On Friday the U.S. “Inherent Resolve” command of its operations in Syria and Iraq released a statement that points to unnecessary intensified fighting about the city of Raqqa and elsewhere.
The Syrian Arab Coalition and their Syrian Democratic Force partners completed the liberation of the Tabqah Dam, as well as the city of Tabqah and its nearby airfield May 10.
…
In Tabqah, the SDF’s increased pressure on ISIS from each flank allowed it to accelerate the pace of the fight, clear the final neighborhoods of the city, and isolate Tabqah Dam.Approximately 70 ISIS fighters conceded to the SDF’s terms, which included the dismantling of IEDs surrounding the dam, the surrender of all ISIS heavy weapons, and the forced withdrawal of all remaining fighters from Tabqah City.
The SDF accepted ISIS’s surrender of the city to protect innocent civilians and to protect the Tabqah dam infrastructure which hundreds of thousands of Syrians rely on for water, agriculture, and electricity.
(The “Syrian Arab Coalition” is U.S. propaganda parlance for its own forces in the area. That force is part of its Central Command. The “Syrian Democratic Force” are predominantly fighters of the Syrian-Kurdish YPG and a few U.S. special forces embedded with them.)
The Kurdish forces obviously made a deal with the ISIS rearguard. They offered safe passage (safe conduct) to the ISIS fighters if those would dismantle their demolition charges on the Tabqa dam and leave their heavy weapons behind. The ISIS group accepted and fulfilled its part of the deal. The dam was saved. The ISIS forces withdrew.
The Kurdish commander had made the right decision. Any fighting around, on or within the dam structure could have led to a catastrophic dam failure which would have killed ten-thousands (at least) further down the Euphrates.
The next line in the U.S. press release is therefore ominous:
The Coalition tracked fleeing fighters and targeted those that could be safely hit without harming civilians.
The U.S. military broke the “safe passage” deal the Kurds had made with the ISIS fighters.
Quoting that press release via an AFP reporter I remarked:
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA -3:03 PM – 11 May 2017Ahh – the outrage from @afp if the Syrian government would do alike – targeting rebels after they surrender their weapons and move out ..
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA – 7:26 PM – 11 May 2017ISIS fighters got screwed on deal, were promised free escape then killed. That trick works only once.
To be able to make such deals in similar future situations one needs to keep them.
The Syrian government managed to reconcile with about 1,500 towns and local areas that had taken part in the insurgency against it. It promised an amnesty for the fighters and reestablishment of public services. If it would have broken this contract with some of the first areas that took part in it, others would never have agreed to such deals but would have fought down to the last man, woman and child. The Syrian government also offered safe passage to al-Qaeda held Idleb for various Jihadist groups in besieged areas. It stuck to those deals and never attacked the departing enemies. This enabled it to make more such deals. Large parts of Homs, Aleppo and Damascus thereby returned to government control without destructive fighting.
In Tabqa the U.S. military broke the deal and the word its Kurdish allies had given to ISIS when the deal was made. It tracked and killed those who were guaranteed safe passage, likely from U.S. helicopters of jets. Like me, the Wall Street Journal found this odd. It asked the Pentagon for an explanation:
“This was an agreement for them to leave the Tabqa Dam and to leave the remaining portions of the city they held, but it doesn’t change the fact that when we see ISIS fighters on the battlefield and we have a clean shot at them, we will continue to take it,” [Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis] said.Capt. Davis declined to answer whether the U.S. is bound in any way when an ally like the Syrian Defense Forces make an agreement on the battlefield.
“I think SDF let them have safe passage out of Tabqa, but once they continued on the battlefield, I don’t know if that’s something we’re required to honor,” he said.
The U.S. military did not hit the ISIS group “on the battlefield”. Its own press releases quoted above said it “tracked fleeing fighters and targeted those”. Those ISIS people were not fighting. The were not on the immediate battlefield. They were not “fleeing” either. They had been guaranteed safe passage.
I have yet to see a comment from the Kurdish commanders on the ground who made the deal, or from the U.S. special forces embedded with them. If I were in their place I would be furious. The breaking of this deal guarantees that no future deals can be made. ISIS fighters would never again feel bound to them. They will now kill hostages, not negotiate about them. They will blow up infrastructure instead of accepting deals about preserving it in exchange for safe passage. The Kurdish soldiers on the ground will have to bleed for this stupidity. This was some extremely short sighted and vindictive behavior by the U.S. commanders of the overall operation.
The WSJ points out that the problem is wider. The U.S. military itself urges ISIS fighters to surrender, but has no idea what it would do should they actually do so:
Pentagon officials have said in the past that Islamic State fighters can surrender on the battlefield, but haven’t provided details on how such negotiations might proceed, or who would take the lead on such matters since local forces lead the fight in Syria and Iraq.”..those who do not surrender to the Iraqi security forces will be killed there,” Col. John Dorrian, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria said in February.
The U.S.-led coalition didn’t respond to a request for comment or an explanation of policy.
It would be very helpful for the Kurdish and Iraqi forces on the ground if they would have clear public guidelines for handling surrendering enemies. But the U.S. command seems to have none of those for them. This will lead to a TINA mentality: “there is no alternative, we’ll have to kill them all” on both sides of the fight.
In terms of propaganda this will work to ISIS’ favor. Instead of TV pictures of demoralized, defeated and surrendering ISIS fighters the relevant public will see more ISIS “martyrs” who “heroically” blow themselves up as the only way out. This will reinforcing ISIS’ apocalyptic message.
What a stealthy bugger of a problem. Malware deftly delivered, locking the system by encrypting files and making them otherwise impossible to access unless a fee is paid. A form of data hijacking that can only be admired for its ease of execution, for its viral-like replication that seeks, even hunts, vulnerable “unpatched” computer systems.
The global information environment is well and truly primed for plunder, vulnerable to such malicious “worms” as WannaCry. Each age creates the next circumstance for profit, often outside the boundaries deemed acceptable at the time. In a networked age reliant on huge quantities of data, times are good for the intrepid.
The weekend reporting on the WannaCry ransomeware worm was filled with predictable gruesomeness, suggesting that the unfortunates turning up to work on a Monday could well discover they were unable to access work files.
Much of the damage had already been done, with notable targets being the National Health System in Britain, and the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica.[1] In Britain, patients had to be relocated, and scheduled operations and treatment delayed if not cancelled altogether. Crisis meetings were held by members of the May government. As one doctor put it in eerily apocalyptic fashion, “our hospital is down.”
Another notable country target was Russia, including networks within the Interior Ministry, suggesting that the cyber misfits in question may have overstretched in their enthusiasm.[2] Russia tends to figure, as it does in other jottings of demonology, as a place of sanctuary for the cyber crooked, bastion where IT sorties can be launched. But not now.
More useful, if sobering analysis, came from Nicholas Weaver, who noted that the strength of the attack was its multi-vector nature.
“If a targeted user receives a worm-laden email and clicks on the attachable executable, the worm starts running.”[3] (Computer speak tends to get mangled in its descriptions, since worms would otherwise crawl. But not wCry, which does its damage at an enthusiastic gallop.)
This delightful worm capitalises on a vulnerability evident in the network protocol in Microsoft Windows termed Server Message Block. This is where the ransomeware does its bit, encrypting the files in question, and locking out users on pain of ransom.
Much in this saga is based on systems that were never reformed. UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt had been badgered by his shadow counterpart, Jonathan Ashworth, that the NHS’s computer systems were dangerously outdated and susceptible to attack.[4]
While victim blaming is second nature to this trade, Weaver’s salient observation is that the computer industry is just as responsible, if not more so. The persistent use of executable attachments should trigger liability, if not shame.
Developers and members of industry, in other words, should be made the classroom dunces.
“Our bottom line up front,” claim Ben Buchanan, Stuart Russell and Michael Sulmeyer for Lawfare, “is that, VEP (Vulnerabilities Equities Process) or no VEP, today’s ransomeware attack highlights the risks of relying on software that is no longer supported by its developer (like windows XP) and of not applying patches that the developer makes available (like MS17-010).”[5]
This brings us to the body that keeps giving, albeit indirectly and haphazardly: the US National Security Agency. In April, a group calling itself Shadow Brokers released a set of tools pilfered from the NSA, including the vulnerability occasioned by SMB.
The Microsoft public relations machine went through the motions of putting out the fires, explaining that the company had already dealt with the vulnerabilities (patched them, if you will) in March, including a patch against the spread of the WannaCry ransomeware. Much of this was occasioned by a helpful disclosure to the company from US government sources.
This entire process revealed a certain dance between government agencies and vendors in the exchange system known as the VEP. Through this tense understanding, the US government designates which discovered software vulnerabilities should be passed on to vendors.
The vendors, in turn, apply the relevant, protective patches, though whether this is actually done is quite another matter. There is also every chance that the US government will refuse to reveal such a vulnerability in the first place. Being in the business of hacking, some cards will be well and truly hidden, to be procured when required. Such an instance arose in 2014, when the Heartbleed vulnerability was exposed to much fanfare. The response from US government officials was one of implausible deniability.
Entities such as the Patients’ Association in Britain have condemned the outfit behind the attack, but also noted that the entire establishment remained green and inadequately prepared. Unprotected and unbacked, software left unsupported by developers is fit for the dustbin of history. In the meantime, the catastrophe stemming from future attacks is easy to envisage.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark is a senior lecturer at RMIT University, Melbourne and former Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Email: [email protected].
By the end of this month, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Advisor HR McMaster will deliver to President Trump their plans for military escalations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. President Trump would be wise to rip the plans up and send his national security team back to the drawing board – or replace them. There is no way another “surge” in Afghanistan and Iraq (plus a new one in Syria) puts America first. There is no way doing the same thing over again will succeed any better than it did the last time.
Near the tenth anniversary of the US war on Afghanistan – seven years ago – I went to the Floor of Congress to point out that the war makes no sense. The original authorization had little to do with eliminating the Taliban. It was a resolution to retaliate against those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. From what we know now, the government of Saudi Arabia had far more to do with the financing and planning of 9/11 than did the Taliban. But we’re still pumping money into that lost cause. We are still killing Afghanis and in so doing creating the next generation of terrorists.
The war against ISIS will not end with its defeat in Mosul and Raqqa. We will not pack up and go home. Instead, the Pentagon and State Department have both said that US troops would remain in Iraq after ISIS is defeated. The continued presence of US troops in Iraq will provide all the recruiting needed for more ISIS or ISIS-like resistance groups to arise, which will in turn lead to a permanent US occupation of Iraq. The US “experts” have completely misdiagnosed the problem so it no surprise that their solutions will not work. They have claimed that al-Qaeda and ISIS arose in Iraq because we left, when actually they arose because we invaded in the first place.
General David Petraeus is said to have a lot of influence over HR McMaster, and in Syria he is pushing for the kind of US troop “surge” that he still believes was successful in Iraq. The two are said to favor thousands of US troops to fight ISIS in eastern Syria instead of relying on the US-sponsored and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to do the job. This “surge” into Syria would also lead to a lengthy US occupation of a large part of that country, as it is unlikely that the US would return the territory to the Syrian government. Would it remain an outpost of armed rebels that could be unleashed on Assad at the US President’s will? It’s hard to know from week to week whether “regime change” in Syria is a US priority or not. But we do know that a long-term US occupation of half of Syria would be illegal, dangerous, and enormously expensive.
President Trump’s Generals all seem to be pushing for a major US military escalation in the Middle East and south Asia. The President goes back and forth, one minute saying “we’re not going into Syria,” while the next seeming to favor another surge. He has given the military much decision-making latitude and may be persuaded by his Generals that the only solution is to go in big. If he follows such advice, it is likely his presidency itself will be buried in that graveyard of empires.
“We are people! We are not illegal!” — Kiwi Ilafonte
This past May 1st, across the United States and here in Quebec, the spirit of May Day was alive and well. Immigrant workers have given International Workers’ Day a new breath of fresh air since the historic mobilizations of a “day without an immigrant” in the United States in 2006. This year in the U.S., broad coalitions of migrant communities and trade unions took to the streets in solidarity with immigrant workers to resist Donald Trump‘s racist and xenophobic policies. In Montreal the Immigrant Workers Centre, community organizations, and trade unions marched in solidarity with precarious immigrant workers and the “Fight for $15” campaign. The struggles of immigrant workers for migrant justice, against racism and broad workplace struggles that impact heavily immigrant workers for decent work and wages are critical for any renewal of working class politics in North America and beyond.
The world is still reeling as Donald Trump is turning his anti-immigrant rhetoric into reality, with a second attempt at implementing the ban on immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries, pushing forward the expansion of the wall between Mexico and the United States, and increased deportations. Migration has become one of the most profound issues of our time, shaping contemporary politics in the advanced capitalist states in Europe and North America. Not only in the United States, but in the first two months of 2017, 1,134 migrants crossed from the U.S. into Canada in harsh conditions in order to claim refugee status as a result of the crackdown on migrants in the USA. It is critical for the Left to put forward a clear position of solidarity with migrants and open borders at this juncture, not only in order to pose a challenge to the far right’s xenophobic agenda but also for building a working class movement for more radical social transformation.
Analyzing Migration
Across the advanced capitalist states, a few sections of the broad left have currently taken positions on migration based on a game of catch-up to the right. These policies have unfortunately begun to have a significant impact on how the Left is analyzing the question of migration, as well more broadly for how it relates to the questions of class and to whom we should begin to re-orient our discourse in this current moment of disorientation.
Some sections of the Left seek to rebuild a lost connection to the “rust belt” working class, in particular states in the U.S., and de-industrialized regions in Canada, abandoned by the Left, thus rebuilding the weakening power of trade unions. As a result, the strategy of this section of the Left has been to present a more tame position of regulated migration, in order to reorient their demands toward such sections of the working class. Similarly, elements of the trade union movement seek a tightening of the labour market through restricting migration rather than organizing migrants and immigrant workers, due to their own inability to adapt their organizing strategies and forms to the current historical juncture. This only reinforces a false vision that pits migrants and immigrants against a narrow vision of the working class.
Protest at New York’s JFK airport, opposed to Trump’s ban.
Such a view of the working class distorts our perception of how work has transformed, and of who is performing that work. To simply speak of a national working class is impossible; we need to think of the class in a true internationalist and local way, understanding the role migration plays. It is precisely at this moment that we need to be organizing more with immigrant and migrant workers, not simply to rebuild the labour movement, but more profoundly to create working class politics that can lead to radical transformation. To engage in organizing that can bring about solidarity in local communities to defend their neighbors; coworkers who face exploitation and deportation as a manner to frame how work has shifted. Why is there such profound migration, and how can they challenge their employers and racist policies by finding the local commonalities.
Interventions and Migrations
The massive wave of migration over recent years has its roots in the dispossession of people by the devastating impacts caused by global capitalism, and U.S. imperialism, which have their roots here in the Global North. A testament to this is the recent ban of migrants from seven states that the U.S. has actively attempted to destabilize, force regime change, or has occupied directly. Canada’s role as an imperialist state has also fueled the destabilization of the Middle East, has contributed immensely to the creation of 60 million refugees by 2015 – mainly displaced in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia. The U.S. is also pursuing the same strategy to shut the borders to Latin America, in particular to those devastated by NAFTA and displaced from their lands as a result of U.S. intervention in Central America.
A similar pattern has taken root with the role of Canadian capital in Central America. In Guatemala, for example, entire communities have been displaced violently from their lands and livelihoods with destructive mining projects on their territory. This displacement has fueled labour migration by over 5,000 Guatemalans in the agricultural program in Canada as a mechanism of development for rural indigenous communities in Guatemala who were originally displaced by Canadian capital. As journalist Juan Gonzalez describes Latino migration to the U.S.,
“you cannot understand the enormous Latino presence in the United States unless you understand America’s role in Latin America, and in fact that the Latino presence in the country is the harvest of the empire.”
Those that have become en masse displaced by U.S. imperialism and neoliberalism will have no refuge from its carnage. From the dangerous journey to “El Norte” to the death boats on the Mediterranean, migration has become the last desperate scream of humanity searching for a better future, making our solidarity and the opening of borders a must for the global working class.
Global migration has reached historic proportions, reaching 244 million people in 2015, according to the United Nations. The massive wave of migration by 2015 was a signal in terms of both the desperation of a global working class and the increasing inequalities produced by the expansion of global capital, as those whose collective wealth and resources have continued to be drained, accumulated and concentrated. A recent study has shown that from 1980 up to the present, the developing world has lost $16.3-trillion in capital flight to the Global North. Developing countries have paid $4.2-trillion in interest payments on international debt. This has resulted in those populations without state social services, decent work, as a result of structural adjustment, and the integration into global capitalism. The integration of the developing world into U.S.-led global capitalism did not lead to a trickle-down effect of wealth and prosperity on a global level, but has in reverse led to a profound trickle-up effect – and concentration of capital in particular states and regions across the globe. As capital becomes more mobile and seeks competitive advantage, this has had a great impact on local populations.
As capital flight generates unemployment and forces workers to migrate to seek work, at the same time generates the needs for workers in other regions. One of the largest flow of migration globally has been internal migration in China from rural regions into industrial hubs. Asia has also now become the second largest destination of migrants globally outside of Europe. As production chains become more global as a result of the compression of time to be able to move goods across the globe, has resulted in the need for greater low wage disposable workers in other regions. Shifting the nature of migration globally, already coupled with historical imbalances as a result of imperialism and uneven development maintaining particular migration corridors. The crisis of 2007/08 in the core countries resulted in push factors of new corridors such as African migration toward Brazil, and Asia. Thus as the power of capital globally strengthens and becomes more mobile it makes migration one of the major forms that workers have individually to cope with such capital flight, and uneven development under capitalism.
Is Global Migration Necessary for Global Capitalism?
One faulty assumption is that capitalists and conservative politicians are outright anti-migration. Trump had actually declared that his aim was to transform the U.S. immigration system into one modeled on Canada’s immigration system, which is based on meeting the needs of capital and ensures that those who come through regulated means remain temporary, vulnerable and deportable at any given moment. Global elites, and states in the Global North have in fact been immensely supportive of global migration that suits the needs of capital. Migration has not only provided mass pools of cheap exploitable labour across the globe but has also shored up entire economies in the Global South. In essence it has become the last escape valve that has prolonged the crisis in the Global South, through large financial flows from migrants in the form of remittances. Labour migration is the largest percentage of migration globally. According to the ILO, there are an estimated 150 million migrant workers in 2015 worldwide. The overwhelming majority of labour migration takes place in the form of migrant worker programs, either under trade agreements, through the International Organization of Migration, or Guest Worker programs. These migration regimes allow for mass, temporary migration that suits the need of capital rather than workers.
States have increasingly opted for such models, based on temporary labour migration where workers are tied to a single employer without the freedom of movement. This can be seen as a globalization of the Kafala system. The Kafala system is a sponsor-based system of migration where the employer sponsors the migrant worker for the visa. This creates in essence a privatized form of migration where the employer has the power over the migrant to determine if they are allowed to remain in the host country. The kafala system is associated with temporary migrant workers in the Gulf Cooperation Countries, forcing workers into situations with single employer visas, without fundamental worker rights, and with deportation being the consequence of challenging their work conditions. This model is not simply a phenomenon in the Gulf, but has been expanded as a model of regulated migration globally.
Canada has become an example of this system for other states to replicate – migration has become regulated and stratified in two forms: one for wealthier migrants, and skilled workers, who have access to citizenship and permanent residence under the point system; and the other form, extreme exploitation without the ability to become permanent residents under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program in Canada. The program has brought over 300,000 workers on temporary work visas without the right of permanent residency, tied to a single employer and thus constrained in their capacity to defend their basic rights for fear of facing deportation. This form of stratified migration is now upheld by the World Bank as an effective model to ensure continuing flow of remittances from the Global North to the South, while guaranteeing a supply of cheap labour that can be quickly accessed and disposed of. Ensuring that workers remain temporary in the countries to which they migrate ensures that they remit more to their countries of origin. This has become a central aspect of capitalist development in the Global South.
The failure of neoliberal policies (free trade, privatization, and freedom of movement for capital) in the Global South has led to a new discourse by the World Bank – promoting ideas of sustainable development aid; not eliminating debt and allowing countries to pursue sovereign forms of economic development, but repackaging neoliberal policies through aid. To no one’s surprise, the mantra of sustainable development also became an epic failure.
The World Bank has since promoted what it sees as the only safety valve left to governments and capitalists in some zones of the Global South to release mounting pressure over unemployment, low value and low-paid work in global supply chains, and lack of state services as a result of economic restructuring – exporting, not commodities, but populations!
Multi-lateral coordination between the UN, the EU, and the IMF through the Forum of Global Migration and Development, the World Bank has moved to promote and expand regulated migration as a mechanism for development, further locking certain zones in the Global South into exploitative neoliberal capitalism. By 2015, the remittances of migrants to developing countries had reached an estimated $601-billion. Without such remittances back to the Global South countries permitting them to purchase commodities from the Global North, they would not meet their international debt obligations, and people’s ability to survive would be in peril. Further, remittances and migration become the only means left for Global South populations to secure services, such as health and education, that were previously provided for publically but have now become privatized. Entire economies (such as that of the Philippines and Egypt) are now built around providing export labour.
The Philippines, considered one of the great hopefuls of American-led globalization, although moving labour intensive industries to the Philippines has not improved conditions of poverty for workers there. This led to an increase of its labour export policy, which has led to sending 20 per cent of its workforce abroad. The Philippines has become dependent on remittances which account for 10 per cent of its GDP. Other states such as Egypt have pursued similar strategies, to shore up their economies. Egyptian migrants fill the fisheries of Greece, the agricultural sector in Cyprus, and construction in the Arab world. Egypt too was considered a darling of the World Bank with growth rates at 5 to 6 per cent during the early 2000s. Remittances from Egyptian migrants alone were equivalent to the revenue of the Suez canal, or 5 per cent of the GDP. Not only are the immediate remittances crucial for foreign currency reserves, but also for replacing state services such as welfare, and education, as those in poverty rely on remittances of family members who are sent as workers abroad.
Remittances have become an increasingly important lifeline for developing countries. According to the World Bank, developing countries need to leverage remittances in order to gain access to international capital markets due to the counter cyclical nature of remittance flows. This has been the particular strategy proposed by World Bank economist Dilip Ratha. According to Ratha, “[r]emittances can improve a country’s creditworthiness and thereby enhance its access to international capital markets. Hard currency remittances, properly accounted, can significantly improve country risk rating.” This has only reinforced countries in the Global South to pursue labour export programs in order to have steady access to capital markets. This only benefits corporations in the Global North and South, instead of eliminating international debt, countries in the Global South can seek new loans to continue to pay their unjust debt obligations to international lenders. Labour migration has become a win-win for global capitalism – it has allowed countries in the Global South a mechanism to continue to integrate into global markets, avoid crisis, and maintain imports, but at the same time giving countries in the Global North unprecedented amounts of cheap exploitable labour.
Migration and Class in the Global North
Immigrants and migrant workers have been at the fault lines of global capitalism – they are at the heart of the global economy as expressed with such clarity by journalist Michael Grabell around migrant workers in the U.S. and the rise of the logistics industry.
“The people here are not day labourers looking for an odd job from a passing contractor. They are regular employees of temp agencies working in the supply chain of many of America’s largest companies – Walmart, Macy’s, Nike, Frito-Lay… They unload clothing and toys made overseas and pack them to fill our store shelves. They are as important to the global economy as shipping containers and Asian garment workers.”
Beyond this, immigrant workers are concentrated in industries that cannot be off shored, such as: agriculture, food-processing, services, and logistics, where these workers face the same conditions as they would in the Global South. As conditions facing all workers become more precarious, immigrant and migrant workers become increasingly vulnerable facing lower-wages, precarious conditions, as temporary agency workers, as day labourers, and as a result of being undocumented and without having trade union representation. Despite this, they have organized against the odds, self-organizing against unjust laws, and employers. Organizing not only to defend their own labour rights, but for the working class as a whole.
In the United States immigrant workers brought back to life a militant tradition to May Day as witnessed by the historic mass mobilizations, in 2006 on the “day without an immigrant” where a million people mobilized in the streets of Los Angeles and mobilizations across the United States. In France the sans papier actions in the Paris region in 2008 under the banner “we work here, we live here, we stay here” migrant workers organized wild cat strikes, and occupations of restaurants to demand regularization. In Canada immigrants have been central to broad based working class movements such as the fight for $15 in Canada.
Migrant and immigrant workers have been forming new models of worker organizations along class lines, which has opened up the possibilities of going beyond business unionism. From the creation of hundreds of workers’ centres across the U.S. and in Canada, despite the contradictions and limits, migrant and immigrant workers continue to self-organize. Immigrants have formed their own unions on industrial lines, such as the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, taxi workers have organized in Toronto to build new types of organization, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britainwhich has organized migrant workers who are cleaners in London, and large networks such as the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in the USA. These examples of worker self-organization and a renewed labour movement by immigrant workers have been central to giving hope for a renewal of working-class politics.
The industrial action by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance to refuse to go to JFK airport on the eve of the implementation of Trump’s first immigration ban despite the action being limited was the very first political industrial action by workers against Trump and his policies. This is the kind of struggle and organization that will rebuild the Left and where we need to concentrate our forces, if we truly want to move from protest to power. But that means a Left that takes a serious effort to relate to such struggles.
Under Trump, as capital becomes more mobile and more power is given to finance through deregulation, and borders become increasingly tightened – the call for open borders is not simply a humanitarian demand or one that may seem simply an impossible one, it is very much a necessary one in our moment, and at its heart a working-class demand. That is if our conception of working class is a truly international one, and we aim to root our struggles with all of those who are dispossessed by global capital from their land, and their livelihoods. Where we can be the most effective now is not to call for regulated migration but to actually call for open borders, and to be vigorous in our support for migrant workers in their organizing, not just against employers but their struggles for immigration status, and freedom of movement. As a Left, we also need to find the commonalities in terms of their struggles with those having their livelihoods displaced, whether it be in the rust belts in the U.S., or those having their livelihoods displaced in Mexico, the Philippines, or Syria. They all have had their livelihoods and dignity displaced by the same common enemy – global capitalism and imperialism. This is where we can build the common struggle against the tensions, and build working-class struggles based on solidarity and internationalism. We must, as the Left, call for freedom of movement for people, not for capital.
Mostafa Henaway is a long time organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, and was a member of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), and the Toronto Coalition of Concerned Taxi Drivers.
The Obama administration bears full responsibility for replacing democracy in Ukraine with an illegitimate Regime integrated by Nazi parties. .
The nation shares a near-1,500 mile land and sea border with Russia. Stop NATO’s Rick Rozoff earlier explained Ukraine is “the decisive linchpin in plans by the US and its NATO allies to effect a military cordon sanitaire, severing Russia from Europe” – a sinister plot perhaps intended as prelude to nuclear war.
