving commitment’ by the U.S. and its allies to Israel despite its gross violation of Palestinian rights. In short, there was an organic connection between the prejudice that was promoted in American popular culture as a support mechanism to a foreign policy that enabled Israeli aggression and colonization. Both the Americans and Israelis wanted to crush any resistance, regardless of what forms it took.”

In the wake of 9/11, in another racist operation, the Bush administration rounded up and incarcerated hundreds of Arab Americans who had committed no crime. Bush also instituted his Terrorist Surveillance Program to spy on people without judicial review. That program was codified by Congress and continued during the Obama administration.

In 2011, Wired uncovered FBI training materials that described how agents were taught to consider “mainstream” Muslims as supporters of terrorism.

The Intercept reported in 2014 that documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the FBI and the National Security Agency covertly read emails of prominent Muslim Americans, including lawyers, academics, civil rights activists and a political candidate.

Arab American activism

Jabara was a founder and past president of the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG), the first national organization of Arab American peace and civil rights activists. Founded in 1967, AAUG was the most visible and active Arab American organization in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It had chapters in most U.S. cities and universities.

AAUG was

“a select group of Arab Americans [college graduates] who formulated a sense of ethnic identity, fostered community solidarity, and practiced progressive and transnational politics,” Pennock writes.

This group was committed “to an anti-racist, anti-imperialist analysis of Arab world problems” and was ideologically aligned with the global left. It aimed to demonstrate to Americans that “Zionism was a form of colonialism rather than a legitimate expression of Jewish nationalism.”

Significantly, AAUG “helped elevate the Palestinian struggle to the status of a premier universal human rights issue,” AAUG member Ghada Hasem Talhami later observed.

AAUG’s scholarly analysis, published in the Arab Studies Quarterly and other papers and monographs,

“was usually critical not only of Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East but also of conservative Arab states,” Pennock notes. Following the 1967 war, Egypt and Syria had “demonstrably retreated from their commitment to pan-Arabism and Palestinian independence,” she adds.

Thus, Jabara notes, AAUG provided a forum for Arab intellectuals, artists, activists and political figures who may not have had such opportunities to meet in their home countries.

Jabara saw a natural alliance between the issues facing Arab Americans and the struggles of “Black Americans, Chicanos, Oriental Americans, young people and civil libertarians,” all of whom were “excluded from any meaningful participation in the American decision process.”

Most in the African-American community had traditionally formed alliances with Jews. But by the 1980s, many became increasingly critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, which they equated with South African apartheid.

The most significant factor driving U.S. foreign policy, according to Jabara, was not the Zionist lobby, but rather “America’s definition and pursuit of its economic interests in the region.”

Arab students, many of them members of the Organization of Arab Students (OAS), likened the struggle of the Palestinians to the Vietnamese fight for self-determination.

By the 1980s, the Muslim Student Organization supplanted OAS as the leading organization of Arab American students, who were increasingly becoming Muslims.

In 1980, Jabara helped form the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) with former Sen. James Abourezk and Arab American Institute founder James Zogby. Jabara also served as president of ADC, which is still a significant organization.

Jabara told Truthdig that the 1973 oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries led to an

“uptick” in prejudice against Arab Americans. “That led to the creation of the ADC in 1980,” he added.

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association, was the first in the United States to be racially integrated. From the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, Jabara played the central role in convincing NLG to take up the issue of Palestine and the rights of Palestinians to self-determination. No issue has ever been as divisive in NLG. Some Jewish members left the organization, but it continues to oppose the Israeli occupation.

In 1977, Jabara led the first NLG delegation to Israel, Palestine, Syria and Jordan, and contributed to the delegation’s groundbreaking 1977 report on conditions in the occupied territories. That report was widely circulated within the then-young human rights network and is largely credited with paving the way for other organizations to break with the pro-Israeli orthodoxy and issue their own reports critical of Israeli human rights abuses.

Jabara was also a key participant in the lawsuit filed by NLG and the Center for Constitutional Rights against the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith for spying on NLG and other Arab American and progressive groups.

Anti-Zionism vs. Anti-Semitism

In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly, by a 2-to-1 margin, passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism. It drew parallels between Israeli Zionism and apartheid South Africa. The United States voted against the resolution.

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A BDS protest (Source: WikiMedia Commons)

Beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s, people critical of Israel’s policies were accused of anti-Semitism, a characterization that persists to this day. Indeed, those who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are often labeled anti-Semitic.

Following in the tradition of the Arab American call for the United Auto Workers to divest its Israeli bonds in the early 1970s, the BDS movement was launched by representatives of Palestinian civil society in 2005. They appealed to “international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era … [including] embargoes and sanctions against Israel.”

This call for BDS specified that “these nonviolent punitive measures” should last until Israel fully complies with international law by

1) ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the barrier wall;

2) recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3) respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their land as stipulated in General Assembly Resolution 194.

Students for Justice in Palestine, which focuses predominantly on the BDS movement, has been tarred as anti-Semitic by Zionist groups on campuses throughout the country.

But Rafeef Ziadah, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, says,

“The BDS movement is opposed, as a matter of principle, to all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”

In 2014, Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti wrote in The New York Times,

“Arguing that boycotting Israel is intrinsically anti-Semitic is not only false, but it also presumes that Israel and ‘the Jews’ are one and the same. This is as absurd and bigoted as claiming that a boycott of a self-defined Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, say, because of its horrific human rights record, would of necessity be Islamophobic.”

Any criticism of Israeli policy is labeled anti-Semitism, even though many Jews—including members of Jewish Voice for Peace, Jewish Center for Nonviolence and IfNotNow—oppose the occupation.

Israel has invaded Gaza three times in the last seven years, killing thousands of Palestinians, including large numbers of women and children. The Black Lives Matter movement sees similarities between the police killings of African-Americans in the U.S. and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza.

As the struggle against the Israeli occupation continues, Pennock’s compelling book is a must-read for progressives and all interested in a comprehensive history of Arab American activism. The parallels it draws with current events will inform today’s activists in our struggles for freedom and equality.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Her most recent book is “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.” Visit her website at http://marjoriecohn.com/  and follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/m arjoriecohn

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London’s tabloids have gone into high gear with vivid descriptions of the attacks and the tragic loss of life. Seven killed and 48 wounded.  

“ISIS has claimed responsibility for the depraved attack in London Bridge as chilling video shows three jihadis calmly strolling past a pub while in the midst of the van and knife rampage that killed seven and critically injured 21.” ( The Sun, June 5, 2017) 

ISIS has claimed responsibility, Is there a pattern?

Without exception, Al Qaeda or ISIS were allegedly behind the Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Manchester and London Bridge terror attacks,  which served to spearhead a wave of Islamophobia across Western Europe, while also providing a pretext for the introduction of drastic police state measures:

“The twisted killers are seen calmly walking through Borough Market moments before they launched a stabbing attack on pubgoers while shouting “this is for Allah”, having already driven a van into crowds.” The Sun, June 5, 2017)

The statement of Prime Minister May (three days before the UK elections) points in the direction of an organized hate campaign against Muslims:

[The Manchester and London attacks] …are bound together by the single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam. It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth.

… It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence – and make them understand that our values – pluralistic, British values – are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.  (emphasis added),

“Perversion of the Truth”? Lies, fabrications, omissions. What the British media in chorus fails to mention is that both ISIS and Al Qaeda are creations of US intelligence, recruited, trained and financed by the US and its allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and Jordan.

The Islamic State (ISIS) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة‎).

The origins of Al Qaeda date back to the Soviet-Afghan war. The Koranic schools in Afghanistan used to train Al Qaeda recruits were financed by the CIA, using textbooks published by the University of Nebraska. That’s where the “evil ideology of Islamist extremism” referred to by PM May originated: The “Global War on Terrorism” is a lie, “Islamic terrorism” is a product of US foreign policy which claims to be spreading “Western civilization”:

the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..

 

afgh-Textbook jihad

Picture above is translated as follows: “Jihad – Often many different wars and conflicts arise among people, which cause material damages and loss of human life. If these wars and disputes occur among people for the sake of community, nation, territory, or even because of verbal differences, and for the sake of progress…”

This page is from a third-grade language arts textbook dating from the mujahidin period. A copy of the book was purchased new in Kabul in May 2000. 

… Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska -Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $ 51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.” (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)

The ISIS is a terrorist paramilitary entity created by US intelligence. It has nothing to do with the tenets of Islam. The ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance in Syria who are fighting a secular government. While America claims to be targeting the ISIS, in reality it is protecting the ISIS.

Britain’s Role in the “War on Terrorism”

There is evidence that British SAS Special Forces were dispatched to Syria in 2011 to integrate the ranks of the so-called moderate Al Qaeda rebels. Special Forces often hired through a private mercenary company on contract to NATO or the Pentagon were embedded within most paramilitary rebel formations, According to Elite UK Forces (the website of the SAS)

Reports from late November last year [2011] state that British Special forces have met up with members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the armed wing of the Syrian National Council. The apparent goal of this initial contact was to establish the rebel forces’ strength and to pave the way for any future training operations.

More recent reports have stated that British and French Special Forces have been actively training members of the FSA, from a base in Turkey. Some reports indicate that training is also taking place in locations in Libya and Northern Lebanon. British MI6 operatives and UKSF (SAS/SBS) personnel have reportedly been training the rebels in urban warfare as well as supplying them with arms and equipment. US CIA operatives and special forces are believed to be providing communications assistance to the rebels.

British MI6 were actively involved, collaborating with the CIA:

As the unrest and killings escalate in the troubled Arab state, agents from MI6 and the CIA are already in Syria assessing the situation, a security official has revealed.

Special forces are also talking to Syrian dissident soldiers [Al Qaeda].

They want to know about weapons and communications kit rebel forces will need if the Government decides to help.

“MI6 and the CIA are in Syria to infiltrate[rebel ranks]  and get at the truth,” said the well-placed source.

“We have SAS and SBS not far away who want to know what is happening and are finding out what kit dissident soldiers [Al Qaeda] need.” Syria will be bloodiest yet, Daily Star, January 1, 2012  (emphasis added)

The air campaign launched by Obama in 2014, which had the full support of the United Kingdom, was intent upon destroying Syria and Iraq rather than “going after the terrorists”. There is ample evidence that the Islamic State is protected by the US-led coalition.

The inflow and delivery of weapons and supplies are coordinated by the Pentagon in liaison with America’s allies.

US military aid is channelled to Al Qaeda as well as to ISIS-Daesh.

The US has also used the illegal weapons market  to channel vast amounts of weapons and military hardware to the Syrian “rebels”.

With regard to the Manchester and London terror attacks, this relationship between the ISIS and its Western State sponsors (including the intelligence services of the British government) cannot be swept aside.
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The blowback thesis is a red herring. The debate on the so-called causes of terrorism has focussed on “Blowback or Extremism?” Neither.
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Who are behind the terrorists? The role of the State Sponsors of Terrorism (including Her Majesty’s Government) is something which has been carefully overlooked.

The State sponsors of ISIS-Al Qaeda are now heralded as the victims of ISIS-Al Qaeda, an absurd proposition. Those who are funded and supported by Western intelligence services are now said to be fighting back.

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

The British government through its intelligence services is known to have covertly supported several Al Qaeda affiliated entities including the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which was linked to the Manchester bombings.

The “Liberation” of  Tripoli was carried out by “former” members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which is affiliated to Al Qaeda.  These “former” Al Qaeda affiliated brigades constituted the backbone of the “pro-democracy” rebellion, which was supported by NATO.

Within the ranks of the LIFG rebels, US Navy SEALS, British SAS and French legionnaires disguised in civilian rebel garb, were reported to be behind major operations directed against key government buildings including Gadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound in central Tripoli.

“Highly-trained [British Special Forces] units, known as ‘Smash’ teams for their prowess and destructive ability, have carried out secret reconnaissance missions to provide up-to-date information on the Libyan armed forces.” (SAS ‘Smash’ squads on the ground in Libya to mark targets for coalition jets, Daily Mirror, March 21, 2011)

And in the wake of NATO’s war Libya, these pro-democracy LIFG Al Qaeda affiliates have joined the ranks of the ISIS.

Washington’s Regime Change for Syria: Install the Islamic State

It is worth noting that the release of the Hillary Clinton email archive as well as leaked Pentagon documents confirm that the US and its allies are supportive of ISIS.

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

 

Concluding Remarks

Despite the evidence, it is very difficult for people to accept the fact that their own government is supporting terrorism.

Most people will dispel this as an impossibility. But it is the forbidden truth.

The established consensus is that the role of a government is to protect its people. That myth has to be sustained.

The media’s role is to ensure that the truth does not trickle down to the broader public.

If that were to occur, the legitimacy of Western heads of State and heads of government would collapse like a house of cards.

The governments of the countries whose citizens are the victims of terror attacks are supporting ISIS-Daesh through their intelligence services.

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Syrian government forces, led by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces, have achieved a major victory in the battle against ISIS in eastern Aleppo. Late on Friday, the Tiger Forces encircled the ISIS stronghold of Maskanah and took control over the N4 highway. On Saturday, army troops liberated Maskanah itself and started removing mines and IEDs set up by terrorists in the area. A majority of ISIS terrorists had withdrew from the town in the direction of Palmyra, according to local sources.

Separately, units of Liwa al-Quds and the Republican Guard advanced east of Khansser and captured the Alam hill and the nearby points.

A contact line between government forces and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces will likely be established south of Dibsi Afnan. Then, the SAA may continue developing advance expanding a buffer zone along the Ithriyah-Khanasser-Aleppo road.

The liberation of Maskanah also opens additional opportunities for operations against ISIS in the provinces of Homs and Deir Ezzor.

ISIS responded to this with a large advance against the SAA in the city of Deir Ezzor. ISIS units operating had received additional reinforcements, including artillery pieces and military equipment. This allowed them to capture the Panorama roundabout and the Panorama School in the area of the 137th Base. A fierce fighting is ongoing in Tal Umm Abboud and Tal SyriaTel. If the 137th Base falls into hands of ISIS, this may lead to a collapse of government forces defenses in a large part of Deir Ezzor. The situation is critical.

In turn, ISIS has invested a large number of its resources in this operation and if it fails, this may open a road for the government advance on al-Sukhna on the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor highway.

Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal are located at a strategic highway linking Raqqa and Mosul.  If ISIS wants to keep at least some presence in the Syrian-Iraqi battleground and to get some freedom of operations, it desperately needs to capture the city of Deir Ezzor. This is why many militants redeployed from other fronts, including the ISIS-held area of Iraq and Raqqa are involved in this effort.

Since June 3, it has liberated more than 1400 square kilometers east of Palmyra city. The operation involves large forces of the SAA and its allies armed with dozens of armored vehicles and battle tanks, including modern T-90A battle tanks. The Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Air Force support the operation.

ISIS claimed that 21 Syrian soldiers were killed by a VBIED attack in the Abbasiya area. 14 Syrian soldiers were reportedly killed in a suicide attack in Al-Gharb hills. ISIS destroyed a battle tank of the SAA near Al-Mahaor with an ATGM, and targeted a gathering of soldiers there with an ATGM, allegedly killing five soldiers. The casualties of ISIS forces in the area are unknown.

The US-led coalition has set up a new military base in at the Syrian-Iraqi border. The base is located at Al-Zkuf, 70 km northeast of Al-Tanf and 130 km south of the ISIS-held town of Al-Bukamal. The declared goal is to assist US-backed militant groups, like Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra, in their battle against ISIS.

Meanwhile, US-backed militants have continued their attacks against government troops in the southeastern desert. However, they have achieved no notable results. The SAA maintains positions in about 40-45 kilometers from Al-Tanf.

The situation is also escalating in the city of Daraa as government forces have deployed reinforcements in order to prevent further militant advances in the provincial capital. The army has launched an intense bombing campaign against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies in the area. Government forces also conducted few counter-attacks.  According to some pro-government sources, the army may launch a military operation in order to liberate the whole city. However, this looks too optimistic, considering the situation in Deir Ezzor and near Palmyra.

Voiceover by Lance Ramsay

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Emboldened by U.S. backing Saudi Arabia launched a campaign to finally subjugate Qatar into client state status. The plan has now reached a high point. A few hours ago Bahrain, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia severed all ties with Qatar.

All sea- and airspace have been closed for Qatari traffic and the land-routes severed. All Qataris will have to leave those countries within 14 days. Qatari diplomats were given just 48 hours.

The immediate consequences are huge. Some 37 million passengers cross through Doha each year. But Qatar Airways now has to fly through Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish airspace to reach Europe. (If the situation persists the UAE owned Emirates Airways will likely order a huge bunch of new planes.) Half of the food in Qatar comes via Saudi Arabia through Qatar’s only land border. 600-800 trucks per day can no longer pass. The 19 flights per day between Doha and Dubai are called off.  Oil prices rose some 1.6% and the Qatari stock exchange tanked.

Source: Moon of Alabama

The reasons for the immediate spat are manifold. It has only little to do with Iran.

The Saudis accuse Qatar of supporting terrorists. That is like Britain accusing the U.S. of imperialism, or the mafia cutting ties with the mob over gangsterism. As Joe Biden remarked (video below) when still Vice President, both Wahhabi countries, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have been funding and fueling terrorism in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. But the Saudi view is that the more “liberal” Qatar is simply supporting the “wrong” kind of terrorists.

The Qatari government and its mouthpiece Al-Jazeera installed and supported the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt. The Saudis put that government down by financing a military coup against it. Qatar is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood government of Turkey. It is supporting the Palestinian Hamas, also a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate. Qatar is financing various al-Qaeda aligned groups in Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. The Taliban have their only diplomatic mission in Doha. Until recently the Saudis have been financing ISIS. They are now mainly back at financing various other Jihadi groups in Syria under CIA control. The UAE is sponsoring the Libyan general Hiftar who is fighting Qatari supported al-Qaeda aligned groups. The Saudis are making nice with Israel and have no interest in the Palestinian cause which Qatar supports.

There are diverting interests in hydrocarbons. Qatar is the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas – a serious competition to Saudi oil exports. It has recently intensified its relations with other producers and customers in the Gulf region and beyond.

More local and personal dimensions of the spat include many intermarriages and competitions between Saudi and Qatari tribes and families. There are rumors that significant tribal groups in the Saudi’s Najd desert, especially the al-Tamim, have recently renewed their ties to Qatar under its current emir Prince Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani. This was an “in your face” for the al-Sauds.

Oman and Kuwait have taken no position in the fight and try to mediate. Turkey is allied with Qatar but has stayed suspiciously quiet. There is a new defense agreement between Qatar and Turkey promising Turkish support if Qatar is attacked. The Turkish military has a base in Qatar with some 600 soldiers. A huge share of foreign investment in Turkey has come from Qatar. The Turkish and Qatari government coordinate tightly in their common support for al-Qaeda and other Takfiris in the war on Syria.

The current standoff between Qatar and other Arab countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council were enabled by the Trump administration:

Whereas the Obama administration sought to enhance U.S. engagement with the GCC as a bloc, Trump focused instead on Saudi Arabia and the UAE as the twin pillars of its regional approach. Strong bonds reportedly have formed between Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia as well as Yusuf al-Otaiba, the influential UAE ambassador in Washington.Key principals within the Trump administration, such as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, hold views on Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood that are virtually indistinguishable from those in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Trump fell into a Saudi-Israeli trap. The Pentagon hawks have dreamed of an “Arab NATO” to fight Iran. The envisioned “Arab NATO” may soon have its first war but it will be against one of its members. The (not-satanic) “Orb” show and the unlimited U.S. support for Saudi Arabia have exacerbated the fissures within the GCC and will hinder any common operations.

The U.S. military has huge interests in Qatar and other Gulf countries. Al-Udeid in Qatar is the biggest U.S. airbase in the Middle East. It is also the forward headquarter of the U.S. Central Command with some 10,000 U.S. soldiers and leads the fight against ISIS. The U.S. Navy fifth fleet is hosted in nearby Bahrain which has now declared a cold war with Qatar. Any spat or difficulty between the Gulf countries hinders U.S. military operations.

In Washington an intense Saudi and UAE lobbying campaign against Qatar has been ongoing for months. A Saudi lobbyist threatened the Qatari ruler with the “same fate as Egypt’s Morsi”. In a reprisal hacked emails between the UAE ambassador Yusuf al-Otaiba and Israeli lobbying organizations in Washington were recently published. The documents show that the Zionist lobby organization “Foundation for the Defense of Democracy” is advising the dictatorship of the UAE on how to fight the dictatorship of Qatar.

At the end of the “orb” show the Saudis and the U.S. pushed a document declaring various organizations and Iran “terrorist supporters.” Qatar refused to sign it. Saudi clerics then declared that the Qatari al-Thani rulers are no longer considered to be “part of the Abdel Wahhab clan”. That takes away the Wahhabi rulers religious legitimacy.

Qatar had tried to calm the situation down. It announced that six of its soldiers had been wounded while fighting for the Saudis near Yemen. It expelled a few Hamas leaders from the country. A mediator was sent to Kuwait – so far to no avail.

The extreme bullying of Qatar by the Saudis and the UAE, with total closure of all its borders, is designed to create an immediate capitulation. So far Qatar holds onto its course but in the end it is likely to fold. It will have to stop its support for “terrorism” i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood. Another scenario is a putsch in Doha with some Saudi puppet prepared to take over the realm. If that is unsuccessful a military move could follow. Qatar has little capabilities to withstand a potential Saudi invasion.

For Iran this is a chance to further blow up the GCC by intensifying its relations with Qatar. It could increase its food exports to the country and host Qatar airline flights. This in exchange for a Qatari retreat from Syria. The U.S./Saudi plan of confronting Iran through the GCC would then be in complete jeopardy.

The Imam says: “More popcorn please.” (Source: Moon of Alabama)

No matter how the spat with Qatar ends, the GCC unity has (again) been exposed as a sham. It can not be repaired. Saudi “leadership” is shown to be just brutal bullying and will be resisted. U.S. plans for a united GCC under Saudi leadership and U.S. control are in shambles.

The linch pin of all this is the Saudi war on Yemen. The Saudis support the Hadi puppet government of Yemen and two years ago aligned the other Gulf states, including Qatar, to fight against the Houthi in north Yemen. They accuse the Houthi of receiving Iranian support. There is zero evidence for that claim. The war and the coalition have failed. Houthi resistance continues unabated. With Yemen sinking into a famine thanks to a Saudi border blockade and a Cholera epidemic rapidly extending, the war must come to a close. Kuwait, Oman and Qatar are talking with the Houthi in Sanaa. Last week troops from the UAE used helicopters to again fight Saudi supported militia around the southern airport in Aden. The U.S. and Britain urge for the war to end and, behind closed doors, threaten to withdraw their support for it. The Saudi under their new leadership overestimate their capabilities. So did Trump when he raised their role. The Saudi “apes with Macbooks” do not have the capabilities needed for a serious political actor in this world. Their money can paper over that for only so long.

The above all reminds of a prediction made nearly two years ago by a Yemeni lawyer in Sanaa:

@Bafana3
At the end of this war on #Yemen, the GCC states led by Saudi Arabia will collapse into oblivion. I do not know what will replace them.
9:29am · 15 Aug 2015

Featured image: arabtimesonline.com

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Author’s Note and Update

The following article was first published in September 2014 at the outset of Obama’s air campaign “against the ISIS”. 

Amply documented but rarely mentioned in news reports, the ISIS is a creation of US intelligence, recruited, trained and financed by the US and its allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and Jordan.  

What this means is that the ISIS terrorists are the foot soldiers of the Western alliance in Syria and Iraq. While America claims to be targeting the ISIS, in reality it is protecting the ISIS. 

The air campaign launched by Obama in 2014 was intent upon destroying Syria and Iraq rather than “going after the terrorists”. There is ample evidence that the Islamic State is protected by the US-led coalition.

The inflow and delivery of weapons and supplies are coordinated by the Pentagon in liaison with America’s allies. 

US military aid is channelled to Al Qaeda as well as to ISIS-Daesh.

The US has also used the illegal weapons market  to channel vast amounts of weapons and military hardware to the Syrian “rebels”.  

In March 2017, the US military came to the rescue of ISIS-Daesh commanders who were being evacuated out of Iraq and Syria in US military helicopters. According to the Arabic language al-Hadath news website:

“several US military helicopters landed on kilometer 10 of Deir Ezzur-Hasaka road and evacuated a number of ISIL commanders from the region. … After the helicopter landed, several US marines took 10 ISIL commanders on board and left the region,” …

Abu Dajane Fransawi has most likely been among the top ISIL commanders taken away by the US marines, …ISIL’s man in charge of the terrorist group’s financial affairs in Forat (Euphrates) oilfield.” (quoted by FNA)

Similar rescue operations of ISIS-Daesh Commanders were conducted in Iraq.

Manchester, London

With regard to the Manchester and London terror attacks, this relationship between the ISIS and its Western State sponsors (including the intelligence services of the British government) cannot be ignored.

The blowback thesis is a red herring. The sponsors of ISIS are now heralded as the victims of ISIS, an absurd proposition. Those who are funded and supported by Western intelligence services are now said to be fighting back.

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

The British government has supported several Al Qaeda affiliated entities including the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which was linked to the Manchester bombings.

It is worth noting that the release of the Hillary Clinton email archive as well as leaked Pentagon documents confirm that the US and its allies are supportive of ISIS, which according to European press reports, are the alleged architects of the Brussels, Berlin and Manchester terror attacks.

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

The governments of the countries whose citizens are the victims of terror attacks are supporting ISIS-Daesh through their intelligence services.

Michel Chossudovsky, March 17, 2017, June 5, 2017

*       *      *

The Islamic State (IS) is portrayed as an Enemy of America and the Western world. 

With the support of America’s indefectible British ally, President Barack Obama has ordered [2014] a series of US bombing raids on Iraq allegedly with a view to defeating the rebel army of the Islamic State (IS).

“We will not waver in our determination to confront the Islamic State If terrorists think we will weaken in the face of their threats they could not be more wrong. (Barack Obama and David Cameron, Strengthening the NATO alliance, op ed published in the London Times, September 4, 2014, emphasis added)

But Who is behind the Islamic State Project?

In a bitter irony,  until recently the rebels of the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were heralded as Syria’s “opposition freedom fighters” committed to “restoring democracy” and unseating the secular government of Bashar al Assad.

And who was behind  the jihadist insurgency in Syria?

Those who ordered the bombing campaign are those who are behind the Caliphate Project.

The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently the alleged target of  a US-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, was and continues to be supported covertly by the United States and its allies.

In other words, the Islamic State (IS) is a creation of US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-‘Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة‎). Moreover, according to Israeli intelligence sources (Debka) NATO in liaison with the Turkish High Command has been involved in the recruitment of jihadist mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian crisis in March 2011.

In relation to the Syrian insurgency, the Islamic State  fighters together with the Al Qaeda affiliated jihadist forces of the Al Nusrah Front are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance. They are covertly supported by US-NATO-Israel. Their  mandate is to wage a terrorist insurgency against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The atrocities committed by Islamic State fighters in Iraq are similar to those committed in Syria.

As a result of media disinformation, Western public opinion is unaware that the Islamic State terrorists have from the very outset been supported by the United States and its allies.