Under Kiev’s rule, Ukraine is a hotbed of militarized extremism, waging war on its own people, committing appalling human rights abuses – with full support and encouragement from Washington and key NATO countries.
Since putschists usurped power in February 2014, around 2.8 million Ukrainians fled Donbass to escape conflict unleashed by Kiev, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ Russian office.
Around 1.5 million are internally displaced. Most others left for Russia where they now reside as refugees.
On May 12, Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) President Alexandr Azkharchenko told the Russia-Donbass Integration Committee
“(w)e have one goal, the reunification with the motherland, and the motherland is Russia – and this is the ultimate goal of this committee.”
“All the work is aimed only at one thing – homecoming.” Minsk is effectively dead because Kiev refuses to observe its principles. Instead it’s at war with the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
Both may pursue integration with Russia. Over three years of conflict likely convinced most of their people. Their future lies with Moscow, not Kiev.
If a referendum was held on reunification with the motherland, it’s hard imagining it wouldn’t pass overwhelmingly.
Instead of continuing to beat the dead horse of Minsk with no success, integration with Russia seems the most effective way forward – perhaps the only way to end conflict.
If agreed to by Putin and Russia’s parliament, what should have happened earlier, Kiev isn’t likely to shell cross-border, other than perhaps occasional incidents, risking confrontation with Moscow if they persist.
On Monday, Sergey Lavrov accused Kiev of
“sabotaging…the political process and arranging armed provocations on the contact line on a regular basis…”
Russia still calls Minsk the way to resolve conflict, knowing Kiev continues violating its terms, with support from Washington and NATO.
According to DPR’s vice commander Eduard Basurin, Ukrainian armed forces committed 51 ceasefire violations in the past 24 hours, 331 in the past week, firing 2,122 shells, mortar rounds and other projectiles at Donetsk – flagrant Minsk violations, continuing regularly.
“(T)he atrocities of the Ukrainian Nazis do not end,” Basurin stressed. They’re using banned munitions, including 8.6 mm caliber Lapua magnum expansive bullets – prohibited by the “Declaration on the use of bullets that are easily opened or flattened in the human body.”
On impact, they open like flowers, most often inflicting mortal wounds, nicknamed “flowers of death.”
Donetsk investigative bodies continue collecting incriminating evidence of war crimes by Ukrainian forces.
Russia’s Investigative Committee initiated criminal cases against Kiev military and political officials responsible for high crimes in Donbass, causing civilian deaths, injuries and destruction.
Russian law permits prosecutions if its citizens are harmed or if actions by a belligerent violate international human rights laws.
Last August, Moscow charged Ukraine’s defense minister and several military commanders with war crimes, additional cases launched in September and later in the year, likely more coming given endless Kiev aggression.
What’s ongoing followed putschists in Kiev usurping power, orchestrated by Washington, a sinister anti-Russia plot.
Moscow seeks mutual cooperation with all countries, conflict resolution to restore peace and stability to war-torn nations, and respect by the world community it deserves.
Commenting on Europe and America days earlier, Sergey Lavrov used uncharacteristically strong language, saying
“(w)e hope that Europe(an) (countries) will see that the era of a master-pupil relationship is long over.”
Improved relations with Russia depend on it.
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.”
President Xi Jinping, in his keynote speech that opened the two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, did his best to explain the future of the New Silk Roads.
Xi said that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – that what was once “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) – is a multilateral project set to bring “peace, harmony and happiness” across Eurasia by “strategically connecting” nations as diverse as Russia, Mongolia, Turkey and Vietnam through development plans that are already operational. And, he added, they will be a success because extra funds are already on their way.
Xi told his audience, that included Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and a host of other world leaders and top ranking officials, that he had proposed an additional RMB 780 billion (approximately US$113 billion) to be disbursed through multiple sources.
These include the Silk Road Fund; the China Development Bank; the Export and Import Bank of China and also overseas capital provided by Chinese banks. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is not part – at least not yet – of this proposed package.
That’s still a long way towards fulfilling Asia’s gargantuan infrastructure needs – estimated to be at least $5 trillion up to 2022.
Economic logic certainly points to connectivity between Asia and Europe compressing as mutual trade multiplies. Italy and the UK are already enthusiastic supporters of OBOR/BRI. As too are Germany’s industrialists.
Significantly, before the summit, Xi was in a phone call with new French President Emmanuel Macron, who took power this Sunday. Xi not only offered the requisite support for EU integration; he encouraged Macron to buy into the New Silk Roads – which are not exactly understood in France’s business and media – as part of a unified EU strategy.
There’s no question that this massive attempt at infrastructure building – pipelines, ports, roads, high-speed rail, fiber-optic cables – that aims to unify Eurasia into a seamless trade emporium is the definitive 21st century geoeconomic/geopolitical project.
OBOR/BRI will configure Globalization Mark II, or which Xi in Davos defined as “inclusive globalization”.
And OBOR/BRI will certainly act as an essential component of Xi’s Made in China 2025 strategy and the now central aspirational “Chinese Dream” concept. The initiative has become the trade/economic foreign policy arm of Xi’s drive to move China into the status of a “moderately affluent” society.
What Xi is aiming at during the Beijing summit is to address two key but controversial points. How China proposes to finance OBOR/BRI. And how to build a consensus that this is a Eurasia-wide “win-win” operation.
About that black or white cat
New Silk Road activity is already frantic. Take the China-Europe Railway Express for instance. It spans 51 different rail links with freight trains already connecting 27 Chinese and 28 European cities. There’s also a planned rail line between China and Laos and a high-speed rail between Yunnan province in China and Thailand. In Malaysia there is Kuantan port industrial park and aluminium and palm oil processing. In Turkey three state-owned Chinese companies are turning the country’s third largest port, Kumport, into a key OBOR/BRI node.
Among all these myriad projects, arguably the most ambitious is the US$46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It’s a complex network of roads, rail, oil/gas pipelines, ports, airports and special economic zones linking Xinjiang to Gwadar port in Balochistan and is first New Silk Road project to get direct investment from the Silk Road Fund.
In November 2016, an upgraded and extended Karakoram highway linked this Arabian Sea port with the ancient Chinese silk road of Kashgar.
As Xi has stressed, China, beyond CPEC, will get even closer, geopolitically, to Pakistan under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Cue to India throwing tantrums – and then sending a low-level delegation to the Beijing summit.
That could be said to be counterproductive because China and India’s development strategies are not mutually exclusive. India is the second largest shareholder of the AIIB, after China and both China and India are equal partners in the New Development Bank (NDB) – the BRICS bank – which is not directly implicated in financing OBOR/BRI projects.
And most of all China and India are both members of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC); that has the aim of – what else – economic development. BCIM-EC could either become a branch of OBOR/BRI or proceed as a stand-alone mechanism, with equal voice by all members.
So to upgrade Deng Xiaoping.
“It doesn’t matter if the New Silk Road cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”.
And catching mice in the 21st century means Eurasia integration.
The UK government has secretly drawn up more details of its new bulk surveillance powers – awarding itself the ability to monitor Brits’ live communications, and insert encryption backdoors by the backdoor.
In its draft technical capability notices paper [PDF], all communications companies – including phone networks and ISPs – will be obliged to provide real-time access to the full content of any named individual within one working day, as well as any “secondary data” relating to that person.
That includes encrypted content – which means that UK organizations will not be allowed to introduce true end-to-end encryption of their users’ data but will be legally required to introduce a backdoor to their systems so the authorities can read any and all communications.
In addition, comms providers will be required to make bulk surveillance possible by introducing systems that can provide real-time interception of 1 in 10,000 of its customers. Or in other words, the UK government will be able to simultaneously spy on 6,500 folks in Blighty at any given moment.
According to the draft, telcos and other comms platforms must “provide and maintain the capability to disclose, where practicable, the content of communications or secondary data in an intelligible form and to remove electronic protection applied by or on behalf of the telecommunications operator to the communications or data.”
The live surveillance of individuals will require authorization from secretaries of state, overseen by a judge appointed by the prime minister. And there are a few safeguards built into the system following strong opposition to earlier drafts of the Investigatory Powers Act.
Closed doors
What will concern many, however, is how the draft paper and its contents are being handled.
The technical capability notices paper has only been provided to a select few companies – mostly ISPs and telcos – on a short four-week consultation, but a copy of the draft found its way to the Open Rights Group, which popped it online today.
According to the document, it has already passed through the UK’s Technical Advisory Board, which comprises six telco representatives – currently O2, BT, BSkyB, Cable and Wireless, Vodafone and Virgin Media – plus six people from the government’s intercepting agencies, and a board chairman.
That means that the contents have already been largely agreed to by most of the organizations that have been included in the closed consultation.
It is unclear whether the Home Office intends to make it available for public comment after that time or whether it will seek to push it through the legislature before anyone outside the consultation group has an opportunity to review it.
The rules will have to be formally approved by both houses of Parliament before becoming law.
You ain’t see me, right?
The process and the approach seem to be purposefully obscure. The rules come under Section 267(3)(i) of the Investigatory Powers Act – a one paragraph section that refers back to Section 253, which covers “Technical capability notices.”
There is no mention of the technical capability notices paper existing either on the Home Office website or on the Gov.uk consultation website. And the only reason we know about it is presumably because someone at one of the few companies that have been sent the draft rules decided to tell Open Rights Group about it.
But what the nine-page document does is provide the government with the legal authority to monitor anyone in the UK in real time, as well as effectively make strong and unbreakable encryption illegal.
This act of stripping away safeguards on people’s private data is also fantastic news for hackers, criminals, and anyone else who wants to snoop on Brits. The seals are finally coming off.
“This lays bare the extreme mass surveillance this Conservative government is planning after the election,” Liberal Democrat President Sal Brinton told us in a statement.
“It is a full frontal assault on civil liberties and people’s privacy. The security services need to be able to keep people safe. But these disproportionate powers are straight out of an Orwellian nightmare and have no place in a democratic society.”
The Home Office’s private consultation is open until 19 May. If you would like the UK government to know your views, then email [email protected]. ®
PS: The Home Office ran a short public consultation earlier this year on a code of conduct for government snoops.
The environment ministry in India will make the final call after the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee recently gave a positive recommendation for the commercial cultivation of GM mustard. Whether the crop is commercially cultivated could depend on the Supreme Court, which is hearing a case seeking a moratorium on its commercial release. The government has stated it will abide by the court’s decision (although that remains to be seen and some question the court’s impartiality). The final hearing will probably take place in July. The case before the Supreme Court was brought by Aruna Rodrigues who accuses various officials and the regulatory authorities of unremitting fraud and regulatory delinquency.
The importance of GM mustard should not be underestimated. It is central to the whole debate about the future of agriculture in India and the wider development paradigm. GM mustard is a Trojan horse that would help pave the way for ripping up the economic and social fabric of India and recast for the benefit of powerful Western corporations, not least Bayer-Monsanto (see GM Mustard in India to read my numerous articles on this issue).
GM mustard is being promoted on the basis of the lie that it will increase yield. However, the government itself admits there’s no evidence that it will do so. In aletterto Anil Dave, India’s environment minister, presented below, advocate Prashant Bhushan says that conclusions were drawn and disseminated to mean that GM Mustard DMH 11 is a superior hybrid-making technology that will out-yield India’s best non-GMO hybrids and varieties. But he adds that non-GMO hybrids and varieties out-yield HT DMH 11 hands down.
Bhushan reminds the Indian government that it has admitted that there is no evidence that GM mustard out-yields non-GM. In an affidavit to the Supreme Court, the government stated,
“No such claim has been made in any of the submitted documents that DMH 11 out-performs Non-GMO hybrids.”
ANNEX
Prashant Bhushan Advocate
Resi. Office. Chamber
B-16, Sector-14, Noida C-67, Sector-14, Noida 301, New Lawyers Chamber
Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar Supreme Court Of India
Shri Anil Dave The Hon’ble Minister of MoEF and Climate Change
Paryavaran Bhavan
Lodhi Road
New Delhi
COMMERCIAL APPROVAL BY THE GEAC OF HT MUSTARD HYBRID DMH 11ON 11 MAY 2017
Dear Shri Dave
I express a deep disquiet and anxiety at the opaque and unscientific regulatory oversight of this GM mustard, which is also an herbicide tolerant (GM) crop. It has resulted yesterday, in its undoubtedly flawed approval for ‘Commercialisation’ by the GEAC. I write to request you to please withhold your approval of such a move on three grounds.
The first is that the CJ, based on the assurance given by the AG Mukul Rohatgi that the Union of India will not release DMH 11 “without the prior approval of the Supreme Court”, accordingly, gave a verbal Order of an interim injunction till the case is heard comprehensively and the issue of HT mustard in substance. This was widely reported in the newspapers, two examples of which are referenced ([1]).
The second is the grave matter of the independence, surety and rigour of the oversight of the biosafety of HT Mustard DMH 11, which is critical for India’s agriculture in mustard, its food safety (both as a vegetable and seed oil), and furthermore, and of outstanding importance, the certain contamination that will occur of India’s mustard germplasm. These matters are of course, of central concern to your Ministry’s ‘regulating’ function and mandate for India.
The third is the requirement and my personal plea to you, to take note of the lessons of history of GMO regulation in India, embedded as it is in the most serious conflicts of interest and lack of expertise, where regulation has become farcical. For this reason, self-assessed safety dossiers by crop developers are kept secret by our Regulators and governing Ministries. Four official reports attest to the prevailing, utterly dismal state of regulation.
May any government treat its citizens with such willful disregard, despite Constitutional provisions?
The Bt brinjal Biosafety-Dossier remained unpublished for 16 months despite a SC order, but eventually, the Regulators had to comply with its full publication (with the raw data), which then revealed its fraudulence when examined and appraised by independent scientists of international stature. Studies said to be done were not done, as many as 36 of 37 environmental studies, leaving aside other risk assessment protocols. The moratorium which followed was also in large part influenced by the fact that India is the world’s Centre of brinjal diversity with 2500 varieties and wild species, which would certainly be contaminated. This is what the 37th PSC of 2012 (on GMOs) had to say on Bt brinjal and regulation. I quote very briefly. I would urge you to read the full recommendations of just 3 pages:
“—-Convinced that these developments are not merely slippages due to oversight or human error but indicative of collusion of a worst kind, they have recommended a THOROUGH PROBE INTO THE BT. BRINJAL matter from the beginning up to the imposing of moratorium on its commercialization by the then Minister of Environment and Forests (I/C) on 9 February, 2010 by a team of independent scientists and environmentalists”. (Recommendation – Para No. 2.79).
“The Committee after critically analyzing the evidence —— the gross inadequacy of the regulatory mechanism, — the absence of chronic toxicology studies and long term environment impact assessment of transgenic agricultural crops; the virtual non-existent nature of the oversight bodies like National Biodiversity Authority, Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Right Authority, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, etc., recommended that till all the concerns voiced in their Report are fully addressed —-, to put in place all regulatory, monitoring, oversight, surveillance and other structures, further research and development on transgenics in agricultural crops should only be done in strict containment and FIELD TRIALS UNDER ANY GARB SHOULD BE DISCONTINUED FORTHWITH”. (Recommendation – Para Nos. 8.116, 8.121 & 8.125)
“Noting with concern the grossly inadequate and antiquated regulatory mechanism for assessment and approval of transgenics in food crops; the serious conflict of interest of various stakeholders involved in the regulatory mechanism; the total lack of post commercialization, monitoring and surveillance, the Committee have felt that in such a situation what the Country needs is not a bio-technology regulatory legislation but an all-encompassing umbrella legislation on bio-safety ——- The Committee have also cautioned the Government that in their tearing hurry to open the economy to private prospectors, they should NOT MAKE THE SAME FATE BEFALL ON THE AGRICULTURE SECTOR, as has happened to the communications, pharma, mineral wealth and several other sectors in which the Government’s facilitative benevolence preceded setting up of sufficient checks and balances and regulatory mechanisms, thereby, leading to colossal, unfettered loot and plunder of national wealth in some form or the other, incalculable damage to environment, bio-diversity, flora and fauna and unimaginable suffering to the common man”. (Recommendation – Para No. 3.47 & 3.48)
But till date, the GM mustard dossier remains unpublished in willful Contempt of Court. Prof Pental is the Chair of the DBT’s Agricultural Biotechnology Task Force. SR Rao, Member GEAC is over-all in-charge of the DBTs Agri Biotech programmes. The DBT also funds Pental’s GM mustard.
Does anything more need to be said to underscore the implications of thiscosy‘arrangement’ of partnership in the Regulatory oversight of HT mustard DMH 11 and GMOs in general?
Data that has ‘leaked’ around the edges demonstrate that we have ample reason to be greatly concerned of gross cover-up and misconduct. Furthermore, this HT mustard DMH 11 and its two HT variants are doubly barred by the unanimous 5-member TEC recommendations: ie this is an HT crop and a crop in a Centre of genetic diversity.
The further contents of this letter below, make clear in the simplest possible way, from, and it has to be said, curious admissions of your Apex Regulator and the Union of India in their ‘Reply’ Affidavit submitted to the SC, which effectively demolish wholesale, any sound basis for the release of HT DMH 11 for commercial cultivation. I make 3 short points, to alert you to the veracity of this statement, as you will not be briefed correctly on these matters by your Regulators and indeed by the Ministries of S & T and Agriculture, both of which promote HT DMH 11 and even fund it (DBT) as stated above:
(a) HT hybrid mustard DMH 11 has failed the first criteria of a test risk protocol of a GM crop: ‘Is the GM Crop required in the first place’? The answer in “No” based on the admission of the Union of India itself in their ‘Reply’ Affidavit in the SC. They said:
“No such claim has been made in any of the submitted documents that DMH 11 out-performs Non-GMO hybrids. The comparison has only been made between hybrid DMH 11, NC (national Check) Varuna and the appropriate ZC (zonal checks) — MSY of 2670 Kg/ha has been recorded over three years of BRL trials which is 28% and 37% more than the NC & ZC respectively” (At 88, pg.56).
Unfortunately, the whole truth uncovered, is that no valid comparators were used and the field trials themselves stand voided on the basis of serious anomalies and violations in field testing, inconclusive results and even statistical fraud. Yet, conclusions were drawn and disseminated to mean that DMH 11 is a superior hybrid-making technology that will out-yield India’s best Non-GMO hybrids and varieties. The fact is, Non-GMO hybrids and varieties out-yield HT DMH 11 hands down.
(b) We know, based on the AG’s assertion in Court that the Union of India holds that this GM mustard will displace imported edible oil-seeds in a significant way (reduce our oilseeds bill). However, such an assertion in the light of the above submission is to say the least ludicrous, entirely lacking any semblance of logic. Moreover, the nearest equivalent to Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) is rape-seed oil (Canola), imported from Canada (which is essentially GMO) and represents just 2% of India’s edible oil imports! Rs 68,000 Cr is the total import oil-seeds bill, not Canolaalone, as the AG mistakenly stated in Court. Can this be the basis for the Commercialisation of HT mustard DMH 11?
It gets murkier still when the U of I also admits that:
“Heterosis is due to the careful selection of parents and not due to the three transgenes” — “The developers have nowhere claimed that the yield increase is due to the three transgenes”( At 65, page 45)
This is exactly the issue that there is no trait for yield in HT DMH 11. It is good indeed that on this point we are all in agreement. Yet, somehow, the opposite story prevails, the ‘story’ to the media, and the PMO. The stand of the Niti Aayog is particularly curious in that their National Agri policy requires GMOs in agriculture to meet India’s food security as they are better yielding! Where in this statement is the basic science governing the trait for yield in GMOs and Mustard in particular? It is very troubling that the Niti Aayog has failed to do some basic homework.
(c) Therefore, we draw the conclusion that the stated regulatory intent is to deregulate HT DMH 11 as a policy agenda based on no science, and to convert India’s mustard agriculture, in a massive and dangerous experiment, to (GM) HT hybrid mustard, (variants of DMH 11). Imagine our consternation when your Regulator admitted to precisely this:
“Once the GE mustard events Varuna bn 3.6 and EH2 modbs 2.99 are approved and deregulated, these would be immediately used by the National net-work programme” — “Once a robust pollination control mechanism is in place, yield of hybrids can be further improved by breeding better parental lines” (at 63, pg. 43).
The statement is pure spin, dissimulation. Unless deconstructed, it conveys that HT Hybrid DMH11 is a superior hybrid-making technology (which it is not); that will (alone) provide 25 to 30% higher yield and even better, (not true, as admitted), because on the contrary, India’s best Non-GMO hybrids and varieties are already significantly outperforming HT DMH 11. Unfortunately and regrettably, the plain truth is that decades of good work already being done by our agri institutions and the DRMR[2] in Non-GM hybrid technology and superior-yielding varieties will be laid waste in this dangerous plan for the country via HT Hybrid DMH 11 and its variants.
AND OUR GERMPLASM WILL BE THOROUGHLY CONTAMINATED AND IN A CENTRE OF MUSTARD DIVERSITY.
India is a centre of diversity in mustard with 9720 Accessions in our gene banks (The NBPGR[3]). With a commercialised GM crop, contamination of non-GMO is certain. That is the evidence.
In closing, I’d like to emphasise that GMO contamination is neither remediable nor reversible and is the outstanding concern. The genes in HT hybrid DMH 11 are toxic genes: being an HT crop also means that DMH 11 is a pesticidal crop. Its nationality doesn’t change the science. It stays this way whether foreign or Indian! How do we get carried away on such a band-wagon?
The issue also is that with GMO contamination, our mustard will be changed at the molecular level. Any toxicity that there is will remain in perpetuity. Are we prepared to be the agents for such monumental risk and put India and its people in jeopardy without any recourse and remedy?
For these reasons among others, and there are decidedly ‘others’, I would urge you on behalf of our Nation not to endorse this outrageous and anti-national approval, but reject it in the public interest. You will be doing India a noble service in posterity.
Thank you, Yours sincerely,
Signed/
Prashant Bhushan
* * *
Notes
[1]LiveLaw News Network: ‘No GM Mustard Without SC Approval’ October 24, 2016;
Apparent National Security Agency (NSA) malware has been used in a global cyber-attack, including on British hospitals, in what whistleblower Edward Snowden described as the repercussion of the NSA’s reckless decision to build the tools.
“Despite warnings, @NSAGov built dangerous attack tools that could target Western software. Today we see the cost,” Snowden tweeted Friday.
At least two hospitals in London were forced to shut down and stop admitting patients after being attacked by the malware, which operates by locking out the user, encrypting data, and demanding a ransom to release it. The attacks hit dozens of other hospitals, ambulance operators, and doctors’ offices as well.
The Blackpool Gazette in the northwest reported that medical staff had resorted to using pen and paper when phone and computer systems shut down. Elsewhere, journalist Ollie Cowan tweeted a photo of ambulances “backed up” at Southport Hospital as the staff attempted to cope with the crisis.
Other disruptions were reported in at least 74 countries, including Russia, Spain, Turkey, and Japan, and the number is “growing fast,” according to Kaspersky Lab chief Costin Raiu. Security architect Kevin Beau said it was spreading into the U.S. as well.
The malware, which Microsoft tested briefly earlier this year, was leaked by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, which has been releasing NSA hacking tools online since last year, the New York Timesreports.
Times journalists Dan Bilefsky and Nicole Perlroth wrote:
Microsoft rolled out a patch for the vulnerability in March, but hackers apparently took advantage of the fact that vulnerable targets—particularly hospitals—had yet to update their systems.
The malware was circulated by email. Targets were sent an encrypted, compressed file that, once loaded, allowed the ransomware to infiltrate its targets.
Reutersreported that the National Health Service (NHS), England’s public health system, was warned about possible hacking earlier in the day, but that by then it was already too late.
A Twitter account with the handle @HackerFantastic, the co-founder of the cyber security company Hacker House, tweeted that the firm had
“warned the NHS with Sky news about vulnerabilities they had last year, this was inevitable and bound to happen at some stage.”
“In light of today’s attack, Congress needs to be asking @NSAgov if it knows of any other vulnerabilities in software used in our hospitals,” Snowden tweeted. “If @NSAGov had privately disclosed the flaw used to attack hospitals when they *found* it, not when they lost it, this may not have happened.”
Disclosing the vulnerability when it was found would have given hospitals years, not months, to update their systems and prepare for an attack, he added.
“Something like this is incredibly significant, we’ve not seen P2P spreading on PC via exploits at this scale in nearly a decade.”
Patrick Toomey, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) National Security Project, said,
“It would be shocking if the NSA knew about this vulnerability but failed to disclose it to Microsoft until after it was stolen.”
“These attacks underscore the fact that vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies, but by hackers and criminals around the world,” Toomey said. “It is past time for Congress to enhance cybersecurity by passing a law that requires the government to disclose vulnerabilities to companies in a timely manner. Patching security holes immediately, not stockpiling them, is the best way to make everyone’s digital life safer.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
China’s President Xi Jinping is promoting, in the Belt and Road Initiative, a plan for building the infrastructure crucial for development throughout the world, and emphasizes the interconnected and inclusive focus of this global project.
It would appear that by constructing the transport facilities, the industries, etc. which facilitate economic development, the poorest, most remote, and destitute areas of the world will thereby become accessible, and the resources essential for rescuing people from poverty can be transmitted.
The abysmal inequality which plagues and endangers, ultimately, the survival of everyone, will, through this construction, be reduced, and, ultimately eliminated. This vast global vision should create the economic framework for ultimately building hospitals and schools, within this infrastructure, which will enhance the quality of life for the hitherto most “wretched of the earth.”
President Putin welcomes this initiative as promotion of peace and development. Of particular interest is the great enthusiasm of the British representative, which can be explained in many different ways. The United States also spoke in support of the Belt and Road Initiative, citing various ways in which the country is developing infrastructure, and various industries.
Although Xi Jinping mentions the numerous wars and spread of terrorism, and the refugee crisis, at no point is there any mention of the vast resources being squandered in the weapons industries, or the trillions of dollars spent on building more advanced nuclear weapons. Unless a method is devised of transforming the economies which are based on profit maximization, and the most profitable industry is war, the glorious vision of an interconnected, inclusive and peaceful world will be jeopardized.
Carla Stea is Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, currently in Beijing for the Belt and Road Forum.
North Korea today is not the North Korea of 1994 when President Bill Clinton seriously considered a preemptive strike against the Yongbyon nuclear reactor. Back then North Korea did not possess any nuclear weapons.
Now North Korea possesses the knowledge of nuclear weapons technology and any US cyberattacks can only slow the process of weapons development but not stop it. Most likely the North’s ability to reconstitute nuclear weapons technology is there for good — and it is proceeding with ICBM experiments too.