The killings of innocent civilians by the Islamic State terrorists in Iraq are used to create a pretext and a justification for US military intervention on humanitarian grounds.  The bombing raids ordered by Obama, however, are not intended to eliminate the Islamic State, which constitutes a US “intelligence asset”. Quite the opposite, the US is targeting the civilian population as well as the Iraqi resistance movement.

The Role of Saudi Arabia and Qatar

Amply documented, US-NATO support to the Islamic State is channeled covertly through America’s staunchest allies: Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Acknowledged by the Western media, both Riyadh and Doha acting in liaison and on behalf of Washington have played (and continue to play) a central role in the financing the Islamic State (IS) as well as the recruitment, training and religious indoctrination of terrorist mercenary forces deployed in Syria.

According to London’s Daily Express “They [the Islamic State terrorists] had money and arms supplied by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”

US Saudi connection

“The most important source of ISIS financing to date has been support coming out of the Gulf states, primarily Saudi Arabia but also Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates,” (According to Dr. Günter Meyer, Director of the Center for Research into the Arabic World at University of Mainz, Germany,  Deutsche Welle)

This money was channeled to ISIS terrorists fighting against government forces in Syria:

Through allies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the West [has] supported militant rebel groups which have since mutated into ISIS and other al‑Qaeda connected militias. ( Daily Telegraph, June 12, 2014)

According to Robert Fisk, the IS caliphate project “has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia”:

…[M]eet Saudi Arabia’s latest monstrous contribution to world history: the Islamist Sunni caliphate of Iraq and the Levant, conquerors of Mosul and Tikrit – and Raqqa in Syria – and possibly Baghdad, and the ultimate humiliators of Bush and Obama.

From Aleppo in northern Syria almost to the Iraqi-Iranian border, the jihadists of Isis and sundry other groupuscules paid by the Saudi Wahhabis – and by Kuwaiti oligarchs – now rule thousands of square miles. (Robert Fisk, The Independent,  June 12, 2014

In 2013, as part of its recruitment of terrorists, Saudi Arabia took the initiative of releasing prisoners on death row in Saudi jails.

A secret memo revealed that the prisoners were being “recruited” to join jihadist militia (including Al Nusrah and ISIS) to fight against government forces in Syria.

Saudi prison

The prisoners had reportedly been offered a deal — stay and be executed or fight against Assad in Syria. As part of the deal the prisoners were offered a “pardon and a monthly stipend for their families, who were allowed to stay in the Sunni Arab kingdom”.

Saudi officials apparently gave them a choice: decapitation or jihad? In total, inmates from Yemen, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Jordan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, and Kuwait chose to go and fight in Syria.(See Global Research,  September 11, 2013)

“Volte Face”: About Turn

On September 11, 2014, coinciding with the commemoration of 9/11, the King of Saudi Arabia together with the Monarchs of the Gulf States announced their unbending commitment to support Obama’s holy war against the Islamic State (IS), which has and continues to be funded by Qatari and Saudi money as part of a carefully engineered intelligence operation.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, left, speaks with Joseph W. Westphal, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on his arrival at the King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia on Sept. 11, 2014. (Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski via Associated Press)

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf  States which actively contributed to the financing of the Islamic State, not to mention the recruitment, training of terrorists on behalf of Washington, pledged their unbending support for Obama’s military campaign to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State.

The statement of  support contained in the communiqué, commits the “leading Arab states to working with the U.S. to cut off the flow of foreign fighters and funds to the Islamic State.” It also confirms that members discussed  “a strategy to destroy the ISIL wherever it is, including in both Iraq and Syria.”

Saudi Arabia has come to understand the Islamic State group is a serious threat to their country as well– that it isn’t a mainstream Sunni movement.One element of Obama’s IS plan seeks to undermine the ideological and religious claims that the Islamic State militants make to Islam.

The administration hopes Riyadh will use its influence among Islamic religious leaders. (Voice of America, September 11, 2014)

Recruiting “Moderate Terrorists”

As part of the agreement, the House of Saud is to “host a training facility for thousands of Syrian rebel fighters who are combating both the Islamic State and President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.” An absurd and fake proposition.  Until September 9th, “officially” Saudi Arabia had been supporting the Islamic State against the government of Bashar al Assad and now it has been entrusted in recruiting jihadists to fight the Islamic State. An  absurd and fake proposition. But the media has failed to connect the dots and uncover the big lie.

We are dealing with a diabolical project:  The architects of the Islamic State have informed the World that they are “going after” their own terrorists as part of a counter-terrorism operation.

While these actions are undertaken under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism”, the US has no intention to target its IS own terror brigades which are integrated by Western special forces and intelligence operatives. In fact the only meaningful and effective campaign against Islamic State terrorists is being waged by Syrian government forces.

Needless to say, US, NATO, Saudi and Qatari support and funding to the Islamic State will continue. The objective is not to destroy the Islamic State as promised by Obama. What we are dealing with is a US sponsored process of destabilizing and destroying both Iraq and Syria. The campaign against the Islamic State is being used as a justification to bomb both countries, largely targeting civilians.

The endgame is to destabilize Iraq as a nation state and trigger its partition into three separate entities.

The broader US-NATO strategic objective is to destabilize the entire Middle East- North Africa -Central Asia -South Asia region, including Iran, Pakistan and India.


Order directly from Global Research

America’s “War on Terrorism”

by Michel Chossudovsky

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.  original

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalization is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

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Washington’s Empire Is Not Unraveling

June 5th, 2017 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The military/security complex spent seven decades building its empire. The complex assassinated one American president (JFK) who threatened the empire and drove another (Richard Nixon) out of office. The complex does not tolerate the election of politicians in Europe who might not follow Washington’s line on foreign and economic policy.

Suddenly, according to the Western and even Russian media, the complex is going to let one man, Trump, who does not rule America, and one woman, Merkel, who does not rule Germany, destroy its empire.

According to the presstitutes, by pulling out of the Paris Accord (the global climate pact) and stating that NATO members should contribute more to the alliance’s budget for which the US taxpayer has an overweighted share, Trump has caused Merkel to conclude that Europe can no longer rely on Washington. The discord between Trump and Merkel and Washington’s resignation of its leadership position has destroyed the Western alliance and left the EU itself on the verge of being torn apart.

All of this is nonsensical sillyness. What has happened is this:

Just as men in dark suits and dark ties carrying briefcases explained to Trump that it was not Washington’s policy to normalize relations with Russia, they explained to him that it was not Washington’s policy to exit the Paris Accord. Trump said something like this: Look, you guys, you have already required me to abandon my peace initiative with Russia and my intent to pull out of Syria. Now you are forcing me off my “America First” pledge. If people realize that I am not really the president, who are you going to rule through? What about a compromise?

Here is the deal, as Trump made perfectly clear in his speech. He is temporarily pulling the US out of the Paris Accord while he immediately opens negotiations to rejoin the Paris Accord on terms less burdensome to Americans. In other words, the “pull out” is a face-saving gesture that will result in a small reduction in America’s share of the cost. We will have a “Trump victory” and no damage to the Paris Accord.

Source: The Washington Post via Michael Bucci

Merkel facing reelection needs a boost that will refocus German attention from the one million Muslim refugees, bringing crime, rape, and terrorism in their train, that Merkel brought into Germany. Her dramatic statement that Europe can no longer rely on America was a perfect way to refocus attention. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump and Merkel got together and agreed on how they would play this.

Yet neither reporters nor commentators could report the obvious truth. Why? The Western media could not let pass the opportunity to denounce Trump for destroying American leadership and the climate, and environmental organizations seized the fundraising opportunity to oppose Trump’s climate destruction. Russian commentators saw hope for Russia in NATO and the EU breaking up as consequences of America going its own way.

There are two serious implications of this media deception. One is that Americans and the world are blinded to the fact that there are power centers that constrain a president and are capable of substituting their agendas for the agendas on which the president campaigned. We saw this with Obama, but were given the explanation that Obama never meant it in the first place. Now we will get the same explanation of Trump. The fact that the president is constrained by the military/security complex and the financial sector will not come through. Thus, The Matrix’s myth of democracy bringing change via elections will continue to blind people to reality.

A second consequence is that the Russians, ever hopeful to be part of the West while retaining national sovereignty, which no member of the EU or NATO is permitted to do, will see in the reported withdrawal of American leadership renewed hopes of joining Europe. If the Russians take seriously the New York Times anointment of Germany’s Merkel as “the liberal West’s last defender”, Russia might leave herself militarily and economically exposed by slowing military preparations and the development of economic relations with Asia.

(https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/world/europe/germany-merkel-trump-election.html?mcubz=0&_r=1)

People can have little idea of actual events as long as news reporting and commentary reflect political agendas and hopeful aspirations.

 

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“Nothing justifies killing of innocent people.” Tony Blair, CNN, 15th January 2015. 

Perhaps the attack which killed seven and injured forty eight – twenty one critically – on a balmy Saturday evening on London Bridge and nearby Borough Market, a popular area of cafes, bars and restaurants, could be described in one word: “blowback.”

The lesson could not be starker. In December last year, after the Berlin Christmas lorry attack, a contributor on an ISIS forum called for more attacks with the comment: “Muslim countries will not be the only ones that are sad.” (1) 

After the attack on a concert in Manchester two weeks earlier, killing twenty three, injuring one hundred and nineteen, twenty three critically, Islamic State responded that it was a response to Britain’s: “transgressions against the lands of the Muslims” and a victory against “the Crusaders.” Bush and Blair, please note. 

Source Screenshot Guardian

As US and British bombs drop and allied soldiers slaughter, year after year, decade after decade, in majority Muslim countries, it is, as in London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Nice, the innocent going about daily business, enjoying an evening meal, celebration or sports event who pay the ultimate, heartbreaking price. In Iraq and other countries under “allied” assault it is also those called “insurgents” who are in fact simply nationals who want their country, illegally invaded or attacked, back.

“2017 will be the year of the massacre” was written on another forum.

Also in December, Europol, the law enforcement arm of the EU issued a stark, lengthy Report with warnings of attacks: “both by lone actors and groups” are “likely to take place in the near future … ” 

The UK belongs to the “Global Coalition”, a sixty eight country partnership across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the Americas “committed to defeating IS”, seemingly regardless of human cost and reducing countries to rubble. 

“The UK parliament backed British participation in air strikes against IS in Iraq back in September 2014 … Just over a year later in 2015, MPs authorised air strikes against IS in Syria. (Thus operating entirely illegally in Syrian airspace.) 

“The UK has conducted more than 1,200 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since it became involved – more than any other coalition country bar the United States. 

“In 2016 the US dropped 12,192 bombs in Syria and 12,095 in Iraq, according to the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations.” (2)

In all, the U.S. bombed Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia in 2016, raining down an average of seventy two bombs a day, the equivalent of three an hour. 1,337 were dropped on Afghanistan, up from 947 in 2015, three on ally Pakistan, fourteen on Somalia and thirty four on Yemen.

However: ‘ … estimates were “undoubtedly low, considering reliable data is only available for airstrikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, and a single strike, according to the Pentagon’s definition, can involve multiple bombs or munitions.” ‘ (3)

Of course all countries in the Global Coalition will be regarded by their victims and those emphasizing with them, as equally culpable, since in a “coalition”, all bear responsibility for the actions of another, with British Ministers ever trumpeting the “special relationship” with the US.  

In the UK, Prime Minister May seems either not to make the connection, or to choose to ignore it. Moreover, the Manchester suicide bomber was twenty two year old Salman Abedi, British born, of Libyan parents who were part of the murderous opposition to Muammar Gadaffi’s government (which had given it’s citizens the highest standard of living in Africa.)

When she spoke after Manchester’s tragedy:

“May’s speech did not address allegations that in 2011, while she was Home Secretary, Libyan Islamists previously under surveillance in Britain were given back their passports and helped by the government to fly to Libya to fight Muammar Gadaffi’s regime.

“Nor did she say why the government is refusing to publish a report on jihadist funding – allegedly because it fingers Saudi Arabia, Britain’s arms industry’s biggest customer.” (4)

Further, Abedi junior, although “known to the authorities” had returned to the UK from Libya and possibly Syria, reportedly, just days before his lethal attack.

In context, regarding Saudi Arabia, as The Intercept points out:

“Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made the U.K.’s uneasy alliance with the Saudis an election issue, with voters going to the polls on June 8th. The Tories’ ties to Saudi Arabia, Labour leaders charge, have resulted in record weapons sales – Conservative governments have licensed £3.3 billion ($4.2 billion) in arms sales to the Saudi military since the onset of the Yemen campaign – and a reluctance to criticize human rights abuses.

“While Tory politicians have defended the arms sales to Saudis as a move to shore up Britain’s allies in the region, Tory members of Parliament have collected £99,396 ($128,035) in gifts, travel expenses, and consulting fees from the government of Saudi Arabia since the Yemen war began.” (5)

The unpublished Report referred to above was to be published in Spring 2016. Jeremy Corbyn and Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Fallon have charged that the reason for its suppression is that it involves lucrative State customers including Saudi and other Gulf States “funding and fuelling extremist ideology.” 

This reluctance may well have roots firmly back in Baghdad Butcher Tony Blair’s government. This, from The Guardian, 15th February 2008 is worth a few paragraphs quote: 

“Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday. 

“Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced ‘another 7/7’ and the loss of ‘British lives on British streets’ if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence. 

“Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi National Security Council, and son of the Crown Prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE. 

“He was accused in yesterday’s High Court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family. 

“The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties. 

“Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have ‘rolled over’ after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was ‘just as if a gun had been held to the head’ of the government.” (6) 

Apart from accusations of double standards on human rights and terrorism, there is another towering double standard. As always, rightly, when there is a tragedy in the West, world leaders send messages of sympathy and outrage, the Eifel Tower or Brandenburg Gate go dark or display the victim country’s colours. 

Heartwarming messages poured in to London from leaders across Europe and the world offering prayers, solidarity, hearts and minds. The exception was Donald Trump who can ever elevate tastelessness to new heights and used the grief of others to push his travel ban and to insult the (Muslim) Mayor of London. 

The dead alleged terrorists have not been publicly identified by the police and authorities yet, but it has been reported that one has Irish identity documents. Perhaps Trump will rain 59 Cruise missiles down on Ireland.

 Back to double standards, in just two examples out of Iraq’s daily horrors, in July last year in vibrant Karrada, central Baghdad, two hundred and ninety two people were killed and over two hundred injured in a terrorist attack.

 On 30th May this year, as people were breaking their Ramadan fast at a popular ice cream shop in Karrada at least fifteen were killed and thirty injured by another attack, both were, as London, said to be ISIS acts.

 In between those two carnages have been near daily others across the country since 2003’s invasion, as in Afghanistan since 2001, Syria and Libya 2011, Palestine’s approaching seventy years devastations. How many Western world leaders have sent prayers, thoughts, solidarity, hearts and minds?

 Or do they just settle for Trump’s travel ban?

 Notes

1.    http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/574071/uk-terror-attacks-lone-wolf-isis-manchester-bombing-westminster-attack-islamic-state

2.    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39598979

3.    http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-bombed-iraq-syria-pakistan-afghanistan-libya-yemen-somalia-n704636

4.    http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-c14f-May-Uses-Terror-to-Try-to-Boost-Flagging-Polls#.WTVZe-mvsb3

5.    https://theintercept.com/2017/06/04/tory-uk-saudi-arabia-gifts-money/

6.    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/15/bae.armstrade?CMP=share_btn_fb

     

     

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A study released May 28 by University of California Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman and two Scandinavian colleagues, “Tax Evasion and Inequality,” demonstrates that global wealth inequality is drastically underestimated in official statistics because of how successful the super-rich are at evading taxes.

According to the paper, the super-rich, that is the top .01 percent, hide some 25 percent or more of their wealth. This is primarily due to the exploitation of offshore tax havens that allow them to avoid paying taxes where their income is actually accrued, and where they actually live.

The study demonstrates, yet again, that the super-rich are a law onto themselves, living in a world completely separate from the vast majority of humanity. Earlier this year, Oxfam reported that only eight men control as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. However, the findings of this new paper suggest that wealth concentration is even higher.

The authors of the paper write,

“The many data sets used in this article all paint the same picture: the probability to hide assets rises very sharply with wealth, including within the very top groups. As a result, offshore wealth turns out to be extremely concentrated. By our estimate, the top 0.01% of the distribution owns about 50% of it [offshore wealth].”

They conclude,

“this implies that the top 0.01% hides about 25% of its true wealth”

Zucman explained to the Los Angeles Times,

“There’s a big industry providing wealth management services for the super-wealthy all over the world. … Once you cross a certain threshold of over $50 million, you get offered those services.”

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Source: hsbc.com

The study’s authors, Anette Alstadsaeter, Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman, rely on several sources to make their analysis. The first and most important is leaked data from HSBC Private Bank (Suisse), the Swiss arm of HSBC, the sixth-largest private bank in the world. The data from HSBC Private Bank (Suisse), which was exposed in 2015, shows how the bank hides billions of dollars of taxable money for corporations such as Google and Amazon, as well as a variety of extremely wealthy clientele. The dirty stream of money exposed in the leak went as high as former US President Bill Clinton, and involved several billionaires and public figures.

Another source they use is the data from the Panama Papers, the massive leak of files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack-Fonseca in 2016. Those files showed how the law firm made millions of dollars helping politicians and the super-rich stash their money and hide it to evade taxation.

A third source they use is data from Norwegian, Danish and Swedish tax authorities showing households who voluntarily disclosed previously hidden assets in exchange for tax amnesty. Zucman, et al. were able to match assets exposed by the 2015 HSBC leak and the Panama Papers with government data in the Scandinavian countries. This method allowed them to understand the average amount of wealth the super-rich said they had versus what they actually had in undisclosed accounts.

The paper showed that in Norway, when offshore assets are added, the Norwegian super-rich show a 30 percent rise in income and the increase is likely to be higher in other countries.

“Because most Latin American, and many Asian and European economies own much more wealth offshore than Norway, the results found in Norway are likely to be lower than for most of the world’s countries,” the authors noted.

Zucman told the Los Angeles Times,

“There is good reason to believe that the very steep gradient [in tax evasion by the wealthy] is also the case in the US.”

According to the conservative figures of the Internal Revenue Service, which does not cover legal tax havens, $406 billion in taxes are unpaid every year. An investigation into the HSBC leak by the CBS News program “60 Minutes” showed that the Swiss bank run by HSBC had about 4,000 US taxpayers with wealth exceeding $13 billion.

The individual tax evasion highlighted in the report, however, is only part of a much broader phenomenon. Tax evasion in the US literally takes place on an industrial scale and is built into the business model of major US corporations.

It has been estimated that US firms hold about $2 trillion in cash on offshore holdings largely to escape paying US taxes—an amount roughly equivalent to 14 percent of American gross domestic product.

The most prominent example is Apple which holds $240 billion out of its $256 billion in cash reserves offshore in order to avoid paying taxes on this money if it repatriated it. At the same time, it borrows tens of billions of dollars in the US, much of it in order to finance share buybacks and dividend payments in order to boost its share value.

The operation of this seemingly perverse logic—borrowing money while having an ocean of cash on hand—is the outcome of policy decisions of the US Federal Reserve since the eruption of the financial crisis of 2008 aimed at boosting the wealth of the financial elite.

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Source: nbcnews.com

Its policy of quantitative easing, which has pumped around $4 trillion into the US financial system coupled with the maintenance of ultra-low interest rates, means that Apple only has to pay interest ranging between 1.6 and 4.3 percent to finance operations that boost the value of its shares—far less than the cost in taxes that it would have to pay if it repatriated its overseas holdings.

As a result of these and other financial machinations, Apple’s total market value passed $800 billion earlier this year and is well on the way to the $1 trillion mark while the social cost of these operations is borne by millions of working-class families who are deprived of vital services because it is claimed that government has no money to pay for them.

Apple, however, is only the biggest example of a process which extends across the corporate world. Among the other big holders of overseas cash reserves are: Microsoft, with $113 billion; Cisco Systems, with $62 billion; Oracle, with $52 billion and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, with $49 billion.

These figures underscore the fact that tax evasion and the gains secured by the “malefactors of great wealth” are not the result simply of their individual actions but are the product of an economic and political order of, by and for the rich.

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Their agendas threaten digital democracy – the last frontier of press freedom.

Trump’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai called Net Neutrality’s days numbered. He intends undermining digital democracy, letting users access all content without restrictions, limitations, or discrimination, an online level playing field for everyone.

At stake is compromising the last vital truth-telling space, threatened if content is censored or controlled.

Pai wants a free and open Internet eliminated by getting rid of FCC legal authority to enforce Net Neutrality rules – adopted in 2015.

They prevent ISPs like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from blocking and discriminating against web sites and other online material.

If current rules are abandoned, ISPs no longer will have to treat all web content equally.

They’ll be able to establish toll roads or premium lanes, charge extra for speed and free and easy access, control content to stifle dissent and independent thought, along with undermining digital democracy.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May opposes online freedom. She and other Tory hardliners want its content regulated, a scheme to impose government thought control, allowing what it considers acceptable, prohibiting what it wants suppressed.

May’s Tory manifesto calls for Britain becoming “the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the Internet.”

“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet. We disagree,” it says.

Tories want government control over what people write, post and share online, the end of UK online freedom if enacted into law.

Britain’s new Investigatory Powers Act requires Internet companies to maintain records on customers’ browsing histories, along with ministerial power to breach online privacy, including encrypted content – on the phony pretext of assuring no “safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online.”

May’s scheme involves having government act as online content gatekeeper, the way all police states operate.

Following the Manchester and London Bridge/Borough Market incidents, May renewed her call for global Internet regulation, on the phony pretext of “depriv(ing) the extremists of safe spaces online” – elements America, Britain, NATO, Israel and other regional rogue states support.

Saying “(w)e cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” rings hollow. She, Trump and likeminded rogue leaders want free expression stifled, using the ruse of global terrorism supported by Washington and its allies as a phony pretext to suppress criticism of their agendas.

May wants ISPs working with No. 10 cooperatively, helping to advance its agenda. She wants Britain becoming more of a police state than already – the same thing going on in America.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Palestine’s West Bank: Fifty Years of Immoral Occupation

June 5th, 2017 by Prof. Alon Ben-Meir

Today, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has reached the milestone of 50 years that will be recalled in shame.

Fifty years that have dehumanized both the occupier and the occupied; years of failing to muster the courage to right the wrong.

Fifty years that bred nothing but hatred and contempt for the other; years of illusions trying to deny the other the right to a home of their own.

Fifty years of yearning for peace only to be crushed time and again; years of submission to hopelessness and despair.

Fifty years of pessimism, paralysis, and abdication of responsibility; years of fearing to grasp the only solution but choosing instead to hold onto self-delusion.

A protester holds a placard as she stands next to Israeli soldiers during a protest against Israeli settlements in Beit Fajjar town south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem December 27, 2014. REUTERS/ Mussa Qawasma

Fifty years of disingenuous engagement with one another for the worthiest cause of peace; years of mutual victimization and finding comfort in self-pity and stolen dreams.

Fifty years of occupation that transcends the pale of human decency, subjecting the Palestinians to dejection and despair; years of colonization, home demolitions, terrifying night raids, uprooting of olive trees; years of usurping Palestinian land, robbing them of their dream to be independent and free.

Fifty years of inflicting pain and anguish that spared but a few; years of constant fear of administrative detention and incarceration, with thousands of political prisoners languishing in jails; years of being deprived of their basic rights, not knowing what tomorrow will bring; years of outcry of Palestinian youth, born and reared under occupation with no hope and no prospect of being unshackled from the chains of dishonor and despair.

For fifty years, Israel denied the Palestinians self-determination, justifying it in the name of national security—but nothing threatens its security more than the continuation of the occupation. Breaching the moral law and flouting the Palestinians’ human rights only nurtures another generation who live to resent, live to hate, and live to harm, for there is nothing left for them to lose.

For many Israelis, fifty years of occupation seems to pass as if it were normal, conditions to which they have simply become accustomed—never mind that moral erosion has infected the Israelis’ social fabric, defying the moral principle on which the state was erected.

They have been led astray by corrupted leaders with no courage of conviction to change direction, exempting themselves of the moral obligation to be just and fair. They have become indifferent and complacent, blind to the light, with little concern about where Israel will be in ten or fifteen years if they do not end the inhumane occupation.

Israel has spent fifty years preparing its youth for the next violent battle, injecting the poison of hatred into their veins, and viewing the Palestinians as objects that can be dispossessed without any sense of moral culpability.

To end the occupation, the Palestinians must do their share. Years of misguidance, division, and violent extremism, while remaining bent on destroying Israel and inciting the people to violence, was nothing but self-defeating.

Plagued by factionalism and blind rivalry, the Palestinians missed one opportunity after another to reach out for peace, choosing instead to fight hopelessly unwinnable wars, leaving them shattered yet still holding onto the illusion they can prevail.

Palestinian leaders have spent fifty years squandering resources for personal gains, guarding their power while riding on the backs of the poor and despondent. They have victimized one generation after another, robbing them of a promising future, alienating and leaving them languishing in the darkness of their despair, rather than defying the Israelis by building a free, independent, and flourishing country in which they can take pride.

When will this all end? How many more children must die for an elusive goal that defies reality and common sense? Those Israelis and Palestinians who believe in a shared destiny must never agree to cooperate with the corrupt leaders who are oblivious of how ominous the future will be if there is no change.

Israeli leaders must end the occupation and stop reveling in the lies of their own creation. It is time to recognize that the occupation is an albatross choking every Israeli ever so slowly, sapping their spirit, corrupting their soul, and stripping Israel and the Jews the world over of the values of what is right, what is just, and what is caring—the pillars of their very survival.

I call on every man and woman of conscience to bring the madness of this debilitating conflict to an end. No Israeli or Palestinian child should die in another violent conflict between the two sides that will change nothing but bring more suffering, despondency, bloodshed, and sorrow.

As the late President Kennedy said in the 1960s,

“[the] people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high…”

It is time for both sides to rise and demand that their leaders compromise and come to terms with a reality that neither can change, and seek a just and fair solution that must bring an end to the occupation.

If the Israelis and Palestinians continue to hate, resent, and kill each other, they will be consumed by the land they are fighting for. But if they learn to live in harmony and peace, together they will make the land exude milk and honey, ushering in a renaissance the likes of which has never been seen before.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.
[email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com

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The Saudi Hand in British Foreign Policy

June 5th, 2017 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia always knows when it’s onto a good thing. That particular “thing”, in the few days left before the UK elections, is the May government. That same government that has done so much to make a distinction between policy and values, notably when it comes to dealing with Riyadh.

The United Kingdom has been a firm, even obsequious backer of Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen. In the traditional spoiling nature of British foreign policy, what is good for the UK wallet can also be good in keeping Middle Eastern politics brutal and divided. The obscurantist despots of the House of Saud have profited, as a result.

The Saudi bribery machine tends to function all hours, a measure of its gratitude and its tenacity. According to the register of financial interests disclosed by the UK Parliament, conservative members of the government received almost £100 thousand pounds in terms of travel expenses, gifts, and consulting fees since the Yemen conflict began.