David Sanger ran an interesting article, “Trump Inherits a Secret Cyberwar against North Korean Missiles” (New York Times, March 4, 2017). In 2014, the Obama administration ordered Pentagon officials to step up their cyber and electronic strikes against North Korea’s missile program.
“Soon a large number of the North’s military rockets began to explode, veer off course, disintegrate in midair and plunge into the sea.”
Upon close examination, however,
“Pentagon’s disruption effort, based on interviews with officials of the Obama and Trump administrations, found that the United States still does not have the ability to effectively counter the North Korean missile program.”
Despite Trump’s saying “It won’t happen!,” North Korea will continue to develop its nuclear weapons technology. Trump may consider direct missile strikes on the launch sites as did Obama, but there is little chance of hitting every target.
Iran found out about the US and Israeli-led sabotage of its nuclear program using the “Stuxnet” worm, and effectively countered it (as well as cyberattacking Saudi Arabia’s oil field computers). Iran was a comparatively easy target, though. Sanger notes that in North Korea, missiles are fired from multiple launch sites around the country and moved about on mobile launchers in an elaborate shell game meant to deceive adversaries.
Bruce Cummings tells us that for decades the North has built some 15,000 underground facilities of a national security nature. In the mountainous terrain, sometimes a mile deep, are hidden nuclear weapons facilities as well as conventional weapons such as long-range canons. See “Advocates Urge Trump to De-escalate with North Korea, Not Ratchet Up Threats & Military Aggression” (Democracy Now! April 17, 2017) with guests Bruce Cummings, and Christine Hong.)
North Korea seems to have figured out how to deal with cyberattacks. In April and September last year North Korea had successes with R-27 engines and exploded nuclear weapons with more than twice the destructive force of the Hiroshima bomb.
A report on cyber vulnerabilities by the Defense Science Board, commissioned by the Pentagon during the Obama administration, warmed that
“North Korea might acquire the ability to cripple the American power grid and it could never be allowed to ‘hold vital U.S. strike systems at risk’.”
We know that, in 2014, North Korea messed with Sony Pictures Entertainment wiping out 70 percent of the company’s computing systems. Ted Koppel’s work, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath (Crown, 2015) deals with cyberwar and its limits.
Once the US uses cyberweapons against nuclear launch systems of North Korea, Sanger notes, Russia and China may feel free to do the same, targeting American missiles.
“Some strategists argue that all nuclear systems should be off-limits for cyberattack. Otherwise, if a nuclear power thought it could secretly disable an adversary’s atomic controls, it might be more tempted to take the risk of launching a pre-emptive attack.”
America’s Red Line vs. North Korea’s Red Line
The US will draw a line if and when a North Korean ICBM is capable of reaching the US mainland.
North Korea is two or more years away from successfully achieving such capability. It has yet to figure out how to solve the problems of 1) miniaturizing the nuclear warheads and 2) re-entry from space.
Joshua Pollock, a senior researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International studies in Monterey, CA, thinks that the North’s ICBM tests will allow them to work through problems of 1) and 2) and the North will be able to create a reliable weapon in a “year or two.” (North Korea nuclear threat: should California start panicking? By Alan Yuhas, The Guardian, April 20, 2017.)
Joseph Bermudez, an analyst at 38 North, a think tank affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said,
“If everything proceeds as is, It’s likely by 2020 that they could have a system reaching the United States.”
After the fifth test last fall, Siegfried Hecker, the former director of Los Alamos National Lab, thought likewise:
“Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capacity to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so.”
Bermudez observed,
“It’s likely that any cyberwarfare campaign would not be able to stop either the nuclear program or the ballistic program, only delay it.” (Yuhan, The Guardian. Emphasis added).
Pollack argues that the good news is North Koreans are not suicidal and they are not going to just start a war. As any other country, North Koreans wants to survive as a nation.
The North does not want war. Neither do South Korea and China. There will be a war only if US wants it.
Max Fisher points out the dilemma in “The North Korea Paradox: Why There are No Good Options,” New York Times, (April 17, 2017). He writes,
“The United States’ relative strength is also paradoxically, a weakness. North Korea knows that it would quickly succumb to a full American attack, making its only option to escalate to nuclear strikes almost immediately at the start of a conflict.” (italics added). It’s a hair trigger to nuclear escalation.
The North’s goals are:
1) recognition of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a legitimate political entity and a nuclear state;
2) stopping the US conspiracy of regime change, biannual “decapitation” exercises along with South Korean military;
3) lifting sanctions; and
4) replacing the armistice of 1953 with a permanent peace treaty.
Should the US engage in a pre-emptive strike, it would not be truly “pre-emptive” in that the word pre-emption means “action taken to check other action beforehand.” The initial first strike against the North would not eliminate all North Korean military targets, such as 15,000 tunnel complexes – some of which are located mile deep under rugged mountains. And even if the US did intercept the North’s ballistic missiles in midflight with an anti-missile system (such as THAAD), the North would retaliate not only with nuclear but also with conventional weapons.
William Perry, former US Secretary of Defense, remarked (April 14 edition of the LA Times):
“I think with high confidence, there is going to be a military reaction from North Korea. Not a nuclear attack as they threatened, [but] rather a conventional but still quite destructive attack against South Korea.”
There are approximately 20 million people in the greater Seoul area. Moreover, the North has the military hardware to attack Tokyo, Okinawa, and more than 80,000 US military personnel in South Korea and Japan.
In the same article, Leon Panetta, who served as Secretary of Defense under Obama administration, warning against Trump raising tensions, said,
“We have the potential for a nuclear war that would take millions of lives. So I think we have got to exercise some care here.”
Christine Ahn writes,
“Any military action by Washington will undoubtedly trigger a counter-reaction from Pyongyang that could instantly kill a third of the South Korean population.” (“The High Costs of US War Mongering Against North Korea,” by Christine Ahn, Truthout, April 26, 2017.)
We are not talking about tossing around nukes with 15 kilotons (Hiroshima) or 18 kilotons (Nagasaki); the most common nuclear weapon in the US arsenal today, the W76, packs an explosive power of 100 kt. The next most common, the W88, packs a 475-kilotont punch.
Conn Hallinan describes a scene:
“A recent study found that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan using Hiroshima-sized weapons would generate a nuclear winter that would make it impossible to grow wheat in Russia and Canada and cut the Asian Monsoon’s rainfall by 10 percent. The result would be up to 100 million deaths by starvation. Imagine what the outcome would be if the weapons were the size used by Russia, China, or the U.S.” (“America’s New Nuclear Missile Endangers the World, by Conn Hallinan”, Counterpunch, April 28, 2017.)
The red line for North Korea is: sovereignty and self-determination. And if it takes nuclear weapons to deter the great powers, so be it.
Rarely do we see North Korea openly critical of China. Kim Chol’s angry remarks carried by the official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday May 3 as president Trump was pressuring China to increase the pain inflicted on North Korea was thus unusual:
“One must clearly understand that the D.P.R.K.’s line of access to nukes for the existence and development of the country can neither be changed nor shaken… And that the D.P.R.K. [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] will never beg for the maintenance of friendship with China, risking its nuclear program which is as precious as its own life, no matter how valuable the friendship is.” The North accused China making “lame excuses for the base acts of dancing to the tune of the U.S.” (North Korean Media, in Rare Critique of China, Says Nuclear Program Will Continue”, by Choe Sang-hun, New York Times, May 4, 2017.)
Kim Jung-un, being “a smart kid,” as Trump called him, is well aware of what happened to Maummar al-Qaddafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq for having surrendered their nuclear weapons programs. As Hillary Clinton put it,
“I came, I saw, and he [al-Qaddafi] died.”
She is no Julius Caesar but decided to co-opt his famous “veni, vidi, vici.”
Interestingly, Moon Jae-in, the most likely next president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) is also saying that South Korea needs to say no to the United States. That is also unusual. Moon’s advocacy of “[South Korean] National Interest First” policy is striking a responsive chord among the voters.
Moon is calling for
1) renegotiating the THAAD agreement of the recently impeached Park Geun-hye’s administration with the US;
2) renegotiating the Operational War Time Control (OPCON) policy, a fundamental anomaly whereby the US nullified South Korea’s sovereignty by being a hegemonic overlord controlling the South’s military dating back to the beginning of the Korean War under the fig leaf of the UN Command; and
3) renegotiating Park Geun-hye administration’s “comfort women” agreement with Japan. (See also “The United States Should Listen to South Korea – or It Will Reap the Whirlwind,” by Tim Shorrock, The Nation, May 5, 2017.)
Jason Lim, a 36-year-old South Korean engineer living in Washington, DC, thinks
“it’s important to try and maintain a solid alliance with the United States – but not at any cost…”
Lim and many South Koreans say their country has been reduced to a pawn in a superpower game of chess as the United States and China seek to tackle North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile programs.
“What none of the policy papers address is the role that South Korea has to play. It is simply assumed that the status quo will continue, and South Korea will go along with any action the U.S. chooses to take, no matter how harsh or dangerous. In the mind of the Washington Establishment, this is a master-servant relationship and nothing more.” (“US-North Korean Relationships in a Time of Change,” by Gregory Elich, Counterpunch, February 13, 2017.)
Both North Korea (DPRK) and South Korea (ROK) are saying,
“We have had enough of ‘serving the powerful’ (sadaejuuyi).” A good many South Koreans are seriously fatigued by 72 years of “You gotta behave” from September 1945 to the present day.
In 2004 I was at a university in Seoul to teach for a semester and was told by the university that I should never, never criticize the United States.
In an interview with Hankyoreh (Hani), John Delury, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, Yonsei University , Seoul, Korea, was asked:
“Do you think the North Korea nuclear and missile threats could come to an end by just pressing the North to the maximum level and imposing tougher sanctions?”
Delury replied:
“Thinking that it’s a matter of making North Korea hurt enough shows a fundamental misunderstanding of a key attribute of the DPRK state and society which has an extraordinary capacity to absorb pain. They have maybe suffered more than anyone since 1945. They’re like a boxer, they’ll never beat you but you can never knock them down. No matter how hard you hit them, they get back up.” ([Interview] “Can candlelight energy spark new era of inter-Korean relations?“ Hankyoreh, (April 11, 2017).
To understand the mindset of North Koreans — and indeed many South Koreans — one needs to have a historical knowledge of the horrendous Holocaust that took place during the Korean War, 1950-53 – something few US citizens are aware of.
As Air Force General Curtis LeMay put it,
“Over a period of three-and-a-half or four years [actually, thirty-seven months] we did burn down every town in North Korea and every town in South Korea…and what? Killed off 20 percent of the Korean population…What I’m trying to say is if once you make a decision to use military force to solve your problem, then you ought to use it and use too much so that you don’t make an error on the other side and not quite have enough. And you roll over everything to start with and you close it down just like that.” (Thomas Coffey, Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay, (NY: Crown publishers, 1986, p. 306.)
The Holocaust exterminated 4.610,000 Koreans, mostly civilians, as noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1967 edition, vol. 13, p. 475. Of the 4.6 million, 3 million North Koreans out of 9 million population were massacred. North Koreans defiantly swear “Never again!”
If such a slaughter had taken place in the United States back in 1950, it would have meant 30,454,200 Americans killed — or 20 percent of the U.S. population at that time of 152, 271,417.
Here is a brief excerpt from I. F. Stone’s The Hidden History of the Korean War:
Senator Stennis:
“Now as a matter of fact, Northern Korea has been virtually destroyed, hasn’t it? Those cities have been virtually destroyed.”
General O’Donnell:
“Oh, yes, we did it all later anyhow…I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name… Just before the Chinese came in we were grounded. There were no more targets in Korea.” (I. F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1971, pp. 312-13.)
Bruce Cummings reflects on war and memory: “’War is a stern teacher,” Thucydides wrote. Indeed it is the supreme teacher of one’s memory. As Nietzsche put the point in discussing humanmnemotechnics, the oldest psychology on earth is that which must be burned in: ‘only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory.’” (Bruce Cumings, North Korean, Another Country, p. 26. Cumings relates Nietzsche’s thoughts from Frederick Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of morals (NY: Vintage Books, 1969), p. 61,)
As a 14-year old refugee, I still vividly remember the images of the horrific carnage and destruction during the desperate years of the Korean War because they were burned into my memory – after all these years. Especially in North Korea, these stark memories have been passed on to the new generations.
THAAD
As Gregory Elich cogently argues in his “Threat to China: Pressure on South Korea to Join U.S. Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense System” (Global Research, July 1, 2014), South Korea really does not need a THAAD battery, as a Pentagon official admitted. It is not relevant to South Korea’s defense against North Korea’s attack because of the short distances between the North and targets in the South.
A THAAD battery that the US is deploying in South Korea – in the stealth of night with 8,000 Korean security police to guard against protesting South Koreans – is intended to detect and track as early as possible China’s ICBMs, tipped with MIRV payloads and headed for the West and East Coast of the US.
This US initiative boils down to the US trying to squeeze one billion dollars out of South Korea’s treasury for installing a THAAD missile defense that South Korea does not need – in addition to $880 million per year that South Korea already pays for maintaining approximately one hundred permanent US bases in South Korea.
As scientists Postol and Lewis warmed, THAAD in Seongju, South Korea, may well be the first place targeted by China before Beijing launches any ICBM attack against the US mainland, thereby making South Korea not more but less safe.
Why is “Pivot to Asia” important to the US?
The US policy of “Pivot to Asia” is primarily preoccupied with the military potential and development of China. THAAD is an important part of the US effort to surround China and Eurasian heartland with hundred of military bases.
Mike Whitney writes,
“It means the United States has embarked on an ambitious plan to extend its military grip and market power over the Eurasian landmass, thus securing its position as the world’s only superpower into the next century.” (“Blood in the Water: The Trump Revolution Ends in a Whimper,” by Mike Whitney, Counterpunch, February 17, 2017.)
His reference to Hillary Clinton’s “America’s Pacific Century” passages are worth quoting because they reflect the thinking of the foreign policy elites, especially the Council on Foreign Relations. (“America’s pacific Century, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” Foreign Policy, October 11, 2011.)
“Harnessing Asia’s growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests… Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology… American firms (need) to tap into the vast and growing consumer base in Asia…
“The region already generates more than half of global output and nearly half of global trade… We are looking for opportunities to do even more business in Asia… and our investment opportunities in Asia’s dynamic markets.”
The Rand Corporation came up with a study entitled War with China: Thinking through the Unthinkable, by David C. Compert, Ahtrid Stuth Cevalles, Ccristina L. Grafola, 2016.
That Rand study recommends that the US duke it out with China before 2026. By then China will already have much further developed its military technology, and later on it could be difficult for the US to prevail in a military confrontation, especially given the economic trends of China vis-à-vis the US by that time.
Robert Gordon argues in The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living since the Civil War (Princeton University Press, 2016.) that the Golden Age of American growth was from 1870 to 1970. It was an exceptional and truly remarkable century of American prosperity.
For the next 25 years, the US needs to grapple with a number of headwinds – such as
1) rising inequality;
2) poor-quality education;
3) the aging population; and
4) rising government debt.
He might have added political paralysis and corruption of the Washington swamp and the cancer of Orwellian “alternative facts” by “manufacturing consent.”
I shall offer two good examples and return to Gordon.
First, let’s take the allegation that Russia and Trump conspired to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Without a single piece of verifiable evidence, the major media have been pathologically obsessed with deep-state magic. Ordinary Americans are reduced to helplessly watching a factional power struggle among the entrenched elites for the control of an American society in disarray, instead of trying to figure out why the election was such a disaster for the Democrats as well as the Republicans. Over the last several months, it has been incredible that so much time and energy has been wasted with such stuff while the country urgently needs to deal with more serious things.
Meanwhile as Dave Lindorff notes,
“The pretext for the US cruise missile blitz, an alleged attack on a rebel-held town called Khan Shiekhun in Idlib province, where some 70 people, including children, were reported to have died from illegal Sarin-gas bomb said to have been dropped by Syrian planes, has yet to be investigated by any independent observers.” (“Yet Another President Commits the Ultimate War Crime of launching a War of Aggression,” by David Lindorff, Counterpunch, April 7, 2017.)
A Foreign Affairs article, “Syria Policy After the Chemical Attacks,” by Sam Heller, (April 6, 2017), assumes what happened was a fact. “Yet the United States has asserted definitively that the regime was responsible for the attack.”
Then on April 14, we see a carefully argued Counterpunch article, An Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report About the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria, by MIT physicist Theodore Postol. It is a lengthy and carefully documented piece. Speaking of the White House intelligence summary of this incident released on April 11, Postol remarks
“I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 or 7 am on April 4, 2017.”
“In fact,” Postal continues, “a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4.”
So much for the tossing of 59 Tomahawks costing US taxpayers about $100 million and doing no real damage to one of the Syrian airbases. The “alternative fact” here is that Trump was supposedly deeply moved by daughter Ivanka’s humanitarian sentiments evoked by images of children poisoned by Assad on April 4, 2017.
Back to Gordon. He forecasts that the average growth in real income per person over the next quarter-century will be 0.7 percent per year – even lower than the 1.3 percent per year in the 2000-2015 period. If this is the economic prospect for the next 25 years, how can we in the US afford to continue spending approximately $1 trillion per year to cover the Pentagon’s epic military spending?
Now the question: Does THAAD, as anti-missile system, work?
Conn Hallinan refers to an essay by Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project of the American Federation of Scientists, Matthew McKenzie of the National Resources Defense Council, and physicist and ballistic missile expert Theodore Postol. This essay appeared in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Evidently, the three scientists regard anti-missile systems as unreliable.
“Once they migrate off the drawing board, their lethal efficiency drops rather sharply.” (America’s New Nuclear Missile Endangers the World, by Conn Hallinan, Counterpunch, April 28, 2017.)
During the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan was enamored with his Strategic Defense Initiatives (SDI), mockingly dubbed “Star Wars” by Ted Kennedy. SDI is supposed to safeguard Americans by destroying incoming nuclear missiles.
Most scientists specialized in ballistic missile field doubt its technical feasibility, noting that it is like hitting one speeding bullet with another. Even if it did work, it will only encourage the adversaries to build more missiles and use more decoys – some weighted and some not – so as to overwhelm the anti-ballistic systems.
In any event, Congress came up with billions of dollars for the SDI program. Lawrence Wittner says
“And today more than thirty years later, the United States still lacks an effective missile defense system.”
Thus far, the SDI program has gobbled up over $180 billion of American taxpayers’ money.
Wittner informs us that
“One of the major components of the missile defense program is the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD). It is designed to use ground-based ‘killer-vehicles’ to destroy incoming nuclear missiles by colliding with them.” (“Should We Keep Wasting money on Missile Defense – or Invest in Something Useful?” by Lawrence Wittner, Counterpunch, (February 1, 2017).
The Pentagon has conducted 17 tests of GMD since 1999 always of course in a situation quite unlike armed combat; “People conducting the tests knew the speed, location, and trajectory of the mock enemy missiles ahead of time, as well as when they would be launched. Nevertheless, the GMD system failed the test eight times – a 47 percent failure rate.”
And the GMD test record did not improve in recent years. It failed 6 out of 10 tests and 3 of its last 4. In 2016, a report written by the three scientists noted that the GMD system is “simply unable to protect the U.S. public.”
Why such enormous costs without useful results? David Williams, a journalists who has done extensive investigations of GMD, thinks this is due to the influence of “major defense contractors with billions of dollars of revenue at stake” – in particular, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman.
China’s Red Line
China definitely does not want the Korean peninsula united under the US hegemony. While China may squeeze North Korea’s trade with China, limit oil supply, and even tolerate a limited US military attack on North Korea’s military targets, it will not allow regime change in North Korea orchestrated by the US. That is China’s red line. That much is understood between North Korea and China. Geopolitically, it is in China’s interest not to allow regime change in North Korea.
Therefore, China is opposed to the annual joint military exercises to “decapitate” North Korean regime, assassinate Kim Jung-un and other key leaders. The last US-led joint military exercise involved some 350,000 military personnel, mostly South Korean military underlings.
In the event the North’s regime falls, it may create a major refugee problem in Manchuria. China is taking measures for that eventuality. But more importantly, North Korea provides a buffer zone for China. China entered the Korean War primarily for that reason. And China sacrificed a great deal – approximately 900,000 PLA “volunteers” lost their lives on the frozen terrains of North Korea.
Kim Chol’s angry remarks carried by official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday May 3 is noteworthy because he is clearly stating that North Korea values its sovereignty and autonomy over and above China’s friendship.
Through three generations of the Kim dynasty, North Korea has played Beijing off against Moscow so that it can be “self-reliant” (juche), sovereign and autonomous in a rough-and-tumble international political milieu.
China is biding its time. China has geopolitical ambitions for the Eurasian heartland, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and other foreign policy goals. It hopes to proceed with deliberate speed. China may be thinking in terms of Mackinder’s geopolitics.
This article was originally published in Counterpunch on May 10, 2017.
Leo Chang (Korean Name Chang Soon), son of the prime minister of both the First and the Second Republic of Korea, left in 1950 at the start of the Korean War for the US at the age of 15, returning frequently as an adult. After earning a PhD from Georgetown University, he worked as an Associate in Research at the Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research from 1976-1999 and taught from 1963-1999 at Regis College. He also taught international relations for two years at Beijing University. Prof. Chang is author, most recently, of Reflections on the Roots of US Involvement in Korea, (Levellers Press, 2013) and available also now in a Korean edition.
A President or head of State of a great nation, a major world power we might think would have reached their position through years of responsible achievement and experience in the art of statecraft, in short through development of very special qualities of responsible leadership. It’s instructive to briefly look at the current president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, aka The Donald, from the perspective of qualities of leadership.
The Five Qualities
Some two thousand and five hundred years ago one of my favorite strategic analysts, a Chinese general and Imperial Adviser, Sun Tzu, wrote his tiny but historic text, The Art of War. It’s used today as essential reading all over the world, including by students at the US West Point military academy, the incubator for America’s future generals. In his treatise Sun Tzu describes five essential qualities needed in a successful leader, in his case, a successful general. The qualities apply to anyone in a position of leadership responsibility.
The five essential qualities include one who is both wise and possessing ability to think strategically, to respond quickly to changes, to anticipate the moves of opponents. A second essential quality of a successful leader according to Sun Tzu is a leader who is trustworthy, a person of integrity, one who stands by their word. The third essential quality of a great leader is one not often observed in the West these days, namely benevolence or simply love–the wish to treat people with respect and kindness, thereby winning the hearts of the people. Fourth of the essential great leader qualities is courage or valor, in the sense of the courage to make quick and perhaps risky decisions in difficult situations. Finally, Sun Tzu names the character quality of being disciplined, allowing no ambiguity in the chain of command of the leadership.
Of course a great leader of a great power or nation should have all five qualities in an integrated personality to qualify for the responsibility. This gives us an interesting metric to look at Donald Trump after observing his actions for more than his first 100 days in the highest office in American politics, that of President and Commander-in-chief.
The Donald as True Leader?
Many critical pundits or analysts have believed the narrative that takes the US President as a “man of his word,” one who is serious about making America great again, about draining the swamp, about bringing jobs back to the USA from China, Mexico and elsewhere, about ending Washington intervention into the internal affairs of other countries with its NGOs and Color Revolutions to name just a few important promises. The narrative usually then explains the facts, such as Trump’s naming to every key economic and financial post Wall Street bankers of Goldman Sachs and business partners of the convicted former hedge fund operator, George Soros, or the leaking of scandals that forced Trump “pro-Putin” National Security Adviser, Mike Flynn, to resign only days in office to the secret machinations of something they often call the Deep State.
The Deep State exists, no question, a secret state within the state, like some kind of freemasonic Ur-Lodge, unelected by the public, unanswerable to anyone but their secret internal Brotherhood, the Deep State. Donald Trump is not their enemy, or he would have been shot down well before the first Republican primary. He is a creature of that Deep State. He keeps his word, but not to his voters; rather he keeps it, but to his Deep State controllers from Wall Street and the Big Oil and the Military Industrial Complex.
If we were to look at Trump through the prism of Sun Tzu’s essential five qualities of a successful true leader, it becomes clearer that Donald Trump–a casino mogul whose prior political expertise before the White Whose Oval Office, was dealing in the politics of international organized crime, of the Resorts International of the murky James Crosby, learning his business “skills” as a protégé of the infamous New York mob lawyer, Roy Cohn—as a true leader of integrity, is found wanting in the essential qualities named by Sun Tzu.
We recall that The Donald is one whose expressed views of females is patriarchic and barbaric to put it mildly. He apparently views women as “things” and not as human beings. He clearly fails the Sun Tzu test in the criteria of benevolence or love in the sense of treating people, male or female, with respect and kindness. Merely recall the Trump “locker room” dialogue with Billy Bush, released during the Presidential campaign.
In terms of being a person who stands by his word, whom we can trust, he fails badly here as well. Before the election candidate Trump spoke out against the regime change antics of the Obama Administration and the tax-exempt foundations sponsored by George Soros. On being inaugurated, he has done nothing to order a withdrawal of US Government NGOs or US Ambassadors working to unseat governments not following Washington orders such as the ongoing CIA coup attempt in Macedonia. That, despite the fact that at least eight Republican Congressmen have brought to his attention the fact that US Ambassador Jess Baily is destroying the government of what was a stable US ally in favor of fostering a Greater Albania scenario that could start a new Balkans War.
As to the essential ability to think strategically, how would we assess one who sends the Seventh Fleet to challenge North Korea, then, some days later, tells Bloomberg News that he “would be honored” to meet the young North Korean dictator? Or a President who casually picks up the phone to speak with the anti-China President of Taiwan, sparking a major diplomatic incident with America’s most important trade partner China, or who drops a Mother of All Bombs on caves in Afghanistan for no clear strategic reason in a fruitless US war that has rumbled on now for 16 years with no result other than support for the world’s largest opium harvests. Or a President who orders a cruise missile strike on Syria during dessert with China’s Xi Jinping at Key Largo Florida, an action that Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross later cynically called, “after-dinner entertainment.” In what can be called an insult of the highest order, Trump did not inform his Chinese dinner guest of his decision to bomb the Syrian airbase until the bombing was already underway, actions more resembling an emotionally infantile practical joker than a statesman with respect for his Chinese guest.
As to the quality of being disciplined, of allowing no ambiguity in the chain of command, we find again a President in sad lack. A President who reportedly refuses to take responsibility for hearing the daily intelligence briefings, who delegates extraordinary powers to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner and his wife, the President’s daughter, in a brazen case of nepotism. A President who delegates responsibility for military foreign policy actions to “the Generals” of whom he has named four to key Cabinet posts including as Defense Secretary.