Image result for Charlotte Leslie

The Saudi sponsors certainly know which side their bread is buttered on. Those involved in debates on Middle Eastern policy have been the specific targets of such largesse. Tory MP Charlotte Leslie (image on the right) was one, and received a food basket totaling £500.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond is another keen target of the Kingdom’s deep pockets, having shown a willingness to defend mass executions in the past.

“Let us be clear, first of all,” he insisted after consuming the Kingdom’s gruel on why 47 people were executed in January 2016, “that these people are convicted terrorists.”

Four of them, including Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, were political protesters as well, but terrorists come in all shades.

Hammond, instead of going red on the issue, found another Islamic regime of comparable worth to point the finger at. Iran, for instance, “executes far more people than Saudi Arabia”. Best, then, to drop the matter and do such things as accept a watch from the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the value of £1,950.

Such a sweetly disposed attitude stands in the annals of the British approach, a matter not so much of sentiment and institution. The Blair government of New Labour fluff was similarly keen to smooth the pathway for the British arms market, while making sure that Riyadh, whatever its policies, was courted.

Attempts to shine a strong, searing spotlight on corrupt practices, notably those linked to BAE, have been scotched, blocked or stalled. One such example, a chilling one given the recent spate of attacks on civilians in the UK, involved a disgruntled Prince Bandar, head of Saudi Arabia’s national security council, threaten Prime Minister Tony Blair with “another 7/7” should a fraud investigation into BAE-Riyadh transactions continue.

High Court documents in February 2008 hearings insisted that the Prince had flown to London in December 2006 to give Blair a personal savaging laced with ominous promise: stop the Serious Fraud Office investigation, or expect London to witness a terrorist inflicted bloodbath.[1]

Blair complied, leaving Robert Wardle, the SFO’s director, stunned.

“The idea of discontinuing the investigation went against my every instinct as a prosecutor. I wanted to see where the evidence led.”

Not, however, obliging Tony and the happy executioners in Riyadh.

In yet another interesting turn ahead of the June 8 election, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn has decided to bring the Saudi role behind that policy into full view. Corbyn’s rebranded Labour approach is more hardnosed on the issue of UK arms sales to the Kingdom. Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry (image below) wished for a return (was there every one?) to an “ethical foreign policy”, one fashioned on the approach taken by former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

Cook’s ethical thrust, if it could be termed that, came to view in 2003 when he resigned over the Iraq War.

“Labour does not accept that political values can be left behind when we check in our passports.”

Not so, according to Blair, whose sense of ethics was always muddled by a contaminating mix of evangelism and fakery. But times are different from Corbyn’s perspective. This is Labour rebooted on Cook’s original objectives:

“We will strive,” promised Thornberry, “to reduce not increase global tensions, and give new momentum to talks on non-proliferation and disarmament.”[2]

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Thornberry’s words would have sent a true tingling through the Saudi security establishment. In line with the Labour party manifesto, the shadow foreign secretary promised to pursue an independent UN investigation into alleged war crimes in Yemen. Arms sales to the Saudi coalition engaged in that conflict would be suspended.

The picture is not a pretty one when shoved into the electoral process. But then again, the May wobble and turn may well justify such a relationship on terms that Saudi security and power is preferable to other authoritarian regimes. These big bad Sunnis are the good Muslims of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Such splitting of hairs doesn’t tend to fly well from the stump and the Tories might well attempt to keep things as quiet as possible. The Saudis, on the other hand, will be wishing for business as usual, praying that the threat of a Corbyn government passes into the shadows of back slapping Realpolitik.

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

Notes

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China Builds New Type of Globalization

June 5th, 2017 by Sara Flounders

Imperialism is worried that China’s huge global infrastructure projects could challenge the U.S.-led world order

The People’s Republic of China hosted a summit May 14 called the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, also known as the New Silk Road project. Twenty-nine heads of state and representatives of 130 countries attended from across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Seventy countries signed agreements with China to participate.

The “Belt” refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt. It encompasses land route development from central China to Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Eastern Europe. The “Road” refers to the Maritime Silk Road. This involves ports and coastal infrastructure from Southeast Asia to East Africa and the Mediterranean.

The plan projects a network of trade routes with new rail lines, ports, highways, pipelines, telecommunications facilities and energy centers linking countries on four continents. It includes financing to promote urban planning, potable water, sanitation and food development. China is calling it the “plan of the century.”

China describes the project as a revival of the ancient Silk Road with 21st-century technology. It is projected to be 12 times the size of the U.S. Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Western Europe after World War II.

Major corporate media around the world warn that the gathering signals the end of the American Century — the U.S. claim to be the world’s sole superpower. Numerous analysts suggest the project could shift the center of the global economy and challenge the U.S.-led world order.

New Silk Roads (Sources: Xinhua / US Department of Defense / Gazprom / Transneft / UN / The Wall Street Journal)

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Freeman described the OBOR project as

“potentially the most transformative engineering effort in human history. China will become the center of economic gravity as it becomes the world’s largest economy. The ‘Belt and Road’ program includes no military component, but it clearly has the potential to upend the world’s geopolitics as well as its economics.” (NBC News, May 12)

In a May 13 article, “Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order,” the New York Times predicted:

“The initiative … looms on a scope and scale with little precedent in modern history, promising more than $1 trillion in infrastructure and spanning more than 60 countries. Mr. Xi is aiming to use China’s wealth and industrial know-how to create a new kind of globalization that will dispense with the rules of the aging Western-dominated institutions. The goal is to refashion the global economic order, drawing countries and companies more tightly into China’s orbit. It is impossible for any foreign leader, multinational executive or international banker to ignore China’s push to remake global trade. American influence in the region is seen to be waning.”

U.S. infrastructure is collapsing

Meanwhile, the U.S. infrastructure is literally falling apart. Crumbling roads, bridges, dams and schools have been given an overall D+ grade by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Investment in infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and wastewater treatment plants, is at a 30-year low.

Source: historymaniacmegan.com

Donald Trump, with his “America First” campaign slogan, pledged to rebuild the country’s broken infrastructure. But since becoming president, his administration has instead opted for cutting taxes on the rich while increasing the military budget. Meanwhile, the U.S.-initiated Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which was designed to exclude China, has collapsed.

China’s OBOR project has generated enormous interest because U.S. imperialism has less and less to offer any developing country, except weapons sales and military bases. Weapons quickly become obsolete, leaving only debt and underdevelopment.

Where U.S. infrastructure projects are in place around the world, they are focused on building and maintaining a vast high-tech network of 800+ military bases and servicing an armada of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and destroyers. Each base is an expense to and an attack on the sovereignty of the host country. U.S. foreign aid ranks near the bottom of such expenditures of all developed countries, amounting to less than 1 percent of the federal budget. It is largely military aid to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Egypt and Pakistan.

U.S. wars have resulted in great profit for U.S. corporations while massively destroying vital civilian infrastructure in developing countries under attack. Water purification plants, sanitation, sewage, irrigation, electric grid, communication centers, hospitals and schools have been intentionally destroyed in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. By contrast, China has no foreign military bases. Its ambitious OBOR initiative does not include military equipment or facilities.

Nevertheless, U.S. corporate power sees all other economic development as a threat to its global domination. Its aim is to protect at all costs the irrational capitalist system.

Response to U.S. pivot to Asia

credits to the owner of the photo

The pivot to Asia begun during the Obama administration is an aggressive military plan that includes the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the Pentagon’s new THAAD missile battery in South Korea. Its focus is containing and threatening China’s growing economic influence in the region.

U.S. military planners brag of their ability to strangle China and cut its vital shipping lanes, such as the Straits of Malacca. This narrow transit point between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea handles 80 percent of China’s crude oil and other vital imports.

China, now the world’s largest trading nation, has responded with the nonmilitary OBOR plan that will open many trade routes through surrounding countries. Trade routes, unlike U.S. military bases, offer immediate benefit to the development of these countries. China is expected to invest up to $1.3 trillion in OBOR infrastructure projects.

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: Challenge to IMF and World Bank

Past U.S. practices of seizing the assets of countries holding substantial funds in U.S. banks meant that the $1.26 trillion that China has held in U.S. Treasury notes was especially vulnerable. Until six months ago, China was the number one investor in U.S. Treasury notes. Now China is divesting.

China has used a part of its significant reserves to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The AIIB plays an essential role in encouraging trade and economic cooperation with other countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. This Chinese initiative is seen as a counter to the U.S.-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

As the Cuban news outlet Granma wrote on March 6:

“AIIB aims to rescue those areas of the region somewhat abandoned by both the World Bank and the Asian Investment Bank (AIB), as well as encourage trade and economic cooperation.”

Both the IMF and the World Bank exert enormous leverage through “structural adjustment” policies. Debt repayment requires countries to cut spending on education, health, food and transportation subsidies. Their real goal is to force developing countries to privatize their national assets.

Phony concern for environment

Corporate-funded nongovernmental organizations and social media campaigns claim that China will not show the same respect for the environment and human rights as the U.S. and other imperialist powers do. They claim that China might not follow environmental restrictions on loans imposed by the World Bank and IMF.

This is sheer hypocrisy. The U.S. military machine is the world’s biggest institutional consumer of petroleum products and worst polluter of greenhouse gas emissions and many toxic pollutants. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.

U.S. wars have contaminated the soil and water of vast regions under U.S. occupation with depleted uranium, benzene and trichloroethylene at air base operations and with perchlorate, a toxic ingredient in rocket propellant.

Despite U.S. pressure, AIIB grows

Despite strong U.S. efforts to discourage international participation in the OBOR infrastructure fund, Russia, Iran and Latin American countries promptly joined and contributed substantial capital. Breaking ranks, Germany and South Korea then became major shareholders, followed by Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Australia. The Philippines and even Saudi Arabia saw the advantages of participation. The AIIB, founded on June 29, 2015, began operations last year.

According to a Times editorial of Dec. 5, 2015,

“Countries are finding they must increasingly operate in China’s orbit. The United States worries that China will use the bank to set the global economic agenda on its own terms.”

In addition to the AIIB, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China already finance big-ticket projects in Asia and Africa. By Chinese estimates, their combined overseas assets stand at $500 billion — more than the combined capital of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Socialist planning to overcome underdevelopment

China’s past decades of development and modernization and its current surpluses are what make these new global plans possible. China has an estimated $4 trillion in foreign currency reserves. Its granaries are full and there are surpluses in cement and steel.

In 1949, when the revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party took power, China was an underdeveloped, war-torn country with a largely illiterate, majority peasant population. Western and Japanese imperialist powers had looted and carved up China for their own profits. Breaking their hold was the first step in liberation, but China was deeply impoverished.

After nearly 30 years of heroic efforts to modernize the economy based on the organization and efforts of the masses, the Chinese Communist Party in 1978 opened the country up to some forms of capitalist ownership and foreign capitalist investment.

This still risky policy has continued for nearly 40 years. It has allowed Chinese millionaires and even billionaires to develop and spread corruption. Foreign capital, ever hopeful of totally overturning the Chinese state, invested because profits could be made. But the Communist Party has used the years of capitalist investment to build up a modern, state-owned infrastructure alongside the growth of private capital.

credits to the owner of the photo

Now China ranks as a developing country with a majority urban population living in modern, planned cities. The working class is now the largest social class in China. Wages for shop-floor workers in China have tripled in the last decade to become the highest in developing Asia.

China adopted a new industrial policy in 2015: “Made in China 2025,” which intends to upgrade manufacturing capabilities for high-tech products. These plans are supported by $150 billion in public or state-linked funds. It is this kind of long-term socialist planning that is the motor behind China’s new One Belt, One Road plan.

While the U.S. attempts to block these needed infrastructure efforts, move missiles and aircraft carriers off China’s coast, and send the lowest possible diplomatic delegation to China for the OBOR summit, Washington had the audacity and arrogance to warn China against north Korean participation. The DPRK sent a high-level delegation.

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Selected Articles: UK Elections: Corbyn or May?

June 5th, 2017 by Global Research News

The general election in the UK is due on Thursday, June 8. Apparently, a series of “terrorist” attacks garnered attention not just domestically but more so internationally. Are these purported “terrorist” attacks part of a bigger political agenda? Read the insightful articles below to gain perspective.

“We are now days away from one of the most important elections for decades, with Jeremy Corbyn rapidly closing the poll gap between himself and May, and the BBC, ITV News, Sky News and Channel 4 News are choosing not to tell the British voting public that the Tory leader oversaw, and (necessarily) approved, the withdrawing of terrorist control orders for known Jihadists in Manchester that they might travel freely between that city and Libya and so aid the UK government’s effort to overthrow Gaddafi.” (Alison Banville, 2017)

Theresa May’s Snap Election Gambit Looking Ill-Conceived

By Stephen Lendman, June 04, 2017

In mid-April, with a seemingly unbeatable 24-point lead over Labour in polls, May called for June 8 snap elections, seeking a stronger mandate to pursue her agenda.

Days ahead of voting, her strategy appears to have backfired. Labour narrowed her lead significantly to 3% in a You Gov poll – with 42% support compared to Labour’s 39%.

London Bridge Attacks: Who Knew, Who Benefits the Most?

By Shawn Helton, June 04, 2017

London once again becomes a target of a purported terror event. This time, were told multiple attacks have occurred simultaneously, happening less than two weeks after Manchester’s known wolf arena bombing. Only time will tell if the latest attacks on London Bridge and the Borough Market area, will also turn out to be the work of known wolf terrorists watched by British security.

UK Election: Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn? The Unknown Factor in that YouGov Poll

By Graham Vanbergen, June 02, 2017

When Theresa May called a snap election two months after reiterating seven times in as many months that she would not do so, there were seemingly good reasons behind it. Not least, May was in a commanding 21 point lead ahead of Corbyn and she appeared at the time to be the most solid politician to help negotiate a good Brexit deal for the country. In addition, Labour was in the midst of an internal battle, driven by a more right-wing ‘Blairite’ agenda.

Keeping Secrets: Theresa May, Manchester and the Corporate Media

By Alison Banville, June 01, 2017

‘No intervention’ by our intelligence agencies, we now know, was not strictly true, of course, because thanks to an explosive Middle East Eye article published last Thursday we see it was exactly the kind of ‘intervention’ voters should have knowledge of before attempting to judge how fit Theresa May is to run their country, especially in the context of the cynical and corrosive Tory characterisation of Corbyn as a ‘terrorist sympathiser’.

Britain’s General Election 2017 – Peace Policies and Foreign Follies

By Political Concern, May 30, 2017

Theresa May supported each and every one of these military interventions. Jeremy Corbyn opposed all of them. So whose judgment would you trust?

Terror in Britain: What Did the Prime Minister Know?

By John Pilger, May 31, 2017

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer.

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Students usually don’t think of themselves as a class. They seem “pre-class,” because they have not yet entered the labor force. They can only hope to become part of the middle class after they graduate. And that means becoming a wage earner – what impolitely is called the working class.

But as soon as they take out a student debt, they become part of the economy. They are in this sense a debtor class. But to be a debtor, one needs a means to pay – and the student’s means to pay is out of the wages and salaries they may earn after they graduate. And after all, the reason most students get an education is so that they can qualify for a middle-class job.

The middle class in America consists of the widening sector of the working class that qualifies for bank loans – not merely usurious short-term payday loans, but a lifetime of debt. So the middle class today is a debtor class.

Shedding crocodile tears for the slow growth of U.S. employment in the post-2008 doldrums (the “permanent Obama economy” in which only the banks were bailed out, not the economy), the financial class views the role industry and the economy at large as being to pay its employees enough so that they can take on an exponentially rising volume of debt. Interest and fees (late fees and penalties now yield credit card companies more than they receive in interest charges) are soaring, leaving the economy of goods and services languishing.

Although money and banking textbooks say that all interest (and fees) are a compensation for risk, any banker who actually takes a risk is quickly fired. Banks don’t take risks. That’s what the governments are for. (Socializing the risk, privatizing the profits.) Anticipating that the U.S. economy may be unable to recover under the weight of the junk mortgages and other bad debts that the Obama administration left on the books in 2008, banks insisted that the government guarantee all student debt. They also insisted that the government guarantees the financial gold-mine buried in such indebtedness: the late fees that accumulate. So whether students actually succeed in becoming wage-earners or not, the banks will receive payments in today’s emerging fictitious “as if” economy. The government will pay the banks “as if” there is actually a recovery.

Occupy Boston activist Nelson Terry at the Occupy Wall Street event in New York City protesting student loan debt, September 19, 2011 (Source: Wikipedia)

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And if there were to be a recovery, then it would mean that the banks were taking a risk – a big enough risk to justify the high interest rates charge on student loans.

This is simply a replay of what banks have negotiated for real estate mortgage lending. Students who do succeed in getting a job hope to start a family, or at least joining the middle class. The most typical criterion of middle-class life in today’s world (apart from having a college education) is to own a home. But almost nobody can buy a home without getting a mortgage. And the price of such a mortgage is to pay up to 43 percent of one’s income for thirty years, that is, one’s prospective working life (in today’s as-if world that assumes full employment, not just a gig economy).

Banks know how unlikely it is that workers actually will be able to earn enough to carry the costs of their education and real estate debt. The costs of housing are so high, the price of education is so high, the amount of debt that workers must pay off the top of every paycheck is so high that American labor is priced out of world markets (except for military hardware sold to the Saudis and other U.S. protectorates). So the banks insist that the government pretends that housing as well as education loans not involve any risk for bankers.

The Federal Housing Authority guarantees mortgages that absorb up to the afore-mentioned 43 percent of the applicant’s income. Income is not growing these days, but job-loss is. Formerly middle-class labor is being downsized to minimum-wage labor (MacDonald’s and other fast foods) or “gig” labor (Uber). Here too, the fees mount up rapidly when there are defaults – all covered by the government, as if it is this compensates the banks for risks that the government itself bears.

From debt peons to wage slaves

In view of the fact that a college education is a precondition for joining the working class (except for billionaire dropouts), the middle class is a debtor class – so deep in debt that once they manage to get a job, they have no leeway to go on strike, much less to protest against bad working conditions. This is what Alan Greenspan described as the “traumatized worker effect” of debt.

Do students think about their future in these terms? How do they think of their place in the world?

Students are the new NINJAs: No Income, No Jobs, No Assets. But their parents have assets, and these are now being grabbed, even from retirees. Most of all, the government has assets – the power to tax (mainly labor these days), and something even better: the power to simply print money (mainly Quantitative Easing to try and re-inflate housing, stock and bond prices these days). Most students hope to become independent of their parents. But burdened by debt and facing a tough job market, they are left even more dependent. That’s why so many have to keep living at home.

The problem is that as they do get a job and become independent, they remain dependent on the banks. And to pay the banks, they must be even more abjectly dependent on their employers.

It may be enlightening to view matters from the vantage point of bankers. After all, they have $1.3 trillion in student loan claims. In fact, despite the fact that college tuitions are soaring throughout the United States even more than health care (financialized health care, not socialized health care), the banks often end up with more education expense than the colleges. That is because any interest rate is a doubling time, and student loan rates of, say, 7 percent mean that the interest payments double the original loan value in just 10 years. (The Rule of 72 provides an easy way to calculate doubling times of interest-bearing debt. Just divide 72 by the interest rate, and you get the doubling time.)

Image result for columbia university and new york university

Columbia University – School of Professional Studies, New York City (Source: USjournal)

Image result for new york university campus

New York University (NYU) – School of Professional Studies (Source: best-masters.com)

A fatal symbiosis has emerged between banking and higher education in America. Bankers sit on the boards of the leading universities – not simply by buying their way in as donors, but because they finance the transformation of universities into real estate companies. Columbia and New York University are major real estate holders in New York City. Like the churches, they pay no property or income tax, being considered to play a vital social role. But from the bankers’ vantage point, their role is to provide a market for debt whose magnitude now outstrips even that of credit card debt!

Citibank in New York City made what has been accused of being a sweetheart deal with New York University, which steers incoming students to it to finance their studies with loans. In today’s world a school can charge as much for an education as banks are willing to lend students – and banks are willing to lend as much as governments will guarantee to cover, no questions asked. So the bankers on the school boards endorse bloated costs of education, knowing that however much more universities make, the bankers will receive just as much in interest and penalties.

It is the same thing with housing, of course. However much the owner of a home receives when he sells it, the bank will make an even larger sum of money on the interest charges on the mortgage. That is why all the growth in the U.S. economy is going to the FIRE sector, owned mainly by the One Percent.

Under these terms, a “more educated society” does not mean a more employable labor force. It means a less employable society, because more and more wage and consumer income is used not to buy goods and services, not to eat out in restaurants or buy the products of labor, but to pay the financial sector and its allied rentier class. A more educated society under these rules is simply a more indebted society, an economy succumbing to debt deflation, austerity and unemployment except at minimum-wage levels.

For half a century Americans imagined themselves getting richer and richer by going into debt to buy their own homes and educate their children. Their riches have turned out to be riches for the banks, bondholders and other creditors, not for the debtors. What used to be applauded as “the middle class” turns out to be simply an indebted working class.

Michael Hudson is the author of Killing the Host (published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by Islet). His new book is J is For Junk Economics.  He can be reached at [email protected].

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On June 3, a so-called March for Truth was held in US cities nationwide targeting Donald Trump for the wrong reasons, not the right ones. More on this below.

A May 30 press release said the following:

The action “is a national coalition of activist groups and grassroots, local organizers demanding that leaders in government defend the rule of law and fully investigate the Trump administration’s motives for interfering in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and ties to Donald Trump and his associates.”  (emphasis added)

“National Partner organizations include MoveOn, Women’s March, Indivisible, Public Citizen, Free Speech for People, Town Hall Project, The Opposition, Swing Left, Stand Up America, Common Cause, OurStates, Action Group Network, flippable, Rock The Vote, Lawyers for Good Government, DailyKos, Working Families Party, Rise to Run and Progressive Democrats of America.”

They call for the following:

“An independent commission must be established and congressional investigations should be properly resourced and pursued free of partisan interests.”

“As much information should be made available to the public as possible, and as soon as possible.”

“Congress should require Donald Trump to release his tax returns to clarify his business interests and obligations to any foreign entity.”

“If crimes were committed or if collusion is discovered, it must be prosecuted.”

Their press release claims Trump’s firing of FBI director Comey and memos alleging he attempted to influence “an active FBI investigation,” along with (witch-hunt) congressional testimony by John Brennan, James Clapper and Sally Yates suggests he compromised what (anti-Trump undemocratic) Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings (ludicrously called) “a fight for the soul of democracy.”

It’s hard taking any of this seriously. There’s plenty about Trump’s early months in office to criticize. March for Truth organizers ignored all of it, targeting the wrong issues, not the right ones.

Their action appears part of a deep state, undemocratic Democrat party, scoundrel media attempt to weaken, delegitimize and undermine the president, wanting him ousted from office, a coup d’etat scheme – participants in cities nationwide duped to go along.

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Source: Business Insider

Here’s what warrants Trump criticism:

His putting America first is all about serving wealth, power and privilege exclusively.

He infested his administration with hawkish generals, billionaires like himself, neocons and Zionist extremists.

Prioritizing national security comes at a time when America’s only enemies are invented ones, no others. The so-called war on terror is a colossal hoax.

Trump’s wanting an additional $54 billion for so-called “defense” is all about enriching war-profiteers and waging imperial wars.

Instead of ending the ones his predecessors launched, he’s escalating them.

Instead of improving relations with Russia, China, Iran and other independent countries, he’s made things worse.

Instead of eliminating the risk of nuclear war, it remains an ominous possibility on his watch – his Korean peninsula brinksmanship the clearest example.

Instead of draining the swamp, he filled it to overflowing.

His infrastructure rebuilding scheme is all about privatizing public properties for profit.

His immigration ban is part of America’s war on Islam and fundamental freedoms.

His healthcare plan aims to enrich insurers, drug companies and large hospital chains more than already – at the expense of providing a fundamental human right for all Americans.

His one-sided support for Israel assures continued occupation harshness.

His draconian budget proposal greatly harms the nation’s most vulnerable.

His tax cut scheme is a giveaway to monied interests.

He’s done nothing so far to restore prosperity for ordinary Americans enduring protracted Main Street Depression conditions.

He has no positive legislative achievements. His blizzard of executive orders do more harm than good.

His focus on militarism and belligerence diverts national resources for warmaking, instead of using them for vital domestic issues benefitting all Americans.

He broke every positive promise made while campaigning.

His agenda continues neoliberal harshness begun by his predecessors.

He boasted about meeting with an array of ruthless Israeli, Saudi, Egyptian and other rogue leaders.

His Saudi arms deal is all about enriching war-profiteers, along with furthering the kingdom’s support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, its war on Yemen and homeland repression.

All of the above and more is what Saturday marchers should have focused on – legitimate reasons to protest against Trump, not the dubious ones used, diverting attention from what’s most important.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Haven’t We Had Enough of Afghanistan?

June 4th, 2017 by Justin Raimondo

Will there ever be an end to the war in Afghanistan? Apparently not if our generals have anything to say about it – and they do. President Trump has turned over the prosecution of our perpetual “war on terrorism” to the Pentagon, claiming that they’ve been held back by previous administrations. The new policy is to turn them loose.

We saw what this means when the so-called “Mother of All Bombs” was dropped in a remote location where ISIS was said to be hiding: 92 “militants”were said to have been killed. Contrary to the triumphalist reports in US media, the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever deployed in combat had a minimal effect. And the cost, at $16 million for a single MOAB, came to around $174,000 per “militant.”

With anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 ISIS fighters in Afghanistan, let’s take the median number of 2,000 and estimate that getting rid of all of them will cost around $348 million, give or take $10 million or so.

And you’ll note that we’re just talking about ISIS here. The Taliban is not only still in the mix, they’re actually in a better position than ever. In March, the Taliban claimed that 211 administrative districts of the country were either under their control or else contested: this isn’t far off the report of the Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which put the number at 171. The Taliban control more of Afghanistan than at any time since the war started, and they continue to make major gains, such as in Helmland province. The pace and severity of Taliban/ISIS attacks has recently escalated, with a suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 100 people, the culmination of 8 major attacks just in the month of May.

The Taliban in Afghanistan (credits to the owner of the photo)

After 16 years of fighting, the US is no closer to defeating the radical Islamist insurgency than it was at the very beginning. The original rationale for the invasion – the presence of Osama bin Laden – is long since gone.

The justification for continuing the Afghan war, you’ll recall, was that we couldn’t allow any “safe havens” where the terrorists could plan and carry out attacks on the US and Western Europe. The logic of this is difficult to follow, however, since a “safe haven” can be defined as anywhere terrorists gather – which can occur just as easily in Hamburg, Germany, than in some mountain cave in Afghanistan. Furthermore, we are now told that the primary locus of terrorist activities is in territory controlled by ISIS, which has few strongholds and little support in Afghanistan.

The reality is that terrorist plots are more likely to be hatched in Western Europe and right here in the United States than in the Afghan wilds.

Yet that hasn’t stopped our generals from requesting thousands more US troops to be sent to fight the longest war in our history: news reports tell us they want “a few thousand” more, but it’s hard to imagine this will make much difference. It’s also hard to imagine that the American people support this: while no recent polls have been taken — for some mysterious reason they stopped measuring support for the war in 2015 – the last time anyone looked opposition was over fifty percent.