Finally, is Donald Trump a man of courage, of valor? That too rare quality in today’s political world, such as that exhibited by John Kennedy during the harrowing days of the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis, is not obviously present among the virtues of a President Trump. Not merely the fact that Trump managed to avoid the Vietnam War draft as a young man. It goes far deeper. True courage is a moral quality– the courage to do the right thing despite going against the consensus. To date, Donald Trump has shown an extraordinary ability to make quick decisions, too quick. But decisions utterly lacking in strategic depth, in clarity, in respect for the rules of law or the laws of nations.
The problem is not Donald Trump. The problem is that we, American citizens, blinded ourselves by wishful thinking that finally someone would stand up and “make America great again.” Someone would name all the treasonous policies that have destroyed the core of the US economy, who would refocus money and energy on rebuilding America’s staggering $8 trillion infrastructure deficit and de-escalate the buildup of the world’s largest war machine. That would perhaps go a big step towards making America great again. But The Donald clearly has no intention of being the true leader to do that. He is not even interested now that he is in the White House. The world is being played for suckers, especially the 48% of Americans who still believe in The Donald as their saviour.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
May 15th, 2017 by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
The Canadian Labour Congress, the national labor federation representing 3 million workers across Canada passed an Emergency Resolution at its 2017 convention in Toronto on 10 May in support of Palestinian prisoners’ #DignityStrike. The text of the resolution follows:
a) Call on the Canadian Government to pressure Israel to stop violating international law by illegally detaining Palestinians and depriving them of their basic human, civil and political rights;
and
b) Work with global union federations, affiliates and civil society organizations in Canada on campaigns in support of Palestinian prisoners.
BECAUSE More than 1600 Palestinian prisoners have been on a hunger strike since April 17, 2017; and
BECAUSE Key demands of the hunger strike include: end to the denial of family visits, the right to appropriate health care, the right to education in prison and an end to solitary confinement and “administrative detention”; and
BECAUSE The CLC supports the right of the Palestinian people to national self-determination and an end to the illegal Israeli occupation as the basis for a just peace in the region.
This important resolution follows on strong, growing international labor movement and trade union support for Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian struggle for justice, self-determination and liberation.
On 12 May, the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), which represents nearly one million workers in Norway, endorsed a full international economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel as a necessary means to support fundamental Palestinian rights.
The Congress of LO unanimously supported some form of boycott of Israel, as 193 delegates voted for a full boycott and 117 voted for a limited boycott of Israeli settlements. The strong majority of the LO congress embraced a full boycott of Israel, emphasizing the importance of meaningful international action in the face of impunity and apartheid. The LO vote escalated the existing position of the labor confederation in support of the boycott of settlement products.
This important action came as 1500 Palestinian prisoners have been engaged in a hunger strike since 17 April for their basic human rights, including an end to the denial of family visits, proper medical treatment and health care, the right to pursue distance higher education, and an end to solitary confinement and administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial.
A number of trade unions and workers’ organizations have been vocal in their support for the Palestinian prisoners. 26 European trade unions and labor organizations endorsed a collective statement in support of the hunger strike:
“We believe that as trade unionists and conscious citizens of this world, we have duty and power to take a stand. We stand in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in their demand for fair treatment and justice. We commit to working within our respective unions not to renew contracts with corporations like HP and G4S profiting from the imprisonment of Palestinians. In addition we call on the EU and European member states to end their complicity and hold Israel accountable for its gross violations of human rights,”emphasized the unions, including labor organizations in Belgium, France, Ireland, Norway, the UK, Galicia, Basque Country, Valencia, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands, Catalonia, and Luxembourg.
Meanwhile, the National Union of Teachers in the UK has joined several other international labor unions in being an HP-free zone. Kevin Courtney, general secretary with the National Union of Teachers, said in the Electronic Intifada that
“the NUT does not buy or use HP products or services as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
HP provides services and technologies to the Israeli military as well as the Israel Prison Service, and the boycott of HP is a priority for BDS campaigns in support of Palestinian prisoners.
These statements followed declarations by the World Federation of Trade Unions, representing 92 million workers in 162 countries, and the International Trade Union Confederation, representing 181 million workers in 163 countries, in support of the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike.
The WFTU statement
“expresses its firm internationalist solidarity with the more than 6700 Palestinians, including 389 children and 56 women, currently imprisoned by the Israeli occupation forces.
We strongly denounce the imprisonment of the Palestinian people by Israel, the inhumane detention conditions and the acts of abuse like the violent beatings against our Palestinian brothers and sisters and we demand the immediate release of all Palestinian prisoners and the end of Israel’s arrest campaigns, aggressiveness and occupation of the Palestinian territories.”
“The World Federation of Trade Unions and the international class oriented trade union movement stand on the side of the heroic Palestinian people and prisoners, express their solidarity and support to their fair struggle.”
“Palestinian prisoners who have declared an indefinite hunger strike to protest against violations of human rights inside Israeli Prisons. We also support the ‘general strike for freedom and dignity’ held in solidarity with hunger striking prisoners and call for wider international solidarity…
We add our voice to the demands of the hunger striking Palestinian detainees calling for the lifting of restrictions on family visits, improved overall detention conditions and access to medical care, including easing restrictions on access to education materials and food, as well as the installation of telephones to communicate with their relatives. We also recall that under international humanitarian law, detainees from occupied territories must be detained in the occupied territory, not in the territory of the occupying power, as enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
In South Africa, among the endorsers of the South African Campaign for Palestinian Political Prisoners is the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) as well as the South African Municipal Workers Union. Sidubo Dlamini, the President of COSATU, is joining in the broad one-day hunger strike in South Africa in support of Palestinian prisoners, alongside government officials, anti-apartheid struggle veterans and former political prisoners.
This support comes amid a growing campaign in the international labor movement in support of Palestinian rights, including an end to occupation and apartheid, full equality for all and Palestinian refugees’ right to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled. Unions endorsing BDS include COSATU, CUT in Brazil, CSN in Quebec, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Irish Confederation of Trade Unions and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) in the United States. Unions in Scotland, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Belgium, the Basque Country, Uruguay and many other countries have also taken a stand in support of Palestinian rights and the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions. Workers’ struggles and popular movements like the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil have been strong supporters of the Palestinian struggle – including that of the Palestinian prisoners – for many years.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes all of the labor unions taking a stand with the Palestinian people and the Palestinian prisoners. We echo the call of Palestinian trade unions:
“We also take this opportunity to call on trade unions yet to join the BDS movement to: implement boycotts of Israeli and international companies that are complicit with violations of Palestinian rights, divest trade union funds from companies and institutions complicit in Israel’s occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid, and apply pressure on governments to cut military and trade relations with Israel. We reiterate our call for a boycott of Histadrut, Israel’s general trade union, for its complicity with Israel’s violations of international law and its refusal to take a clear stand in support of comprehensive human rights for Palestinians.”
We urge all labor organizations and workers’ movements to express their solidarity and support for the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, for the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation and for the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. The majority of Palestinian prisoners are Palestinians of the popular classes: workers, from the villages, the refugee camps and the cities. The international workers’ movement is engaged in a battle confronting capitalist exploitation, oppression and austerity around the world. The Palestinian prisoners in their battle for dignity and freedom are on the front lines not only of the struggle for Palestinian freedom, but for social justice and human liberation in the world today.
One of the most peculiar features of the United States is the presence of a rabidly pro-war leftism that poses as “independent” politics. Ever since the Obama Administration made it fashionable for so-called liberals to strike a “Grand Bargain” with the GOP, anti-war politics have been non-existent in public life. The non-profit industrial complex hasn’t helped the situation. Democracy Now, as the best known non-profit “independent news” organ, is the perfect example of pro-war leftism in motion. The organization’s recent coverage of Syria has only encouraged imperialism’s war narrative despite the presence of a GOP-led Administration, House, and Senate.
On May 3rd, Democracy Nowinterviewed Anand Gopal, former fellow at the New America Foundation from 2012-2014. That Democracy Now describes itself as “independent media” yet associates with figures such as Gopal raises question marks about the source’s credibility on the issue of war and peace. The New America Foundation can hardly be considered an impartial source. As is the case for most think-tanks in the US and West, the foundation receives patronage from sources directly invested in war. Such sources include the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, and a consortium of corporate-backed foundations associated with the Wall Street firms CitiGroup and JP Morgan Chase.
Gopal received his political training from the primary benefactors of war, that being the profiteers of finance and monopoly capital. He spent a number of years in Afghanistan embedded in the Taliban and now specializes as the journalistic mouthpiece for terrorists in Syria. His efforts have won him a Pulitzer prize and numerous work opportunities in the NGO industry. According to a recent report in the Moon of Alabama, Gopal has been caught on social media distributing ISIS documents on how to join the organization. His interview with Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh verifies his allegiance to US imperialism’s proxies currently wreaking havoc in Syria and the region at large.
Gopal’s claims paint Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad as the cause of all suffering in Syria. He cites “conversations” had with ISIS fighters who reported that they turned to terrorism in response to Bashar Al-Assad’s brutality. Syria and Russia are not only failing to fight terrorism, he claims, but the US also possesses no plan for regime change in the region. The YPG is the only force fighting ISIS. Of course, none of Gopal’s assertions were supported with concrete evidence beyond talking points.
Yet facts on the ground suggest otherwise The “Assad brutality” narrative has been disproven countless times by independent journalists, especially in relation to allegations of the Syrian government’s use of chemical agents. Journalist Seymour Hersh traced the chemical weapons used to attack Ghouta, Syria in 2013 back to Turkish and Saudi rebel stations and supply chains. The 2017 chemical weapons attack occurred when the UN had already confirmed three years earlier that the Syrian government had given up all of its chemical weapons in the deal brokered by the US and Russia. If Gopal and his think-tank employers lie about allegations as serious as those involved in chemical weapons disputes, what makes them reliable sources of information about Syria at large?
A bigger question is why Democracy Now would host Gopal on its program at all. Why would Democracy Now allow Gopal to run interference by painting Russia and Syria as mass murdering nations and the US as an arbiter of peace? It has been well-documented since 2011 that US involvement in Syria has always been about overthrowing the Syrian government. Defense Intelligence Agency documents confirm that the US willingly aided ISIS in Syria and created the conditions for its rise during the occupation of Iraq beginning in 2003. It is public record that the US and its allies funded and armed the original “revolutionaries” in Syria with the explicit aim to rid of Assad. These foreign, sectarian fighters number in the tens of thousands and have come from places as close as Turkey and as far as the European mainland. All of them are guilty of committing head-chopping crimes in the name of “democracy.”
Gopal and Democracy Now do not mention the numerous examples that show the Syrian government’s broad support among the people. In 2012, amidst the proxy invasion, the Syrian government amended the national constitution. It was approved by nearly ninety percent of the Syrian population. In 2014, Bashar Al-Assad was reelected as President with 88.7 percent of the vote. Reputable polls show that the Syrian government is the most popular force in the country. Meanwhile, the likes of Gopal and Democracy Now continuously fail to mention the atrocities committed by the invading terrorist forces and the aid that they have received from imperialist countries.
Democracy Now runs interference for imperialism because it is beholden to funding sources, as are all non-profits and non-governmental organizations. Just as Gopal is a product of the New America Foundation, so too is Democracy Now a product of the Pacifica Foundation’s benefactors. An analysis conducted in Critical Sociology found that the Pacifica Foundation received upwards of 148,000 USD between the years of 1996-1998 from the Ford, Carnegie, and other foundations to launch Democracy Now. The Lannan Foundation gave Democracy Now an additional 375,000 USD packaged in a number of grants, according to the foundation’s IRS 990 forms since 2008.Patrick Lannan, the capitalist mogul who founded the organization, sat on the board of ITT corporation in the late 70s and early 80s. The ITT corporation was instrumental in the CIA-backed fascist coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende in 1973.
So-called international non-profits such as the Ford Foundation have a long history of receiving enormous donations from the wealthiest individuals and corporations to achieve imperialism’s objectives around the world. Foundations wield a form of “soft power” on behalf of US imperialism. Their main purpose is to provide a “civil society” infrastructure in targeted nations capable of fomenting conditions of regime change. This has been a general condition throughout Latin America. Foundations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and the Ford Foundation have been caught supporting right-wing opposition groups waging destabilization campaigns against Left governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
So it should come as no surprise that Democracy Now lends legitimacy to the imperialist narrative in Syria. Democracy Now is “independent” in name only. Democracy Now’s staff is beholden to funding sources that hold a large stake in the creation of a humanitarian face to imperialism. So while the outlet may present news and facts on US domestic issues largely left out of the corporate press, it remains a dangerous source of misinformation on the international front. Only a distorted worldview can arise from the lies presented by Amy Goodman’s coverage of Syria.
Real independent journalists based in the US exist, but have little financial or political support. Journalism and media must be placed in the context of the generalized struggle against US imperialism. Independent media thrives in periods where peoples’ movements are vibrant and strong. When movements are weak, so too is independent journalism. The corporate media landscape in the US will remain dominant as long as the alternative is conceived within the bowels of corporate foundations. These are radical times, and they require a radical break from the levers of control wielded by both “hard power” and “soft power” mechanisms of imperialism. That includes challenging the narratives put forward by Democracy Now.
Danny Haiphong is an activist and radical journalist in the Boston Area.
In approaching the end of the African Hybrid War research, the series will now take to addressing the strategic vulnerabilities inherent in Niger, a country which is triply important for its uranium reserves, geographic position just north of Niger, and the emerging French-Chinese competition there.
These three factors combine in such a way as to make this landlocked and atrociously impoverished country a lot more important than the unaware reader might immediately assume, thus broadly explaining the reason why it’s included in this continental study. The research will accordingly begin by highlighting some of the most relevant characteristics about Niger in order to comprehensively introduce the country to the reader. Afterwards, it’ll examine the French and Chinese sectors of interest before delving into the various asymmetrical threats that imperial Nigerien stability. Once that’s done, the last part of the research will speak on the significance of coups in the country’s short history and forecast why it’s more than likely that this will remain a recurring event in the coming decades.
Niger: Middle Of Nowhere Or Undiscovered Significance?
Geographic:
Most people that even have a passing familiarity with Niger might reactively dismiss it as nothing more than a desert-strewn wasteland of zero strategic value, but such superficial and uneducated individuals would be doing themselves and all others an enormous disservice by not taking the time to learn about the country and appreciate its strategic significance. It’s true that the Sahara occupies the vast majority of the country’s territory, and that most of Niger is sparsely inhabited if it’s even populated at all. Moreover, there’s also veracity to the statement that it’s a huge country because its total area nearly equals that of France, Germany, and Poland combined (the Weimar Triangle).
Demographic:
If astute researches dig a bit deeper, though, they’ll find out that the country of 17 million people is the fastest-growing one in the world when it comes to population, with the UN’s 2015 World Population Prospects report predicting that it will reach 72 million by mid-century and then top 209 million by 2100. Just about all of this growth is expected to take place along Niger’s densely populated southern border and among people who are already dependent on agriculture and foreign aid to survive. This is one of the main reasons why Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world today, and it’s unfortunately forecast to remain so for the coming future unless something fundamentally changes to address that.
Energy:
Even though Niger has hefty uranium reserves and has recently begun developing its oil sector, it appears unlikely that either of these two resources will be responsibly used by the authorities (which are under the domineering influence of the military) for the betterment of the population. Even the possible construction of the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline through Nigeria, Niger, and Algeria en route to Spain and the rest of the EU isn’t realistically expected to help much owing to the oligarchic and corrupt structure of the governing elite. Moreover, this project might never even see the light of day because of the fact that the large-scale dissemination of LNG technology is quickly making sea-based transport of this resource just as – if not more – competitive than overland routes in some instances such as the aforementioned one.
Military:
Apart from the attraction that Great Powers have to Niger’s energy resources, the country is also a focal point of competition chiefly just because of its strategic position. Proceeding in a clockwise rotation, Niger borders Algeria, Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali, and it’s also very close to Cameroon as well due to the shared regional space that it enjoys around the Lake Chad basin. Being located in the heart of the Sahara, foreign forces can operate with ease across the multistate bordering region and thus throughout most of the breadth and width of North-West Africa.
This is why France has troops in the country as part of Operation Barkhane (and prior to that simply to protect its uranium mines) and that the US operates drone bases in the capital of Niamey and the Saharan town of Agadez, dispatched special forces to the Boko Haram-threatened border town of Diffa, and is rumored to have access rights to an airfield in the country’s second-largest city of Zinder. It’s therefore not hard to see why Niger has become the new hub for the US’ special operations in North-West Africa, and by reasonable NATO-allied inference, it can be understood that the French military also exploits the country for similar purposes.
Summary:
Even though Niger might be proverbially located ‘in the middle of nowhere’, it definitely has an undiscovered significance that most observers have neglected to notice up until now. The country’s demographic statistics, particularly its extreme poverty and explosive birth rates, point to startling risks for long-term stability and frighteningly portend the unmistakable signs of a looming humanitarian crisis, but France’s energy stakes in the country combined with it and the US’ geostrategic military interests there guarantee that the West will play some sort of a role whenever that happens. The prospects for domestic conflict in Niger are worrying high, but before getting into the specifics of what these entail, it’s important to take a deeper look at France and China’s involvement in the country in order to get an idea of how its two largest economic partners could be affected by any forthcoming violence there.
The New Cold War Hits Niger
Most analysts agree that China and the West are fiercely competing in Africa for markets and resources, and geographically ‘godforsaken’ Niger is no different from the rest of its continental peers. The US has been expanding its military footprint all across Africa, and though it’s the most militarily preeminent force in Niger, it lacks the legacy of institutionalized and economic contacts of influence that France has, most of which are predicated on Paris’ pressing need to sustain the security of its vital uranium trade there.
The author briefly touched upon this in a 2014 article that was published on RT, and the reader is encouraged to refer to it in seeing how the US might one day leverage its military influence in Niger in order to put pressure on France. For the scope of the present writing, however, this won’t be expanded upon any further, and the rest of this section will investigate the specifics of French-Chinese strategic involvement in Niger in acquiring a more profound understanding of each competing actor’s long-term plans for the country.
France:
Like it was described in the preceding section, France’s military-economic focus on Niger is chiefly due to the uraniumtrade that its state-run Areva company enjoys with the country. To give the reader a sense of just how important Niger figures into France’s energy equation, it’s enough to mention that the former imperial power derives approximately 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, with Nigerien uranium accounting for 40% of that. This works out to the Saharan country providing for around a little less than a third of France’s total energy needs, which lends understanding to why Paris deployed troops to its two mines in Arlit and the unopened one in Imouraren in order to protect its highly strategic assets there from retributive Salafist militant attacks in 2013. This decision was made in the context of France’s military campaign in neighboring Mali, though the move didn’t prevent Arlit and the irreplaceable transit city of Agadez from being hit in May of that year.
To elaborate a bit more on the pertinence of Agadez to France’s energy security, extracted uranium from the Arlit mines must pass through this city en route to the Beninese coastal city of Cotonou, which is the country’s largest city and the location of its only seaport and international airport. This is likely attribute to France wanting to avoid any sort of strategic transit dependence on independently inclined Algeria, hence why it prefers instead to rely on the geographically circuitous route of going overland through much more easily impressionable Benin before shipping the precious resource by boat to its eventual destination. Furthermore, it can be logically inferred that the uranium convoy is guarded by French troops or private security teams, and while Algeria would be absolutely opposed to these units transiting its territory, Benin probably has no such qualms. On a related note, there’s talk of improving the efficiency of this hitherto road-only route to the Atlantic by taking advantage of the regional railroad plans that aim to construct an iron corridor through Burkina Faso, Togo, the Ivory Coast, and most relevantly for France, from Niger’s Niamey to Benin’s Cotonou.
Corporate legal drama, however, has stalled the initiative and made Niger consider detouring its coastal pathway through Burkina Faso and Togo instead, which might in the future present an alternative and/or complementary route for Areva’s uranium exports. For the time being, though, the Niger-Benin route is the company’s preferred one, but this transit necessity also tangentially extends France’s energy security concerns through Niger’s southern neighbor as well. Benin is a mostly stable country, but it does have a history of being rocked by ethno-regionalist divisions between its northern Muslim tribes, the southwestern descendants of the once-proud Kingdom of Dahomey, and the southeastern Yoruba who also extend into neighboring Nigeria and constitute one of the main ethnic groups there. Resultantly, although France doesn’t directly have an on-the-ground military presence in this tiny sliver of a country, it might one day be compelled to have one or to stage a neo-imperialist Françafrique intervention there in contravention of the leadership’s will if Benin ever slides into domestic chaos and inadvertently disrupts the viability of France’s uranium export routes through its territory.
China:
Beijing’s approach to Niger is slightly different than Paris’, though understandably on account of the fact that China is by far a ‘latecomer’ to the country and therefore had much less time to build up influence there. With that being noted, China has still managed to carve out an impressive sphere of influence within the country, focusing mostly on oil and uranium resource extraction. Unlike France which is much more deeply involved in the industry, China only has access to one uranium mine in the town of Azelik. Business Insider did a write-up about this investment, albeit in their characteristically biased manner, though it might be interesting to the reader to go through it nonetheless. The main point that the publication is trying to push is that the locals are apparently antagonistic towards the Chinese because of what they try to hint at is the country’s stereotypical avoidance of human and labor rights, though this sort of an ‘angle’ says more about the agenda of this pro-Western media outlet than it does about China’s. It’s long been known that the West uses this line of rhetorical attack in order to delegitimize Chinese investments and precondition the masses into accepting the possibility of labor unrest and militant activity against Beijing’s projects, both of which could be strategically weaponized by the US as a form of Hybrid War against China. The competitive ‘encroachment’ that China has made on France’s prized uranium industry in Niger is probably what’s to blame for why the West is so proverbially up in arms and literally wants its local proxies to one day be as well.
Supplementary to China’s uranium investment in the country is its foray into the oil industry, though this has also been fraught with a lot of controversy. A dispute between China and Niger last fall led to the temporary shutdown of Beijing’s oil refinery in Soraz, a small town near the second-largest city of Zinder in the south-central part of the country. As explained in the above link, incidentally also from Business Insider, this facility is located quite a distance away from the Lake Chad-neighboring oil reserves that China has permission to tap into, though this is because of internal Nigerien political reasons and is possibly attributable to the government wanting to craft the illusion that more of its citizens are benefiting from this investment through the visible employment of some locals outside of one of the country’s main cities. In the future, China hopes to expand its in-country oil exports by constructing a pipeline through Chad, which would then link with the already existing one built by Exxon in 2003 and thenceforth ship the Nigerien black gold to the Cameroonian port city of Kribi. Due to the transit reliance on Chad and especially Cameroon, it can be argued that China seeks to integrate Niger into the CCS Silk Road, though by using the oil pipeline route as a pilot case prior to broadening the planned corridor to include commercial products as well.
Weighing The Differences:
France
In evaluating France and China’s grand strategies to Niger, it’s easy to see that each Great Power has similar, yet fundamentally different, approaches. The French are depending on the military and that of their American ally in securing Paris’ valuable uranium export routes, with the former colonial master not seeming to have any wider interest in the country besides that. It can rhetorically be argued that France doesn’t want Niger to ever become a terrorist haven (ergo Operation Barkhane), but this only cynically extends as far as preventing any terrorist attack against French interests, be it the uranium trade or the European homeland. Anti-government terrorist/rebel groups that are not of an Islamic disposition and accordingly aren’t assessed as posing any significant threat to French interests could actually be quite useful for Paris one day in that they could apply pressure on Niamey if it ever leans too close to Beijing.
All that France would have to do in such a case is simply tolerate the existence of such groups and make sure that Operation Barkhane doesn’t interfere with their activities, or on the reverse, actually in some sense helps to create and/or encourage such movements to take shape. This Machiavellian policy might one day become the standard application of Françafrique all across the Operation Barkhane space, with France ordering its in-country troops to selectively intervene against such groups in the event that it finds it strategically or politically convenient to do so. In the Nigerien context, France has a stake in proving its ‘post-imperial’ ‘benevolence’ towards its hosts and could thus help the Saharan country’s military in carrying out tasks of joint importance, such as providing logistical-technical-intelligence support for operations against Boko Haram, Tuareg rebels, and/or Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Paris essentially wants to do what Beijing can’t, which would thus reinforce its importance to Niamey and make the government/military less likely to take any decisions that could endanger France’s vital uranium interests (such as allowing China a bigger footprint in the industry).
China
China’s way of dealing with Niger is altogether different from France’s, although it does in principle share the same energy foundation as its European rival. The cornerstone of Chinese involvement in Niger is Beijing’s interest in the uranium and oil industries, but it’s from here where China’s motives markedly diverge from France’s. Instead of plotting to use its energy investments as a magnet for inviting a military ‘protection’ racket into the country, China seeks to one day expand its planned energy export routes through Chad and Cameroon to include a real-sector commercial component that has the promise of fundamentally transforming Niger’s development prospects. Granted, it would be overly optimistic to even assume that such a route would ever be fully created, let alone reliably safeguarded from any of the Hybrid War disruptions that will be described in the following section, but the concept of stability and growth through Chinese-backed trade routes is a powerful idea that already has many analogues all throughout the continent, so it’s bound to capture the imagination of some Nigerien citizens – and most importantly, their political-military decision makers – if Beijing ever decides to unveil a New Silk Road strategy for the country.
In practice, China could invest in roads, railways, and other trade-facilitating infrastructure along Niger’s densely populated southern strip in order to extend the energy CCS Silk Road from the south-central town of Zinder across the country’s lower periphery and thus link Niamey all the way to Douala (the CCS Silk Road’s terminal). If combined with the planned West African Railway system through Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo, and the Ivory Coast, then this would interestingly create a ringed network of transport infrastructure all around Nigeria that would infrastructurally unify the transregional West-Central African space of France’s former colonies. Moreover, the interlinking of a Sudan-Chad (two of the three transit states on the CCS Silk Road) trade route with another one in Burkina Faso and beyond to the rest of the West African countries (such as being proposed with the West African rail project) by means of Niger would in effect actualize a transcontinental Sahelian-Saharan trade corridor from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea coasts. The blueprint for this are Trans-African Highways 5 and 6, with the exceptions being that Nigeria is skirted around until it stabilizes enough to be responsibly integrated into this network and the Sudanese portion terminates in Port Sudan instead of continuing through Ethiopia to Djibouti (though this latter route should eventually one day be utilized).
French-Chinese Competition:
Observers shouldn’t underestimate the wide-ranging consequences that the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road from Senegal to Port Sudan would have in radically transforming the geopolitics of this vast space, which is why France is hesitantly cautious about this while China is actively enthusiastic. The challenges are manifold, however, and they include not only disruptive Hybrid War risks, but more mundane issues such as bureaucracy and a lack of political-economic willpower on behalf of the transit states (such as is the issue with Chad at the moment in pertinence to the CCS Silk Road). These obstacles play to France’s favor, as does its transnational military presence all along this route under the aegis of Operation Barkhane, but if China managed to break through these barriers and make significant progress on this project, then it would almost certainly engender some sort of asymmetrical French response, most likely in the form of Hybrid Warfare or a Paris-backed coup/rebel takeover of one or another transit state.
The importance that this has for Niger is paramount, since if the regional dynamics shifted in such a way as to promote the perception that China’s Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road vision will tangibly be completed in some functional way (e.g. if tangible progress were made along both the eastern and western vectors), then Niger’s military leaders/kingmakers might decide that their country’s future best belongs in the hands of China, not France. If such a change in perspective remained solely in the realm of attitude and didn’t take any physical manifestations, then it wouldn’t pose a challenge to France’s hitherto hegemony in the country nor prevent Paris from indefinitely retaining the Damocles’ Sword of disruptive controlling influence over this route (e.g. Hybrid Wars, coups, etc.). If Niger makes any moves that frighten France, such as curtailing its military cooperation and presence in the country and/or allowing China a broader stake in the uranium sector, however, then it could result in a sudden exacerbation of French-Chinese competition in the strategically positioned Saharan state.
Rebels, Insurgents, And Terrorists
All of Niger’s Hybrid War threats revolve around one or another armed group, with five separate actors being described in this section. They can be arranged into two types of categories – actual or latent, and borderland or interior – though the distinction within and between each of these classifications can quickly become blurred as various scenarios switch from being active to passive and move from being geographically concentrated to more broadly threatening, or vice-versa in both regards. Beginning with the most relevant threats and proceeding to those that are still in their incipient stages, Niger’s forecasted portfolio of Hybrid War risks looks like such:
Boko Haram:
It’s a given that Boko Haram would figure as the most pressing of all of Niger’s threats after seeing how the cross-border terrorist organization has directly targeted the country itself on several occasions. Niger actively partakes in the Chadian-led anti-Boko Haram Coalition and even requested once that its Saharan neighbor dispatch 2000 troops to the country. Niamey fears that Boko Haram could one day morph into an existential threat for Niger because of a confluence of several motivating factors, namely that the terrorist group is already active in the bordering territories of Nigeria; the Niger-Nigeria border is infamously porous; and the militants could suddenly cause a lot of damage and panic in the country by striking anywhere within the densely populated southern border strip. Furthermore, some analysts believe that the group is now targeting Niger more frequently after having suffered a debilitating bout of infighting in early September that weakened its once-dominant position in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State.
Under ever-increasing threat from the terrorists, Niger’s best bet is to establish a degree of strategic depth together with its Chadian ally in carving out a buffer space along the shared Nigerian border. This is of course easier said than done and requires a high degree of multilateral coordination and trust between all sides, though both of these are lacking and Nigeria is particularly sensitive to foreign operations being conducted on its soil, no matter if these are being done ‘for the collective good’ and because Nigeria’s corruption-decayed military is unable and/or unwilling to liberate the territory itself. Should all the countries of the anti-Boko Haram Coalition succeed in isolating the terrorists and securing the borderland region, this would only be sufficient for defending against the conventional land-grabbing expansionist danger that that the organization poses. Even though Boko Haram might no longer have the capability to stage cross-border raids and gobble up weakly governed peripheral territory in the Lake Chad basin, this shouldn’t be taken to mean that its sleeper cells all throughout the region can’t function as delayed time bombs in giving the group a ‘second wind’ sometime in the future.
Therein lies the interlinked problem between Niger’s exponential population growth and its vulnerability to terrorism, since the government will be unable to provide for all of its citizens in the future and thus many of them could become attracted to terrorist propaganda. In fact, it might even turn out to be that Boko Haram’s ‘second wind’ starts off in Niger once the demographic situation there spirals out of control (however long or short it may take for that to happen) and reversely spills over the Nigerian border in an ironic twist of fate. After some time it might make sense to consider Niger and Northern Nigeria as a single strategic space after the former’s population eventually comes to rival the latter and cross-border problems continuously permeate between them. While the amalgamation of Southern Niger and Northern Nigeria into a unified theater of planning could theoretically lead to positive outcomes for development and other humanitarian considerations, it’s not foreseeable that decision makers on either side of the border will see it that way except when pressed to do so out of urgent security concerns such as the most likely one which was just described. It would be wisest if China’s Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road initiative proactively played a role in positively bridging the border between these two regions in order to preempt this problem from festering, but it might turn out to be that the disruptive scenario discussed above actually undercuts China’s integrational one.
People march in support of the Niger army’s war against Boko Haram in Niamey, Feb 2015.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM):
Along a related vein to Boko Haram, the same imminent demographic explosion which threatens to prompt a surge of domestic sleeper cell support for the Nigerian-based terrorists could also lead to one for AQIM as well. This organization is much more shadowy and has thus far not laid claim to any territory like Boko Haram has, except if one accounts for when AQIM-affiliate Ansar Dine hijacked the Tuareg-led “Azawad” project in neighboring Mali from 2012-2013. That example could provocatively even be argued to have served as a prelude to Daesh’s similar desert surge along the Syrian-Iraqi border one year afterwards, though it would in that case be much better to label the proto-Al Shabaab “Islamic Courts Union” in Somalia as the ultimate godfather of this trend for its uncontrollable territorial expansionism in 2006. Anyhow, the importance in recalling these examples is to illustrate how a mysterious terrorist group not currently active in the territorial-administrative sense could rapidly transition to this model if the domestic, international, and geographic circumstances are favorable. One should remember the tactical-strategic lessons introduced in the previous two chapters about Cameroon and Chad whereby it’s postulated that easily traversable geographic spaces such as the Sahelian-Saharan ones around the Lake Chad basin are inherently much more at risk of sudden terrorist expansionism than their more comparatively impassible jungled counterparts.
One key element of difference between Boko Haram and AQIM, at least thus far, is that the former usually only launches attacks in or near areas that it hopes to one day control, refraining for the most part from threatening the other more distant parts of Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. AQIM, however, has no such apparently self-imposed constraints, as the Al Qaeda franchise that it’s formally a part of has a history of killing people all across the world and striking at whichever seemingly random targets that it chooses. While it’s difficult to accurately quantify, it could be safely assumed that AQIM has a wider operational reach than Boko Haram due to its affiliated global network, presumably better finances and more ‘qualified’ conspirators, and its unconstrained geographic theater of activity. Therefore, while Boko Haram might for the time being only threaten the Southern Nigerien core space, AQIM might more nimbly be able to unpredictably strike here and there all throughout the country, be it near the capital or in the Tuareg-majority northern desert. Although AQIM might not seem like much of a threat in the current day, this is simply because it’s been largely inactive and totally overshadowed by the much more publicized exploits of its Daesh competitor in the Mideast and West Africa (with Boko Haram ‘formally’ being allied with the Al-Baghdadi’s ‘caliphate’), and responsible observers shouldn’t disregard its future potential.
Tuaregs:
One of the most dynamically evolving Hybrid War threats in Niger stems from the transnational Tuareg ethnic group which resides primarily in the northern Agadez Region. The Tuareg are a mostly nomadic people who also live in Mali, southern Algeria, and southwestern Libya, though many of them in the latter two countries are thought to be refugees who were pushed out during the many civil conflicts which erupted in Niger and Mali, although that isn’t at all to say that this group isn’t endemic to these areas. However, the Tuareg presence in Algeria and Libya bestowed each of these rival countries with the chance to diplomatically intervene in resolving Tuareg-related crises in Mali and Niger as a means of bettering their own position and indirectly competing with one another. This was the case in the past, though it’s extraordinarily unlikely that Libya will ever again hold the diplomatic sway over this community as it did during the Gaddafi, meaning that Algeria will likely continue to retain some degree of influence or diplomatic intervention potential over the Tuaregs in northern Mali, though it’s unclear if any outside force (aside from their neighboring brethren) could exert pressure on their Nigerien counterparts and fill the void that Libya left.
To continue speaking more about the Tuaregs themselves, several important comparisons can be made to the Kurds and Baloch. All three groups are proud of their identities and fiercely secular, and some members of their communities have a history of waging separatist conflicts that easily spill across the border. Moreover, the Tuaregs, Kurds, and Baloch are “stateless” in the sense that they don’t have their own nation-state and instead live within larger cosmopolitan ones, which is a political fact that has recurrently been exploited by both their own communal demagogues and foreign instigators in order to incite conflict against their state of residence. The biggest difference between the Tuaregs, Kurds, and Baloch, however, is that the former are much smaller in numerical size than the other two though they’re inversely spread out across the largest area of the three. Additionally, from a geographic-tactical standpoint, the Tuaregs mostly live in flat desert areas that are easily traversable during blitzkrieg offensives, such as the one which was launched in Mali in 2012 and will be addressed real soon. Some Tuaregs also live in mountainous regions in Mali and Niger which function as military ‘redoubts’ and are valuable strongholds during times of civil conflict. These bastions are also less vulnerable to air strikes, thus raising the stakes for the national military in having to conduct risky ground operations in clearing them out, something which neither the Malian nor Nigerien armed forces typically have the stomach for doing.
The above strategic-tactical considerations are important to understand because they were observably on display during the four regional conflicts that the Tuaregs prominently took part in, each of which ended up spilling across the border or had the high risk of doing so. The Tuaregs were fighting in every case for one or some of the following reasons:
* independence;
* broad economic-political autonomy (devolution);
* decentralization;
* affirmative action/positive discrimination for enrollment in state institutions (military, government, etc.);
*and violently venting general frustrations (e.g. about the repatriation of refugees, rebel amnesty, ceasefire/peace implementation delays, rabblerousing, etc.).
The first Tuareg conflict of the modern era was a very low-scale rebellion in Mali between 1962-1964 and was properly contained by the authorities. It wasn’t until 1990-1995 that a much more significant cross-border one broke out both in that country and Niger. It, too, was eventually put down, with Niamey having to radically resort to locking down the Agadez Region in order to do so, though. The end result was that the Tuaregs were supposed to be integrated into Nigerien and Malian state institutions, though this didn’t happen at the pace nor scope that some of the Tuaregs had expected and another war eventually broke out from 2007-2009 in both of them. This phase of the recurring regional conflict was significant for two reasons; firstly, it AQIM started to get involved through kidnapping and banditry, thus drawing international attention to what would otherwise be an obscure conflict in the middle of nowhere to most of the global audience; and secondly, the Tuaregs founded the “Niger Movement For Justice” rebel group which served as an ‘inclusive’ front for their respective interests, just as the “Syrian Democratic Forces” function for the Kurds in today’s Syria.
Both of these trends – the Salafist exploitation of Tuareg conflicts and the Tuareg creation of ‘inclusive’ rebel organizations to disguise their local objectives – would repeat themselves once more during the latest 2012 Tuareg War in Mali. During that time, the armed Tuareg which had been living in Libya fled their protector state amidst the large-scale breakdown in law, order, and safety that NATO had provoked, bringing their heavy weaponry with them as they returned to their native homeland in Mali (by way of Niger). The resultant conflict that exploded led to the de-facto establishment of ‘Azawad’, which is what the leading National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) rebel group called the France-sized political unit that they had carved out for themselves. Part of the reason why they were so successful at doing this in the course of only a few months is because of their alliance with Ansar Dine, an AQIM affiliate that eventually took over ‘Azawad’ in summer 2012 and turned it into a terrorist state. This prompted France’s Operation Serval in early 2013 and the supportive intervention of nearly 2,000 Chadian ground troops there, all of which transited through Niger en route to the conflict and served to underscore the very close military relations between Niamey and N’Djamena (which would be reinforced 2 years later through the anti-Boko Haram Coalition).
The outcome of the French-Chadian intervention in ‘Azawad’ was that the MNLA joined in the counter-offensive to evict the terrorists from their declared homeland, though with the significant political concession being that they renounced their separatist claims. After the conflict was ‘officially’ over (though by no means militarily completed, seeing as how it still seethes to this day), the Tuaregs were granted partial autonomy by the central Malian authorities, though this wasn’t satisfactory enough to placate some of the hardliners. The situation in Northern Mali is deteriorating to the point where it looks like another low-scale Tuareg insurgency is imminent, though it’s unclear how widespread it would be and whether or not it would have the potential of spilling across the Nigerien border. Niger remained relatively calm amidst the 2012-2013 events in Mali, and the authorities did an effective job of keeping the peace and preventing any copycat ‘uprisings’. In the future, however, the French anti-terrorist Operation Barkhane deployment in the country could be directed to encourage and/or support Tuareg-led ‘rebels’ as a means of applying anti-Chinese pressure against Niamey, so the situation needs to be continually monitored for any signs that it’s moving along this scenario path.
Anti-Government ‘Rebels’:
Descending down the ladder of the most likely Hybrid War threats to Niger, one must at some point discuss the role of anti-government ‘rebels’, whether Tuareg-led or otherwise. These groups appeal to certain segments of the population because of their redistributionist platform, in which they call for the more equitable sharing of revenue from the country’s uranium and oil resources. This populist pitch could theoretically become very attractive to many Nigeriens who are desperate to escape their country’s ignominious poverty, and if their message is skillfully crafted and actively disseminated, then the rebels could succeed in ginning up significant anti-government discontent which could then be directed towards provoking a Color Revolution and/or Unconventional War (Hybrid War). Niger’s southern strip is highly at risk of falling under the influence of rebel ideas because of its out of control poverty and population growth, which go hand in hand with fostering the conditions for anti-establishment sympathies. It was already described in the research how this could play to the advantage of Salafist terrorists, but the same principles of appeal could also be applied towards secular insurgents as well, which might even see these two ideologically opposed actors dueling it out with one another in the future as part of a multisided civil war.
Expanding on that idea, Niger already has a documented history of Tuareg-led rebel formations, which were previously mentioned to have been mostly rhetorically inclusive front organizations for promoting Tuareg interests. Due to their battlefield experience in Niger and Mali, Tuaregs could once more take the lead in assembling an armed anti-government organization, albeit one which this time truly works to promote the southern/Hausa agenda as well. Tactical coordination between the two transnational Tuareg and Hausa border populations and the regular reinforcement of trust between such identity-separate parties might be difficult to engender, but should it be reached, then the new rebel group that would be created from this pragmatic alliance could end up becoming a serious threat to the authorities. Niamey would have to divide its military focus between north and south, with each cardinal direction requiring a different strategy in combating the insurgency, as fighting against rebels in the windswept deserts of the sparsely populated Tuareg-inhabited north necessitates a different approach than doing so against their allied counterparts in the more densely populated Hausa-majority Sahel region in the southern part of the country. In practice though, the above scenario might not realistically come to pass, as the technical, logistical, and other difficulties standing in the way of a Tuareg-Hausa anti-government alliance might be too strong to fully surmount, thus leading to any ‘inclusive’ rebel front between these two groups being mostly of a nominal and symbolic form.
Considering this, Niamey might more easily be able to divide each component of the rebel front and deal with them separately on its own terms, thus lessening the physical challenging in containing this sort of insurgency. The Hausa aspect of this scenario will be discussed in the next subsection devoted more fully to it, so for now the analysis will proceed with the Tuareg tangent. With history as a reliable indicator, the Tuaregs will more than likely play some sort of leading role in the event that a new and inclusive rebel group is formed to fight against the government. However, for as much of a tactical advantage as the incorporation of Tuareg militants might be to the incipient insurgency, it would also carry with it a certain strategic vulnerability because Niamey could somewhat convincingly argue that the attempted establishment of a ‘Nigerien Azawad’ might also get hijacked and overrun by AQIM or Boko Haram extremists just like how the Salafists took over its Malian counterpart several years ago. This fearmongering angle, whether grounded in situational facts or historical hyperbole, would be premised on attracting French support for the government’s anti-insurgency operations, thus compelling Paris into either actively or passively getting involved in the conflict. From one side, France could remain on the sidelines just as it officially did during all of Niger’s previous Tuareg-involved insurgencies, even if it discretely decides to support the rebels or the government. On the other side, however, France could be more interventionist and enthusiastically encourage one or the other party, whether through joint anti-rebel operations with Niamey or open backing to the insurgents.
Ultimately, France’s attitude towards any Tuareg-led rebel movement will be conditional on the state of affairs between Paris and Niamey, and whether the former imperial master perceives its Françafrique policy to be under threat by China and Beijing’s ties with Niamey. If France feels confident with its position, then it assuredly wouldn’t have any interest in destabilizing Niger, and might on the contrary actively involve itself in stopping any incipient conflict before it spirals out of the control. But, if the Chinese are perceived to be making headwinds in Niger and Paris becomes overly dissatisfied with this in general or has (speculative) reason to fear that its uranium investments might be adversely affected (perhaps over concerns that a pro-Chinese Niger might play uranium games with France just like a pro-Western Ukraine did with Russian gas), then Paris might secretly redefine its Operation Barkhane mission in the country into one of supporting – not opposing – anti-government insurgency. Like such covert interventions typically end up, France might inadvertently advance the conditions for Niger’s total collapse, which coupled with the already existing AQIM and Boko Haram threats, could turn the traditionally secular country into a hotbed of Salafist terror just like Syria has become, and with similar regionally impacting consequences vis-à-vis Nigeria this time instead of Iraq and Turkey.
Hausa:
Lastly, the Hausa of Southern Niger comprise the country’s largest demographic, and while being the most unlikely cause of any potential Hybrid War in the future, their widespread involvement in any unrest could have the most powerful and immediate impact of any of the aforementioned scenarios. This is due not just to their numerical prowess and concentration along the country’s densely populated, highly impoverished, and exponentially growing southern belt, but also because of the Hausa’s transnational identity and strong presence in Northern Nigeria. In fact, there are nearly six times as many Hausa living in Northern Nigeria than in Southern Niger, meaning that the potential is indeed present for Nigerien members of this demographic to be influenced by their Nigerian counterparts. Furthermore, if the Hausa in both states identify more with their ethnic identity than their civil one, then they might agitate for “Hausaland”, whether as a separatist entity or a sub-national ‘Identity Federalized’ state with quasi-independence.
One way to prevent this from happening is for each country to sufficiently accommodate the interests of this group so that they don’t come to feel (or be misled by negatively intentioned forces into thinking) that their issues could be better addressed outside of the respective state that they presently inhabit. As it relates to Niger, the government must be careful not to decentralize far enough to the point that the Tuaregs are perceived to have reaped inordinate benefits, such as through de-facto political and/or fiscal autonomy (with the latter relating to uranium revenue). Niamey would not willingly move in this direction except as a concession to a forthcoming Tuareg insurgency that it had difficulty taming, though the inadvertent effect of this sort of convenient compromise could be that it sparks Hausa hatred in the south and inspires a whole different type of anti-government challenge (e.g. a Color Revolution and guerrilla warfare). Again, this particular scenario doesn’t seem to be too promising because it would first necessitate a Tuareg rebellion in the first place, which hasn’t yet repeated itself, and then the government would have to be unable to comprehensively deal with this on its own or in joint cooperation with France before settling for the type of political-economic concessions to the Tuaregs that could then in turn incense the Hausa.
Looked at from another angle, however, the Hausa don’t necessarily have to be seen as only constituting a Hybrid War threat, since they could also materialize into an anchor of cross-border stability if Niger took the proper steps in this direction. The global trend towards regional integration appears irreversible for the time being, and it’s possible for the Hausa to play a unique role in bridging Niger with Nigeria to tighten the West African Core Region (WACR) and turn it into a more robust center of African Multipolarity. This could also expand the prospective Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road into Northern Nigeria concurrent with similar inroads being made by the Cameroon-Chad-Sudan (CCS) Silk Road in Southern Nigeria as part of a comprehensive strategy for linking Nigeria into the transregional trade networks that China is charting along its periphery. The problem, however, is that Niamey doesn’t fully trust Abuja, believing that its southern neighbor might use the numeric superiority of the Hausas in its territory to influence its cross-border counterparts and thenceforth Niger’s domestic political affairs. Moreover, if either country ‘loses control’ of the Hausa, then they might splinter off to promote “Hausaland” between them, which could also possibly be just as susceptible to a Boko Haram hijacking as a ‘Nigerien Azawad’ would be to similar subterfuge from AQIM.
Sooner or later, though, Niger needs to figure out a visionary policy for bettering the livelihood of this demographic because the explosive population growth that’s projected for the future will lead to instability, uncertainty, and humanitarian challenges that could predictably amalgamate into one large crisis, made worse by the fact that the Nigerien Hausa might one day outnumber their Nigerian counterparts and thus reverse the presumed power dynamic that presently exists between the two neighbors (of Nigeria having the chance to use Hausa to influence Niger). Worsened by terrorist attacks and rebel uprisings, to say nothing of the ever-haunting specter of Color Revolutions, Niger could easily descend into failed state status and become a geopolitical victim of the French-Chinese Cold War in the West African Core Region.
Coups
The last instrument of Hybrid War that could be utilized against Niger is a military coup, of which the country already has a storied history. Coups were carried out in 1974, 1996, 1999, and 2010,with the most recent one interestingly occurring right after the 2007-2009 Tuareg-involved conflict and amidst a sharp deterioration of French-Nigerien relations. It’s definitely possible that the French had a hand in overthrowing President Tandja after the constitutional crisis that was triggered when he took moves to run for a third time. It’s also relevant that this was right around the time when China was awarded its first uranium mine in the country, which probably sent alarm bells ringing in Paris and prompted Sarkozy to take measures to indirectly deal with this and prevent the presumed pro-Chinese alignment of the Nigerien government from spiraling out of control and jeopardizing the strategic security of France’s uranium investments. The government announced that a mysterious coup plot was allegedly foiled in December 2015, but because of the dearth of details and secrecy surrounding the situation, it’s unclear exactly what this could have been linked to, who might have really been behind it, or even if it was an actual threat at all in the first place and not a blown-out-of-proportion or manufactured pre-election scandal by incumbent President Issoufou (who went on to win re-election in early 2016 by an over 80% margin).
Prognosticating that Niger will probably experience many internal troubles in the future because of its explosive population growth, widespread poverty, and high risk of militant violence (whether of a Salafist or secular nature), it’s foreseeable that the military might one day be forced to intervene in stabilizing the situation if the formal government is incapable of dealing with it. Just like how the 2012 Malian coup took place amidst deteriorating domestic conditions, so too could a Nigerien one occur under similar stresses in reaction to demographic pressure and/or uncontrollable terrorism along the southern belt. The population might even encourage this because of the relief that it could provide them in ameliorating the difficulties that some might exclusively blame the civilian government for the time of these hardships. The military, unlike the politicians, are the only institution capable of holding Niger together, protecting its borders, and fighting rebels/terrorists, and since it’s already embedded in the state by means of its economic and natural resource influence, it shouldn’t be too difficult in most cases for the generals to dispose of the president. Judging by Niger’s history, the putschists would more or less be accepted by their African Union counterparts in spite of the stringent opposition leveled against their actions and the country’s temporary suspension from this organization. Following Niger’s established template, democratic motions would be commenced, cosmetic changes would be made to the constitution, and the military would promote a civilian stand-in government to publicly rule in its place after elections are held.
The determining factor that could break this oft-repeated cycle would be if France were opposed to the military coup, which would only be the case if it either didn’t have anything to do with it or ‘something went wrong’ and the ‘wrong faction’ seized power. To remind the reader, France is in a heated competition with China for influence all throughout Africa, with Niger being one of the battlegrounds in which this Cold War is being fought. France could initiate the covert proceedings or give the green light to any possible coup attempt against the existing government in order to offset what it feels is the authorities’ uncomfortable coziness with the Chinese, though it’s also theoretically possible that a ‘counter-coup’ could occur among the members of the military elite who genuinely believe (or have a self-interested investment) in China’s One Belt One Road vision. The same latter point could also be applied towards the population, both in terms of those who might be pro-China by that time and in favor of the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road project or those who for whatever reason (whether they are even consciously aware of it or not) support French interests in this country. As a result, popular outrage against a coup might take the form of a Color Revolution (if backed by the French) or a people’s protest (if in alignment with Chinese interests). Therefore, one must expect that interlinked coups and Color Revolutions could become an occasional occurrence in Nigerien politics as the outgrowth of French-Chinese competition in the country takes on new and adaptable forms.
Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently residing in Moscow. Thew views expressed are his own. He is the author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.
Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to April 2013, Islamic State and al-Nusra Front (currently Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS) were a single organization that chose the banner of “Jabhat al-Nusra.” Although the current al-Nusra Front is led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani, he was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012.
Thus, the current al-Nusra Front is only a splinter group of Islamic State which split from its parent organization in April 2013 over a dispute between the leaders of the two organizations.
In March 2011, protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. In the following months, violence between demonstrators and security forces led to a gradual militarization of the conflict. In August 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was based in Iraq, began sending Syrian and Iraqi jihadists experienced in guerrilla warfare across the border into Syria to establish an organization inside the country.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Led by a Syrian known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the group began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country. On 23 January 2012, the group announced its formation as Jabhat al-Nusra.
In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio statement in which he announced that al-Nusra Front had been established, financed and supported by the Islamic State of Iraq. Al-Baghdadi declared that the two groups were merging under the name “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.” The leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, issued a statement denying the merger and complaining that neither he nor anyone else in al-Nusra’s leadership had been consulted about it.
Al-Qaeda Central’s leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, tried to mediate the dispute between al-Baghdadi and al-Julani but eventually, in October 2013, he endorsed al-Nusra Front as the official franchise of al-Qaeda Central in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, however, defied the nominal authority of al-Qaeda Central and declared himself as the caliph of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Keeping this background in mind, it becomes amply clear that a single militant organization operated in Syria and Iraq under the leadership of al-Baghdadi until April 2013, which chose the banner of al-Nusra Front, and that the current emir of the subsequent breakaway faction of al-Nusra Front, al-Julani, was actually al-Baghdadi’s deputy in Syria.
Thus, the Islamic State operated in Syria since August 2011 under the designation of al-Nusra Front and it subsequently changed its name to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April 2013, after which it overran al-Raqqa in the summer of 2013, then it captured parts of Deir el-Zor and fought battles against the alliance of Kurds and the Syrian regime in al-Hasakah. And in January 2014 it overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in Iraq and reached the zenith of its power when it captured Mosul in June 2014.
Al-Nustra Front
Moreover, many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration in 2003. Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama Administration’s policy of nurturing militants against the Syrian regime, since the beginning of the Syrian civil war until June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul and the Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous policy of indiscriminate support to Syrian opposition and declared a war against a faction of Syrian opposition: that is, the Islamic State.
Additionally, such Syria “experts” also try to find the roots of Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the insurgency in Iraq died down after “the Iraq surge” of 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became an impotent organization after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006, and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq by the Bush Administration.
The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq has been the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria against the Assad regime, when the Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently captured Mosul in June 2014. The borders between Syria and Iraq are quite porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama Administration’s policy of providing money, arms and training to Syrian militants in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan was bound to backfire sooner or later.