Naturally, given the current atmosphere in Washington, there’s an anti-Russian angle to all this: General John Nicholson recently testified before Congress that Moscow is pushing a “false narrative” that the Taliban is fighting ISIS while the Afghan government army is sitting on its haunches, collecting bribes and managing the drug harvest. Russia’s goal, he said, is to “undermine the United States and NATO.”

Yet the Taliban is not the same as ISIS, and the latter has largely alienated Afghan civilians, just as al-Qaeda did in Iraq: foreign fighters, no matter their religion, are not popular in Afghanistan. The Taliban, for all its theological pretensions, is essentially a nationalist movement fighting a foreign invader: ISIS, however, is quite a different story.

The Trump campaign told us that all foreign commitments were going to be judged by new criteria: how does this serve American interests? And the question of how continuing to fight this war serves our interests has yet to be answered by the Trump administration. They have simply taken the war as a given.

In a 2009 speech at Tennessee State University, I asked my audience to

“remember the fate of the previous would-be conquerors of the proud Afghan people: the Russians, the British, the Golden Horde, and even Alexander the Great. They all failed, and the bones of their centurions are dust beneath the feet of a warrior people. In that kind of terrain, against that kind of enemy, there is no such thing as victory – there is only a question of how long it will take for them to drive us out – or whether we go bankrupt before that happens.”

Even earlier, in 2001, I predicted that the Afghan war would be a quagmire, a mistake we would eventually come to regret – an opinion for which David Frum, then National Review’s neocon enforcer of ideological correctness, saw cause to label me “anti-American.”

When the truth is considered “anti-American,” then we know we’re in trouble. Indeed, we’ve been in some pretty serious trouble for the past 16 years. Now is the time to reverse course and make it right.

It’s time to acknowledge that truth. It’s time to get the hell out of Afghanistan – now.

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].

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Note: This is an updated version.

A suicide attacker struck the heavily guarded diplomatic quarter in Kabul with a massive truck bomb during rush hour on Wednesday morning, killing 90 people, and wounding more than 400. There was no claim of responsibility.

“I have been to many attacks, taken wounded people out of many blast sites, but I can say I have ever seen such a horrible attack as I saw this morning,” ambulance driver Alef Ahmadzai told The Associated Press. “Everywhere was on fire and so many people were in critical condition.”

Contacted moments after the attack, Friba, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan’s representative, said:

“Everyone is still rattled. The city died with the blast.”

In a short interview, the Afghan women’s leader speaks on one of worst suicide attacks in Afghanistan in many years, and the mockery of the U.S. “War on Terror”. Friba, who doesn’t mention her real name for security reasons as RAWA works underground, unmasks once again local government and intelligence, and U.S. led coalition which promised to free her people 16 years ago, especially the women.

Corruption and alliance with terrorists, according to RAWA’s representative, permeates all powers in her country, including the foreign ones.

“Traitors that sell their country to aliens obviously do not care about their people or their security. A government that welcomes their killers with open arms despite countless massacres committed by them; and a government whose foreign backers provide these enemies with arms and money!” she says.

Friba states that insecurity has increased in her country after U.S. invasion in October 2001, and the solution is not with any foreign power, but only in the hands of the Afghan people.

“Barely a month goes by without one or two attacks that leave tens dead and hundreds of loved ones in mourning.”

A reality not shown in the West by a mainstream media, supported by weapons manufacturers, which raises the question once again: are some human lives more valuable than others for Westerners?

“’War on Terror’ is not actually waged against terrorists, only those terrorist groups that do not comply with the U.S’s orders. Just like the U.S., the puppet Afghan government also uses terrorist groups for its purposes. It is no secret that the U.S. actively nourishes terrorism in Afghanistan and the region to attack its rivals, Russia and China,” says RAWA’s representative.

Below, the full interview with Friba.

Edu Montesanti: What exactly happened and why the Afghan forces, financed and trained by US military, cannot keep your country safe 16 years after US-led coalition invasion to Afghanistan, as attacks like this are frequent and even grow, month by month, in number and intensity?

Friba: The death toll has climbed to over 100 now with more than 400 injured. These are however official statistics which we cannot entirely trust, the casualties may be higher than this. Insecurity in Afghanistan has been the biggest hardship our people have faced after the US invasion.

To begin with, the “war on terror” is not actually waged against terrorists, only those terrorist groups that do not comply with the US’s orders. This means that the US and its allies do not target the Taliban or other terrorist groups fighting the Afghan forces, uniformly. In fact Afghan soldiers have witnessed foreign forces’ helicopters dropping off weapons in Taliban-held areas, and the payment of huge bribes to the Taliban.

It is no secret that the US actively nourishes terrorism in Afghanistan and the region to attack its rivals, Russia and China – the growing instability and shift of terrorist presence to northern Afghanistan is proof of this policy.

The Afghan apparatus is comprised Jehadi criminals who are lackeys of foreign countries and whose own lives depend on the support of their foreign masters. Traitors that sell their country to aliens obviously do not care about their people or their security. Their only aim is to fill their pockets by taking money from foreign countries and in return, allowing them to influence the state at the highest levels, maintaining their mafia ties, dealing drugs (many prominent Afghan government officials are mafia figures and drug lords), running kidnapping rings, and other such criminal activities.

This greedy mercenary nature of the state also translates into corruption in the high ranks of the military and Defense Ministry. These bodies have been hit with high-level corruption cases, with scandals ranging from land grabbing, “ghost soldiers” cases, and fuel theft worth millions of Dollars, to accusations of collusion with the Taliban.

While Afghan youngsters die on the war front every day, the brethren-in-creed of the Taliban in the Afghan government,propose “peace talks”, calling the brutal Taliban “upset brothers”. They have released countless dangerous terrorists from jails over the years.It is natural that this entire situation kills the spirit and will of the young Afghan soldiers, dying in battles every day, to fight against these terrorists resolutely. These forces are fighting for a government and military that do not care about them, are deeply embroiled in corruption and rolling about in money; a government that welcomes their killers with open arms despite countless massacres committed by them; and a government whose foreign backers provide these enemies with arms and money!

These soldiers have been deserted by their superiors when they were under Taliban siege, and several bloody attacks on these soldiers have carried suspicions of inside collusion. How can these youngsters fight whole-heartedly in such a situation? Today, the purpose of most Afghan soldiers is to earn a mouthful for their families in this extreme poverty and unemployment, with the salaries they are paid, their intension is not to fight Taliban, as they don’t see any major difference between the Taliban and the army generals and high ranking officials who mostly have bloody and dark past and implicated in war crimes.

This is not to mention that the police and army force is already ravaged by illiteracy, drug addiction, and poor management. All these are reasons that the Afghan forces have failed continuously for the past fifteen years.

It is curious that, again, a very safe place has been attacked in Afghanistan – months ago, the Afghan military area was strongly attacked by the Taliban, too. What can you say about the Afghan intelligence?

The situation described above extends to the Afghan intelligence as well. Just like the US, the puppet Afghan government also uses terrorist groups for its purposes, and turns a blind eye to terrorists on the orders of their foreign masters.

According to former intelligence chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, figures within the highest ranks of the government maintain the interests of different foreign countries, yet continue to enjoy their position and the backing of the president – in other words they are “untouchable”. HanifAtmar, senior national security advisor, and MasoomStanekzai, the intelligence chief, are called the “suit and tie wearing” Taliban by our people for their lack of action against the Taliban, and those figures within the government who serve the intelligence agencies that support the Taliban.

The corruption and absolute breakdown of military leadership means that the Taliban can easily penetrate the capital city, military bases, ministries, military hospitals, and now the diplomatic area. Although commissions are made for investigation of every such incidents, but they never share the results with the public. Everyone knows that such complex attacks are made possible through the help from the within the Afghan security and intelligence agencies.

No group has claimed responsibility: what is said in Afghanistan about the author of this attack?

The Taliban denied any responsibility, and Afghan intelligence have stated that the Haqqani Network inside Pakistan carried out the attack with the help of the Pakistani intelligence. The specific target of the attack is also unknown, which would have offered clues as to which country was behind the attack. Afghanistan has become the center of intelligence warfare between the West and its regional rivals, Russia, China, Iran, and India.

Most regional powers and the US/NATO, are heavily engaged in fostering terrorism and designing plans using terrorist groups as their strategic weapon. If Russia or Iran supports a certain Taliban leader or group, he/they is/are immediately targeted by the US. Similarly, if India supports some group of terrorists, it is immediately attacked by the US, with Pakistan at its heels. In this complex and foggy situation, it is very difficult to ascertain exactly which intelligence agency is behind such attacks, but the US knows this very well and might even have prior knowledge of such attacks, but it never reveals such information. Such is the game ongoing in Afghanistan today.

What must happen to attacks like this have an end?

We have said this before, and will say it again: the only solution to this situation is in the hands of the people of Afghanistan. An end to the US/NATO occupation should be the first step of our struggle for justice, peace and democracy. Occupation and terrorism are two sides of the same coin. If our people are mobilized and organized under a truly democratic and national leadership, and rise up against their enemies – Islamic fundamentalists inside and outside the government and their foreign masters – only then can our country escape from this quagmire.

All the graphics in this article are from teleSUR.

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Displaying what one commentator called “sheer 19th century bloodlust and thirst for empire,” Erik Prince, founder of the private mercenary firm Blackwater, argued in The Wall Street Journal this week that the United States should deploy an “East India Company approach” in Afghanistan.

The country, he wrote, should be run by

“an American viceroy who would lead all U.S. government and coalition efforts—including command, budget, policy, promotion, and contracting—and report directly to the president.”

Prince continued:

In Afghanistan, the viceroy approach would reduce rampant fraud by focusing spending on initiatives that further the central strategy, rather than handing cash to every outstretched hand from a U.S. system bereft of institutional memory.

Prince insists that these are “cheaper private solutions,” but such privatization would also be a boon for military contractors.

As one critic noted, it is hardly surprising that a “war profiteer sees profit opportunity in war.” Blackwater, the private military company Prince founded in 1997—which now operates under the name Academi—made a fortune off the invasion of Iraq. In 2007, a New York Times editorial noted that Blackwater had “received more than $1 billion” in no-bid contracts from the Bush administration; that same year, Blackwater contractors shot and killed more than a dozen civilians in what came to be known as the Nisour Square massacre.

The Mysterious New Owner of Blackwater Worldwide | blackwater-460x250 | Black Ops CIA Corporate Takeover Military Special Interests US News

Source: thesleuthjournal.com

But “war profiteering” doesn’t quite capture the scope of Prince’s vision for Afghanistan. Despite the fact that private contractors have a long record of abuse and deadly criminality, Prince believes that they should have a stronger presence in a war that has spanned nearly 16 years and cost trillions of dollars.

Such a recommendation, combined with Prince’s invocation of the East India Company—a vestige of the British empire that “conquered, subjugated, and plundered vast tracts of south Asia for a century,” in the words of historian William Dalrymple—amounts to a call for “literal colonialism,” says Anil Kalhan, chair of the New York City Bar Association’s International Human Rights Committee.

Prince’s past connections to President Donald Trump indicate that his advice could potentially have some measure of influence on the White House.

As The Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill, the author of a bestselling book on Blackwater, reported in January, Prince spoke with the Trump

“team on matters related to intelligence and defense” and offered suggestions “on candidates for the Defense and State departments.”

In April, The Washington Post reported that Prince, presenting himself as “an unofficial envoy for Trump,” met in January with “a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow” and then-President-elect Trump. Prince also donated $250,000 to the Trump campaign following the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to the Post.

Prince’s op-ed comes as the Trump administration is reportedly considering sending more troops to Afghanistan as civilian deaths from the war have “reached record levels.”

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Just hours after Megyn Kelly announced on NBC’s Today show that she would be interviewing Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg tomorrow at the International Economic Forum, Showtime released the first trailer and extended clip for The Putin Interviews, a sit-down with the Russian president conducted by the film-maker Oliver Stone for a four-part special that premieres on 12 June.

In the extended clip released on Thursday, The Guardian reports Stone and Putin can be seen driving in a car with an English translator in the backseat, discussing topics such as Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing and Russian intelligence.

“As an ex-KGB agent, you must have hated what Snowden did with every fiber of your being,” Stone asks in the clip.

“Snowden is not a traitor,” Putin replies. “He did not betray the interests of his country. Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly.”

Even though Putin condemned the NSA’s spy operation, he told Stone that Snowden shouldn’t have leaked the documents they way he did.

“If he didn’t like anything at his work he should have simply resigned, but he went further,” Putin said in a clip of the interview released Saturday.

Stone, whose 2016 film Snowden detailed the rise and fall of the whistleblower, goes on to ask Putin about his own intelligence activities, and though the clip features no overt references to rumors of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, Stone can be seen asking Putin about hacking in the special’s official 30-second trailer.

“I think they’re working quite well,” Putin says of Russian intelligence. “Our intelligence services always conform to the law. That’s the first thing. And secondly, trying to spy on our allies if you really consider them allies and not vassals is just indecent. Because it undermines trust. And it means that in the end, it deals damage to your own national security.”

Stone recently took to Facebook to express his views on Trump and Putin.

This film comes against a frightening background wherein the US is sleepwalking into a situation where it becomes more and more likely that Russia will react. Which is precisely what so many angry American neocons and Hillary-wing Democrats seem to want! Why? Is it really worth it to push the world closer to the nuclear precipice for this anger? Is it Trump they hate or is it truly the Russians? And why have they conflated these 2 issues?

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The Kissinger Backchannel to Moscow

June 4th, 2017 by Gareth Porter

Last week’s leak to the Washington Post of an intelligence report about President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in early December to discuss a possible back channel to Moscow appears to represents the climax of the campaign of leaks against the Trump team regarding contacts between Trump associates and Russians.

The leak about Kushner came shortly after another sensational story broadcast by CNN on May 17 about U.S. intelligence picking up conversations among Russian officials during the presidential campaign in which they bragged about having cultivated a relationship with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and expressed the belief they could use him to influence Trump.

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

Those two leaks sandwiched extraordinary testimony by former CIA Director John Brennan before the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 in which he said he was concerned about “intelligence” regarding Russian efforts to “suborn” certain Americans – meaning to induce them to commit unlawful acts. That may have been a reference to the leaked interception of Russians bragging about their relationship with Flynn that had just been reported.

“It raised questions in my mind about whether the Russian’s efforts were successful,” Brennan said.

Then, Brennan offered an inflammatory comment reminiscent of McCarthyism.

“Frequently people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late,” Brennan said.

Unidentified former Obama national security officials immediately condemned the Kushner proposal to Kislyak for a backchannel – which occurred after Trump’s election but before his inauguration – as

“not only highly improper but also possibly even illegal,” as Politico reported.

In an interview with the PBS NewsHour, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper followed that script, suggesting that the attempt to “mask this dialog” with Russia made the Kushner request inherently suspicious.

“Why all the cloak and dagger secrecy?” asked Clapper.  “One wonders if there was something worse than that or more nefarious than that…”

Clapper also argued that the proposal for the channel was illegitimate because the meeting was held before Trump became president.

“There is a distinction between reaching out, establishing lines of communication versus substantively interfering with the policy of the present administration,” he said.

The Kissinger Precedent

But the Brennan-Clapper line insinuating that the Kushner request for contacts with the Russians was potentially treasonous collapses in light of the well-documented story of how President-elect Richard Nixon’s national security adviser-designate Henry Kissinger established his own personal backchannel to the Soviet leadership in 1968 using a known KGB operative with whom he had been meeting for years as his contact.

Historian Richard A. Moss of the Naval War College recently published an authoritative book-length study of the Kissinger backchannel showing that that Kissinger began setting up his backchannel to the Soviet government leadership through his Soviet contact in December 1968 soon after being named Nixon’s choice for national security adviser.

Retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn at a campaign rally for Donald Trump at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Oct. 29, 2016. (Flickr Gage Skidmore)

And it shows that Kissinger seized on the one Soviet government contact he already had to establish the backchannel. That was Boris Sedov, whom Kissinger knew to be a KGB operative. Kissinger had been acquainted with Sedov from the latter’s visits to Harvard. The two continued the contacts after Nixon’s election in 1968.

Moss’s book recounts how Kissinger used the Sedov channel to introduce the concept of “linkage” of different policy issues into negotiations with the Soviets. Sedov gave Kissinger a Soviet government paper on Middle East policy, according to Moss’s account. Only after Nixon’s inauguration did Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin agree that all further communication would be through Dobrynin.

Both the Kissinger-Sedov and Kissinger-Dobrynin channels were kept secret from the rest of the Nixon administration’s national security apparatus, as recounted by Moss. Nixon agreed to set up a secure phone line in the White House linking him directly to Dobrynin. The U.S. intelligence agencies, the National Security Council staff and the Pentagon were kept in the dark about these conversations.

And to complete the parallels between the Kissinger backchannel episode and the Flynn and Kushner contacts with the Russians, Moss reveals that Sedov later bragged to a Lebanese-American about his contact with Kissinger –- a boast that was immediately picked up by FBI surveillance of Sedov.

Further, Oleg Kalugin, the head of the KGB’s station in Washington, surely boasted to his Kremlin bosses about having “forged a close back channel tie with Henry Kissinger” – as Kalugin put it in his own memoirs – that would be useful in influencing Nixon’s policy toward the Soviet Union.

Sedov later boasted to Kalugin that he had been so successful in cultivating Kissinger’s assistant Richard Allen that he wanted to try to recruit Allen as an agent, according to Kalugin. But Kalugin rejected the proposal. (Allen went on to become President Ronald Reagan’s first national security adviser.)

This history of Kissinger’s Soviet backchannel in 1968 reveals Brennan’s breathless alarm about Russian “suborning” Flynn or using the backchannel to manipulate Kushner as unworthy of a serious intelligence professional.

Nothing in the Kislyak report intercepted by U.S. intelligence suggests that Kushner’s desire for the backchannel was for anything other than to discuss how to increase cooperation on issues of common interest. Two unidentified sources told ABC News that the Kushner-Kislyak meeting “was focused on the U.S. response to the crisis in Syria and other policy-related matters.”

Need for Secrecy

And the Trump transition team’s reasons for wanting a private channel of communication with the Russians that would not be visible to the U.S. national security bureaucracy were precisely the same as those of Nixon and Kissinger.

Moss, the historian of the Kissinger backchannel, recalled in an opinion piece on the Kushner affair that Dobrynin’s memoirs quote Kissinger as telling the Soviet Ambassador that the Nixon administration wanted to conduct a

“most confidential exchange of views” with the Kremlin, because “The Soviet side . . . knows how to maintain confidentiality; but in our State Department, unfortunately, there are occasional leaks of information to the press.”

Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, walks with Army Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend; Jared Kushner, senior adviser to President Trump; and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Douglas A. Silliman after arriving in Baghdad, April 3, 2017. (DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro)

The leak of the intelligence report of the Kushner-Kislyak meeting to The Washington Post underscores the problem faced by the Trump team amid the flood of leaks about U.S.-Russian discussions that were conducted through official U.S. channels.

Demonstrating the intensity of the anti-Trump attitudes among many Obama officials – both those who have left the government and those who remain as holdovers – someone with access to the secret report was so determined to expose the Kushner backchannel as to reveal to the Russians what must be one of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence secrets of all – the U.S. capability to intercept Russia’s diplomatic messages.

The idea of depending on a secure line of communication within the Russian Embassy for the backchannel was inherently unrealistic, but not because it would give the Russians some unfair advantage in negotiations. The real problem was that it would have been too awkward for a U.S. official to go to the Russian Embassy every time he wanted to use the channel. Indeed, it appears that the proposal was not pursued further because the Russians themselves were wary of it.

Moss, who says he is speaking for himself and not for the Naval War College, told this writer in an interview,

“Better relations with the Russians would be a good thing.” He noted several “areas of opportunity” including energy resources and cooperation on counter-terrorism in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. “If Kushner and Kislyak were discussing how to defeat ISIL that would be a perfectly legitimate thing,” said Moss.

But Moss warns that the underlying political crisis in American society is a formidable obstacle to any shift by Trump in relations with Russia. Trump “feels he won the election fairly and that unelected bureaucrats are working against him,” Moss observed, but “The people who suspect possible collusion between the Trump and Russian interference in the election may feel Trump is an illegitimate president.”

Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn are obviously no Kissingers. But the insinuations from Brennan and others that Trump’s advisers may have somehow crossed the line into treason is itself the crossing of a dangerous line into McCarthyism. And the mainstream U.S. news media is participating enthusiastically in the campaign to impugn the loyalty of Trump’s advisers, even though there is still no public evidence to support such suspicions.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

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Trump Moves to Keep CIA Torture Report Secret

June 4th, 2017 by Jason Ditz

The likelihood of the full version of the 2014 CIA torture report compiled by the Senate Intelligence Committee ever being made public has dropped precipitously, as President Trump has begun returning all copies of the still-classified document to the committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R – NC).

Government documents, even classified ones, are supposed to eventually be made public under the Freedom of Information Act, and while the federal government has long gone out of its way to skirt FOIA requirements anyhow, Congress is outright exempt, meaning if they get all the copies, they likely disappear forever.

This is actually a faction fight between Sen. Burr, eager to keep the document secret, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D – CA), who chaired the committee when it was written in the first place, and who ordered copies sent to numerous federal agencies specifically so that eventually one of them would release it under a FOIA request.

Burr’s call to recover all the documents is highly unusual, and Trump’s agreement to do so is even more-so. The 6,700 page document excoriated US torture policies after 9/11, and noted that not a single incident of a terrorist attack had been foiled because of the torture.

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

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Tories under May assure dirty business as usual. Corbyn-led Labour advocates responsible change.

His social justice manifesto calls for an economy working for everyone, not just privileged Brits like now.

It advocates improved worker rights, a national education service, social security for pensioners, dignity for Brits unable to work, secure homes, help for the homeless, healthcare for all the way it used to be, safer communities, real democracy, equity for everyone, and more.

UK elections weren’t due until May 7, 2020. In mid-April, with a seemingly unbeatable 24-point lead over Labour in polls, May called for June 8 snap elections, seeking a stronger mandate to pursue her agenda.

Days ahead of voting, her strategy appears to have backfired. Labour narrowed her lead significantly to 3% in a You Gov poll – with 42% support compared to Labour’s 39%.

An expected Tory landslide now appears a horserace – May’s best laid plans not turning out as expected.

You Gov’s constituency-by-constituency polling result shows Tories losing 20 seats next Thursday, Labour gaining up to 30 – resulting in a hung parliament, Tories around 16 seats short of a majority.

May’s support plunged after the poor reception her party’s manifesto got, polar opposite Labour’s, including plans for elderly Brits to pay home care costs the first time – the largest stealth tax in UK history, according to some observers.

Image result for may vs corbyn

As of May 31, according to You Gov, Tories are expected to win 310 seats, Labour 257, the Scottish National Party 50, Northern Ireland parties 18, Liberal Democrats 10, Plaid Cymru 3, Green 1, and Other 1, UK Independence Party (UKIP) none – 326 seats needed for a majority, otherwise coalition governance is needed.

Given variations in projections, You Gov explained Tories could end up better or worse on election day. If things go badly for May, she could be replaced as prime minister for waging a losing campaign.

She refused to participate in last Thursday’s BBC leaders’ debate. Corbyn issued a statement, saying

“(t)he Tories have been conducting a stage-managed arm’s length campaign and have treated the public with contempt.”

“Refusing to join me in Cambridge tonight would be another sign of Theresa May’s weakness, not strength.”

Tory Home Secretary Amber Rudd stood in for her in a seven-participant debate. Labour’s election coordinator Andrew Gwynne commented, saying:

“It’s very regrettable the prime minister wouldn’t debate with Jeremy and, after tonight, I can see why.”

“She has no answers to the issues that really concern people on the doorstep, the NHS and cuts facing our schools, and far from appearing strong and stable, she was definitely on the back foot answering most of the questions pitched to her.”

May’s approval rating hit a new low – 50% of Brits dissatisfied with her leadership, only 43% satisfied. In the past month, Corbyn gained 23 points.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage calls May the Tory’s

“biggest liability…It’s quite tough to believe anything she says,” he stressed.

Days ahead of June 8 snap elections, she’s still favored to remain prime minister. Yet a bad showing with a hung parliament makes her a loser, weakening her authority, undermining it if she’s challenged and replaced as party leader.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Predictable Exits: Trump and the Paris Agreement

June 4th, 2017 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The distress caused by US President Donald Trump in over the last week continues the theme of exit: old alliances and agreements need revision; compacts need unpacking. Thursday saw Trump add another graceless if direct announcement: the United States would be leaving the Paris climate agreement.

“This agreement,” he claimed in a speech of fantastic make-believe, “is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.”

And so, we return to the language of competition – usually deemed unfair when it comes to US interests.

Trump’s tactics on this are foolish and nostalgic (they, at points, combine). The sentiment that jobs are to be found in the bosom of the coal industry is naïve, but it also suggests a poor understanding of current economics.

Between 2011 and 2016, US coal production fell by 27 per cent. The greatest reason was natural gas, lessening demand, renewable energy and the assortment of Obama-era regulations.[1] A few US coal producers had to also admit that their game would have to change. The Paris accord, claimed Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and Cloud Peak Energy, could still be abided by.[2]

Image result

Source: nationalreview.com

A far better approach, in so far as Trump was pretending to be pragmatic, would be to economise on the green boom. Make America Great Again at the tip of a Green Spear. But such an approach jars with the masculine punchiness of digging into the earth, and renting it into impoverished oblivion. To make that case, think tank fraternities have insisted on the unnecessary shackling that the Paris accord inflicts. Abide by such arrangements, they warn, and energy prices are bound to rise.

Furthermore, the climate change combat regime is inherently flexible. Much mischief could have been made within it, given its aspirational context. The Paris accord, for all the effusive fanfare, is non-binding, easy to cast off or modify in the event states wish to revise their commitments as unduly onerous. There would be much room for the cynics to manoeuvre.

That particularly point was ignored, possibly with a mixture of malice and ignorance, in a May letter to Trump signed by twenty-two Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.[3] Remaining in the Paris Agreement, they warned,

“would subject the United States to significant litigation risk that could upend your Administration’s ability to fulfill its goal of rescinding the Clean Power Plan.”

Trump’s speech similarly replicated this cobwebbed error, one that admits to the Paris accord being “non-binding” and yet an imposition of “financial and economic burdens” that are simply “draconian”.

Industry conglomerates have duly insisted that the environmental effort is something they can do outside the stifling channels of a presidential administration. General Electric’s Jeff Immelt was one such figure:

“Climate change is real. Industry must now lead and not depend on government.”

The other response to Trump is also a variant of charged hope, pure and distilled in what seems like a shaman’s brew. It reeks of a desperate counter, a sense that, even if the United States is not on board, the rest will still persevere. The rest, in this case, tend to be the bulk of Europe, and China. (Within the United States, states and cities promise to pull their weight.)

French President Emmanuel Macron, who is fast filling a vacuum of anti-Trump desperation, decided to reverse the Trump slogan. Speaking officially in English, a language pooh poohed by French officialdom and Gallic stiffness, Macron suggested that the time had come to “make the planet great again”.

Germany’s Angela Merkel dug into the religious fold and linked planet earth with the divine.

“To everyone for whom the future of our planet is important, I say lets continue going down this path so we’re successful for our Mother Earth.”

The environmental side of things are far from the only matters at stake here. Green matters are also political ones, and slipping away from the Paris agreement will leave a vacuum that will be filled, one way or another.

China remains posed to assume the mantle, which will provide endless grist to the public relations mill. But even the PRC faces its own internal battles and battlelines, notably in the area of state-owned coal companies.

The last time such a sentiment found form was the founding of the League of Nations, a body that would, in the duration of its troubled life, constantly wish for US participation. Caught in its state of normalcy, as the term came to be known, the United States went into something of international hibernation from 1919. It would only wake up with a violent Japanese jolt at Pearl Harbour in 1941.

The ensuing participation in the Second World War, when the League had, effectively, been charred beyond recognition. For irreconcilable pessimists, the next charring may well be underway, only this time on a far more global scale.

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

Notes

[1] http://energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/report/can-coal-make-comeback

[2]https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/6/2/15723988/winners-losers-trump-paris

[3] https://www.inhofe.senate.gov/download/paris-letter

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Though too early to know, the timing raises suspicions – 12 days after the Manchester blast, four days before UK snap elections.

Polls suggest a possible hung parliament, Tories losing their majority, a dreaded outcome for Prime Minister Theresa May if occurs, weakening her authority, her party leadership potentially challenged, her political future at stake.

Here’s what happened Saturday night in London. Three alleged assailants drove a van at high speed into pedestrians on London Bridge. It’s unclear how many were struck.

Police said stabbings then occurred in nearby Borough Market. Seven deaths were reported, another 30 injured, requiring hospitalization – plus three alleged assailants killed.

london-bridge-attack-2017-6-3.jpg

A man lying on the ground with canisters attached to his belt.  (Source: GABRIELE SCIOTTO)

According to assistant police commissioner Mark Rowley, the incident is being treated as a terrorist attack.

Lethally shooting alleged attackers assures dead men tell no tales, leaving important questions unanswered. Was the incident a terrorist attack or something else? The timing is suspicious.

Why weren’t the alleged assailants apprehended? Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“Everyone charged with a penal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.”

Under English common law, individuals accused of criminal or civil offenses are presumed innocent unless proved guilty in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt.

According to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the Council of Europe (Article 6.2):

“Everyone charged with a criminal offense shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.”

This principle is binding on all Council of Europe countries, including all EU member states, Britain one of them.

The presumption of innocence is also affirmed under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Article 48, stating:

1. Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.

2. Respect for the rights of the defense of anyone who has been charged shall be guaranteed.

Lethally shooting suspects deprives them of their fundamental rights under EU and UK law.

Reports on what happened differ, some indicating three assailants, others saying two, armed with knives.

How could so much harm to so many happen without anyone intervening defensively before police arrived?

Why didn’t police react more quickly in a heavily patrolled part of London, containing the incident before it got out-of-hand?

If assailants wanted to cause mass casualties, why did they use knives as reported, why not easily obtained guns?

Passers-by rush to help the victims knocked down in a murderous rampage

Passers-by rush to help victims knocked down in a murderous rampage (Source: thesun.co.uk)

Knife attacks are the equivalent of hand-to-hand combat, targeted individuals able to do something defensively, maybe able to disarm assailants even when injured.

Why would they attack pedestrians in congested areas where bystanders, acting in self-defense, could possibly disarm and hold them until police arrived?

Lots of questions remain unanswered. The second violent incident ahead of UK snap elections raises suspicions about what’s going on.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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London once again becomes a target of a purported terror event. This time, were told multiple attacks have occurred simultaneously, happening less than two weeks after Manchester’s known wolf arena bombing. Only time will tell if the latest attacks on London Bridge and the Borough Market area, will also turn out to be the work of known wolf terrorists watched by British security. 

RT News reports:

“London police confirm they are dealing with three “incidents” in the city center on Saturday evening: a vehicle collision with pedestrians on London Bridge, reported stabbings in the Borough Market area and a third incident in Vauxhall.”

*UPDATE* – According to Met Police head Cressida Dick, 7 people are dead and 3 suspects have been shot and killed by police. Early reports suggested this was a ‘triple terror attack’ in London but new reports have amended the initial reports. Here’s a screenshot from the UK’s Telegraph

Though many are still shocked in the wake of the London Bridge attacks – key questions will undoubtedly emerge following this latest act of terror in the West.

LONDON-BRIDGE-ATTACK-21WIRE-SLIDER-SH-4

‘LONDON TERROR’ – What’s truly behind this latest terror tragedy? (Photo Illustration 21WIRE’s Shawn Helton)

The new London attacks, come on the heels of the UK’s 2017 general election on June 8th, a race which has tightened dramatically since the Manchester Arena attack. Reuters reports the latest election details in the aftermath of yet another terror incident:

“British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives have a lead of just one percentage point over the opposition Labour Party ahead of the June 8 election, according to a Survation poll conducted for the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

The poll showed said May’s lead had fallen sharply from a lead of 12 percentage points in the previous Survation/Mail on Sunday poll published on May 21.

In the new poll, support for the Conservatives stood at 40 percent, down six percentage points and Labour were on 39 percent, up five points.”

Will this sudden terror attack give the Conservative Party a bounce in the polls only days ahead of the General Election?

As it turns out, this morning Prime Minister Theresa May announced that, once again, General Election national campaigning has been suspended. May made the exact same announcement immediately after the Manchester Bombing two weeks ago.

‘SHELTER IN PLACE’ – Police order patrons to hide in place after multiple attacks.  (Image Source: cnn)

The following video clip of the police ordering London Bridge bar patrons to ‘shelter in place’ was reposted on Twitter by @ChetCannon:

The UK’s Telegraph reported the following details as there are believed to be multiple fatalities with some three dozen injured at the moment:

“Eyewitnesses spoke of there being two or three masked men, who got out of the van and started attacking people with knives.

A second incident is believed to have taken place at the Borough Bistro, in Borough Market. Eyewitnesses have told of seeing a man being stabbed by someone wearing a red hoody. The attacker then walked calmly away, and gunshots were heard near the Brindisi tapas restaurant.

The BBC is reporting that a security guard who works across multiple bars and pubs in Borough Market claims to have seen a man with a canister strapped to his abdomen. Stressing that the reports were unverified, the news channel claims the man saw the attackers after receiving a call from a colleague in another bar who said people had been stabbed.

The eyewitness described people running away screaming from three men, one wearing a red and black top. He claimed one man had a canister taped to his abdomen. The man and his colleagues tried to throw chairs at the three attackers, who were going in and out of different bars, before helping to evacuate the area.

Drinkers inside a pub have told of the police rushing in, and telling everyone to get on the ground. They were then told to run away from the area.”

Armed police combed nearby London Underground station (possibly Bank station). WATCH:

The Telegraph also added the following:

“A British Transport Police (BTP) officer was stabbed in the face as he responded to the terrorist incident at London Bridge.

Emergency services rushed to the scene following reports of a vehicle ploughing into pedestrians around London Bridge and stabbings at Borough Market shortly after 10pm.

The BTP officer, who was on duty, was one of the first on the scene after he responded to calls for help from the public, the force said.

A spokeswoman said it was believed he was targeted by one of the three attackers who were later shot dead by police.”

There have been reports of a controlled detonation of explosives near the London Bridge area…

Controlled-Explosion-Screenshot

NOTE: In this same area, London Bridge, was placed on lockdown and the area evacuated back on March 7th due to a stolen car found abandoned and left yards away from the famous Shard Building.

“Dozens of officers were deployed to the scene along with the fire service and a bomb disposal robot over the ‘suspicious vehicle’.”

“The bridge was closed both ways, while the railway station was also closed as a precaution and people were warned to stay away from windows.”

Additional eyewitness testimony reportedly states that the three masked men believed to be the alleged attackers have been shot, while seen outside a pub with ‘hoax suicide vests’ on.

Cui bono: Who Benefits?

As previously mentioned, the event may affect election polling results – possibly benefiting the ruling Conservative government who were plummeting in the polls over the last week – amazingly, only 4 days from the scheduled voting day on June 8th.

It is undeniable that because of this event, on the heals of both Manchester and Westminster terror events, the Met Police have accumulated more power in terms of their role in helping to manage “national security.” Likewise, these events may be used to devolve more power and clout to the British Intelligence Services.

If this were indeed an ‘ISIS Attack,’ it is hard to see how ISIS/ISIL would benefit, other than hasten its own demise by baiting increased airstrikes on Syria by NATO member states. The Trump Administration could easily seize on events in London to call for increased “Anti-ISIS” operations in Syria and Libya, but it should be pointed out that since this latest anti-ISIS US Coalition began in 2014, US-led efforts have had very little effect on the spread of takfiri militants in the Middle East. This leaves the only real beneficiary here as being the Pentagon and the wider military industrial complex itself.

As far as the attackers themselves, we are told that they were all shot dead by police – so no benefit there. On top this, the fact remains that this incident is now being used by anti-Muslim advocates as proof of a ‘clash of civilizations,’ followed by calls for a UK police state mass detention and deportation of UK Muslims:

QUESTION: Why would terrorists be outfitted with fake ‘hoax suicide bomb vests,’ if their objective was mass casualties?

This aspect will most likely be swept aside, as mainstream media might suggest that the alleged attackers could not obtain real explosives – but this doesn’t adequately explain why they were wearing fake suicide vests.

In less than a few hours, a “series of coordinated terror attacks” has been declared by MET police.

No forensic review or careful examination of a crime scene, yet again…

QUESTION: Will the three masked London attackers have ties to ISIS or al-Qaeda  – while also maintaining a link to British security services as seen in other ‘Known Wolf’ cases?

As with previous high-profile ‘terror’ events, the mainstream media and authorities have been quick to assign a motive and categorize the event as a “terrorist attack.” The official narrative is that the perpetrators were ‘inspired by ISIS’ and were following appeals by so-called ‘Islamic State’ leaders on the internet to use the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to carry out random attacks against non-Muslims in London.

Here’s a screenshot from NDTV depicting authorities supposedly moving in to ‘neutralize’ the alleged London attackers…

London-screenshot

The police and media were quick to announce late last night that the security operation was being led by the Met Police, and not the Intelligence agencies. This is important to note because immediately after the Manchester Bombing, the UK government launched Operation Temperer, where PM May, on the “advice of JTAC,” went ahead and deployed British military troops on the streets but working under the command of police to provide a “static armed guard” at key locations.” This set a precedent for the UK which signals a move away from the normal separation of civil police and the military – and moving towards a continental European model of a militarized police, as in France and other countries. Interestingly, the troops were withdrawn after only a few days, perhaps because of accusations that May was nudging country towards Martial Law. The government claimed that this was because the JTAC ‘Threat Level’ had been reduced from “critical” down to “severe.”

1 Martial Law UK copy

POST-MANCHESTER: In a ‘show of force’ Theresa May placed troops on the streets of Britain, but under the command of the Met Police.

It’s important to remember that prior to the Manchester and Parliament Square attacks, mass casualty drills had been held and in one case, Met Police rehearsed a ‘terrifyingly realistic‘ drill on the River Thames.

As we’ve mentioned at 21WIRE numerous times in recent years, many political leaders and media operatives bang the drums of security over so-called terror ‘sleeper cells’ (see the the London Boys sleeper cell) hiding in a nation near you – none of them acknowledge the historical fact that they themselves have also helped to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through counter-terrorism operations for decades.

When we learn who will ultimately “claim responsibility” for the latest attacks in London – it’s worth reviewing a set of patterns often seen in the aftermath of these types of events:

– Suspects have alleged connections to terror or terror networks (potentially security as well).
– Multiple suspects reportedly have ‘radicalized’ views on religion, feeding a prepackaged media narrative which may conflict with other details about said individuals.
– Sensational media projections that bring in additional story lines for dramatic effect.
– A  ‘presumed’ terror motive is publicly accepted with vague evidence provided.
– Politicians, law enforcement and media call the incident a ‘terror attack’ before all evidence has been reviewed, with predictable calls for increased security.Here’s a YouTube clip featuring FOX News coverage of the attacks, which also includes an interview with an eyewitness discussing the shelter in place scenario which took place after the London terror event…

QUESTION:  Will the London triple attacks increase racial and ethnic tensions in the West, while also pushing the public into accepting a more direct military intervention in Syria – if so, who benefits the most from this latest attack?

Author Shawn Helton is Associate Editor of 21st Century Wire, as well as an independent media forensic analyst specializing in criminal investigations and analyzing media coverage of terrorist events and theatres of war. 

Featured image: theearthchild.co.za

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Permanent Warfare Sustained by Media Propaganda

June 4th, 2017 by John Stanton

“USCENTCOM commanders announced today that they intend to maintain their presence in [Afghanistan, Iraq and Qatar] until the sun runs out of hydrogen, thus committing the US to the longest duration deployment in human history. When asked how they planned to maintain the presence in the three countries for a projected length of 4 to 5 billion years, planners said ‘we’re working on a plan for that. We don’t have one yet, but not having a plan or an intelligent reason to do something has never been much of an impediment for us in the past; we don’t foresee it being a big show stopper for us in the future either.’ 

Among the options that were being discussed was an innovative program to “interbreed” the deployed personnel. “We are going to actively encourage the military members in these countries to intermarry and raise children that will replace them in the future. Sure, it may be a little hard on some of our female service members, since there currently are about 8 men for every woman over there, but we expect that to be Overcome by Events (OBE) as the sex ratios will even out in a generation or two.

In any case the key to the plan is to make these assignments not only permanent, but inheritable and hereditary. For example, if you currently work the Joint Operations Center (JOC) weather desk, so will your children, and their children, and their children, ad infinitum. We like to think of it as job security.” Captain (Combined Joint Task Force-180)

Coincident to the Pentagon’s request for thousands more US soldiers to be shipped off to Afghanistan comes the massive vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBID) attack in Kabul that has killed nearly 100 and wounded 400 others. Among the wounded are said to be about a dozen US citizens who, likely, are defense and support contractors. The Taliban vehemently denied any involvement in the attack. The Islamic State, or an affiliated group, is the likely suspects.

Image result

A wounded man at the site of a huge explosion in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, on Wednesday. The bombing killed at least 80 people and injured hundreds. No group has taken responsibility for the attack. (Source: Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

And so the world is off to the races again with a news cycle that features the routine victim portrayals, on scene interviews, expert analysis, and statements from leaders around the world condemning the attack and vowing to carry the fight to the evil doers. A billion year crusade indeed!

Americans watch the carnage on television or the Internet and empathize for, maybe, 10 minutes. Then, at their own peril, it is back to soap operas, video games, sporting events, the mobile device and the Game of Thrones television series: Seems like much of the world does the same thing. We are into civilian body counts on television, or the Internet, now with an occasional US soldier’s death reported. This is not dissimilar to watching body counts during the Vietnam War only civilians lead the gruesome counts.

Mini-Tet Offensives

Meanwhile, the Kabul attack becomes a prop to support the Pentagon’s request for more US troops to support Afghanistan, Iraq and the eternal global war on terrorism. But how are a few thousand US soldiers sent to and fro going to bring the Taliban to its knees or stop terrorist attacks from happening anywhere in the world? Even as the Islamic State is being squashed in Iraq and Syria, they are able to create havoc in Baghdad, Kabul, the Philippines and Manchester, UK.

Don’t we need 500,000plus soldiers as we did in Vietnam to crush the adversaries? Why the incremental increases Why not seek the services of 1 million American citizens via the draft to go and get the job done in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria?

The suicide attacks are mini-Tet Offensives: They remind world leaders and military planners that they are largely helpless to eliminate terrorist attacks. The relatively low numbers of reinforcements requested by the Pentagon are puzzling. If the US wanted to annihilate the Taliban and the Islamic State, they’d get the Whole of American Society involved in the task. Most Americans don’t care about US military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria.

The Haunting

“In a New York Times article dated August 7, 1967, two unidentified generals were quoted who stated that he had destroyed a single North Vietnamese division three times:

‘I’ve chased main-force units all over the country and the impact was zilch. It meant nothing to the people. Unless a more positive and more stirring theme than simple anti-communism can be found, the war appears likely to go on until someone gets tired and quits, which could take generations.’

The other general’s quote was

‘Every time Westmorland makes a speech about how good the South Vietnam Army is, I want to ask him why he keeps calling for more Americans. His need for reinforcements is a measure of our failure with the Vietnamese.’”

Replace the “anti-communism and Vietnamese” with the Taliban, Islamic State or any terrorist group and the sentiments from 1967 are relevant in 2017.

In many ways, American society is culturally fragmented and stove-piped in three factions: Left, right and center. This is not dissimilar to the late 1960’s, early 1970’s. Aggressive Alt-Righter’s have taken up the mantel of Neo-White Nationalism, an ideology that finds friends in a Republican White House and Justice Department Attorney General Jefferson Sessions.

The Democrat Left still bemoans Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016 and has, as yet, no aggressive platform to counter the Alt Right or appeal to its lost followers. The Independent Center looks Left and Right and disdains the rigid, uncompromising ideology they hold. If the stovepipes crack open in the worst way, the streets are where passions will be fought for as they were during the Vietnam era.

Vietnam

There are other similarities to the Vietnam experience. President Donald Trump’s administration is in disarray and under investigation by the US Justice Department. CNN reports that former FBI director James Comey will testify in the US Senate that Trump pressured him to halt the investigation into Russian influence operations during the 2016 presidential race. The country is already, officially a nation at war and is even flirting with a war against North Korea. To top it off, Trump just declared war on the planet on June 1 by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords. The Trump Administration is cornered and dangerous.

It’s hard not to draw comparisons with the Vietnam War experience. The convergence of the anti-war and anti-racism movements, the criminal investigations of  president Richard Nixon, and a cultural sea change challenging the established order was, then, unprecedented. Its ghosts seem to be haunting the American Republic at this moment in time.

According to the History.com:

Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the Tet Offensive Communist attacks, news coverage of the offensive (including the lengthy Battle of Hue) shocked and dismayed the American public and further eroded support for the war effort. Despite heavy casualties, North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, painful American withdrawal from the region.”

History does repeat itself simply because humans are repetitive creatures.

“And corruption is stranglin’ the land. The police force is watching the people and the people just can’t understand. We don’t know how to mind our own business, ’cause the whole world’s got to be just like us. Now we are fighting a war over there but no matter who’s the winner we can’t pay the cost.” Steppenwolf Monster, 1969.

John Stanton can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: britannica.com

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“Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?…What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” – Zbigniew Brzezinski, in conversation with Le Nouveau Observateur (January, 1998) [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

 

Zbigniew Brzezinski, counselor and trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, professor of American foreign policy at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and most famously National Security Adviser under US President Jimmy Carter passed away on Friday May 26th in a Falls Church, Virginia Hospital. He was 89. [2][3]

Brzezinski, though hardly a household name, enjoyed an influence over international politics that few intellectuals outside elected office can hope to attain. In addition to his numerous academic treatises, and the role he played in the Carter administration, he was active in the secretive and influential Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group. Additionally, he co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller.[4]

As investigative journalist Daniel Estulin exposes in his 2009 book, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, all of these bodies convene business and political leaders alongside select members of the press behind closed doors with the aim of undermining sovereign democracies and imposing a policy framework favouring a privileged few. Estulin’s analysis reveals that membership in one or more of these bodies functions as a kind of rite of passage for aspiring presidential candidates in both major US political parties.

It could be posited therefore, that Brzezinski, given his influential role in these organizations, may be more powerful in a sense than elected presidents. [5]

The application of Brzezinski’s theories on utilizing ethnic national struggles as a cudgel against the Soviet Union, was supportive in securing the collapse of the USSR. However, as he would concede in his later writings, this approach has proved to be a spectacular failure in terms of attaining what he called US “global primacy” on the world stage forcing a rethink of his earlier 90s era imperial framework.

More importantly, Zbig’s strategy has left a trail of bloodshed and mayhem throughout Eurasia, extending into the Middle East, North Africa and even ‘coming home to roost’ in major American and European centres.

Zbigniew Brzezinski is the author of several pivotal works, including Between Two Ages : America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (1970), The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997), and Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power.

Given the ultimate breadth of his influence, this week’s Global Research News Hour commemorates the passing of this controversial figure with an overview of his life and legacy, through the eyes of four observers.

In the first half hour, writer, author and commentator Jay Dyer analyzes Brzezinski’s core beliefs and activities in the pre-Carter era, and the role of the Trilateral Commission in advancing his influence over Carter and successive presidential administrations. We later replay part of an October 2016 interview with Andrew Korybko, in which he described Brzezinski’s important role in the development of ‘hybrid warfare’ in the modern era. We get the perspective of John Helmer, who was a White House staffer in the Carter era. Finally, University of San Francisco Professor and scholar Filip Kovacevic examines the impacts of Brzezinski’s strategies in the post 9/11 era, his later rethink of the idea of “US Primacy,” and the prospects of neoconservative decision-makers in Washington following his lead.

Jay Dyer is a contributor to 21st Century Wire and author of Esoteric Hollywood: Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film. He is a public speaker, lecturer and comedian, and has authored hundreds of articles. His website is jaysanalysis.com

Andrew Korybko is a geopolitical analyst and an American commentator based in Moscow. He is the author of Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change. He currently studies at the Moscow State University of International Relations and is a member of the expert council for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Predictions at the People’s Friendship University of Russia. He works for Sputnik.

John Helmer is the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent based in Moscow, and directs his own independent bureau there. He has been a professor of political science, sociology and journalism, and has advised government heads in Greece, the United States and Asia. He served as a staffer in President Jimmy Carter’s White House from 1977 to 1981. Helmer recently composed two articles on Brzezinski: Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Svengali of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency is Dead, But the Evil Lives on, and The President’s Inferiority Complex, His Advisor’s Russia-Hating Obsession, and the Putsch Plotter with the Itchy Trigger Finger. Both can be found on Helmer’s website, johnhelmer.net.

Filip Kovacevic is a Montenegrin geopolitical author, a university professor, and chairman of the Movement for Neutrality of Montenegro. He has authored seven books and numerous articles and teaches at the University of San Francisco. Well versed on Zbigniew Brzezinski’s published works, Professor Kovacevic also serves as senior analyst for Russia and the Balkans for Newsbud.com.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca 

Notes:

  1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
  2. Daniel Lewis (May 26, 2017), “Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter, Dies at 89”, New York Times; https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/zbigniew-brzezinski-dead-national-security-adviser-to-carter.html?mcubz=1
  3. Zbigniew Brzezinski (2012), Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power (Basic Books); author bio
  4. Daniel Estulin (2009), “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group” pg. 144, 160 (Trine Day)
  5. Daniel Estulin (2009), “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group” pg. 43-44, 77-87, 109-112, 137-147) (Trine Day)

 

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have renewed push against the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the southeastern Syrian desert. The SAA began advancing in the Al-Dakwa area and Beer Kasab in order to link up in the Zuluf reserve area. The operation followed an FSA advance against government troops on Wednesday when US-backed militants failed to push the SAA from the Zaza triangle. FSA sources blamed Russian airstrikes and pro-Iranian militias for this failure.

In eastern Homs, the SAA advanced on Al-Abbasiya and Al-Sukari southeast of Palmyra, but ISIS members repelled the attack and forced the army to retreat. Russian warplanes and helicopters have bombed ISIS targets near Al-Sukari and Al-Abbasiya, east of the Arak field, and in Sukhnah.

The SAA Tiger Forces have captured the villages of Jadyaa Saghira and Jadyaa Kabira south of the ISIS-held town of Maskana and the Maskana silos. Thus, the SAA isolated the ISIS stronghold from the southern, western and northern directions.

Experts believe that ISIS will be forced to withdraw from the strategic town soon. However, there is always a chance that terrorists decide to defend the town by all means.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Republican Guard has conducted limited attacks against ISIS east of Khanasser, drawing the terrorist group’s attention from Maskana.

Russian warplanes have destroyed three ISIS convoys fleeing Raqqa, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed in a statement on Thursday. The convoys were attempting to escape from Raqqa in the southern direction on Monday but the Russian Aerospace Forces prevented this. 80 ISIS terrorists were killed and 36 vehicles, 8 fuel trucks and 17 pickups equipped with mortars and machine guns were destroyed.

“The Command of the Russian Air Force group in Syrian Arab Republic warned that any efforts of ISIS’ insurgents to leave Raqqa through the open corridor to Palmyra will be suppressed,” the statement reads.

The ministry added that the US-led coalition and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are maintaining an open corridor for terrorists south of the city.

In May, the SDF released an official statement denying any allegations that they may allow ISIS members to flee Raqqa and arguing there is info indicating that the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance cooperates with ISIS near Palmyra.

Meanwhile, the SDF captured ath-Thadyayn near the Baath Dam south of Raqqa. Clashes have reportedly continued in the Baath Dam itself as claims of the pro-SDF sources that it had been fully retaken appeared to be untrue.
According to opposition sources, the SDF began negotiations with ISIS members suggesting them to withdraw from the dam and the nearby villages. The same approach was implemented in Tabqa and in the Tabqa Dam where terrorists accepted an open corridor deal.

ISIS also released statements claiming that some 23 Kurdish fighters have been killed in the recent clashes in the Raqqa countryside.

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Bahraini regime has issued an unjust verdict against top Islamic scholar Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim on the day the regime’s King Al Khalifa was meeting US President Donald Trump in Riyadh.

On Sunday, a Bahraini court sentenced, Sheikh Qassim, spiritual leader of the country’s Shiite Muslims majority, to one year in jail suspended for three years. The court further ruled to confiscate properties managed by Ayatollah Qassim worth 3 million Bahraini dinars (almost $8 million) and two of his homes.

The court also ordered Ayatollah Qassim, who is in his mid-70s, to pay 100,000 Bahraini dinars ($265,266) in fines over the charges, which emanate from the collection of Islamic tax called Khums, which in Shiite Islam is collected and spent by a senior cleric in the interests of the needy.

In Shiite Islam, Khums is part Furu’ al-Deen which means the branches of religion it is one-fifth of the amount of a year’s savings, (after deducting all the lawful expenses from the earnings of that year).

Therefore, in a country such as Bahrain where the majority of Muslims adhere to Shiite Islam, criminalizing the collection of Khums is tantamount to suppression of religious beliefs and obligations. The Manama regime has not only criminalized the collection of Khums but has gone ahead and grabbed properties worth $8 Million acquired from contribution by Shiite Muslims in the Persian Gulf Kingdom for distribution to the needy.

Disenfranchising Shiite Muslims

In reaction to the repressive verdict, Bahrain’s senior Islamic scholars have said that the trial and conviction of Sheikh Qassim, represented a major shock. They believed it also represents “the persecution of the Shiite Islam and its beliefs”, while warning that the verdict which disenfranchises Shiites will have grim repercussions.

In a statement, the senior Islamic scholars noted that

“Ayatollah Qassim has a distinguished place in the public’s sentiment”, stressing that violating the belief in Khums is considered a flagrant violation of the Shiite teachings.

Shiite Muslims have been denied the right of having Members of Parliament, their media outlets have been closed while their main political party, Bahrain have been denied the right to have any media outlet while al-Wefaq National Islamic Society has been banned.