Regarding the rebranding of al-Julani’s Nusra Front to “Jabhat Fateh al-Sham” in July 2016 and supposed severing of ties with al-Qaeda Central, it’s only a nominal difference because al-Nusra Front never had any organizational and operational ties with al-Qaeda Central and even their ideologies are poles apart.
Al-Qaeda Central’s leader Ayman al Zawahiri
Al-Qaeda Central is basically a transnational terrorist organization, while al-Nusra Front mostly has regional ambitions limited only to fighting the Assad regime in Syria and its ideology is anti-Shi’a and sectarian. In fact, al-Nusra Front has not only received medical aid and material support from Israel, but some of its operations against the Shi’a-dominated Assad regime in southern Syria were fully coordinated with Israel’s air force.
The purpose behind the rebranding of al-Nusra Front to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and supposed severing of ties with al-Qaeda Central was to legitimize itself and to make it easier for its patrons to send money and arms. The US blacklisted al-Nusra Front in December 2012 and pressurized Saudi Arabia and Turkey to ban it too. Although al-Nusra Front’s name has been in the list of proscribed organizations of Saudi Arabia and Turkey since 2014, it has kept receiving money and arms from the Gulf Arab States.
Notwithstanding, excluding the western Mediterranean coast and the adjacent major urban centers controlled by the Syrian regime and the Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria, I would divide the Syrian theater of proxy wars into three separate and distinct zones of influence:
Firstly, the northern and northwestern zone along the Syria-Turkey border, in and around Aleppo and Idlib, which is under the influence of Turkey and Qatar. Both these countries share the ideology of Muslim Brotherhood and they provide money, training and arms to Sunni Arab jihadist organizations, such as al-Tawhid Brigade, Nour al-Din Zenki Brigade and Ahrar al-Sham, in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey in collaboration with CIA’s MOM (a Turkish acronym for military operations center).
Secondly, the southern zone of influence along the Syria-Jordan border, in Daraa and Quneitra and as far away as Homs and Damascus. It is controlled by the Saudi-Jordanian camp and they provide money, weapons and training to the Salafist militant groups, such as al-Nusra Front and the Southern Front of the so-called “moderate” Free Syria Army (FSA) in Daraa and Quneitra, and Jaysh al-Islam in the suburbs of Damascus.
Their military strategy is directed by a Military Operations Center (MOC) and training camps located in the border regions of Jordan. Here, let me clarify that this distinction is quite overlapping and heuristic, at best, because al-Nusra’s jihadists have taken part in battles as far away as Idlib and Aleppo.
And finally, the eastern zone of influence along the Syria-Iraq border, in al-Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, which has been controlled by a relatively maverick Iraq-based jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, though it had received funding and weapons from Turkey and the Gulf Arab States before it turned rogue and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq.
Thus, leaving the Mediterranean coast and Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Baathist and Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime has been surrounded from all three sides by hostile Sunni forces: Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood in the north, Jordan and the Salafists of the Gulf Arab States in the south and the Sunni Arab-majority regions of Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in the east.
Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and Petroimperialism.
Chatham House has been at the forefront of thinking on Britain’s role in the world. So with the General Election less than a month away, it’s a great place to set out my approach: on how a Labour Government I lead will keep Britain safe, reshape relationships with partners around the world, work to strengthen the United Nations and respond to the global challenges we face in the 21st century.
And I should say a warm welcome to the UN Special Representative in Somalia, Michael Keating, who is here today. On Monday, we commemorated VE Day, the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in Europe.
VE Day marked the defeat of fascism and the beginning of the end of a global war that claimed seventy million lives. General Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in 1944, went on to become Republican President of the United States during some of the most dangerous years of the Cold War in the 1950s.
In his final televised address to the American people as President, Eisenhower gave a stark warning of what he described as “the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex.”
“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry”, he said, “can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Sadly, in the more than half a century since that speech, I think it’s clear that Eisenhower’s warning has not been heeded. Too much of our debate about defence and security is one dimensional. You are either for or against what is presented as “strong defence”, regardless of the actual record of what that has meant in practice.
Alert citizens or political leaders who advocate other routes to security are dismissed or treated as unreliable. My own political views were shaped by the horrors of war and the threat of a nuclear holocaust. My parents met while organising solidarity with the elected government of Spain against Franco’s fascists during the Spanish civil war.
My generation grew up under the shadow of the cold war. On television, through the 1960s and into the seventies, the news was dominated by Vietnam. I was haunted by images of civilians fleeing chemical weapons used by the United States.
I didn’t imagine then that nearly fifty years later we would see chemical weapons still being used against innocent civilians. What an abject failure. How is it that history keeps repeating itself? At the end of the cold war, when the Berlin Wall came down we were told it was the end of history. Global leaders promised a more peaceful, stable world. It didn’t work out like that.
Today the world is more unstable than even at the height of the cold war. The approach to international security we have been using since the 1990s has simply not worked. Regime change wars in Afghanistan Iraq, Libya, and Syria – and Western interventions in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen – have failed in their own terms, and made the world a more dangerous place.
This is the fourth General Election in a row to be held while Britain is at war and our armed forces are in action in the Middle East and beyond. The fact is that the ‘war on terror’ which has driven these interventions has failed.
They have not increased our security at home – just the opposite. And they have caused destabilisation and devastation abroad.
Last September, the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee published a report on David Cameron’s Libyan war. They concluded the intervention led to political and economic collapse, humanitarian and migrant crises and fuelled the rise of Isis in Africa and across the Middle East. Is that really the way to deliver security to the British people? Who seriously believes that’s what real strength looks like?
We need to step back and have some fresh thinking. The world faces huge problems. As well as the legacy of regime change wars, there is a dangerous cocktail of ethnic conflicts, of food insecurity, water scarcity, the emerging effects of climate change. Add to that mix a grotesque and growing level of inequality in which just eight billionaires own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion poorest people.
And you end up with a refugee crisis of epic proportions affecting every continent in the world. With more displaced people in the world than since the Second World War. These problems are getting worse and fuelling threats and instability. The global situation is becoming more dangerous.
And the new US President seems determined to add to the dangers by recklessly escalating the confrontation with North Korea, unilaterally launching missile strikes on Syria, opposing President Obama’s nuclear arms deal with Iran and backing a new nuclear arms race.
A Labour Government will want a strong and friendly relationship with the United States. But we will not be afraid to speak our mind. The US is the strongest military power on the planet by a very long way. It has a special responsibility to use its power with care and to support international efforts to resolve conflicts collectively and peacefully.
Waiting to see which way the wind blows in Washington isn’t strong leadership. And pandering to an erratic Trump administration will not deliver stability. When Theresa May addressed a Republican Party conference in Philadelphia in January she spoke in alarmist terms about the rise of China and India and of the danger of the West being eclipsed.
She said America and Britain had to ‘stand strong’ together and use their military might to protect their interests. This is the sort of language that led to calamity in Iraq and Libya and all the other disastrous wars that stole the post-Cold War promise of a new world order.
I do not see India and China in those terms. Nor do I think the vast majority of Americans or British people want the boots of their young men and women on the ground in Syria fighting a war that would escalate the suffering and slaughter even further. Britain deserves better than simply outsourcing our country’s security and prosperity to the whims of the Trump White House. So no more hand holding with Donald Trump.
A Labour Government will conduct a robust and independent foreign policy – made in Britain. A Labour Government would seek to work for peace and security with all the other permanent members of the United Nations security council – the US, China, Russia and France. And with other countries with a major role to play such as India, South Africa, Brazil and Germany. The ‘bomb first, talk later’ approach to security has failed. To persist with it, as the Conservative Government has made clear it is determined to do, is a recipe for increasing, not reducing, threats and insecurity.
I am often asked if as prime minister I would order the use of nuclear weapons. It’s an extraordinary question when you think about it – would you order the indiscriminate killing of millions of people? Would you risk such extensive contamination of the planet that no life could exist across large parts of the world? If circumstances arose where that was a real option, it would represent complete and cataclysmic failure. It would mean world leaders had already triggered a spiral of catastrophe for humankind.
Labour is committed actively to pursue disarmament under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and we are committed to no first use of nuclear weapons. But let me make this absolutely clear. If elected prime minister, I will do everything necessary to protect the safety and security of our people and our country. That would be my first duty.
And to achieve it, I know I will have to work with other countries to solve problems, defuse tensions and build collective security. The best defence for Britain is a government actively engaged in seeking peaceful solutions to the world’s problems. But I am not a pacifist.
I accept that military action, under international law and as a genuine last resort, is in some circumstances necessary. But that is very far from the kind of unilateral wars and interventions that have almost become routine in recent times. I will not take lectures on security or humanitarian action from a Conservative Party that stood by in the 1980s – refusing even to impose sanctions – while children on the streets of Soweto were being shot dead in the streets, or which has backed every move to put our armed forces in harm’s way regardless of the impact on our people’s security.
Once again, in this election, it’s become clear that a vote for Theresa May could be a vote to escalate the war in Syria, risking military confrontation with Russia, adding to the suffering of the Syrian people and increasing global insecurity. When you see children suffering in war, it is only natural to want to do something. But the last thing we need is more of the same failed recipe that has served us so badly and the people of the region so calamitously.
Labour will stand up for the people of Syria. We will press for war crimes to be properly investigated. And we will work tirelessly to make the Geneva talks work. Every action that is taken over Syria must be judged by whether it helps to bring an end to the tragedy of the Syrian war or does the opposite.
Even if ISIS is defeated militarily, the conflict will not end until there is a negotiated settlement involving all the main parties, including the regional and international powers and an inclusive government in Iraq. All wars and conflicts eventually are brought to an end by political means.
So Labour would adopt a new approach. We will not step back from our responsibilities. But our focus will be on strengthening international co-operation and supporting the efforts of the United Nations to resolve conflicts.
A Labour Government will respect international law and oppose lawlessness and unilateralism in international relations. We believe human rights and social justice should drive our foreign policy. In 1968, Harold Wilson’s Labour Government signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
As prime minister, I hope to build on that achievement. Labour’s support for the renewal of the Trident submarine system does not preclude working for meaningful, multilateral steps to achieve reductions in nuclear arsenals. A Labour Government will pursue a triple commitment to the interlocking foreign policy instruments of: defence, development and diplomacy. For all their bluster, the Tory record on defence and security has been one of incompetence and failure.
They have balanced the books on the backs of servicemen and women. Deep cuts have seen the Army reduced to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars. From stagnant pay and worsening conditions, to poor housing. The morale of our service personnel and veterans is at rock bottom.
And as the security threats and challenges we face are not bound by geographic borders it is vital that as Britain leaves the EU, we maintain a close relationship with our European partners alongside our commitment to NATO and spending at least 2 per cent on defence.
That means working with our allies to ensure peace and security in Europe. We will work to halt the drift to confrontation with Russia and the escalation of military deployments across the continent.
There is no need whatever to weaken our opposition to Russia’s human rights abuses at home or abroad to understand the necessity of winding down tensions on the Russia-Nato border and supporting dialogue to reduce the risk of international conflict. We will back a new conference on security and cooperation in Europe and seek to defuse the crisis in Ukraine through implementation of the Minsk agreements.
We will continue to work with the EU on operational missions to promote and support global and regional security. This means our Armed Forces will have the necessary capabilities to fulfil the full range of obligations ensuring they are versatile and able to participate in rapid stabilisation, disaster relief, UN peacekeeping and conflict resolution activities. Because security is not only about direct military defence, it’s about conflict resolution and prevention, underpinned by strong diplomacy.
So the next Labour Government will invest in the UK’s diplomatic networks and consular services. We will seek to rebuild some of the key capabilities and services that have been lost as a result of Conservative cuts in recent years.
Finally, while Theresa May seeks to build a coalition of risk and insecurity with Donald Trump, a Labour Government will refocus Britain’s influence towards cooperation, peaceful settlements and social justice. The life chances, security and prosperity of our citizens are dependent on a stable international environment. We will strengthen our commitment to the UN. But we are well aware of its shortcomings, particularly in the light of repeated abuses of the veto power in the UN Security Council.
So we will work with allies and partners from around the world to build support for UN reform in order to make its institutions more effective and responsive. And as a permanent member of the Security Council we will provide a lead by respecting the authority of International Law.
To lead this work, Labour has created a Minister for Peace who will work across the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We will reclaim Britain’s leading role in tackling climate change, working hard to preserve the Paris Agreement and deliver on international commitments to reduce carbon emissions.
Labour will re-examine the arms export licensing regulations to ensure that all British arms exports are consistent with our legal and moral obligations. This means refusing to grant export licences for arms when there is a clear risk that they will be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law. Weapons supplied to Saudi Arabia, when the evidence of grave breaches of humanitarian law in Yemen is overwhelming, must be halted immediately.
I see it as the next Labour’s Government task, as my task, to make the case for Britain to advance a security and foreign policy with integrity and human rights at its core. So there is a clear choice at this election.
Between continuing with the failed policy of continual and devastating military interventions, that have intensified conflicts and increased the terrorist threat. Or being willing to step back, learn the lessons of the past and find new ways to solve and prevent conflicts. As Dwight Eisenhower said on another occasion: If people “can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.”
And in the words of Martin Luther King
“The chain reaction of evil – hate – begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark days of annihilation”.
I believe we can find those solutions. We can walk the hard yards to a better way to live together on this planet.
A Labour Government will give leadership in a new and constructive way and that is the leadership we are ready to provide both at home and abroad. Thank you.
Global Research strives for peace, and we have but one mandate: to share timely, independent and vital information to readers across the globe. We act as a global platform to let the voices of dissent, protest, and expert witnesses and academics be heard and disseminated internationally.
We need to stand together to continuously question politics, false statements, and the suppression of independent thought.
As we detailed earlier, on the eve of a summit in Beijing, and just hours after Pyongyang’s chief nuclear negotiator said North Korea is ready to hold talks with the United States “if the conditions are mature”, South Korea’s Yonhap reports that North Korea has fired a projectile believed to be a ballistic missile, from a region named Kusong located northwest of Pyongyang, where the North previously test-launched its intermediate-range missile.
Moon intends to resume dialogue with all partners in order not to limit his options in the international arena. Such an approach reflects the essence of the multipolar world order: cooperation and dialogue with all partners in order to achieve a win-win outcome.
Recent tensions between North Korea and the U.S. had accelerated as North Korea conducted a series of ballistic missile tests last month. It also threatened to conduct its sixth nuclear test “at any time.”
Pro-government forces, led by the Syrian Army Tiger Forces, have made significant progress against ISIS in the province of Aleppo. Last weekend, government troops liberated the Jirah Military Airbase after few days of clashes with ISIS terrorists. ISIS attempted to counter attack at the military airbase and near Jirah Saghir village but failed to achieve its goals. The Syrian Army reportedly lost a T-55 battle tank, a BMP-1 armoured vehicle and a technical armed with a 23mm gun in these clashes.
The military airbase was the last major ISIS stronghold on the way to the important ISIS-held town of Maskaneh that will likely become the next target of the government advance in the province of Aleppo. Advancing through Maskaneh, government troops would reach an area controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Tabqah countryside in the province of Raqqah. This will also allow to secure a large chunk of the Ithriyah-Aleppo road.
Meanwhile, ISIS deployed reinforcements in the area between the Jirah Military Airbase and near Maskanah. Thus, it became clear that the terrorist group was going to defend this important town seriously.
The Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces liberated a large area in eastern Damascus from militant groups after a successful military operation in Qaboun and reaching a withdrawal agreement with militants and their families in Thishreen.
A militant infighting continued in Eastern Ghouta where the Al-Rahman Corps and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a joint attack on positions of Jaish al-Islam in the Misraba area. This was a continuation of tensions appeared among militant groups after they failed to retake the industrial area south of Qaboun from government forces.
The SDF advanced further against ISIS terrorists in the province of Raqqah, capturing the villages of Atshana, al-Malali, Abu Khabret al-Rachid, Mazrat al-Ansar, Khirbat al-Khan and reaching an abadoned military base north of the ISIS self-proclaimed capital. Thus, SDF units deployed in about 4 km from the entrance to the city. If the base is captured, it will be a start of clashes in the vicinity of Raqqah and will mark a preparation for the first phase of its storm.
North Korea’s geopolitical policies and America’s are world’s apart. Pyongyang never attacked another country, threatens none now.
America wages permanent wars, destroying one nation after another, threatening all sovereign independent countries with regime change.
Its agenda is humanity’s greatest threat. The DPRK has just cause for concern about another US launched devastating war on the Korean peninsula.
Its nuclear and ballistic missile programs are for defense, not offense, deterrents to possible US aggression.
If Washington recognized its government, normalized relations, and ended decades of hostility, Pyongyang would have no need for powerful weapons.
Instead, US policymakers since the Truman era have been confrontational with Pyongyang. Hawkish Trump administration generals risk possible nuclear war on the peninsula, madness if launched. Threats of a US nuclear attack against North Korea have been ongoing for more than sixty years.
New South Korean President Moon Jae-In is amenable to improved relations with Pyongyang, a sensible policy, the only way to defuse tensions.
Washington is strongly opposed to this idea. It’s unclear where Trump stands, saying one thing, then another, while delegating foreign policy to administration hawks, especially warmaking.
World peace hangs by a thread because of rogue elements Washington – in Congress and close to Trump, making him resemble a potted plant on major geopolitical issues, going in the directions he’s shoved.
It’s unclear if he understands the danger his lack of strong leadership on the international stage poses. Nuclear war could be launched behind his back, neocon generals and advisors informing him after the fact.
On Sunday, South Korea’s Yonyap news agency reported another Pyongyang missile test,
“believed to be a ballistic missile,” it said.
According to Japan’s Kyodo news agency,
“(t)he missile reached an altitude higher than 1,000 kilometers during its flight, raising the possibility that it was launched at a steep ‘lofted’ trajectory. Deliberately firing the missile at such an angle could allow North Korea to test its capabilities without it landing closer to Japan.”
Reportedly it covered a distance of about 700 km before splashdown in the Sea of Japan. An unnamed Japanese government source believes it could be a new type longer-range ballistic missile.
US Pacific Command spokesman Rob Shuford said its flight pattern “was not consistent with an” ICBM. It was airborne for about 30 minutes.
South Korea’s Moon called the test a “reckless provocation.” Japan’s Shinzo Abe said it was “absolutely unacceptable.”
When America and key NATO allies test powerful weapons, including nuclear ones and ICBMs, the deafening sound of silence follows, no criticism from Western capitals, other US allies, and media. The double standard is self-explanatory.
On Saturday, a White House statement called the DPRK “a flagrant menace for far too long…The United States maintains our ironclad commitment to stand with our allies in the face of the serious threat posed by North Korea” – a deplorable perversion of truth.
Washington and its rogue allies alone pose a “serious threat,” the DPRK perhaps the next target of US aggression.
Its KCNA news agency said America’s aim is “maximum pressure and engagement (to) stifle” Pyongyang, compelling it to “strengthen our nuclear deterrent (and ballistic missile capability) at maximum speed.”
Separately, Moon’s press secretary Yoon Young-chan said
“while (Seoul) remains open to the possibility of dialogue with North Korea, it is only possible when (it) shows a change in attitude.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said
“(t)he situation on the peninsula is complex and sensitive, and all relevant parties should exercise restraint and do nothing to further worsen regional tensions.”
Washington’s rage for war should give pause to all nations seeking peace and stability, unattainable as long as US belligerence continues.
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.”
We are dealing with a diabolical media agenda. The following reports point to the fabrication of fake videos and photos of an alleged chemical weapons attack, with a view to blaming the government of Bashar Al Assad.
The second report provides details on the confession of a White Helmets’ associate belonging to Al Qaeda in Syria which was aired on Syrian National Television. The third report overlaps with the second while prviding some addional details and analysis.
It is worth noting that in early May, Russian diplomatic and military source revealed that Al Jazeera reporters “filmed a fake chemical attack against civilians in Idleb province in order to blame the Syrian Army.” According to Sputnik
A false flag fake chemical attack against civilians has recently been filmed by al-Jazeera stringers in Syria, and it was ordered from a European country, a military and diplomatic source revealed on Thursday.
“The “effectiveness” of the White Helmets’ TV-spectacle of accusing Syrian authorities of attacking civilians in Khan Shaykhun with sarin inspired terrorists to continue filming the fake ‘series’. According to info confirmed via several channels, al-Jazeera television channel stringers have recently filmed a staged, fake scene of an alleged chemical attack against civilians by the Syrian Army,” the source told Sputnik.
The source said around 30 fire engines and ambulances, as well as 70 local residents with children transported from a refugee camp were used in the filming across three locations in Idlib province, including Jisr Shughur.
“A multiple simultaneous uploading of filmed fake footage with ‘screaming’ social media comments was due to take place in the next few days (by Sunday) at the separate command of a mastermind and sponsor of the film in one of the European countries,” he added.
This filming appears to be ordered from a European country, the source said.
In December 2016, Egyptian police detained a man for making staged “wounded children” photos, which he was planning to use to misrepresent on social media as photos of destruction and injured people in Syria’s Aleppo.
According to Fort Russ (May 13, 2017) former White Helmets associate named Walid Hindi admitted his involvement in fabricating photo and video material, prepared in cooperation with Turkish Television, during the time when he was working with the notorious White Helmets group in eastern Aleppo.
The group was preparing fake videos of alleged atrocities of the Syrian Army, during its liberation process of eastern Aleppo. In his confession, broadcasted on Syrian National Television on Saturday evening, Hindi admitted to have worked with White Helmets for three years and received rather huge sums of money, majority if which was provided by the Gulf states.
He also describe how filming of “atrocities” would take place.
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When, for instance, they wanted to stage an airstrike scene, the filming crew would fire sirens and the actors would then immediately rush to the scene. Right after that, live streaming of events would begin, accusing the Syrian Army of carrying out yet another airstrike, targeting civilians. Hindi said he participated in fabricating videos more than just once.
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According to Hindi, the main person responsible for “directing” these staged videos was Ibrahim Al Hajj, with Mohammad Al Sayed being the main cameraman.
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In turn, another former associate named Imad Abdul Jawad admitted to have witnessed possession of chemicals by terrorists in Aleppo, saying “During my work shift as a guard I was once asked to transfer a bunch of barrels, containing something what my supervisors called “detergent and washing powder”. I was supposed to transfer the materials from the district of Al Sukkariyeh to the district of Amariya.”
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He then explained that his task was basically to unload the wares at the entrance of the building, pointing out that on one occasion, after finishing unloading the content, he saw people wearing uniforms, silver masks and protective boots and were carrying the goods he just transported to the cellars.
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On one occasion, he managed to get closer and he saw people opening the barrels and pouring their content out into something that looked like gas cylinders, adding that contents looked nothing like washing powder or detergent. He described the liquid, which was being poured out of the barrels, to have a rather foul smell. When his boss noticed he is watching the procedure, he was dismissed immediately.
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It is noteworthy that on January 11th 2017, engineering units of the Syrian Army discovered Saudi-made chemicals, left over by terrorists in one of the neighbourhoods in eastern Aleppo.
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White Helmets are a highly controversial group. Although claiming to be humanitarians, White Helmets are a branch of the armed Syrian opposition and were discovered not only of having ties to terrorist groups and being involved in staging media provocations, but also of deliberately hurting civilians, children including.
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The group is revered by Arab and western governments and mainstream media.
Terrorist Walid Hendi confessed to taking part in fabricating videos and photos for a Turkish TV channel while working with the so-called “White Helmets” that depict neighborhoods and areas in Aleppo being attacked with chemical weapons in order to blame the Syrian Arab Army.
In confessions broadcast by the Syrian TV on Saturday evening, al-Hendi said that he joined the “white Helmets” three years ago in return for receiving funds from the so-called “local council” and financiers from Arab Gulf countries.
Hendi said that they were told that there will be chemical attacks, and they were given protective clothing and they staged a fake chemical attack that was filmed by a Turkish channel, adding that they were filmed by two people called Ibrhaim al-Haj and Mohammad al-Sayyed as they sounded sirens and brought stretchers to transport supposed injured people, with the intent of posting these videos online and accuse the Syrian Arab Army of carrying out a chemical attack.
The terrorist also confessed to taking part in fabricating videos and photos depicting alleged attacks several times.
A Russian diplomatic and military source had revealed on May 4th that reporters working for Qatar’s al-Jazeera TV filmed a fake chemical attack against civilians in Idleb province in order to blame the Syrian Army.
In turn, terrorist Imad Abdeljawad said in similar confessions that terrorists in Aleppo possessed toxic chemicals and that he took part in transporting them.
Abdeljawad said that he was asked to transport what was claimed to be cleaning agents from al-Sukkari neighborhood to al-Ameriya neighborhood to cover up the fact that they were actually transporting dangerous chemicals, adding that after unloading materials from two cars and starting with the third, they wanted to know what materials they were transporting because their smells was agitating, particularly since he suffered asthma.
He went on to say that he saw people in silvery clothing, protective masks, and long boots transporting the materials to a basement, and they looked through windows and saw them opening barrels and pouting a liquid from them into cylinders, and when the man in charge of the terrorists noticed that Abdeljawad and his cohorts were watching he expelled them and prevented them from bearing arms.
Back in January, army engineering units uncovered while combing the Old City neighborhoods in Aleppo an amount of chemical materials of Saudi origin left behind by terrorists, which included sulfur, chlorine, and other materials.
With Moon Jae-In’s victory in South Korea, the period of tension on the Korean Peninsula is likely to end. With the rise to power of the new president, South Korea can expect a sharp decline in hostilities with North Korea as well as a resumption of dialogue with China.
An expected and highly anticipated victory was confirmed in South Korea on May 9, with candidate Moon winning South Korea’s presidential race over his rivals Hong Joon-pyo (Liberty Korea Party) and Ahn Cheol-soo (People’s Party). After the resignation and arrest of former President Park Geun-hye over an immense corruption scandal, public opinion turned away from her party in favour of the main opposition representative, a center-left lawyer specializing in humanitarian issues.
Moon (picture on the right side) spent several years in the opposition party advocating for greater cooperation in the region and dialogue with Pyongyang as well as with Beijing, representing quite a contrast to Guen-Hye’s pro-Americanism. Along the lines of Duterte in the Philippines, Moon intends to resume dialogue with all partners in order not to limit his options in the international arena. Such an approach reflects the essence of the multipolar world order: cooperation and dialogue with all partners in order to achieve a win-win outcome.
Looking at the situation in the region, the victory of a politician who seems to have every intention of negotiating an agreement rather than supporting military escalation seems to provide for a hopeful future for China and her neighbors. The level of cooperation and trade between South Korea and China is fundamental to the economy of both countries, so a return to the negotiating table over the issues surrounding the deployment of THAAD are a hopeful sign that the business communities of China and South Korea value deeply.