Most of the leaders of al-Wefaq have seen their citizenship revoked or jailed, including its spiritual leader Sheikh Qassim, and its secretary general Sheikh Ali Salman. 

By confiscating finances managed by Ayatollah Qassim and seizing his properties while prohibiting him from collecting Khums, the Bahraini regime intends to cripple his activities and prevent him from assisting marginalized Shiite Muslims while curtailing the spread of Shiite Islam in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom.

Bahrainis have persisted in resistance

The Bahraini regime was expected to issue a tougher verdict against Ayatollah Qassim but could not dare execute such a move in fear of far reaching repercussions. Masses in Bahrain have shown the ability for consistency in their resistance against the western-backed Al Khalifa regime. Since the beginning of the Islamic awakening uprising in February 2011, Bahrainis have demonstrations on an almost daily basis demanding that the Khalifah dynasty relinquish power and a just system representing all Bahrainis be established. Despite the presence of Saudi and UAE troops assisting regime forces in the crackdown, the masses have persisted in their resistance. Anti-regime demonstrators have also  been staging sit-in protests in Diraz village since June outside the residence of Sheikh Qassim  to express their solidarity with the 79-year-old cleric since authorities revoked Sheikh Qassim’s citizenship last year.

Trump backs suppression of Shiites Muslims in Bahrain

The jailing of Sheikh Qassim on the day US President Donald Trump met Bahraini ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa in Riyadh sends a message that Washington fully backs the Manama regime in its suppression of Shiite Muslims in the tiny  Persian Gulf Kingdom.

Trump in Bahrain (Source: Alwaght)

Trump told the Bahriani ruler that,

“We’re going to have a very, very long-term relationship. I look forward to it very much – many of the same things in common.”

Trump’s White House decided this year to pursue a $5 billion sale to Bahrain of 19 Lockheed Martin F-16 aircraft and related equipment, which was held up last year by human rights concerns.

Washington is throwing its weight behind the brutally repressive Al Khalifah regime, because Bahrain serves as the base for the US Fifth Fleet.

Featured image: Alwaght

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How accurate is the theory that there are tragic events of exceptional strength that really shape the identity of a nation? How is this happening and what if we do not learn a lesson out of those experiences?

– The prominent French writer Renan wrote in his lecture “What is a Nation?” that people are often connected by memories of shared suffering, and Serbs are no exception. Today, when Yugoslavia is no more, there is no reason why Jasenovac should not be brought back to the center of the Serbian identity, just like the Jews did with Auschwitz.

During the Balkan wars and the First World War, we had a great victory, but also a lot of suffering. We were always criticized for building our identity on suffering, defeat, and therefore, for hardly looking towards the future.

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Milos Kovic

– When Americans ask you a question like that, then they should be reminded of the Hollywood spectacle “300” about Leonidas, that they filmed and earned a great amount of money. What are the ethics taught in this film? It’s not about celebrating only defeats. Battles are fought to be won. Nobody wants to die. War ethics require courage, wisdom and victory. And defeats teach us lessons and they should make us wiser.

If we draw a parallel between the behavior of the Allies in the First World War and what happened in the nineties, we can see that in both cases the Serbian interests were crushed and betrayed, but despite all harmful decisions for us, we still walk persistently toward the European integration.

– In 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a stick in one hand, and in another it had a bag, and they offered Serbia integration, better roads, better health care, better schools. The only condition was to give up independence. The EU today is having the same behavior, even worse. The stick is thicker and the carrots are thinner. It is interesting that, after all, at present a large percentage of Serbs are ready to plunge the country into the EU and to give up sovereignty and freedom, and in 1914 it was unthinkable.

Why was it unthinkable?

– The answers are within ourselves. We are subject to special treatment by the great powers who applied similar methods in Hawaii, the Philippines, the Wild West, in India. But we cannot always blame someone else. The Serbian honor was famed by Serbs from the Republika Srpska and the former Republic of Krajina (in Croatia). Just look at the unfortunate Montenegro, the former Serbian Sparta. Or our desolate Belgrade, which is still acting as if it was the capital of Yugoslavia. Compared to our ancestors, we are really distinguished by cowardice, fatalistic passivity and laziness. All this, however, can change quickly. Vladislav Petković Dis (Serbian poet) lamented in the same way over the Serbian vices, on the eve of the big victories 1912-1918. We only need determination, intelligence and courage.

Nowadays many people believe that our defeats from the end of the 20th century are somehow rooted in victories from the Balkan wars and the First World War, because at that time we got a new State?

– I would say that this kind of debate relates only to the nineties. The generations fleeing the military mobilization and protesting against their own country, at a time when the Serbs across the Drina river were fighting for survival, are now running from their own weakness and are accusing their grandfathers and great-grandfather. Those fathers plunged a mighty sword into the hard stone, and their sons, not being able to pull out that sword, are accusing their fathers for of it. Our grandfathers left us a great Yugoslav State. We, our generation, we were not able to preserve it. It is easy to blame the dead for our own weakness. Let’s look in the mirror and answer the question about where we were and what we did in the nineties when Yugoslavia was broken down and what we are doing today when they are trying to break down our Serbia.

What actually happened to the Albanians in 1912, 1913, 1914, and after 1941?

– It was offered to the Muslim Albanians, who were a privileged class in the Ottoman Empire, to live in a relatively well-ordered and modern Yugoslav State instead of the Ottoman Empire. As equal citizens with their former serfs. Unfortunately, most of them refused. The hostility of Albanians towards the new State was based on class and religious grounds. That is why in the forthcoming World War, the majority sided with the occupiers and enemies of the Serbian people and they again committed genocide against the Serbian people in Kosovo and Macedonia, but also against the Macedonians.

To what extent is the issue explored in the Serbian historiography? Were there any punishment and reprisals in the Serbian army?

– Yes, there were. There are preserved commands from officers during the retreat across Albania stating that any robbery of Albanian civilians would be severely punished. In the short story “Resimić the drummer” Dragisa Vasic describes one such case, when the starving Serbian recruits, while crossing Albania, steal fowl in an Albanian village, and at the request of peasants, the Serbian officer shoots dead those kids. It was a real historical event.

Simon Sebag Montefiore in his “Jerusalem”, considers the Albanians very seriously and notes that they have grown as a strong ethical group since the beginning of the 19th century. By what means did we underestimate them as a group and a political power?

– It must be said that Belgrade really underestimated the Albanian nationalism and that it was generally despised. We were unable to encourage professionals for Albanian studies. There were some, but not enough. It is still difficult to find one who would deal with this important question. Unlike Albanians who, at least in Kosovo and Metohija, were learning Serbian, we were not learning Albanian. So, there has been some underestimation, especially of the Albanian nationalism, and we paid the price. Nevertheless, we must not waste time on blaming ourselves, we must not lose faith in our own strength and we should not forget that the future belongs to those who do not surrender.

 Milos Kovic is Assistant professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade University. He is the author of  “The only path: Entente Powers and the defense of Serbia in 1915.”

Translated from Serbian by Svetlana Maksovic

Original:

Source: ZURNALIST.RS 31.05.2017.

The Duran, English

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The new President of France, Emmanuel Macron, announced on 2nd June, that all Europeans must now come together to “Make our Planet Great Again”. This, in response to the news that the American President, Donald Trump, confirmed that the United States is pulling out of the Paris climate accord – in order to make “America Great again.”

So let me make a shrewd guess at what Emmanuel Macron wants us to understand with his particular take on ‘making the planet great again.’ And I would add, all other signatories to the climate change accord, along with him.

They are all supposedly dedicated and committed supporters of the supposition that an excess of CO2 (primarily) is warming the Earth to a dangerous degree, and must be prevented from doing so further via actions which greatly reduce carbon emissions in everyday life. Right?

OK, so all you wise and earth-caring politicians, if you really believe in your own rhetoric, will you answer a few questions from a curious observer? These same questions also apply to many others who share Mr Macron’s views.

Image result for carbon emission

Source: NewsPatrolling

Firstly, why are you so openly promoting the invasions of foreign countries, arms sales and general rhetoric of ‘war against terrorism’ when it is a well established fact that the military, including air force and navy, are amongst the single greatest contributors to climate destabilization?

Are you aware that the military (US,* NATO, national forces) are amongst the highest, if not highest, users of fossil fuels on the planet; releasing vast volumes of toxic materials directly into the earth’s atmosphere and doing immense physical damage to the planet’s fabric at the same time?

Secondly, why do you promote, or at least fail to limit, the widespread use of monocultural agrichemical farming practices which greatly inhibit the soil’s capacity to absorb CO2 emissions?

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Source: www.wnif.co.uk

Thirdly, why do you continue to allow the expansion of commercial airlines, the building of new runways and the concreting over of green spaces, when you know that high flying jet aircraft disrupt the ozone layer and deposit toxic carbons over vast regions of the upper atmosphere – and indeed on Earth as well?

Fourthly. How come you support, and fail to control, freight carrying cargo ships that ply their trade from one end of the planet to the other, yet have been identified as emitting high levels of CO2, contributing further to overall volumes in the atmosphere?

Fifthly, Why are you so proud of making your new domicile in a power hungry palace and generally showing your admiration for all facets of industry that deliver ‘growth’ by extracting the maximum amount of energy from the earth, at the cost of potential ecocide?

Is this your way of  “making the world great again” ?

In fact, why, if you believe in what you say, do you support the current global economic agenda at all, now that you know that ‘maximum growth neoliberal globalism’ is the chief cause of the very problem you swear is bringing the planet to its knees?

Please can you answer these questions Mr Macron? Please can you answer these questions leaders of the European Union and other countries that signed the Paris climate accord?

Please can you deliberate over these observations climatologists, environmentalists, greens and all others who say ‘the science must be right’ without ever bothering to examine the question themselves, or indeed change their life styles?

I think I can second guess Mr Macron’s response, not that it would be heard in public. So here it is:

“Oh, but the economy is far too important to allow anything to get in the way that might be contrary to its continuous growth and expansion. Arms sales are our biggest earner. Invasions of foreign countries are, err, necessary to defeat terrorism. Agrichemicals and GMO are essential to feed the world. Airlines promote global tourism, easy business and exports.

We must get our priorities right, after all, we cannot go against ‘the laws of the market place’. People must have easy access to the widest possible range of ‘affordable goods’. We cannot arbitrarily limit people’s choice, can we..”

May I interrupt for a moment Mr Macron? What if the price of these ‘affordable goods’ is inhuman, sweat-shop slave labor in Southern hemisphere countries, leading on to the mass production of both commodities and foods that are then packaged, shipped and flown all around the world, contributing hugely to global CO2 emissions?

No reply.

Maybe you didn’t know that a typical range of foods you see being dumped into a supermarket trolley has traveled more that 7,000 kilometres. Is that mitigating climate change? Is that supporting  short supply chains and ecologically benign energy footprints?

No reply.

And what about your military exploits in other countries? In light of the fact that you now know that the CO2 spewing war-machine, a product of the military industrial complex that you are so proud of, is entirely antithetical to your insistence that ‘in order ‘to make the world great again there must be a united effort to reduce CO2 emissions’  – are you willing to radically revise your foreign policy position?

No reply.

Lastly, Mr President and all other masters of hypocrisy, are you happy with dumping barely disguised ‘carbon taxes’ on ordinary people striving to earn a basic living, while you and your business and banking elite plunder the national coffers – and the planetary ones – so as to acquire ever higher salaries, pay-offs and luxury perks for yourselves and your families?

No reply.

So in fact, Emmanuel Macron and similar proteges, you either don’t believe one iota in CO2 provoked climate change in the first place, or you couldn’t give a damn’ about it, even if you might agree with it. Right?

No reply.

Postscript: 

It should be plain by now, to all uncritical believers in the ‘climate accord’ that it is a giant hoax. That none of those ‘important people’ who stand up on a world stage and state that ‘counteracting climate change is the single mot important concern of the decade’ demonstrate any personal interest in their public protestations.

They are fakes. And all those who are genuinely concerned about this issue, should return to square one,  do their own research and seek to find their own answers. Don’t be led by the nose.

 

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, an international activist, writer and broadcaster. His articles appear in a wide diversity of journals and on-line sites. He is President of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside and spends much of each year in Poland. Julian is the author of two acclaimed titles: Changing Course for Life and In Defence of Life. Read more on www.julianrose.info.

Note

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/the_pentagons_hidden_impact_on_climate_change/

This article first appeared in www.connorpost.com

Featured image:  Chesnot / Getty Images

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It was a normal day and people would move to their destinations, some by cars while others on foot. The streets were teeming with commuters as it was exactly when people rush to their jobs in the morning. Suddenly, a fierce explosion jolted the diplomatic and highly secured zone of Kabul and sent blowing shockwaves to surroundings within a kilometer or so. It wreaked a massive havoc in human and financial terms, killing nearly 100 people and incurring multi-million dollars loss.

Afghan Officials claim the suicide bomber in a sewage truck packed with powder-keg tried to convince the security guards that it is granted permission by an [unknown] embassy before hitting the button on dashboard to implode the staggering 1,500 kg of corrosive explosives. It is an official reasoning and media leaned on it.

There are televised commentaries as well as powerful assumptions that challenge that it was a missile that struck the diplomatic enclave. Some 20 to 30 people including security guards in the vicinity of the explosion site have died with no clue of corpse and blown to tiny pieces thanks to the intensity of the blast.

One more mystery about Wednesday’s incident is that the militant group can rarely or never possess such powerful explosives that could produce an earthquake-like explosion, and it reveals that something is wrong.

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ISIS nexus in Afghanistan (Source: TheNewsTribe)

The attack had strong impacts as for the first time as an international display of condolence, the Paris Eiffel tower went dark overnight to pay tribute to the Afghan victims.

The Afghan president Ashraf Ghani wasted no time to announce the execution order of 11 Taliban and Haqqani inmates to heal the wounds and disarm angry Kabulis and above all to stop a large protest rally from shaping up. But it was too late.

The furious Kabul residents concurred to stage an enormous demonstration in protest of the bloody explosion. A notice was well circulated across social media calling Kabulis for a powerful march towards the presidential palace. The peaceful demonstration turned into violence that killed seven people and added to the Wednesday’s deaths.

Afghanistan’s wrathful and war-weary population rarely restrains its feelings to avoid a violent protest.

In the aftermath of the attack, Afghanistan’s media took to explore facts behind the tragedy. The next day, social media burst with posts that blamed Iranian embassy and Russia for the disaster. The other day media reported that the suspected sewage truck belonged to the company of an Afghan MP, Mirwais Yasini, who is already defamed by social media over being an ISI agent in Kabul. But such allegations could be counted as minutiae for investigation into a terror attack as such.

This is a premature and hasty blame-game crafted and unleashed by true masterminds of the attacks to distract general trend from approaching it.

The Taliban rebel group denied responsibility and condemned it with words that it only struck civilians. Afghanistan’s intelligence agency hurled the blame on Pakistan-based Haqqani Network which has yet to claim responsibility. Long after the blast, the Islamic State popped up to assert responsibility as though one might have awakened it to assume it. This is all confusing the nation.

Almost every catastrophic incident in Afghanistan, notably in the capital Kabul, is followed by a war of words between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan government now holds Islamabad directly responsible for it, while in early years, it used to blast at Pakistan-based terrorist groups.

Undeniably, Pakistan is the facilitator of the insurgent terror bombings in Afghanistan at the behest of others, though it is not willfully and singlehandedly chalking out attacks of this magnitude. The US and also the UK, as main war drivers, quietly sidesteps from the line of Afghan-Pak strife, posing as third parties to the Afghan war.

We [Afghans] now live in a more precarious time when the US is working to make twists in its Afghan policy and strategy. Covering the latest tragedy in Kabul, the Western mainstream media has one thing in common to say that

“Afghanistan’s plunging into instability even though the US and allies are struggling to combat”.

It depicts the situation in a fashion that empowers the US and allies to endorse its presence on the ground and cement its position about the new war strategy and policy on the horizon.

Who draw on the most profit out of such media propaganda? It is the same powers that take a handful of reasons back home to propel their war plans.

Peace in Afghanistan is a distant dream. The latest Kabul attack or the escalating flames of war, in general, are the mouthpiece of a fresh US strategy hurtling towards Russia. A documentary by Al-Jazeera titled “ISIL: Target Russia” features that the group is beefing up on the northern and eastern Afghanistan. An Islamic State commander speaking to Al-Jazeera claims that somewhat 2,000 ISIL/ISIS men are embattled in northern Afghanistan while few others have managed to enter into Russia. He says:

“These 2,000 fighters will strike against Russia when the time is ripe”

Kabul explosion

Security forces inspect near the site of an explosion where the German Embassy is located in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday. Rahmat Gul | AP

However, the Islamic State’s capacity to storm Russia sounds implausible. The Afghanistan’s Islamic State, it is argued, is designed to play threat to Russia for its involvement in Syria’s anti-ISIS military campaign that is paying off. What reflects and backs this hypothesis is that the Islamic State’s rise in Afghanistan coincides with Russian intervention into Syrian conflict. We can affirm that ISIS’s fiasco in Syria produced Afghanistan’s branch of the Islamic State in a relatively marginal scale.

In the Islamic State’s wicked war on Russia, what is concerning and disastrous for Afghanistan is the way it hurts the people. The Kabul’s deadly explosion is a manifestation of this dangerously growing force. The Manchester attack, for example, and Kabul’s attack are both by-products of the inflicted dirty war directed from the same address. As a false-flag, the Manchester’s terrorist assault was an advanced show of the Islamic State’s strength in the face of the world that barely believes in or dismisses the terrorist activities.

In the current stretch of history, the warmongers push for an enormous tragedy that can win global heed into the West’s “war on terror”. As much as it becomes tough for a bogus war to produce justifications for its viability that drags on unfoundedly, more deadly events would be imminent, a vortex that Afghanistan is now facing with.

 

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In April the New York Times, published this BS: Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron

The campaign of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been targeted by what appear to be the same Russian operatives responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials before last year’s American presidential election, a cybersecurity firm warns in a new report.

Security researchers at the cybersecurity firm, Trend Micro, said that on March 15 they spotted a hacking group they believe to be a Russian intelligence unit turn its weapons on Mr. Macron’s campaign — sending emails to campaign officials and others with links to fake websites designed to bait them into turning over passwords.

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The group began registering several decoy internet addresses last month and as recently as April 15, naming one onedrive-en-marche.fr and another mail-en-marche.fr to mimic the name of Mr. Macron’s political party, En Marche.

Those websites were registered to a block of web addresses that Trend Micro’s researchers say belong to the Russian intelligence unit they refer to as Pawn Storm, but is alternatively known as Fancy Bear, APT 28 or the Sofacy Group. American and European intelligence agencies and American private security researchers determined that the group was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee last year.

The “Macron attack” was very curious. Gigabytes of campaign emails were released by “the hackers” just hours before a media silence period before the election. The campaign immediately found fakes with Cyrillic markings and blamed “Russia”. None of the released emails contained anything that was even remotely scandalous. It was likely a planned Public Relations stunt, not a cyber attack.

That NYT report was complete nonsense. The “cybersecurity firm” it quoted was peddling snake oil. Phishing attacks are daily occurrences, mostly by amateurs. Phishing emails are not cyber attacks. They are simply letters which attempt to get people to reveal their passwords or other secrets. They are generally not attributable at all. Likewise APT’s, “Advanced Persistent Threats”, are not “groups” but collections of methods that can be copied and re-used by anyone. After their first occurrence “in the wild” they are no longer attributable.

That isn’t just me saying so. It is the head of France’s cyber security agency:

The head of the French government’s cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack.

In an interview in his office Thursday with The Associated Press, Guillaume Poupard said the Macron campaign hack “was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone.”

He said they found no trace that the Russian hacking group known as APT28, blamed for other attacks including on the U.S. presidential campaign, was responsible.

Poupard says the attack’s simplicity “means that we can imagine that it was a person who did this alone. They could be in any country.”

If, as the NYT claims, the authors of the attack on the Macron campaign were the same as in the Clinton case then the Clinton campaign was likely not hacked by Russians.

That will of course not hinder Clinton to claim that “the Russians” were the ones who caused her to lose the election. Clinton has by now listed 24 guilty persons and organizations that caused her loss. She is not one of them.

In her latest Clinton

suggested that Russia or Trump were somehow behind a deliberate inflation of his numbers of twitter followers through the use of bots, because [Trump’s] European and Middle East tour had been a flop.

‘Who is behind driving up Trump’s twitter followers by the millions?’ she said.

‘We know they’re bots. Is it to make him look more popular than he is? Is it to influence others? What is the message behind this?

The Clinton claim of “driving up Trump’s twitter followers by the millions” is fake news based on a hoax. Twitter Audit, where Clinton got the bot numbers from (h/t @LutWitt), says that of the current 15 million plus followers of @HillaryClinton only 48%, or 7,605,960, are real and 8,108,833 fake.

For the @realDonaldTrump account Twitter Audit finds that 51% of its 30 million+ followers are real. Not a great margin but still better than Clinton.

Clinton once famously said “We came, we saw, he died” and laughed (vid). She was talking about the murder of Muhammad Ghaddafi of Libya. She still does not understand why people might be turned off by her vile character. She should take more time to talk with her daughter. Chelsea for one does not like gags about killing presidents:

Hillary Clinton lost it (vid – see her off-the-meds rants on the election starting at 12:00 min). She needs a vacation on some lone island and a long period of silences in some remote cloister. Anything she adds now only reflects badly on her.

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Brexit Britain, Alone and Ignored

June 3rd, 2017 by Craig Murray

Britain’s pusillanimous reaction to Trump’s crazed decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change shows the stupidity of believing that Brexit Britain will be a mighty player bestriding the world stage.

Britain is about to go down on its knees before Trump to beg for post Brexit trade access to the USA, so is in no position to stand up to him as France, Germany and Italy did yesterday. They issued a powerful joint public statement:

“We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies. We are convinced that the implementation of the Paris Agreement offers substantial economic opportunities for prosperity and growth in our countries and on a global scale. We therefore reaffirm our strongest commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement, including its climate finance goals and we encourage all our partners to speed up their action to combat climate change.”

By contrast, we are expected to believe that May expressed her “disappointment” to Trump in a private phone call. Given May’s congenital inability to address any subject directly, and the new servility in Britain’s position vis-a-vis the United States, I think we can all guess how that went.Britain is now a diplomatic non-entity. We are grovelling around the world for trade access, including the most dreadful displays of obeisance to the Saudis who export the ideology and the funds for terrorist jihadism. We have a buffoon for a Foreign Secretary, who is not regarded abroad with the friendly tolerance which Tory England extends to him because he is posh. We have the disgraced Liam Fox in charge of securing international trade.

I do not hold up the Paris Agreement as perfect or even adequate, but it was a huge stride forward in the international acceptance of man made climate change and the need to address it. Trump’s statement of renunciation yesterday notably failed to make any straightforward acknowledgement of the existence of man made climate change. We have heard much in this election campaign from the Tories criticising Corbyn’s hesitation to commit to launching nuclear weapons to destroy the planet. Yet the Tories are failing to take any kind of action to deter the true threat to our children’s existence.

Welcome to Brexit Britain, a diplomatic irrelevance, scrabbling for an economic niche, utterly devoid of principle.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was also British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. Visit his website HERE.

Featured image: True Publica

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On June 8, during Israel’s preemptive Six-Day War, an act of aggression, not self-defense against regional Arab states, the IDF did the unthinkable.

It provocatively attacked its main ally, striking the USS Liberty intelligence gathering ship, in international waters about 25.5 nautical miles northwest of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in international waters.

The incident took 34 US lives, another 171 wounded, the vessel severely damaged, lucky to stay afloat.

It was deployed to monitor belligerents’ communications in response to Israeli aggression on Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq – not the other way around.

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Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (Source: britannica.com)

In August 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin admitted Israel had a choice, saying:

“The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches (did) not prove that (President Gamal Abdel) Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

In February 1968, future Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1974 – 77 and 1992 – 95) told the French newspaper Le Monde:

“I do not believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”

In 1978, Israeli Air Force Commander General Mordechai Hod said:

“Sixteen years of planning had gone into those initial eighty minutes. We lived with the plan. We slept on the plan. We ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it.”

In April 1972, IDF chief General Haim Barlev said

“(w)e were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility.”

Other Israeli political and military officials admitted the same thing. Israel wasn’t threatened. Yet it lawlessly and aggressively attacked four regional countries without just cause – along with its main ally America.

Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer called Lyndon Johnson’s failure to hold Israel accountable “one of the classic all-American coverups.”

Israel knew the ship’s identity, its US flag clearly visible. Good weather conditions made it easy to spot.

Israeli warplanes circled overhead before attacking, at times low enough for US sailors to wave to its pilots. They waved back before opening fire with rockets and machine guns against the lightly armed vessel.

A second wave of planes used napalm, setting parts of the deck ablaze. Israeli attack boats struck the vessel with torpedoes, causing a 40-foot-wide hole in its hull, flooding lower compartments, causing the ship to list 10 degrees, a defenseless smoking hulk, lucky to avoid sinking.

Four other Israeli torpedoes missed their target. Its warplanes strafed the Liberty at close range.

The ship’s radio frequencies were jammed to prevent a distress call for help. When finally able to communicate, it was too late. The damage was done, the human toll testimony to Israeli viciousness.

When attack began, the Liberty was following its signal-intercept mission off Sinai’s coast in international waters at a speed of about five knots.

Israeli forces were ordered to fire on any unidentified vessels proceeding at over 20 knots – at the time, a speed only warships could attain.

The Liberty was clearly identified. Israeli claims otherwise were lies. It took 16 hours for two US destroyers to arrive, then a third warship.

Medical help was provided. Liberty was escorted to Malta for repairs enough to return to America.

Decommissioned a year later, the ship was removed from Naval Vessel Register listings, part of Washington’s coverup.

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Maintaining strong US/Israeli ties mattered more than the lives of its seamen. Liberty survivors were decorated quietly, its Captain William McGonagle (image on the left) awarded Congressional Medal of Honor recognition – the nation’s highest award for valor in action against an enemy force.

Israeli aggression wasn’t mentioned. A US Naval Court of Inquiry claimed no responsibility “to rule on the culpability of the attackers, and no evidence was heard from the attacking nation.”

It lied saying “available evidence combines to indicate a case of mistaken identity.”

At the same time, it found “heroism displayed by the commanding officer, (along with) officers and men of the Liberty exceptional.”

A Joint Chief of Staff’s report contained evidence relating only to communication system failures. Nothing about Israeli aggression.

An unnamed CIA source said Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan personally ordered the attack, wanting the Liberty sunk, its crew members killed.

Israel and America whitewashed the incident, part of covering up IDF aggression, committing war crimes against regional nations and its main ally.

Surviving crew members were ordered to stay silent about the incident. The disturbing truth is well known today – though officially the Big Lie about what happened persists.

Israel attacked the Liberty to prevent information on what it was up to from getting out – preemptively attacking four regional nations, seizing the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

The Sinai was returned to Egypt as part of the 1978 Camp David Accords. Palestinian territories have remained illegally occupied since 50 years ago this month.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: ussliberty.org

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President Donald Trump took what critics are saying is “one of the most ignorant and dangerous actions ever taken by any President” Thursday afternoon and pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.

“An abdication of American leadership and an international disgrace,” was how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) described the move, announced from the White House Rose Garden.

With scant mention of the word “climate,” Trump framed the decision as one being made in the interest of the “forgotten men and women” of America, who he has vowed to protect against the “exploitation” of foreign nations, putting “America first.” Long-debunked fossil fuel industry talking points about lost jobs and economic “suffering” peppered the speech that was said to be “literally wrong about every single thing.”

The real estate mogul said “we are getting out” of the non-binding accord but said he’d either re-negotiate the current agreement or forge “an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its tax payers… and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great, and if we can’t, that’s fine.”

He ended the address saying that it is time to put American cities like “Youngstown, Detroit, and Pittsburgh…before Paris, France.”

Climate campaigners and other advocates of a global effort to combat global warming immediately condemned the move.

“Generations from now, Americans will look back at Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement as one of the most ignorant and dangerous actions ever taken by any President,” declared Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. “Trump’s decision to ignore the vast majority of the American public and the scientific community will harm our country, costing us lives, jobs and our role as a world leader. Trump has isolated our country on the world stage, ceding our leadership position and our economic advantage on clean energy to India and China, and justifying it all by chanting a slogan from a baseball hat.”

“It’s a stupid and reckless decision,” declared 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben in a Thursday New York Times op-ed. “Our nation’s dumbest act since launching the war in Iraq. But it’s not stupid and reckless in the normal way. Instead, it amounts to a thorough repudiation of two of the civilizing forces on our planet: diplomacy and science.”

Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice, similarly said:

“Far from putting America first, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is a short-sighted sop to the fossil fuel lobby. It is a profound failure of American global leadership. It willfully ignores the climate crisis. It will cost U.S. workers clean energy jobs. History will judge withdrawing from the Paris Agreement as a huge error.”

With an emergency White House protest called to counter the president’s speech, others vowed to “harness public outrage into meaningful on-the-ground action.”

“Trump has made his decision and we’re making ours,” said 350.org executive director May Boeve. “We won’t be dragged back by a shortsighted and destructive fossil fuel puppet in the White House.”

“We will harness public outrage into meaningful on-the-ground action,” Boeve continued. “By working at the local and regional level, communities can organize for powerful and lasting change, forcing elected officials to choose a side: that of Trump and his fossil fuel billionaire cabinet, or that of the people fighting for a stable climate and an economy that works for everyone.”

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, lamented,

“with our world speeding toward a climate catastrophe, Trump just stepped on the gas.”

But, Suckling continued,

“the rest of America will keep fighting global warming and this reckless president. We’ll battle his dangerous agenda in the courts, in the streets, and at the state and local level across the country. We won’t let corporate power and this corrupt administration condemn our planet to disaster.”

Watch the speech below:

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

Featured image: Common Dreams

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After 20-plus years of being lost in the muddy centre ground of British politics, the Labour party now stands tall again as the party of social democracy, rooted in values of social justice, participation and unity. Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour is offering a positive message of hope at the coming UK election and presents a real alternative to the Conservatives.

Despite the unrelenting assault on Corbyn by the media and the Conservatives, Labour’s message for change is gaining traction. To his great credit Corbyn has not sunk to the level of exchanging insults, has shown great dignity when attacked and has focused on criticising policies not individuals.

The latest polls estimate Labour has reduced the Torie’s lead from 22% to 5% or even 3%, depending on which pollster one reads. If this is accurate and reflects the final vote it would result in a hung parliament, which would be a tremendous achievement for Labour. A hung parliament describes a parliament in which no single party has an absolute majority of seats. Interestingly, such a state of affairs is also known as a balanced parliament.

The more people hear about Labour’s policies and see Corbyn, the more support for Labour grows. And why wouldn’t it: Labour has designed a set of rational proposals that, if made manifest, would transform Britain from a nation suffocating under a blanket of austerity and injustice, to a fairer country in which public services – including schools and hospitals – are properly funded and where everyone is valued. Conversely as more details emerge about Theresa May – who is by all accounts a narrow-minded control freak – the less appealing, she and her fanatical cohorts become.

The Labour manifesto is filled with light and energy. All areas of responsibility are dealt with from early years education and the environment to foreign policy, health care and of course the economy. It is a manifesto designed to repair the severe damage caused by a brutal Conservative government that is literally destroying the country piece by piece. It is a manifesto and a Labour leadership many of us have been waiting years for. The party and its policies are more or less in tune with the worldwide movement for change, and is a positive development, not just for Britain, but for the world.

“We will measure our economic success not by the number of billionaires, but by the ability of our people to live richer lives.”

Income tax would increase for some, but

“no rises in income tax for those earning below £80,000 a year and no increases in personal national insurance contributions or the rate of VAT.”

Major investment in infrastructure and essential public services – decimated under the Conservative’s crushing and needless austerity programme. A National Transformation Fund, similar to Germany and the Nordic countries, would be set up to “invest £250 billion over 10 years in upgrading our economy.” Energy systems would be transformed with investment in “state-of-the-art low-carbon gas and renewable electricity production,” and, encouragingly, they plan to “ensure that 60 per cent of the UK’s energy comes from zero-carbon or renewable sources by 2030.” Fracking – the source of a major greenhouse gas – would be banned. Corbyn, a life-long peace activist and founding member of Stop The War, would appoint a Peace Minister.

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Common-sense proposals include, bringing private rail companies (many of which are owned by foreign governments) back into public ownership, renationalising Royal Mail and gradually forming a publicly owned decentralised energy system. University tuition fees, which have gone from £3,000 a year to £9,000 under the Conservatives, would be scrapped, a hand of friendship extended to refugees and migrant workers. A unified National Education Service (NES) for England would be set up, “to move towards cradle-to-grave learning that is free at the point of use,” and “free, lifelong education in Further Education (FE) colleges, enabling everyone to up-skill or retrain at any point in life.” Unions would be welcomed back into the workplace, the minimum wage increased to £10 per hour, zero hours contracts and unpaid internships banned, and a maximum pay ratio between workers and Directors/CEO’s of 20-1 introduced (currently the gap can by ten times this or more).

The rental housing market, which is currently completely out of control, will be regulated so people have security in their home and rents they can afford. There are plans for a National Care Service, wide-ranging mental health provision, increased funding for the police and fire services (the Conservatives have cut 10,000 fire-fighter jobs and closed dozens of fire stations throughout the country), support for the NHS, changes to Legal Aid. No additional prisons will be privatised (it’s scandalous that any have been), 3,000 new prison officers will be recruited, art education in schools encouraged and funded, and a new national Culture Fund established.

Vitality and the language of optimism, cooperation and fairness, wash through every section. In the midst of the rise of right-wing politics, worldwide turmoil and uncertainty, the policies articulated offer real hope and stand out as a chance for renewal and social justice in a world where these democratic ideals are in short supply.

Apathy says ‘politicians are all the same, nothing ever changes’; well this is nonsense and always has been, it’s a weak excuse for democratic irresponsibility. In this upcoming election the differences between the Conservatives and Labour are defined and stark; its importance cannot be overstated, the magnitude of the choice is immense, the responsibility on us all, great. Everyone must vote, particularly those under 30 years of age, who routinely don’t bother. If, as the polls suggest, we end up with a hung parliament, Conservative extremism would be held in check, debate and cooperation encouraged. If, and it’s a big if, Labour takes it, the atmosphere and direction of the country would be changed immeasurably for the good, and the World would have taken a small, but enormously significant step in the right direction.

Graham Peebles is a freelance writer. His collected essays are at www.grahampeebles.org. He can be reached at: graham@thecreatetrust.org.

Featured image: Garry Knight via Flickr

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Under conditions of mounting tensions with the United States, Germany is expanding its already close political and economic ties with China.

At a joint press conference in Berlin with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that in the period since China initiated diplomatic relations with Germany 45 years ago, the country has “become an increasingly important and now strategic partner.” This applies to “the entire spectrum” of relations, “of a political as well as economic nature … but also with regard to the cooperation on cultural and social issues.”

“At times of global instability,” Merkel said, both countries feel they “have a responsibility to expand our partnership in these diverse areas and intervene in favour of a rules-based global order.”

She was “happy” that there was “during this year a very intensive exchange.” Another visit is planned by Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of the G20 summit in early July in Hamburg.

Trading relations had been “an important subject” in the talks, Merkel continued. It had been

“agreed that trading nations like Germany and China should cooperate and issue a clear recognition of free trade,” declared Merkel, in what was a barely concealed swipe at US President Donald Trump.

At the G7 summit last week, Trump repeated his criticism of Germany’s trade surplus and threatened to adopt counter-measures.

Germany’s political and economic relations with China are already more developed than with any other country outside of the European Union (EU). Regular government consultations have been taking place between the two countries since 2011.

“China was our most important trading partner in 2016, with a bilateral trade volume of €170 billion. These are already very impressive figures,” Merkel said.

Merkel and Li had “discussed that we want to expand these developments, which have been positive for both sides.”

The two countries signed 11 agreements and declarations of intent, according to the German government’s web site, including on cooperation in air travel technology, electronic mobility and recycling technology, and in the area of artificial intelligence. Partners on the German side included industrial giants like Airbus, Daimler, VW and Bosch, as well as mid-sized businesses and research institutes.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang shake hands - behind them a bank of photographers with cameras.

Prime Minister Li Keqiang was in Berlin for talks with the Chancellor (Source: Bundesregierung/Denzel)

Deutsche Bank signed a five-year cooperation agreement with the China Development Bank (CDB) on Tuesday. Both banks committed in the agreement to finance projects on the “New Silk Road,” up to a cost of $3 billion. With its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, the Chinese government hopes to revive the trade route of the Middle Ages with massive investments in infrastructure in order to connect China’s major economic centres with Europe and Africa.

Germany and China also intend to cooperate more closely in the future on climate protection measures.

China will “continue to adhere to its promises within the framework of the Paris Agreement on climate change,” Li announced in Berlin, only a few hours before Donald Trump declared the US was exiting the deal in Washington.

The picture of Merkel and Li jointly reaffirming their commitment to the Paris Agreement took on a symbolic character under such conditions and was circulated widely around the world.

It is expected that during his visit to Brussels today, Li will sign a joint agreement with EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Council President Donald Tusk on wide-ranging cooperation to combat climate change.

Cooperation between Germany and China on security policy matters is relatively new. With regard to North Korea,

they “shared the conviction that North Korea could pose a danger to world peace,” Merkel said.

At the same time, they were “committed to a negotiated solution that is very, very urgent.” Germany declared its readiness “to be able to contribute to such a solution.”

Li also noted that they “want to cooperate more closely on other security policy matters.” Among other things, Germany and China want to “provide assistance to Afghanistan to rebuild its society and economy, and help them to increase their security capabilities so that the population can live there in peace.” The two countries would consult closely on “other international issues,” including “the Iranian nuclear dossier and the Istanbul process.”

Cooperation is also developing in the military sphere. German soldiers took part in joint exercises with troops from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for the first time on Chinese territory during the 2016 “Combined Aid 2016” aid exercise. It was the first joint exercise between the PLA and any European army. Armed forces from both countries are already working side by side in Africa in UN missions, such as Minusma in Mali.

The deepening cooperation between Berlin and Beijing in a number of important policy areas is directly bound up with fraying Transatlantic relations, which have been a cornerstone of German foreign policy since the founding of the Federal Republic 70 years ago. Following last week’s NATO and G7 summits, Merkel called the alliance with the US into question during a speech in a Munich beer tent on Sunday, and declared that Germany would now take its “fate” into its own hands.

Although neither Merkel nor Li referred to the US or Trump by name during the press conference, German-Chinese cooperation is increasingly directed against the policies of the US, which is turning to economic protectionism and preparing for a military confrontation with Iran and North Korea. Such conflicts would not only be targeted at China, but also the geopolitical and economic interests being pursued by German imperialism in Asia.

Featured image: China.org.cn

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The Plot to Scapegoat Russia

June 2nd, 2017 by W.T. Whitney Jr.

The Cold War we are familiar with ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his new book “The Plot to Scapegoat Russia,” lawyer and human rights activist Dan Kovalik writes about a new Cold War against Russia – and about the peace that never came. He discusses the role of the Democratic Party and the CIA, but his book centers on exploring the cause of why hostilities are back.

The real motivations of revived confrontation are hardly the stuff of day-to-day news, and so the author relies upon the historical record for discovering the origins of a new Cold War. Along the way he explains why the old Cold War was waged.

He regards the commonly – accepted explanation as a pretext: “the Cold War, at least from the vantage point of the US, had little to do with fighting ‘Communism,’ and more to do with making the world safe for corporate plunder.”Implicitly this proposition serves to account for other U. S. wars and interventions.

Without elaborating, Kovalik casts the CIA as the lead plotter in these intrusions. It has the right skills, he suggests, because it is “a nefarious, criminal organization which often misleads the Ameri­can public and government into wars and misadventures,” In his own book, “The Devil’s Chessboard,” David Talbottraced the Cold War machinations of former CIA head Allen Dulles’ and thus was well qualified to provide an introduction for the present volume.

According to Talbot,

“Russia (long with China) is the only country capable of even marginally standing in the way of Washington’s vast imperial ventures.”

These two themes – the real reason for why the United States fights wars and the CIA’s role in such wars – set the tone for the history Kovalik recounts in his highly recommended book.

Image result for dan kovalik

Author, Dan Kovalik

Readers hungry to know about the “plot” advertised in the book’s title will need patience. At the point Kovalik is discussing the current U. S. – Russia confrontation, he has already conducted a tour over time and across the world that surveyed U. S. interventions and foreign meddling. Having identified patterns of U. S. aggression, he presents a scenario that clarifies U. S. motivations for abusing Russia.

This book offers materialso encompassing as to belie its small size. Kovalik’s writing is clear, evocative, and readable. Along the way, he recalls those causes and the outrage that fired up activists who were his contemporaries. That’s a side benefit.

In college Kovalik learned about CIA machinations in Central America. Revelations from former agents Philip Agee, Ray McGovern, and John Stockman astonished him. His first trip to Nicaragua exposed him to a harvest of killings and terror. He learned first-hand about the role of Contra paramilitaries, recruited and paid for by the CIA. At one point he was comforting a father burying his son, killed by the Contras, along with 50,000 other Nicaraguans.

The author recalls the four churchwomen and six Jesuit priests murdered by U. S. – trained soldiers in El Salvador, U. S. support for soldiers and paramilitaries who killed and displaced populations in Colombia, and the CIA’s Operation Condor by which South American client states murderedpolitical enemies. He recounts U. S – instigated coups in Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1954; and Chile, 1973. Along the way he mentions U.S. war in Vietnam, occupation and war in Korea, nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear testing and dying in the Marshall Islands, and the CIA’srecruitment of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen in Afghan­istan.

This was the justification: keeping “the world safe from the threat of Soviet totalitarianism.” Then the Soviet Union was no more and the search was on for a new pretext. Having turned to “humanitarian intervention,” the Clinton administration soon was assisting the Paul Kagame regime in Rwanda and other African nations as they assaulted the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“US mining interests” were satisfied, Kovalik says, but “nearly six million people” people died.

Clinton’s government intervened in Haiti and participated in the destruction of Yugoslavia, Europe’s last socialist state.Supposed humanitarian motivations were behind the United States role in delivering Libya into chaos. For the author, U. S. pretensions and brutality stand in contrast to the relatively benign nature of Russian misdeeds.

More recently, in Kovalik’s telling, the U. S. government settled upon the rationalization of  “American exceptionalism.” This is

“the belief that the US is a uniquely benign actor in the world, spreading peace and democracy.”

Thus terror was exported to Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen, where Saudi Arabia acted as a U. S. proxy. The list includes the 2009 military coup in Honduras facilitated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

For the author,

“The US’s outsized military exists not only to ensure the US’s quite unjust share of the world’s riches, but also to ensure that those riches are not shared with the poor huddled masses in this country.”

Good relations with Russia would be

“simply bad for business, in particular the business of war which so profoundly undergirds the US economy … As of 2015, the US had at least 800 military bases in over 70 nations, while Britain, France and Russia had only 30 military bases combined.”

And,

“under Obama alone, the US had Special Forces deployed in about 138 countries.”

Having surveyed decades worth of U.S. interventions abroad, military and otherwise, Kovalik turns to Russia. In the early 1990s that fledgling capitalist state was in crisis, he reports. Life expectancy had plummeted, the poverty rate was 75 percent, and investments in the economy were down 80 percent. National pride was in the cellar, the more so after the United States backed away from Secretary of State Baker’s 1991 promise that NATO would never move east, after the United States attacked Russia’s ally Serbia, and after the United States attacked Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 without consulting Russia.

He regards Russia’s approach to Ukraine as defensible while reminding readers that Russia offered to cooperate with the United States in ending war in Syria. And U. S. claims about lack of democracy in Russia seem strained, especially when, as Kovalik insists, the United States abuses peoples the world over and itself suffers from a “severe democracy deficit.”

He argues that the Obama administration, particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was obsessed with Russia and that Democrats currently are fueling hostilities, backed by a compliant media. He discusses WikiLeaks revelations about the Democratic Party and hacking attributed to the Russians.

He also suggests, without offering specifics, that the CIA is involved. Kovalik doesn’t comment on possible interaction between Trump campaign personnel and Russian officials.

US Army training in Iraq in support of the ‘Global War on Terrorism’

But prior to his discussion of confrontation with Russia, Kovalik had devoted considerable attention to why and how the United States harasses other countries. The reader, therefore, already knows never to expect U.S. imperialism to give Russia a break and knows why that is so.

Kovalik’s treatment of the Soviet Union is an essential part of his narrative. For one thing, many of the U. S. military interventions he reports on wouldn’t have occurred if the Soviet Union still existed. But basically,

“the Soviet Union, did wield sizable polit­ical and ideological influence in the world for some time, due to the appeal of its socialist message as well as its critical role in winning [World War] II.”

Kovalik acknowledges “periods of great repression.” He adds, however, that

“the Russian Revolution and the USSR … delivered on many of their promises, and against great odds. …. In any case, the goals of the Russian Revolution—equality, worker control of the economy, universal health care and social security— were laudable ones.”

And,

“One of the reasons that the West continues to dance on the grave of the Soviet Union, and to emphasize the worst parts of that society and downplay its achievements, is to make sure that, as the world-wide economy worsens, and as the suffering of work­ing people around the world deepens, they don’t get any notions in their head to organize some new socialist revolution with such ideals.”

Ultimately, Kovalik sides with Martin Luther King, who remarked that,

‘The US is on the wrong side of the world-wide revolution’–

and with Daniel Ellsberg’s clarification:

‘The US is not on the wrong side; it is the wrong side.’”

W. T. Whitney Jr. is a former pediatrician that now lives in Maine, USA. He usually writes articles on Latin America and casually on health care.

*     *     *

Excerpt from the book:

An in-depth look at the decades-long effort to escalate hostilities with Russia and what it portends for the future.

Since 1945, the US has justified numerous wars, interventions, and military build-ups based on the pretext of the Russian Red Menace, even after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and Russia stopped being Red. In fact, the two biggest post-war American conflicts, the Korean and Vietnam wars, were not, as has been frequently claimed, about stopping Soviet aggression or even influence, but about maintaining old colonial relationships. Similarly, many lesser interventions and conflicts, such as those in Latin America, were also based upon an alleged Soviet threat, which was greatly overblown or nonexistent. And now the specter of a Russian Menace has been raised again in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia examines the recent proliferation of stories, usually sourced from American state actors, blaming and manipulating the threat of Russia, and the long history of which this episode is but the latest chapter. It will show readers two key things: (1) the ways in which the United States has needlessly provoked Russia, especially after the collapse of the USSR, thereby squandering hopes for peace and cooperation; and (2) how Americans have lost out from this missed opportunity, and from decades of conflicts based upon false premises. These revelations, amongst other, make The Plot to Scapegoat Russia one of the timeliest reads of 2017.

Author: Dan Kovalik

Print ISBN:  978-1-5107-3032-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3033-5

Year: 2017

Click to order

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Why is ISIS Operating in the Philippines?

June 2nd, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

In response to violence allegedly instigated by ISIS in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao, imposed military rule, and threatened to extend it nationwide to defeat the threat.

What’s going on? Why did ISIS begin operating in the Philippines? Weeks after taking office in mid-2016, Duterte blasted Western imperial Middle East policies, saying the Obama administration and Britain “destroyed the (region)…forc(ing) their way into Iraq and kill(ing) Saddam.”

“Look at Iraq now. Look what happened to Libya. Look what happened to Syria.”

He blasted former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for failing to act responsibly against what’s gone on for years – on the phony pretext of humanitarian intervention and democracy building.

He called Obama a “son-of-a-bitch” for his unaccountable actions – no way to make friends in Washington, especially if his geopolitical agenda conflicts with US aims.

On the day he declared martial law, he met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow for discussions on future military and economic cooperation.

Image result for duterte and jinping

Philippine president given red carpet treatment in Beijing, with both sides agreeing to resume talks on South China Sea (Source: South China Morning Post)

He seeks improved economic and military ties with China. Ahead of visiting Beijing last October, he said

“only China…can help us,” adding:

“All that I would need to do is just to talk and get a firm handshake from the officials and say that we are Filipinos and we are ready to cooperate with you, to help us in building our economy and building our country.”

“If we can have the things you have given to other countries by the way of assistance, we’d also like to be a part of it and to be a part of the greater plans of China about the whole of Asia, particularly Southeast Asia.”

He promised to cool tensions over South China Sea disputes.

“There is no sense fighting over a body of water,” he said.

“We want to talk about friendship (with Beijing). We want to talk about cooperation, and most of all, we want to talk about business. War would lead us to nowhere.”

He announced no further joint military exercises with America, saying he’s open to holding them with China and Russia.

Shifting away from longstanding US ties doesn’t go down well in Washington. Are efforts by ISIS to establish a Philippines foothold part of an anti-Duterte Trump administration or CIA plot independent of his authority?

According to a June 2 Duran.com report, retired Philippine military official Abe Purugganan claims ISIS violence in Mindanao is part of an opposition Liberal Party plan to undermine Duterte and oust him from office – citing information from a party whistleblower.

Below are the comments The Duran posted, saying:

“There is a lot of noises and chatters flooding the cyberspace, you got to use your discernment to filter all these information.”

“LETS PLAY FIRE WITH FIRE,” explaining “(t)hese are the exact words stated by Loida Lewis and her fellow oligarchs on a meeting months ago with Liberal Party members abroad,” adding:

Their plan is to use ISIS or ISIS-connected terrorists to instigate violence and chaos in Mindanao, wanting Duterte’s government destabilized and ousted.

If the information reported is accurate, it explains what’s now going on, likely to worsen, perhaps spread to other parts of the country.

Last week, Duterte said

“if I cannot confront (ISIS terrorists threatening the country), I will resign. “If I am incompetent and incapable of keeping order in this country, let me step down and give the job to somebody else.”

If US dirty hands are behind the ISIS insurgency, he’s got a long struggle ahead, trying to overcome the attack on him and perhaps Philippine sovereignty.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

Featured image: INQUIRER.net

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U.S. President Donald Trump announced, on Thursday, June 1st, that “We’re getting out” of the global agreement on limiting the amount of greenhouse gases pouring into the Earth’s atmosphere. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had described the agreement (which he had signed), by saying of it: “I believe the Paris agreement can be a turning point for our planet. It’s the biggest single step the world has ever taken toward combating global climate change.” Trump doesn’t place a high priority on the issue, and he says that to adhere to the agreement would hurt America’s economy, which he obviously cares about much more than he does about the planet’s climate. 

According to the vast majority of climate-scientists, there will be no way to avoid this planet’s climate-burnout unless the promises of the Paris Climate Agreement are kept. It therefore needs the support of the world’s second-biggest national emitter of greenhouse gases; it needs U.S. President Trump’s support. The world’s biggest emitter, China, is unwavering in its commitment to the agreement. So too is virtually the entire planet — except the U.S.

In 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was approved by the U.S. Senate, and as a consequence of that, no new legislation is required in order for the U.S. to participate in this Agreement, which has since become a part of that Framework Agreement. 

The only other gigantic national contributor to global warming gases (20.09% of the total), China, signed the Agreement on 22 April 2016, and is not threatening at all to back out. The United States, the second-biggest emitter, accounts for 17.89% of the total, and likewise signed on that date. But President Trump is withdrawing the U.S. That, however, could lead ultimately to the collapse of the participation of the other 194 countries, maybe even of China’s participation — unravel and destroy the entire global effort to save this planet (from its humans, who thus are obligated to do what we can to reverse our destruction of the planet). 

Any intelligent person knows that abandoning this agreement wouldn’t merely be an insult to those other 194 nations; it would also be an insult to our planet. Our grandchildren should hate us if we do that. Unless this nation quickly reverses the course that Trump has chosen, they will hate us for it.

Therefore, I propose a global boycott against the U.S. aristocracy, the U.S. billionaires who control U.S.-based international corporations (the people who control the U.S. government). The way to do this would be for an international conference to be held, under U.N. auspices, in order to determine which U.S.-based international corporations are to be boycotted in the first phase, which will be be added in the second phase if need be, etc.; until the U.S. government complies with its global obligation and rejoins the Paris Agreement and is monitored strictly for its compliance with that commitment. If the U.S. then vetoes such a resolution at the U.N. Security Council — since this matter has already been officially recognized by the U.S. government as being crucial to international security — then yet an additional phase of the boycott should kick in, until the U.S. aristocracy buckles.

The alternative to such a boycott will be planetary burnout. Which of the two alternatives is preferable? Is the answer to this question not clear?

In any event, the alleged reason why Trump decided to end U.S. cooperation with the rest of the world on this, was:

“Compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 according to the National Economic Research Associates.  This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs.”

The appropriate way for the planet to respond to that concern would be to continue the boycott of the products of U.S. headquartered international firms until at least that number, 440,000, of U.S. manufacturing jobs, would be hit by it.

Trump announces US withdrawal from Paris Climate Accord (Source: Fox News)

However, that ‘440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs’ was the estimate of NERA, which gets its money from the coal, and liquified natural gas, and nuclear, and other established energy-creation industries — all of the dying ones, none of the ones that are becoming increasingly cost-effective, which are the types that would be soaring if the Paris agreement doesn’t break apart. NERA is no scientific information-source; it’s a propaganda-source. Desmog blog reported:

“NERA” is shorthand for National Economic Research Associates, an economic consulting firm SourceWatch identifies as the entity that published a June 2011 report on behalf of coal industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). ACCCE’s report concluded, “clean-air rules proposed by the Obama administration would cost utilities $17.8 billion annually and raise electricity rates 11.5 percent on average in 2016.”

That report went so far to say that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations of the coal-generated electricity sector would amount to some 1.5 million lost jobs over the next four years.

NERA was founded by Irwin Stelzer, senior fellow and director of the right-wing Hudson Institute’s Center for Economic Policy. In Oct. 2004, The Guardian described Stelzer as the “right-hand man of Rupert Murdoch,” the CEO of News Corp., which owns Fox News. 