Duterte Strategy
The United States is again faced with a Filipino-like scenario. Historically, South Korea and the Philippines have always been two fundamental US allies, more concerned with Washington’s interests than their own national political agendas. Over the last few decades, both countries have been governed by politicians careful not to upset the sensibilities of US policy makers. South Korea and the Philippines are at the heart of the political strategy Obama called the Asian Pivot, more explicitly, a policy aimed at containing China and its expansion as a regional hegemon in Asia.
Following the Trump administration’s focus and threats against North Korea in recent weeks, war has seemed more likely on the peninsula. But with Moon’s victory, it has probably been permanently excluded as a possibility. In several interviews weeks prior to the election, Moon stated that a war between the US and the North Korea would constitute an impossible burden for South Korea to sustain. Moon is very realistic about the conventional deterrence that North Korea possesses, maybe even more so than the nuclear development.
Even though Trump has said he is willing to meet with Kim Jong-un, most of his decisions seem to depend on the hawks surrounding him. Looking at the first hundred days of the Trump administration shows a remarkable departure from electoral promises, with the influence of generals he nominated, leading to various escalations in the hot regions of the world. Bottom line is, Trump’s intentions and words matter to a certain extent as US posture in the region seems to be guided by military generals and inner circle family members. Fortunately for the world, the tentative moves in Syria and Afghanistan have not amounted to much, such as with the bombing of the Shayrat airbase or the show in Afghanistan involving the MOAB.
THAAD to Divide
The deployment of the THAAD system continues as part of a belligerent attitude towards North Korea. The strong and firm rhetoric of Pyongyang is justified and not surprising given the context and the threats facing the country in wake of US provocations. The deployment of THAAD has had consequences, such as increasing tensions between South Korea and China. Moon’s victory goes contrary to the goal of the US policy-makers in Washington to isolate China. In this light, the hurried deployment of THAAD before the South Korean election obliged the probable winner, Moon, to be faced with an accomplished fact. This first step makes it clear what Washington’s attitude towards the new South Korean president will be.
The THAAD has also been deployed to antagonize the most frustrating point between Seoul and Beijing: North Korea. The measure was intentionally taken by Washington to pressure Seoul. THAAD has all the characteristics of a Trojan horse. Placed to reassure an ally (Seoul) against a fake-threat (Pyongyang), it becomes a weapon against China that puts in place a system, only a few hundred miles from its border, potentially able to affect China’s strategic nuclear forces. The US military accelerated the deployment of THAAD in the knowledge that this would immediately place the future president in a difficult situation, in that removing THAAD would not be easy in the face of huge American pressure. This may perhaps be Moon’s first challenge; to use the dismantling of THAAD as a means of exchange with Beijing to return to a normal relationship of co-operation. If Beijing wants to believe Moon’s goodwill in eliminating the THAAD system, it may begin to loosen some of the measures imposed on Seoul as retaliation for the deployment of the US system.
Multipolar world to the rescue
In this scenario, one must not make the mistake of believing that Moon’s victory means that a major US ally will cease its support for Washington. As always, in this era of transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world, the pressure that Washington will decide to apply to South Korea will affect the nature of the US-ROK alliance. The United States will have to abandon the warlike posture so dear to Mattis, McMaster and Admiral Harris (the commander of the US Pacific Fleet). In this Tillerson as a realist might be the right man at the right place to negotiate with Moon. Potentially it could be possible to solve the problem in whole by dealing with North Korea, although that seems unlikely given the pressures the deep state will put on the administration to continue using North Korea to create instability in the region.
This is why much of the region’s future will remain subordinated to potential negotiations between Beijing, Pyongyang and Seoul on the Korean peninsula, especially after Moon’s victory. If these three nations succeed in finding common ground on which to set upon a path of reconciliation, the region will benefit greatly. Of course, in this context, the one most likely to lose influence is the United States. If Washington wants to remain relevant, it should abandon the Chinese containment plan through the Korean peninsula by exploiting North Korean problems. If they instead decide to try to sabotage any peace agreement in the peninsula, this will only push Seoul and Pyongyang even closer together, to Beijing’s great pleasure.
Recent years have seen a mounting showdown between the old world order configuration based on chaos and destruction and led by Washington, and the new multipolar order that focuses on win-win opportunities, dialogue and sincere cooperation. If Washington decides not to accept the new rules of the game, where it can no longer dictate the law, it will end up producing more damage against itself than any foreign country could actually do, in actual fact accelerating the formation of the multipolar world and putting to bed the unipolar world order for good.
Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.
On May 10, Russian Foreign MinisterSergei Lavrov met U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Donald Trump. They discussed issues related to cooperation, primarily in Syria. At a press conference Lavrov confirmed that the two heads of state would finally come face-to-face at the beginning of July.
Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Washington mirrored Rex Tillerson’s trip to Moscow on April 11. The U.S. Secretary of State first met Lavrov before his appointment with President Vladimir Putin. On May 10, Lavrov returned the favor by first holding talks with his American counterpart and then Donald Trump.
In an interview with Gazeta.ru, General Director of Russia’s International Affairs Council Andrei Kortunovunderlined that the meeting between Trump and Lavrov was not simply a polite gesture.
“Regardless of the importance of the Secretary of State’s role, U.S. foreign policy is created by the president. I think that Trump has a certain message for Putin that he wants to send personally, through Lavrov.”
The presidents are travelling to Hamburg
Talks between Lavrov and Trump lasted 40 minutes. One of the main points, as Russia’s foreign minister confirmed during the press conference, was the confirmation of the approximate date of Putin’s first personal meeting with Trump. The two presidents are set to meet during the G20 Summit over the first ten days of July.
Lavrov stressed that before the meeting between the heads of state it’s necessary to finalize several issues, in particular Syria, in order to prepare “concrete, perceptible results.” He added that this is what he will do with Tillerson.
‘Was he fired? You’re kidding!’
During the press conference American journalists tried to find out if the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey would influence Russian-American relations (some U.S. media outlets are linking his departure to the FBI’s investigation into Moscow’s alleged meddling of the presidential elections). Before the meeting with Tillerson, Lavrov made fun of the press by remarking:
“Was he fired? You’re kidding!”
On the evening of May 10, Putin (as he was about to play in an amateur hockey match) said that Comey’s dismissal is America’s domestic affair and Russia has nothing to do with it, in response to a question from a CBSN journalist. In turn, Lavrov refused to discuss rumors of Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. elections, referring to them as “bacchanalia” and far detached from reality.
Comparing Trump’s administration to the Barack Obama’s presidency, Lavrov underlined that with Trump, Russia-U.S. dialogue has freed itself of ideological nuances:
“Trump and his administration are business people who want to make agreements.”
Syria and other issues
Lavrov dedicated most of the press conference to the Syrian issue, stressing that Washington could contribute to the formation of de-escalation zones in the country. He reminded journalists that Russia and the U.S. have mutual understanding about the location of the zones and how they will function. Moscow and Washington, in Lavrov’s words, are ready to cooperate on the Syrian issue.
“For the U.S. the most important thing is to defeat terror. Here we are in perfect harmony,” he said.
Lavrov and Trump did not discuss the unilateral sanctions introduced against Russia by the Obama administration in December 2016. At the same time, Lavrov added that Washington understands the seizure of property belonging to Russian diplomats was wrong.
Trump stated that he was pleased with the meeting and expressed his hope that relations between the two countries would improve. According to an official White House Press Service statement, Trump underlined that Russia needs to “rein in” Assad’s regime in Syria and Iran.
“He also raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere,” the statement says.
Update: Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Sunday that North Korea’s firing of a ballistic missile was a violation of U.N. resolutions and that Japan strongly protested the action. Additionally:
*MISSILE MAY BE NEW TYPE: KYODO CITES JAPAN DEFENSE MINISTER
*MISSILE EST ALTITUDE 2,000KM, KYODO NEWS REPORT
*S. KOREA WILL DEAL STERNLY WITH N. KOREA PROVOCATIONS: YOON
*S. KOREA PRESIDENT STILL OPEN TO DIALOGUE WITH N. KOREA: YOON
* * *
As we detailed earlier, on the eve of a summit in Beijing, and just hours after Pyongyang’s chief nuclear negotiator said North Korea is ready to hold talks with the United States “if the conditions are mature”, South Korea’s Yonhap reports that North Korea has fired a projectile believed to be a ballistic missile, from a region named Kusong located northwest of Pyongyang, where the North previously test-launched its intermediate-range missile.
The nature of the projectile was not immediately clear, a South Korean military official told Reuters.
The ballistic missile firing is North Korea’s seventh this year.
The launch comes just hours after The South China Morning Post reports Choe Son-hui, head of the North Korea’s Foreign Ministry’s North America bureau, offered the assurance in the Chinese capital after an informal meeting in Norway with Thomas Pickering, a former US ambassador to the United Nations.
“If conditions are mature, we will hold dialogue with the Donald Trump administration,” she said.
Choe made the remarks just days after Trump said he would be willing to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “under the right circumstances”.
But the comments also came as the US embassy in Beijing told China’s foreign ministry that North Korea’s attendance at the top-level gathering for the “Belt and Road Initiative” could send the wrong message as the world was trying to pressure Pyongyang over its repeated missile and nuclear tests. The foreign ministry said Beijing welcomed the participation of all countries in the summit.
South Korea’s Yonhap News confirms North Korea has fired what appears to be a ballistic missile from its west coast, the South Korean military reported early Sunday. The launch would be the first in two weeks since the last attempt to fire a missile ended in a failure just minutes into flight. It would also be the first launch since a new, liberal president took office in South Korea on Wednesday saying dialogue as well as pressure must be used to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and stop the North’s weapons pursuit. The new president Moon has said he is willing to engage in dialogue with his northern neighbor.
Weapons experts and government officials, cited by Reuters,
“believe the North has accomplished some technical progress with those tests.”
South Korean Military has now confirmed it was a ballistic missile that flew 700 km.
The Japanese government confirms the missile flew 30 minutes and landed in The Sea of Japan.
Kim claimed in January to be in the final stages of preparations to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, and has since launched several intermediate-range projectiles with varying degrees of success.
The action provides an early test for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who came to office on May 10 saying he would visit Pyongyang under the “right circumstances” to bring peace to the peninsula. Moon convened a meeting of the national security council Sunday morning, according to the Presidential Blue House.
* * *
Today’s launch should not be a total surprise: In a interview earlier in the week with by Sky News, in response to a question “is a sixth nuclear test now imminent”, the answer of the North Korean Ambassador to the UK, Choe Il was
“In regards to the sixth nuclear test, I do not know the scheduled time for it, as I am here in the UK, not in my home country. However, I can say that the nuclear test will be conducted at the place and time as decided by our supreme leader, Kim Jong-Un.”
Asked if he is afraid of a possible US military response, the ambassador answers that
“we are developing our nuclear strength to respond to that kind of attack by the US. If the US attacks us, our military and people are fully ready to respond to any kind of attack. I do not think the US are considering a military attack against us.“
Asked what would North Korea’s response be to a preemptive strike, he answer that:
“The US cannot attack us first. If the US moves an inch, then we are ready to turn to ashes any available strategic assets of the US.”
A video went viral of an aggressive American man beating his chest and taunting a Muslim family on a Texas beach in support of what he believed was US President Donald Trump’s mission of purging America of “Sharia law” and “ISIS” (the Islamic State).
What this man was likely not aware of as he made his lowbrow political statement was that the “Sharia law” he actually fears is called “Wahhabism,” and that his candidate of choice “Trump” was preparing to visit the very source of Wahhabism – Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, the American left remains convinced that their priority should remain resisting an alleged covert alliance between Russia and the Trump administration of which no evidence actually exists. They have made this a priority at the expense of exposing and resisting a documented and longstanding alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia that has endured for decades.
There is common ground here for the American public, but only if the intentional distractions presented by the Western media from both right and left cover can be sidestepped and the truth revealed.
Wahhabism’s Source Code
If the Islamic State is a virus, its source code can be traced directly back to Riyadh and the political regime that resides there. Riyadh chops heads off of offenders, the Islamic State does too. Riyadh oppresses women, the Islamic State does too. Riyadh is arrayed against all forces beyond its and American geopolitical influence, the Islamic State does too. Riyadh promotes a divisive sectarian-driven strategy of tension to divide and conquer, the Islamic State does too.
It is no coincidence that both Riyadh and its American sponsors are fighting precisely the same enemies as the Islamic State: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Russia, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
In essence, President Trump’s visit to Riyadh represents a paradox for Trump supporters.
He’s the man supposed to “save America” from “Sharia law,” but is visiting Riyadh from whence the corrosive version of “Sharia law,” known as Wahhabism, originated and is actively perpetuated from. Worst of all, Riyadh perpetuates Wahhabism with the explicit and long-term support of the United States, including now under the Trump administration.
For the average chest-beating, genital-grabbing Trump supporter, America’s complicity in propping up Wahhabism began under US President Barack Obama who they suspect had infiltrated American politics as a “secret Muslim.” President Trump’s victory at the polls was supposed to reverse this “infiltration.”
Back in reality, US support of Wahhabism goes back to the end of World War I and accepting the waning British Empire’s handover of its vast networks across the colonized Arab World it used to divide and conquer the people living there.
Wahhabism represented one of the more successful and prolific British-supported networks of divide and conquer, adjacent to the Muslim Brotherhood. These networks were employed for decades, including during several attempts to break the Syrian nation under the rule of current Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad.
In fact, Hafez al-Assad’s victory over the Muslim Brotherhood and their Wahhabi allies in Syria served as impetus for the creation of Al Qaeda, a joint US-Saudi project aimed at dislodging Soviet forces from the Central Asian state of Afghanistan.
After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and terrorist organizations like it would be utilized to fight US and Persian Gulf conflicts the world over either as proxy forces or as pretexts for justifying direct military intervention.
From Libya to Iraq, and from Afghanistan to Somalia, the United States has invaded, occupied or otherwise attacked and destroyed nation after nation predicated on the threat posed by “Al Qaeda.” However, it is clear, that if one nation’s government should be attacked, undermined and overthrown in pursuit of defeating the threat of Wahhabism and groups who practice it – Al Qaeda and the Islamic State – it would be Saudi Arabia.
Yet this is not only the one nation the US refuses to target, it has elected to support the regime residing in Riyadh with decades of bipartisan political, economic, and military support.
This support continues, unconditionally, under the Trump administration and represents a conundrum for his supporters who remain convinced he is a champion against terrorism, not yet another facilitator of it. But he is.
US Coddling the Worst Regime on Earth (Not Russia)
The American left remains convinced – in no small part because of the media – that Russia represents the single greatest existential threat to America beyond its borders and the sole reason the Trump administration has assumed office instead of their candidate of choice, Hillary Clinton. Yet there is no actual evidence of this or that US policy – foreign or domestic – would have differed had Clinton won the election.
What there is evidence of, is US ties with Saudi Arabia which include much more than the symbolic and routine meetings Trump’s administration is having with Russian representatives – meetings the Obama administration before it had held including the notorious “reset” meeting between then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The arms sales contracts are likely to comprise of Lockheed Martin Co program packages with a Terminal Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defence system worth $1bn (£770 million), a C2BMC software system, and a package with satellite capabilities.
Provided by BAE Systems PLC, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and an M109 artillery vehicle are also under consideration as part of the deal.
The Independent also notes that:
…there will be $1bn (£770 million) worth of munitions, including armour-piercing Penetrator Warheads and Paveway laser-guided bombs. These contracts had been suspended by the Obama administration because of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen, which caused the deaths of thousands of civilians.
It is clear that after Obama sealed a 60 billion USD deal with Riyadh in 2010, its “suspension” of certain weapon delivered were all but symbolic, and now with President Trump in office, to be reversed.
The Independent’s mention of Yemen is important. It is a conflict which, like Syria, began in 2011 and has persisted with the brutal suppression of anti-US-Saudi-backed government forces across the nation as well as Yemen’s civilian population. The US-backed regime in Riyadh has targeted Yemen with aerial bombardment, sea and air blockades, and even multiple ground invasions.
Many who support or oppose President Trump appear oblivious to the ongoing conflict in Yemen despite repeatedly weighing in on the adjacent Syrian conflict. This is owed to the selective and dishonest reporting of Western media.
This same media, who proposes that President Trump is coddling Russia at the expense of US sovereignty, has failed to expose with equal vigor the bipartisan support both President Obama and now President Trump have exhibited toward a very real threat to American – and global- security, Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the brutality it has subjected neighboring Yemen to, Saudi Arabia oppresses and executes hundreds of its own citizens as well, many of which are executed by public beheading.
The Guardian in a 2016 article reports that up to 157 executions were carried out in 2015, with beheadings reaching their highest level in two decades. This means that Saudi barbarity is on the rise, and despite attempts to portray the regime as one in the process of “reforming,” the facts reveal a regime doubling down within the safety of impunity provided to it by Western politicians and the media.
Finding Common Ground
While the American left appears fixated on President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, documented ties to Riyadh go unnoticed and unopposed. And while the American right is fixated on calling out Muslims real or imagined anywhere they find them, they remain oblivious to the fact that their own candidate of choice is coddling the very source of actual global terrorism.
It is an impressive accomplishment by the Western media, to convince the public that Washington’s competitors are their covert allies and that true enemies of American principles, for all intents and purposes, don’t even exist.
By doing so, the media has managed to enlist the American left in an adversarial campaign against Moscow it would have otherwise found impossible to provoke. It has also managed to slake racist and bigoted perceptions among Trump supporters without exposing Saudi Arabia or President Trump’s role in propping up the Saudi regime and the terror the US and Riyadh collectively propagate globally.
President Trump’s visit to Riyadh and the indifference among both the left and the right regarding it in many ways exposes the alternate reality American political discourse currently resides in. It is one dominated by emotions at the expense of facts, and until journalists, analysts and activists point out and question why both the left and the right share this critical blind spot instead of finding common ground within it, this unfortunate game will continue to consume America politically, consume Yemen in the fires of unchecked and unopposed war, and consume the people of Saudi Arabia and all others subjected to Wahhabism of body and soul.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Ahead of his upcoming visit to Israel, US President Donald Trump should update the two options he presented at his joint Feb. 15 White House news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These were either two states for two people — one Jewish and one Palestinian, on the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (Israel’s territory together with the West Bank) — or one state for the two people on all this land.
As Education Minister Naftali Bennett said in an Al-Monitor interview with Ben Caspit on May 8: Trump must now be told the truth. So this is the truth: The option being promoted by Netanyahu and Bennett is one state for one people. One state for the Jewish people, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. As far as they are concerned, the Palestinians are not “a people” and never were “a people.” Therefore, they do not deserve a state. They should thank Israel for not expelling them from their homes and for even being willing to make “economic” peace with them.
The truth is that since 2009, when Netanyahu first spoke of a two-state solution in his landmark Bar-Ilan speech, more than 100,000 people have been added to the population of the Jewish people in Area C (under Israeli civil and security control) — the part of the West Bank intended for a future state of the Palestinian people. In 2009, there were about 300,000, now there are over 400,000. The truth is that out of Area C, which comprises some 60% of the West Bank, Israel has designated 36.5% as “state lands” — namely lands belonging to the State of Israel, of course. Some 63% of Area C is under the jurisdiction of the local and regional councils of Israeli settlements; some 30% is designated as Israel Defense Forces live-fire drill zones. The truth is that the Israeli authorities grant very few construction permits to Palestinians in the remaining areas, and treat with indifference the abuse of Palestinians by Jewish thugs in the illegal Israeli outposts.
The truth is that senior government ministers are promoting a legislative initiative designed to turn all the Jewish population between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River into one solid mass. No more Green Line (which delineated Israel from the West Bank until 1967), and no (virtual) red line of apartheid. According to this joint initiative by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (HaBayit HaYehudi) and Tourism Minister Yariv Levin (Likud), all Israeli legislation would apply to the West Bank, too. Needless to say, they don’t mean that it would apply to the Palestinian majority living there, but to settlers.
From the explanations furnished by Levin, one of Netanyahu’s closest allies, it appears that the proposed bill leaves the Palestinians with only three options: living forever under foreign occupation, emigration or expulsion. Levin said with no trace of ambiguity,
“The settlement of Judea and Samaria is a fait accompli. … The measure we are leading will put an end to the blatant discrimination and the disregard by the laws of the State of Israel against the regions of the homeland and the Israeli citizens living there.”
In other words, one could say that the move that Shaked and Levin are promoting will offer a juridical stamp of approval (not a legal one, as the settlement enterprise is contradictory to international law) to clear discrimination and to Israel’s ignoring the human rights of 2.5 million West Bank Palestinians. Such a policy has a name: Apartheid.
The Shaked-Levin initiative is a direct sequel to the regularization law, which enables the Jewish people to expropriate Palestinian land rights in the area intended for a sovereign state of the Palestinian people. In a Feb. 6 Knesset debate, Science Minister Ofir Akunis (Likud) responded to critics of that bill by saying,
“We are voting on the link between the Jewish people and its land. Fortunately, the public places its trust in us and not in you, which also means that it believes the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel.”
Akunis and his government colleagues keep coming up with new laws designed to silence opponents of apartheid in the territories or, euphemistically speaking, of the solution calling for one state for one people.
The political right does not want the public to know what this “belonging” of the land of Israel to the people of Israel, as Akunis described it, looks like — a “belonging” that is actually conducted through military occupation, banishment and violation of international law. Proponents of the two-state solution, such as Peace Now, B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, impede the political right’s efforts to present Israel as a victim of the Arabs. As far as the Israeli right is concerned, Israel is not an occupier, but a victim, while the Palestinians dare act against it in international fora, such as the international soccer body FIFA. The Israeli government sees nothing wrong in having the soccer clubs of settlements located outside Israel’s sovereign borders included in its national soccer league.
President Reuven Rivlin took the opportunity during his May 7 meeting with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to protest UNESCO’s criticism of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Rivlin repeated HaBayit HaYehudi leader Bennett’s mantra that
“a nation cannot be a conqueror in its own land.”
But unlike Bennett, the president advocates full equality for all Israeli citizens, regardless of religion, race or nationality. Nonetheless, this week the ministerial Legislative Committee voted in favor of the proposed nationality law, which even gained preliminary Knesset approval, granting priority to the Jewish people — the one who “is not a conqueror” in its own land — over the non-Jewish people living in its state.
Zionist Camp Knesset member Erel Margalit said in response to the ministers’ approval of the nationality law, “A government that is afraid to determine the country’s borders is not entitled to determine its nature.” The truth is that the government is not afraid to draw the state borders. But instead of deciding them in a diplomatic agreement, it does so by establishing facts in the occupied territories. And it does so by endless deception. On the one hand, the prime minister implores the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table, and on the other, he advances the nationality law, explaining that he has to “ensure the future of the people of Israel in the Land of Israel.” Pay attention: “Land of Israel,” not “State of Israel.” Sometimes he says that in the foreseeable future it appears that Israel must control all the territories and promises that it will forever live on its sword, and other times he accuses the leadership of the Palestinian people of incitement to violence against Israel.
The next time Trump meets Netanyahu, he must demand that the prime minister present the government and the Knesset with a proposed resolution saying that the government of Israel “commits to promoting the establishment of a state for the Palestinian people based on the 1967 borders. Until then, it will freeze all construction in the Israeli settlements.” At the end of their previous meeting, Trump said that unlike his predecessors at the White House, he believes a deal can be made between Israel and the Palestinians. Such a resolution is essential for a true regional peace deal. And as Bennett said, Americans like those who tell the truth.
Akiva Eldar is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse. He was formerly a senior columnist and editorial writer for Haaretz and also served as the Hebrew daily’s US bureau chief and diplomatic correspondent. His most recent book (with Idith Zertal), Lords of the Land, on the Jewish settlements, was on the best-seller list in Israel and has been translated into English, French, German and Arabic.
Saudi Arabia is planning to cement ties with US President Donald Trump by investing $40bn in US infrastructure development, according to media reports.
The kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund is set to announce the plans which may be unveiled next week to coincide with Trump’s visit to the kingdom, sources told Bloomberg on Thursday.
Trump will be making his first foreign trip since taking office on 19 May, visiting Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem then heading to Europe.
According to CNBC, Saudi Arabia has been expressing an interest in investing in the US for months.
Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told CNBC in March his government believed US infrastructure, in particular, was an attractive investment.
“The infrastructure program of President Trump and his administration is something that we’re interested in because it broadens our portfolio and it opens a new channel for secure, low-risk yet healthy return investments that we seek,” he said.
Saudi Arabia is also eager to reset relations with the new US administration after bilateral relations deteriorated under former US president Barack Obama, who brokered a historic 2015 nuclear deal with the kingdom’s chief regional rival Iran.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia claimed a “historic turning point” in relations after Trump met Riyadh’s deputy crown prince and minister of defense Mohammed bin Salman in the White House in March.
Following Trump’s meeting with Salman, whose father is the king, the White House issued a statement saying the president supports developing a “US-Saudi program undertaken by joint US-Saudi working groups” that would invest in energy, industry, infrastructure and technology.
The program would potentially be worth $200bn in direct and indirect investment in the next four years, the statement added.
Trump has said he intends to push for $1 trillion in US infrastructure investments over the next decade, with $200bn coming from taxpayers and the rest from the private sector.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s top crude exporter, made an aggressive push to diversify its traditionally oil-dependent economy after the drop in global prices since 2014 slashed its revenues.
It has since planned to expand its sovereign wealth fund as part of its attempts to diversify away from oil after prices slumped.
Riyadh this week reported a mix of austerity measures and rising oil prices had helped cut its projected $53bn deficit by two-thirds.
According to the Al Mayadeen satellite television channel, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) has sent a delegation to Turkey to discuss the possible Turkish intervention to the Syrian province of Idlib.
Furthermore, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has strengthened its forces in many areas in the western and northern countryside of Idlib and doubled the number of checkpoints on the road between Idlib and Salkeen, as well as deployed many heavy weapons. HTS has also built fortifications and planted mines on the road.
According to unconfirmed reports, HTS demanded from Ahrar al-Sham to withdraw completely from the western countryside of Idlib during the next 48 hours. It appears that HTS fears that the Turkish military may use the Ahar al-Sham-controlled area as a foothold for an attack against HTS in the western countryside of Idlib.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), sheikhs in Idlib during the Friday prayers speech warned against the alleged Turkish intervention. They also described Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a “punk”. They also said that the Turkish strategy is an occupation project aimed at reviving the Ottoman Caliphate and that the Syrians should confront this Turkish effort.
Meanwhile, another group of Sheikhs in Turkey and Syria began work on a statement that included a “fatwa” that allows and welcomes the Turkish military operation in Idlib.
It’s worth to remember that HTS issued a statement declaring its intention to fight any Turkish forces entering Syria and any party that cooperates with it.