According to NERA’s website, the late Alfred E. Kahn, the “father of deregulation,” advised NERA’s 1961 foundation

In 2010, NERA published a letter to the New York Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to protest the prospective closure of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants.

A NERA report from earlier this year provided the basis for the popular King Coal refrain that the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) Rule would cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars and “kill” 180,000-215,000 jobs.

These figures were picked up and cited by climate change denier U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in June when he spoke out against President Barack Obama’s mythological “war on coal,” as well as by the Republican Policy Committee in a May policy paper titled, “Obama’s War on Coal.” 

So, that provides a good indication, as to which types of U.S. international companies would especially need to be included in the first phase of the international boycott. Basically, it’s the type that pay Republican politicians more than Democratic politicians.

What other approach than an international boycott, can be effective in order to force such an extremely corrupt nation to do what it must do, for the entire world — to join the rest of the world, in salvaging the entire planet?

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: The Atlantic

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TRUMP PULLS U.S. OUT OF PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD.

World’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter will remove itself from global treaty as Trump claims accord ‘will harm’ American jobs. ‘A reassertion of America’s Sovereignty’.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-trump-idUSKBN18R1J4
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40127326
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/01/donald-trump-confirms-us-will-quit-paris-climate-deal
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-to-announce-us-will-exit-paris-climate-deal/2017/06/01/fbcb0196-46da-11e7-bcde-624ad94170ab_story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html

(Editorial) Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord. Here’s what Trump’s decision on the climate change pact says to the world: America cares little about science, its allies and competitiveness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/trump-paris-climate-change-agreement.html

Critics lament Trump climate move.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-quotes-factbox-idUSKBN18S6KQ

Deal cannot be renegotiated: EU leaders.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-eu-idUSKBN18S6GN
http://www.politico.eu/article/france-germany-and-italy-paris-deal-cannot-be-renegotiated/

U.S. and global leaders react to Trump’s exit from Paris climate change pact.
http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/trump-paris-climate-change-agreement-reaction/

World leaders accuse Trump of turning his back on the planet.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/world/trump-paris-agreement-world-reaction/index.html

World leaders condemned Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement on climate change.
http://www.dw.com/en/world-reacts-to-us-withdrawal-from-paris-agreement/a-39088295

Trudeau tells Trump Canada is disappointed by withdrawal from Paris climate deal.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-mckenna-trump-paris-deal-1.4142211

Is Trump abandoning US global leadership?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40127896

Can China be a world leader on climate change?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/can-china-be-a-world-leader-on-climate-change/article35184534/

Musk to quit Trump advisory councils.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-musk-idUSKBN18S6EO

Goldman’s Blankfein criticizes U.S decision to leave Paris climate deal.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-goldman-sachs-idUSKBN18S6MC

Apple CEO says he pleaded with Trump to stay in the Paris climate accord, “but it wasn’t enough.”
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-cook-memo-condemns-trump-paris-climate-accord/

Obama slams Trump for leaving Paris climate agreement. ‘Trump rejects future’.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/01/barack-obama-slams-donald-trump-paris-climate-239032
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/335975-obama-trump-will-reject-the-future-by-pulling-out-of-paris-accord

Trump makes Europe (feel) great again.
http://www.politico.eu/article/trump-makes-europe-feel-great-again/

UN climate negotiator slams White House for having “no idea” how Paris Agreement works.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-agreement-climate-trump-united-nations/

Washington, California, New York band together to form climate alliance.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/01/climate-alliance-washington-california-new-york-239038

US mayors, governors vow to stick with Paris accord.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/us/trump-climate-deal-cities-states-defying/

All photos are from the author.

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Escalated US War on Syria Likely

June 2nd, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

In March 2011, Obama launched war on Syria, using ISIS, al-Nusra and other terrorists as imperial foot soldiers.

The aim then and now is destroying Syrian sovereignty, ousting Assad, replacing him with a pro-Western puppet, eliminating an Israeli rival, isolating Iran ahead of a similar scheme against its government, and claiming another US imperial trophy.

That’s what the war is all about, orchestrated by Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. There’s nothing civil about it – one of many Big Lies about what’s going on.

Russia’s good faith efforts to resolve things diplomatically are consistently undermined by Washington and its rogue allies – NATO, Turkey, the Saudis, Israel and others.

NATO’s announced escalated “fight against terrorism” beyond its current involvement in Syria and elsewhere, along with the enormous arms deal Trump arranged with Riyadh is bad news for hoped for Middle East peace.

Trump’s visit to Brussels last week was all about enlisting greater NATO support for America’s imperial project on the phony pretext of combating terrorism Washington and other alliance members support.

America, NATO, Israel, and other rogue regional states back what Trump calls “a common threat to all of humanity.”

“Terrorism (won’t be) stopped in its tracks” as long as Washington uses death squad diplomacy to advance its imperium.

Endless wars continue raging with no prospect for resolution any time soon. Trump wants NATO members spending more on militarism and belligerence to serve US interests.

Arms sold to Saudi Arabia are for waging war OF terrorism, not ON it. They have nothing to do with defense, everything to do with aggression and oppression.

They’ll end up in the hands of ISIS, al-Nusra and other regional terrorists, be used in waging terror war on Yemen, perhaps prepare for war on Iran, along with homeland repression.

Long-suffering Syrians face endless imperial war on their homeland. How much more carnage is too much?

How long will the world community tolerate the intolerable? Multiple rounds of good faith Russian orchestrated peace talks since 2012 achieved no breakthroughs because Washington and its rogue allies want endless war and regime change – no matter the human cost.

While hopeful for conflict resolution, Putin fears the worst, “possible dismemberment of Syria,” the Syrian Arab Republic eliminated.

Addressing heads of international news organizations on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, he expressed concern that four “de-escalation zones may turn into a blueprint for future borders” – a possible outcome Russia categorically opposes.

At the same time, he’s patient, hoping for eventual conflict resolution, preservation of Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Efforts to achieve these objectives have a long way to go, America’s imperial project the major obstacle.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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John McCain in Australia

June 2nd, 2017 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

There is no getting away from the fact that a visit to that known outpost of American Empire, Australia, softens the mind and leads to a more vigorous wagging of tongues than usual. Away from the scrutiny of a full blooded Washington press corps, politicians can engage in speculation and hyperbole. The paternalists can slip into something more comfortable, and lord over their retainers.

US Senator John McCain, one such paternalist on tour, was a true picture for budding psychologists on his visit down under. There was a chance for sightseeing in Australia, and offering what would amount to a more moderate touch than the US President.

Having expressed his deep concern at the exploits of the Trump administration, he was trying to hold things together – if only barely. In his sprinkling of views and addresses, the themes of stability and reassurance were pressing, neither of which are particular convincing in this age of Trump.

In a 30 minute address in the NSW State Library’s reading room, McCain was hyping the paternal, familial line: Australians need not be worried that the Grand Uncle across the Pacific had, with a set of similar, affirmed values, forgotten them.

“I realise that I come to Australia at a time when many are questioning whether America is still committed to these values.”

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John McCain delivering a speech at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Tuesday, May 30, 2017 (Source: ussc.edu.au)

These shared values, uttered like a Tibetan mantra, were those of “truth over falsehood, fairness over injustice, freedom over oppression, and the immortal spirit of humankind.”[1] The United States was far bigger than “the person in the White House.”

McCain’s words offered a broader message about reassuring allies in a time where the soothsayers in Washington are finding themselves unwanted. Australia was by no means the only ally to be troubled, noted the veteran senator from Arizona.

“Other American allies have similar doubts these days. And it is understandable.”

McCain has also granted his Australian audiences a set of remarks that can only, in the scheme of things, be regarded as inane in their belligerence. For the 7.30 Report, McCain mused about such topics as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Islamic State.

“I think he is the premier and most important threat, more so than Isis.”

Out of the Cold War deep freeze, McCain insisted that action be taken against the Putin government. Despite admitting that there was no evidence that the Russian effort during the presidential elections had succeeded in altering the outcome, Moscow needed to be taught a lesson.

“So we need to have increased sanctions on Russia and enact other penalties for Russian behaviour.”

Such an addled assessment also came with another erroneous assessment: that the United States actually had a plan for Afghanistan. This should come as a surprise to any student of Afghan history with a rudimentary knowledge of empires. Afghanistan, after all, is where empires go, not so much to an old people’s home than a slaughterhouse to get daily nose bleeds.

Perplexingly, then, McCain claimed that Trump did have a magical grand strategy for “victory”. That would depend on whether he was going to accept the wise counsel of appropriate courtiers.

“I do believe that most of the time he accepts their advice and counsel. Can I tell you that he does all the time? No. And yes, does it bother me? Yes, it bothers me.”

Even as the senator was doing his Australian round, Kabul faced an attack which, even by the standards of recent decades, was exemplarily bloody. An explosive packed water tanker was detonated in the vicinity of the German embassy, including other missions and foreign media outlets, killing at least 80 and wounding 460.

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Aftermath of the blast in Kabul, Afghanistan (Source: Pakistan Point)

Again, a security service that has all but failed, yet constantly propped up by the US and its allies, confirmed its inadequacy. The Afghan Intelligence Service, the NDS, did at least venture some speculation about where the attack came from. The Haqqani, Taliban-aligned network got the honours on that one.

Each disaster tends to be accompanied by a clarion call for more troops, for resources of boundless commitment and boundless enthusiasm. Afghanistan must be made an example of, developed, sorted and ordered.

From his summit as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain has called, along with his colleague Lindsey Graham, for the means to break the stalemate, as described by Gen. John W. Nicholson.

“President Trump and his administration,” both ventured in a co-authored piece for the Washington Post, “must treat Afghanistan with the same urgency as the fight against Islamic State, or this stalemate risks sliding into strategic failure.”[2]

Their stale suggestion for the stalemate: more troops, the abandonment of the onerous fixation with “force management levels”.

For all that, McCain’s visit to Australia posed an eye-rubbing reminder that Afghanistan is also the enigma beyond resolution, let alone interpretation. The senator would, however, have been pleased by one thing, a matter accomplished in joint self-deception with his hosts: the promise of a small deployment of 30 more Australian military advisors to the collapsing effort.

“These additional ADF members,” explained Defence Minister Marise Payne, “will allow Australia to commit additional advisers to further develop the long-term capabilities of the Afghan security forces as part of our current train, advise and assist mission.”[3]

Delusions die hard in Washington, but they die harder in Canberra.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/john-mccain-calls-on-australia-to-sustain-alliance-with-united-states-during-donald-trump-presidency-20170530-gwgp1y.html

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-mccain-and-lindsey-graham-why-we-need-more-forces-to-end-the-stalemate-in-afghanistan/2017/03/13/6c8f7a6e-05b4-11e7-b1e9-a05d3c21f7cf_story.html?utm_term=.91578ea263e8

[3] http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/05/29/australia-send-30-more-troops-afghanistan

Featured image: knau.org

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The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland has confirmed that it is examining a criminal complaint against former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, accused of war crimes by a Geneva-based pro-Palestinian group. Livni recently traveled to Lugano in southern Switzerland for a celebration organised by the Swiss-Israel Association. 

According to the Le Temps newspaper, Livni has been named in a legal suit filed on Monday by the Geneva-based Urgence Palestine activist groupexternal link in relation to her role in the Israeli military’s “Operation Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip between December 2008 – January 2009. She was foreign minister and acting prime minister at the time.

The Attorney General’s Officeexternal link confirmed to swissinfo.ch that this ‘[legal] request is presently being studied’.

Operation Cast Lead began with a week of air attacks and shelling, followed by a land invasion of the blockaded coastal strip, sealed off at sea by the Israeli navy. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 13 Israelis died.

On May 28, Livni attended an event in the Italian-speaking city of Lugano in southern Switzerland organised by the Swiss-Israel Associationexternal link to celebrate the 69th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel. She left Switzerland on Monday via Italy.

It is unclear what action the Attorney General’s office will take action in the future, especially if Livni plans to return to Switzerland.

Pursued overseas 

A representative from the Swiss NGO Trial International, which fights impunity against war crimes, told swissinfo.ch that Switzerland has a duty to act:

“Switzerland has an obligation to work on cases of alleged war crimes if the suspect steps on Swiss territory. If Switzerland opens an investigation, it is in line with Swiss law, especially given the alleged crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead.”

In January 2017, Livni cancelled a visit to Belgium over fears she may be arrested on her arrival in Brussels over war crime allegations. The Brussels prosecutor’s office said Livni was the subject of a 2010 complaint to the federal prosecutor, and the authorities could detain or question her on arrival “to try and advance the investigation.”

Livni, who is still a Zionist Union party member of the Knesset, told Israel Radio at the time that she had pulled out of the Brussels trip for “personal reasons.”

In December 2009, she cancelled a trip to London after being informed that she was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by a British court over her role in the same war.

Featured image: SWI swissinfo.ch

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Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, died Friday at a hospital in Virginia at the age of 89. Though the New York Times acknowledged that the former government advisor was a “hawkish strategic theorist,” misrepresenting his legacy as one of otherwise infinite positivity may not be as easy as the establishment might like to think.

As the United Kingdom plays around with levels of the so-called “terror threat” following a devastating attack by an ISIS-inspired individual — and as the Philippines goes into an almost complete state of martial law following ISIS-inspired destruction — Brzezinski’s timely death serves as a reminder to seek a deeper understanding of where modern terrorism originated in the first place.

As the New York Times explains, Brzezinski’s “rigid hatred of the Soviet Union” guided much of America’s foreign policy “for better or worse.” From the Times:

“He supported billions in military aid for Islamic militants fighting invading Soviet troops in Afghanistan. He tacitly encouraged China to continue backing the murderous regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia, lest the Soviet-backed Vietnamese take over that country.[emphasis added]

While it is progressive of the New York Times to note Brzezinski’s support for Islamic militants, downplaying the effect of his vindictive foreign policy agenda with a mere sentence does an injustice to the true horror behind Brzezinski’s policies.

Because a 1973 coup in Afghanistan had installed a new secular government that was leaning towards the Soviets, the U.S. endeavored to undermine this new government by organizing multiple coup attempts through America’s lackey states, Pakistan and Iran (the latter was under the control of the U.S.-backed Shah at the time.) In July 1979, Brzezinski officially authorized aid to the mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan to be delivered through the CIA’s program “Operation Cyclone.”

President Reagan and Mujahideen leaders from Afghanistan 

Many people defend America’s decision to arm the mujahideen in Afghanistan because they believe it was necessary to defend the country and the wider region from Soviet aggression. However, Brzesinski’s own statements directly contradict this rationale. In a 1998 interview, Brzezinski admitted that in conducting this operation, the Carter administration had “knowingly increased the probability” that the Soviets would intervene militarily (suggesting they began arming the Islamist factions before the Soviets invaded, making the rationale redundant since there was no invasion Afghanistan freedom fighters needed to repel at the time). Brzezinski then stated:

Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.”

This statement went further than merely boasting at the instigation of war and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union. In his memoir, entitled “From the Shadows,” Robert Gates — former CIA director under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama — directly confirmed this covert operation began six months prior to the Soviet invasion with the actual intention of luring the Soviets into a Vietnam-style quagmire.

Brzezinski knew exactly what he was doing. The Soviets were then bogged down in Afghanistan for approximately ten years, fighting an endless supply of American-supplied weapons and trained fighters. At the time, the media even went so far as to laud Osama bin Laden — one of the most influential figures in Brzezinski’s covert operation. We all know how that story ended.

Even with full knowledge of what his CIA-funded creation had become, in 1998 Brzezinski stated the following to his interviewers:

“What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

The interviewer at the time, refusing to allow this answer to pass, retorted:

“Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.”

Brzezinski dismissed this statement outright, replying:

“Nonsense!”

This occurred back when the journalists asked government officials pressing questions, a rare occurrence today.

Brzezinski’s support for these radical elements led directly to the formation of al-Qaeda, which literally translates to “the base,” as it was the base in which to launch the repulsion of the anticipated Soviet invasion. It also led to the creation of the Taliban, a deadly entity currently deadlocked in an endless battle with NATO forces.

Further, despite Brzezinski’s statements, which attempt to depict a lasting defeat of the Russian empire, the truth is that for Brzezinski, the cold war never ended. Though he was a critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Brzezinski’s stranglehold over American foreign policy continued right up until his death.

It is no coincidence that in Syria, the Obama administration deployed an Afghanistan-quagmire-type strategy toward another Russian ally — Assad in Syria. A cable leaked by Wikileaks dated December 2006 — authored by William Roebuck, who was chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Damascus at the time — stated:

“We believe Bashar’s weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as the conflict between economic reform steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question, and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists. This cable summarizes our assessment of these vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be actions, statements, and signals that the USG can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising.” [emphasis added]

Much like Operation Cyclone, under Barack Obama, the CIA was spending approximately $1 billion a year training Syrian rebels (to engage in terrorist tactics, nonetheless). The majority of these rebels share ISIS’ core ideology and have the express aim of establishing Sharia law in Syria.

Just like in Afghanistan, the Syrian war formally drew in Russia in 2015, and Brzezinski’s legacy was kept alive through Obama’s direct warning to Russia’s Vladimir Putin that he was leading Russia into another Afghanistan-style quagmire.

So where might Obama have gotten this Brzezinski-authored playbook from, plunging Syria further into a horrifying six-year-long war that has, again, drawn in a major nuclear power in a conflict rife with war crimes and crimes against humanity?

The answer: from Brzezinski himself. According to Obama, Brzezinski is a personal mentor of his, an “outstanding friend” from whom he has learned immensely. In light of this knowledge, is it any surprise that we saw so many conflicts erupt out of nowhere during Obama’s presidency?

On  February 7, 2014, the BBC published a transcript of a bugged phone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. In that phone call, the representatives were discussing who they wanted to place in the Ukrainian government following a coup that ousted Russian-aligned president Viktor Yanukovych.

Image result for The Grand Chessboard

Lo and behold, Brzezinski himself advocated taking over Ukraine in his 1998 book, The Grand Chessboard, stating Ukraine was

“a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard…a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country (means) Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

Brzezinski warned against allowing Russia to control Ukraine because

“Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”

Following Obama, Donald Trump came into office with a completely different mentality, willing to work with Russia and the Syrian government in combatting ISIS. Unsurprisingly, Brzezinski did not support Trump’s bid for the presidency and believed Trump’s foreign policy ideas lacked coherence.

All that being said, just last year Brzezinski appeared to have changed his stance on global affairs and instead began to advocate a “global realignment” — a redistribution of global power — in light of the fact that the U.S. is no longer the global imperial power it once was. However, he still seemed to indicate that without America’s global leadership role, the result would be “global chaos,” so it seemed unlikely his change in perception was rooted in any actual meaningful change on the geopolitical chessboard.

Further, the CIA’s very existence relies on the idea of a Russian threat, as has been evidenced by the agency’s complete assault on the Trump administration whenever it appears détente is possible with the former Soviet Union.

Brzezinski died safely in a hospital bed, unlike the millions of displaced and murdered civilians who were pawns in Brzezinski’s twisted, geopolitical chess games of blood and lunacy. His legacy is one of militant jihadism, the formation of al-Qaeda, the most devastating attack on U.S. soil by a foreign entity in our recent history, and the complete denigration of Russia as an everlasting adversary with which peace cannot — and should not — ever be attained.

Featured image: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

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Israel’s Occupation Is Morally Indefensible

June 2nd, 2017 by Prof. Alon Ben-Meir

I have long maintained that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank defies the moral principle behind the creation of the state. Contrary to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion, the occupation erodes rather than buttresses Israel’s national security and cannot be justified on either security or moral grounds. Unless Israel embraces a new moral path, no one can prevent it from unraveling from within only to become a pariah state that has lost its soul, wantonly abandoning the cherished dreams of its founding fathers.

There are four ethical theories—Kantian, utilitarian, virtue-based, and religious—that demonstrate the lack of moral foundation in the continuing occupation, which imposes upon Israelis the responsibility to bring it to a decisive end.

The first moral theory is deontological ethics, whose greatest representative is Immanuel Kant. According to this theory, consequences are irrelevant to the moral rightness or wrongness of an action; what matters is whether the action is done for the sake of duty or out of respect for the moral law.

Kant provided several formulations of the moral law, which he refers to as the categorical imperative; for our purposes, what is most important are his first two formulations. The first is the principle that morality requires us to act only on those maxims we can universalize. As he puts it,

“Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

In short, never do anything that you couldn’t will everybody else do at the same time.

Israelis destroy water pipes in Palestine

The question is whether the Israeli occupation is a policy that can be universalized and pass this test of moral reasoning. The answer is clearly no; the policy of occupation is rationally inconsistent, as it requires Israel to exempt itself from moral and political norms that the rest of the international community recognizes (and which serve to protect Israel itself). Israel is making an exception of itself – which is the capital sin, according to Kant, as in effect Israel is saying:

‘We don’t have to live by the same rules as everyone else.’

This is evident from the fact that Israel denies the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and justifies that in the name of national security, even though the achievement of absolute security would invariably render the Palestinians absolutely vulnerable.

Whereas Israel has agreed to a two-state solution, it continues to usurp Palestinian land, thereby violating international agreements which Israel is signatory to (UN Resolution 242, the Oslo Accords). In doing so, Israel is clearly defying the first formulation of the categorical imperative, which as Kant showed, requires us to honor our agreements and contracts. That is, Israel is acting on a maxim or policy of breaking its agreements to serve its self-interest, which cannot be universalized without contradiction because then the institution of reaching international agreements cannot be sustained.

Although many countries break international contracts, that does not affect Kant’s argument as he knew full well that people lie, cheat, and steal. His concern is with the principle of morality and what it requires regardless of whether these requirements are in fact met. By maintaining the occupation, Israel is flouting the moral law while expecting the Palestinians to uphold the same norms.

The second formulation is to never treat another person merely as a means, but always also as an end in themselves. In other words, what Kant is saying is that as free rational beings who can act in accordance with morality, each of us possesses intrinsic worth which implies that we must respect the inherent dignity of each individual.

In the case of the Palestinians who are under occupation, Israel is treating them as objects rather than persons who can rationally consent to the way they are being treated. Israel is coercing the Palestinians physically and psychologically by denying them human rights, through, for example, administrative detention, night raids, and expulsion, thereby robbing them of their dignity and denying them their autonomy.

The second moral theory is Utilitarianism, which in its modern form originated in England with the works of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In contrast to Kantianism, this theory places all emphasis on the consequences of our actions. It states that an action is morally right if it produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.

The moral evaluation of any policy depends on whether it maximizes utility. Utilitarianism agrees with Kant on one fundamental point, which is that morality prohibits making an exception of oneself. For obvious reasons, governments give greater priority to their own people. But does the occupation maximize the security and well-being of all Israelis?

A boy looking at the rubbles in Palestine 

In spite of the fact that Israel takes extraordinary measures to enhance its security, the occupation is in fact undermining the security of the state, as is evident from the repeated bloody clashes. Moreover, if Israel were to extend its moral considerations beyond its own people to include the Palestinians, then the policy of occupation still fails on utilitarian grounds even more acutely.

To be sure, while Israel resorts to utilitarian arguments to justify its treatment of the Palestinians, in the process Israel reveals the classic pitfall of utilitarian thinking, which is that it ultimately does not provide sufficient protection and respect for human rights. This contempt for human rights in fact directly erodes Israel’s moral standing within the community of nations.

The third moral theory is virtue ethics, whose greatest advocate is still Aristotle. In virtue ethics, an act is moral if it is performed as a result of having a virtuous character. Virtue ethics is not primarily about codifying and applying moral principles, but developing the character from which moral actions arise. In this context, the Israeli occupation, while having a major adverse effect on the Palestinians, also has a morally corrupting influence on Israelis themselves.

Virtue ethics recognizes the importance of acquiring the habit to act ethically which involves moral upbringing; as Aristotle is to have said,

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

The occupation is not educating Israeli youth towards moral virtues, but hardening their hearts as they can live with regular prejudices, discrimination, and dehumanization against the Palestinians. As such, the occupation fails to meet the principles of virtue ethics because it creates an environment which degrades the moral substance of the Israelis themselves. As a result, they continue to commit transgressions against the Palestinians without any sense of moral culpability.

One might argue from a certain Israeli perspective (i.e. the settlement movement) that the occupation engenders virtues such as national solidarity, social cohesiveness, loyalty, courage, and perseverance. While this may appear to be true on the surface, the occupation is in fact tearing the Israelis’ social and political fabric apart and undermining the conditions under which moral virtues such as caring, compassion, and magnanimity can grow and thrive.

Moreover, the longer the occupation persists, the greater the damage is to Israel’s moral character, and Israel will become increasingly disposed to compromising its fundamental values and ideals as a democracy committed to human rights.

Finally, we need to consider the moral theory which says morality is acting in accordance with what divinity commands from us. There are two basic theories, both of which can be traced back to Plato’s Euthyphro where Socrates raises the question:

“…whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.”

The first is the divine command theory, which states that what makes an action moral or right is the fact that God commands it and nothing else. The second theory, defended by Socrates, is that God commands us to do what is right because it is the right thing to do. In other words, morality precedes God’s will and is irreducible to divine command.

In the context of this ancient debate, the usurpation and annexation of Palestinian land may appear to be defensible on the basis of the divine command theory because if God requires us to perform any set of actions, then by definition it would be the moral thing to do.

Many orthodox Jews hold to the divine command theory, as they interpret the concept of “mitzvah” (good deed) first and foremost as “command,” the goodness of which cannot even be contemplated apart from the fact that this is what God has commanded us to do.

As such, those who take the Bible as the revelation of God’s commands use it to justify the concept of Greater Israel. As a result, they view the Palestinian presence as an impediment God placed before them to test their resolve. Therefore, their harsh treatment of the Palestinians becomes morally permissible because it is consistent with divine decree.

By adopting the command theory, they are ascribing to a position which has and continues to be used to justify acts which are blatantly immoral. The defender of this theory may counter that because God is good, he does not command anything which is immoral.

However, this argument is hollow because if morality is simply what God approves of, to say that God is good is merely to assert that he approves of himself and his own will. In this case, there is still no safeguard against the extremists who use the command theory to justify even the most heinous crimes. Furthermore, if the command in question satisfies a deep seated psychological need—say, for a God-given Jewish homeland—then what humans ascribe to God eventually becomes ‘the will of God.’

Another problem with the divine command theory is that, as the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz observed, it turns God into a kind of Tyrant unworthy of our love and devotion:

“For why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy for doing just the opposite?”

Turning to the theory that God commands us to do the good because it is good, what becomes clear is that any action must derive its moral worth independently of God’s will. In that case, the Israeli policy toward the occupation will have to be morally justifiable without reference to some divine mandate. We have already examined, however briefly, Israel’s policy in light of deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics, and found that it comes up short and fails to meet the basic requirement of these theories. Therefore, it lacks independent moral justification on which God’s commands could possibly be based on.

Israel’s occupation cannot be defended on moral grounds or in terms of national security. Israel can defend itself and prevail over any of its enemies now and in the foreseeable future, but it is drowning in moral corruption that the continued occupation only deepens. It is that—the enemy from within—that poses the greatest danger Israel faces.

To listen to an audio version of this article, click here.

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