The Kremlin would have been thrilled with the happy snaps, but these were, in the end, purely that. History is an assemblage of misguided images and false assumptions. The pictures of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 remain rank, but brilliant for what modern gibberish-driven commentary terms “poor optics”. A pact featuring the signatures of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union made one British official claim that that all “isms” had become “wasms” as a result.
Since political commentators became amateur optometrists, the obsessions with how events are viewed has begun to populate columns. From across the political spectrum, there is a terror that the Trump train has done its next dramatic swerve, defying decades of practice towards old foes. Bad optics!
What should have been noted was the predictability of it all. One on level, the Lavrov-Trump meeting in the White House was dull. On another, it was a relief. Hostility between Russia and the United States has over the years proven to be a cottage industry for academics, specialists and theorists, in time ballooning into an entire industrial complex.
If swords can be made into ploughshares, well and good. Not so, for the optically deranged and suspicious. For a stricken Senator Dick Durbin from the Democrats,
“President Trump in these pictures is shaking hands with Russians, and the Kremlin is gleefully tweeting these pictures around the world.”
It was certainly a chance for Lavrov to have a bit of fun, which he duly did to reporters knowing that he would be in the company of a Russian photographer, with an accommodating US President. Given the timing of the visit – a day after the sacking of FBI Director James Comey – Lavrov was thespian-perfect, almost hamming his role.
“Was he fired? You’re kidding! You’re kidding!”
To keep him company was the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, who has done what few Russian ambassadors have before him: cultivate the Washington social scene, build bridges, and, it might be said, some illusions. There are those who still remember the May 2010 black-tie benefit for the Washington National Opera, whose steep bill was covered by opera benefactor Susan Lehrman.[1]
Naturally, Kislyak’s presence also raised eyebrows amongst the beady-eyed critics. Careers, notably that of Michael T. Flynn, had been ruined after alleged improper associations. An unnamed White House official on CNN’s informer list called it “ridiculous” that “an ambassador can’t meet with the President as part of a visit from a foreign minister. It’s standard practice.”
Lavrov, beaming like a pig in mud, duly had a poke at the idea that Russia had, miraculously, seized control of the White House in a manner befitting the finest conspiracy tales.
“I believe that politicians are damaging the political system of the US, trying to pretend that someone is controlling America from the outside.”
Good of him to care, though the political system of the Republic was already well and truly withered before the Kremlin became a convenient alibi, explaining why Mr Trump sprung forth like a nasty Jack in the unnoticed, neglected Box.
The Trump administration should have simply let matters be, but decided to retaliate at the bad mood photos of the meeting generated. The photographer, it transpired, was not only Lavrov’s official photographer, but an employee of the Russian state-run news agency, Tass.
This is proving to be standard form in the Trump administration, largely because theatre, rather than reality, is what is assiduously cultivated. To the outraged go the spoils.
“We had an official photographer in the room, as did they,” claimed spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday.
CNN noted the words of an irate White House official, who naturally remained enchantingly anonymous:
“They tricked us.” More, it would seem, Kabuki here, the necessary performance in yet another installment of the chaotic, near illegal mini-series, Trumpistan. “That’s the trouble with the Russians – they lie.”[2]
From another perspective, the Russians may well have simply been living up to expectations. Adding to the drama was speculation that the photographer’s presence, not to mention conduct, might well have constituted a security breach.
“Deadly serious Q,” posed former vice-president Joe Biden’s national security advisor Colin Kahl, “Was it a good idea to let a Russian gov photographer & all their equipment into the Oval office?”[3] Former CIA deputy director David S. Cohen did not think so.
Tongues wagged aggressively: those sneaky Russians might well have secreted a listening device into the White House. After all, a listening device was unveiled in a State Department conference room during the Clinton presidency.
And so it goes, the seeds of speculation sown, the trees of doubt grown, and the wonder about what, exactly, is taking place in the White House in its flirt and tug with the Kremlin. In all likelihood, this is the usual much ado about nothing, though that explanation will not satisfy the nostalgic bridges from the Cold War.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected].
Speaking a few months after the disaster at Fukushima, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami said, “Nuclear power plants, which were supposed to be efficient, offer us a vision of hell.” He spoke about how the nuclear power industry insisted that this was an efficient, clean, and safe source of energy—even though it isn’t. And he connected nuclear power to nuclear weapons, arguing that the experience of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have motivated the development of non-nuclear, renewable sources of energy after World War Two.
Murakami was right to link nuclear power and nuclear weapons. They are connected through their effects, through their creation, and through their proliferation.
Both are characterised by their inherent risks and capacity to unleash uniquely horrifying forms of devastation upon human bodies, the environment, and our socioeconomic infrastructure.
The immediate effects of even a single nuclear weapon detonation are horrifying and overwhelming. One detonation will cause tens of thousands of casualties and inflict immediate and irreversible damage to infrastructure, industry, livelihoods, and human lives. The effects will persist over time, devastating human health, the environment, and our economies for years to come. These impacts will wreak havoc on food production, natural disasters, and displace entire populations.
Meanwhile, nuclear power is the most expensive and dangerous way to boil water to turn a turbine. Nuclear power contains the inherent potential for catastrophe. There is no such thing as a safe nuclear reactor. All aspects of the nuclear fuel chain, from mining uranium ore to storing radioactive waste, are devastating for the earth and all species living upon it. Radiation is long lasting and has inter-generational effects.
Furthermore, the spread of nuclear energy around the world since 1953 has enabled the development of nuclear weapons in several countries, as well as to the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology that are becoming increasingly susceptible to terrorist attack or accidents. The continued existence of nuclear fuel chain facilities, technology, and material makes it more difficult to reach a world free of nuclear weapons. Eliminating all nuclear materials and technology, whatever its designated purpose, is the only way to ensure that it is does not result in catastrophe, by accident or design.
Within the NPT context, nuclear energy is upheld by most states as an “inalienable right”. This means that most states laud its perceived benefits and promote its expansion, regardless of the risks to humanity, the environment, and proliferation. A few states parties recognise these inherent risks and have chosen not to pursue or to phase out nuclear power as part of their energy mixes. The more states parties that follow this path, the better for us all.
Many of the states supporting nuclear power are the same that support nuclear weapons. In both cases this is because they benefit from these technologies—in terms of power or economy. But whereas most developing states demand nuclear disarmament, some simultaneously seek to develop nuclear energy for various applications. But nuclear energy is not a solution to development or to the climate crisis. It continues being promoted as such—this has everything to do with capitalism and nothing to do with protecting the planet or its people.
For the nuclear energy industry, the primary motive for operation is profit. History shows us that increasing profit is often best achieved in ways that are not consistent with designing or operating the relevant equipment for the lowest risk to humanity or the planet. Scientists and activists alike have noted that nuclear power, which produces energy “in large, expensive, centralized facilities” is not useful “for solving the energy needs of the vast majority of [the world’s] population, much less so in a way that offers any net environmental gains.” Profit is less likely to be achieved by honestly exploring alternative sources of energy that might necessitate initial investments, or that might not be eligible for the same government (i.e. taxpayer-funded) subsidies as nuclear is in many countries.
“Nuclear weapons still exist today in thousands, a disturbing and sinister reality which the founders of the NPT would not have possibly anticipated, that 49 years after concluding the Treaty, the world continues to be threatened from the most destructive weapons ever created,” said Egypt during Monday’s discussion on non-proliferation.
Part of the reason these weapons still exist is that nothing has yet been done to stop the production or possession of fissile materials or nuclear technologies.
Nuclear—whether for energy or weapons—is about destruction but its proponents sell it as security, as safety, and even as life itself. Yet just now, on 9 May 2017, there was an accident at the Hanford nuclear site in the United States. An evacuation was ordered after a tunnel at the plutonium finishing plant collapsed. This is the site where the plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was made. It is currently the largest radioactive waste dump in the United States. The tunnel affected by the collapse was reportedly full of highly contaminated materials, including radioactive trains that transport fuel rods.
The bottom line for safety, security, environmental sustainability, and human well-being is that the production, spread, and use of these toxic technologies and materials, whether for weapons or energy, must end.
On Sunday French voters went to the polls and chose Emmanuel Macron rather than Marine Le Pen to be France’s next president. Macron, a former investment banker and economics minister in the hugely unpopular government of President Francois Hollande, was endorsed by Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and the rest of the global elite who favor the unfettered reign of global capital. As economics minister, he succeeded in passing anti-labor legislation that caused rioting in French streets. He supports the privatization of social services like health care and education, NATO hostilities on Russia’s border, and President Donald Trump’s direct missile strikes on the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
Marine Le Pen called for France’s departure from both NATO and the European Union, restoration of the French franc as its currency, and “intelligent protectionism” to defend the living standards of French farmers and workers. She favors detente with Russia, she condemned Trump’s missile strikes on Syria, and she has pushed for restricting immigration and deporting citizens of other nations who are on France’s terrorist watch list. She was endorsed by prominent British Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage and praised by Donald Trump.
Both Macron and Le Pen called for prison capacity expansion, but Macron was reported to have called for fewer new cells than Le Pen.
American author and Counterpunch writer Diana Johnstone says that elites whipped up mass hysteria that Le Pen is a fascist to put the neoliberal globalist Macron in power. I spoke to Diana in Paris where she has lived most of her adult life.
* * *
Ann Garrison: There’s so much furious determination to identify Marine Le Pen as a fascist that it’s difficult to have a rational conversation about it.
Diana Johnstone: Tell me about it. I’ve stopped trying to talk about it to Americans because they’re just not interested, and the myth is so delightful that no one wants to give it up. Everybody likes to believe they’re fighting fascism.
AG: Well, I can’t even tell what they mean by that. The word’s being used very vaguely and self-righteously.
DJ: That means Hitler coming back to life and putting minorities in Auschwitz and then the gas chambers.
AG: So they mean extremely racist and genocidal.
DJ: Well, that’s the implication, but there’s no sign that she’s a racist and there’s no threat of institutionalized racism here. She is extremely hostile to Islamic fanaticism but Islamic fanaticism is not a race.
AG: To be a real fascist, wouldn’t she have to want to shut down the media and suspend the French constitution?
DJ: Well, you can list everything that characterizes fascism and nothing on the list applies. That’s one of them, but there’s nothing fascist about her. This is just propaganda that is being spread not only by the French establishment but also by the whole Western, NATO establishment.
The real issue here is that there is a growing criticism of the European Union (EU) in France, and the whole Western establishment is panicked about this. Ever since the Brexit, they’ve been afraid that this pro-national sovereignty tendency in France, which manifests across the whole political spectrum, could gain momentum and that France might leave the EU and NATO. And of course the whole globalizing elite absolutely don’t want this to happen, so they went all out to invent their own special candidate, who is supported by everybody in the elite. Merkel, Obama, all of the billionaires, all of the banks, and all of the media, which of course is owned by the billionaires. They went all out to create panic that Marine Le Pen might win. This was just theatre calculated to elect a person who is responsible for the most unpopular economic policies of the Hollande government.
Hollande was so unpopular that he couldn’t run for a second term. His approval rating in polls was down to single digits. So the whole elite and its press invented Macron to take his place. The press all started saying that Macron was going to be the next president as soon as he left the government and said he was going to create his new political movement.
All of this is to reinforce the policies that were so unpopular in the outgoing Hollande government, but behind a new young face. This is a total charade, but Macron is even worse because when he was economics minister, he managed to get some very anti-labor legislation passed, then made it clear that he was leaving that government because he hadn’t been able to push it far enough. So he’s virtually promised to make things worse for working people, but nobody paid any attention to that because so many people were screaming, “Fascism! Fascism!” It was really grotesque.
AG: Simply posting any questions about who Marine Le Pen is has been enough to trigger tirades on social media pages.
DJ: I don’t know why these people are so enraged. Where do they get their information? How are they so sure of what they’re saying? What are their sources? What are they talking about?
AG: What would Marine Le Pen have to do to qualify as a fascist, from your point of view?
DJ: Well, she’d have to be in favor of a single party. She’d have to be resorting to violence and various other things, but the point is that her economic policies are actually very left wing. They are very close to those of the left leader, Jean Luc Mélenchon.
AG: Well, the propaganda was so effective that I even saw a news video of Greenpeace hanging an anti-Le Pen banner off the Eiffel Tower that read “#Resist” and “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.”
DJ: Yes, I know. Have you ever heard of mass hysteria?
AG: Yes.
DJ: Well, this is mass hysteria. All these people in the power elite will praise one another. It’s a great power club. Now they’re saying that Macron’s election saved us from fascism, and people are buying it, both inside and outside France.
AG: I’ve seen the press comparing him to JFK, and you said that French people will see his face on magazines whenever they go to the hairdresser or the doctor.
DJ: Yes, he’s been made by the press. As soon as he left the government and said that he was going to form this new movement, “En Marche,” all the magazines put his picture on the cover. The American “Foreign Policy” magazine ran an effulgent article right at the start about what a genius new leader he was and how certain he was to be the next French president.
AG: Someone at a gathering of French farmers hit Macron in the head with an egg.
DJ: Yes, it’s not hard to understand why and that may happen more. Of course, Marine Le Pen appealed to the farmers and workers who are really suffering in the European Common Market, but the human rights people decided some time ago that workers, farmers, and poor people who are complaining must be complaining because they’re racists. They don’t say they’re racists, they don’t act like racists, but they must be racists. That’s the human rights ideology, so the working class which used to be the favorite of the left is now its hobgoblin, and they’re saying, “Look at all these racist workers and farmers supporting Marine Le Pen.” In fact workers and farmers supported Le Pen because they’re losing jobs, they’re losing security, and their social services are going down the drain. Many of them supported Le Pen because she is going against the policies of the European Union and globalization.
AG: Just to make it quite clear what we’re talking about here, Macron and the rest of the globalist elite are advancing an order in which global capital can freely chase the cheapest labor all over the world, including industrial farm labor, then come back with products with no tariffs imposed upon them, and even sue any government that becomes inconvenient for them.
DJ: That’s about it. What Le Pen and others have said is that they want some “intelligent protectionism” and that goes against the whole neoliberal program, which is to make the whole world safe for investment capital.
Certain countries will just be wiped out by this. France has a tradition of pretty good social services. In fact they’ve been excellent, though they’re now getting worse because of the current government. The French are very attached to their social services, but if you privatize them all and then international financial capital says, “Hmm, we can make more profit in something other than transportation, health care or other services,” then they’ll just go and invest somewhere else. So, if you just have unfettered capital like that, you can’t necessarily preserve the existence of your country. Resisting globalization is just the most basic self preservation impulse; people want to preserve their countries as places where you can live decently. That is demonized as being nationalism and nationalism is demonized as fascism and racism.
AG: When I spun off my little description of globalization, I should have included the privatization of everything.
DJ: Yes, that’s right. And Europe is already the frontline of globalization. It’s been opened up as a playground for financial capital, and Macron was made by financiers. The financial elite found him to be a talent; they brought him into the Rothschild Bank and in no time, he’d made a few million dollars. Once someone finds out how fast they can make money like that, it’s like they’re being initiated into the club and they’re going to defend its interests in every possible way.
Diana Johnstone is the author of “The Politics of Euromissiles: Europe’s Role in America’s World,” “Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions, and “Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton.” Her essay “The Main Issue in the French Presidential Election: National Sovereignty and the Future of France,” appears on the Counterpunch and Global Research websites.
“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” — Honoré de Balzac
The SASSA scandal currently unfolding is probably the most dramatic expression of how far the African National Congress (ANC) has traveled since its days of opposition to apartheid. [SASSA stands for South Africa Social Security Agency, which is the agency that pays social grants to about 17 million beneficiaries.] Under apartheid, ANC activists were associated with laying down their lives in defending and advancing the interests of the mass of the people – in particular the black working class. Today, the cadre of the ANC is associated with stealing from the mass of people they used to die for. It is now commonly accepted, including in the ANC itself, that the corruption and theft of public resources is not just an isolated problem in the ANC. The general South African public and the ANC itself now accept that the problem is deep and systemic.
In every newspaper, social media, and television platforms and in everyday conversation the corruption in the ANC is now standard diet, and therefore the SASSA scandal would seem to be just one other scandal among many. But the SASSA scandal, on the contrary, is important in one respect: it allows us the opportunity to develop an understanding of ANC corruption as being made up of different kinds. As a result of the political struggles in the ANC around which the SASSA debacle is unfolding, this scandal gives us an opportunity to look into a part of the ANC’s corruption that the mainstream and middle class press shies away from – the legalized corruption that the ANC has presided over for over 20 years.
Corrupt Alliance
The corruption of the President Jacob Zumaand Gupta family alliance (aka ‘Zuptas’) is clear for all to see – and it is clear to all but its beneficiaries, that it must be opposed and struggled against. What is equally clear is that Pravin Gordhanand the finance ministers that came before him have presided over the growing impoverishment of the mass of black working class South Africans. Under their watch, wealth has become more concentrated in South Africa and has remained deeply racialized. It is equally clear that the development of the black middle class has not moved beyond flashy clothes and flashy cars – under their watch this class remains as precarious as ever. It is also undeniable that there is really no serious black big bourgeoisie to speak off – except a couple of pin-up boys who are exceptions that prove the rule.
In the public domain – and in particular in the media – the focus has been on the most visible part of the problem: the Zuptas. Indeed, Pravin Godharn and his bloc in the ANC have been held up as models of good governance and clean government who will save South Africa from its ‘descent’ into a banana republic. No connection or relationship is established between the corruption of Zuma and his supporters in the ANC, and Gordhan and his “clean governance.”
In the course of the SASSA crisis it began to emerge that there may be deep interconnections between the corruption of the Zuma group and monopoly capital in the form of Alan Gray (owners of Net1 and Cash Paymaster). Note also that another Mr. Clean, ex-Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene, booted out by Zuma on account of his commitment to “good governance,” has also ended up at Alan Gray. Ex-Minister Nene is no flash in the pan when it comes to the revolving door between government finance leaders and finance capital. We know that ex-Finance Minister Trevor Manuel is now one of the big chiefs at Old Mutual, that other giant of South Africa’s monopoly club. Soon after leaving the Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni joined Goldman Sachs, the U.S. investment banking house notorious for its scandalous if legal behaviour all over the world. It also turned out that the bankers of SASSA are none other than the ‘white monopoly capitalist’ most hated by Zuma and his side-kick, College ‘Oros’ Maine – the Ruperts.
How did it come to pass that the most corrupt section of the ANC is connected in all these ways to “white monopoly capital”? Further, how do the “clean” politicians of the ANC also end up in the same bed of monopoly capital? Is there, indeed, a more than passing connection between corruption in the ANC and “white monopoly capital”? Is there a connection between the break up of the ANC currently underway and white monopoly capital?
In light of the SASSA crisis it is important to move beyond the smokescreens and hype put up by South Africa’s mainstream media and its analysts, and explore the deep connections between corruption and neoliberal governance (popularly known as ‘good governance’) that is promoted by Pravin Gordhan and his supporters.
Distribution of Wealth
The wealth of any society is distributed among its various social classes through a range of mechanisms. In capitalist society, the means and processes of the distribution of society’s wealth range from the division of wealth between wages and profits; the markets in which goods are bought and sold serve to distribute wealth between the classes; for example, in the agricultural commodities market the wealth is extracted away from the small farmers and other producers toward financiers who control the world’s global markets in agricultural commodities. The system of taxation in a country also serves to distribute wealth between the classes; and the way the government (in any country a key economic actor) produces, buys and supplies goods and services to the mass of the population also serves to distribute wealth between the classes. The entire capitalist economy is organized around the making of profit for the capitalist, the owner of factories, shops, mines and farms: the means of producing goods and services. The entire system, therefore, is essentially about the way the wealth that is produced is distributed among the capitalists, the middle class, and the working class or poor people in a country.
Theft vs. corruption
In any society there are people who steal something from others. Corruption, however, is not just theft (though in many cases it includes theft), but involves an illegal, hidden and unethical use of access to resources and power to transfer wealth and power to the benefit of oneself or for the benefit of one’s associates. Corruption can be done for a range of reasons, including for personal enrichment, enrichment of friends or relatives, and/or facilitating access to resources and power by yourself, friends and relatives. In the history of capitalism and in the formation of the capitalist class, corruption (and sometimes even more violent crimes) constitutes the most important way of creating wealth for a new capitalist class. In addition, as a result of the constant threat to the wealth of the capitalist resulting from competition and the instability of capitalism, capitalists must periodically engage in corruption – this illegal, hidden and unethical transfer of wealth and power – to maintain their wealth.
Legalization of corruption
In South Africa, for example, the wealth of all the rich white capitalists is founded on the theft of the land, the minerals beneath the land and other resources of the country. Also, it was founded on the exclusion from power of all social classes and groups from the black majority. During the process of the formation of the South African state in the early 1900s, the black middle class of the time – led by the ANC – attempted to get themselves included in the new power arrangements of the Union of South Africa, but this was rejected by the white capitalists and their colonial government in Britain.
An important step in the development of any capitalist class is reached when the wealth this class acquired by theft, corrupt and illegal means is transformed into legal wealth; when they write and rewrite laws to legalize their wealth. For example, the land that was stolen by white settler capitalists over many years in South Africa was legalized with the Land Act of 1913. The initial legalization of corrupt wealth requires that the capitalist class creates a range of laws that maintain this ill-gotten wealth. These laws include property laws and by-laws (in cities and municipalities), laws around setting up businesses, the organization of state policies and taxes that favour the reproduction and maintenance of that wealth, and so on. Meetings between individuals and corporations to organize this corruption are sometimes legalized – and this is referred to as “lobby-groups” and so on. In many countries, such as France, “lobbyists” get paid a lot of money and spend a lot of money (legalized bribery) to persuade those in power to act in the interests of certain power groups.
Power and corruption
Once a capitalist class or section of a capitalist class has legalized its corruption, it has an interest in ensuring that the corruption of competitors is not legalized. By keeping them illegal, the ruling capitalist group can obstruct, weaken, or punish at will its competitors. At times, it may “turn a blind eye” to this corruption as long as it does not threaten its rule. It can also periodically use this dark side of capitalism to strengthen its position without running a risk of becoming illegal – in other words the established capitalists can “outsource” corruption.
Because of their power these groups have created their own system of justice, in which they all agree to pay “traffic fines” for this corruption and theft. In South Africa recently, a number of banks agreed to pay “fines” for manipulating the rand. This parallel system of justice, which includes legal institutions like the Competition Commission, whitewashes corruption and allows powerful groups in society to evade the normal process of criminal justice. Along this line, think also of the bread cartel, which colluded to rob the poor of their already meagre wages and grants.
Distribution of Wealth and Corruption
Corrupt groups in society – such as the ANC cadre or groups of new capitalists like the Afrikaner capitalists after 1948 – draw the wealth they transfer to themselves from different parts of society. There are four main sources of wealth, or circuits of wealth, from which the corrupt groups can steal. The first is from the capitalist class itself. There are many cases of this corruption in the financial markets, and daily we hear of reports of “insider trading,” which is corruption between and among financial market traders to steal from the capitalist class itself. The second is from the state. The third is to steal directly from the middle class, and fourth, they can steal directly from the working class. Corrupt groups focus on the lines along which wealth is distributed in society, where they “intercept” this wealth behind the scenes and direct it to themselves and friends. The wealth can be “intercepted” within the circuits of wealth of particular classes, as well as when wealth moves between the different circuits. Corrupt groups do not in general create wealth, they redirect it and consume it once it is produced.
The line of distribution on which corrupt groups focus depends on the power this group enjoys in society. For example, groups like investment banks and currency trading groups are able to redirect wealth that is circulating in the financial sector by corrupt means. As I have argued, they have created their own systems of justice to ensure that their corruption is legalized. In order for corrupt groups to intercept wealth from the capitalist classes and the middle classes, they need control of important institutions like banks and large corporations.
Weaker groups of emerging capitalists are forced to focus their corruption on less powerful groups in society – such as the working class. In order for them to intercept resources within the working class, and to intercept resources that move from the state to the working class, they need access to political office. Political office allows these groups to intercept transfers from the state to other classes as well, but their lack of power forces them to focus on transfers from the state to the working class.
The 1994 Transition Blocks Black Capitalists
A number of key agreements made during the negotiations before 1994 have come to block the formation of a new class of capitalists. Their elements were:
a. Constitutionalism and constitutional continuity
The constitutional and political settlement at the dawn of democracy constituted the first line of defence against the dangers that democracy posed to the wealthy groups in society – in particular to white monopoly capitalist interests. While not being the only elements of the settlements that served to block the redistribution of wealth, the ones we would like to highlight are:
the transformation of South Africa into a constitutional state.
the adoption of the concept or doctrine of ‘legal continuity’, which meant that all laws and agreements that were passed or entered into during colonialism and apartheid remained valid and could only be changed through the legal process.
the new dispensation made it unconstitutional to punish anyone for any offence committed in the past if no law said it was an offence at the time.
the capitalist corporations continued to be “juristic persons,” and this meant that all key rights conferred by the new constitution to protect people against abuses of apartheid (such as expropriation of property for very low compensation) also protected capitalist organizations.
The doctrines of constitutionalism, constitutional continuity and illegalization of retrospectivity were not enough to defend monopoly capital. Monopoly capital did not trust the new black elite as it was not always clear if the black political elite now in government would resist the pressure of their constituency to redistribute wealth. The capitalist class, through a range of means, intervened to create other lines of defence against the pressure for redistribution of wealth.
b. The capture of the ANC
To protect the interests of monopoly capital, determined efforts were made to capture the ANC as an organization, and these efforts were already successful by 1992. In that year, the Mail & Guardian organized a retreat at Mont Fleurs outside Cape Town, where the consensus about a free market capitalist road began to emerge. Some of the people present were to be key in the adoption of free market economics or neoliberalism in post-apartheid South Africa. They included Trevor Manuel, Tito Mboweni, Rob Davies, Saki Macozoma, Jayendra Naidoo, and some of the biggest capitalists, Christo Wiese, Derek Keys and so on. It was these series of engagements that ended in the capture of the ANC by monopoly capital, and resulted in the adoption of “Growth, Employment and Redistribution” (GEAR) policy by the ANC in 1996.
c. Flags of convenience
Another line of defence put up by (white) monopoly capital was to ensure that key capitalist organizations are protected against the South African state – which was black and could not be trusted – by foreign governments. Following the ascent of Trevor Manuel to the Treasury, five of South Africa’s large corporations were granted permission to become “foreign companies” by shifting their “home” addresses to London and New York. This move allowed these companies to move their wealth overseas. By 2001 the companies were exporting more than R7-billion in profits made in SA overseas. The ‘flags of convenience’ of these companies meant that they were now protected against South African people by their new-found “parents” – the UK and U.S. governments. From being South African companies, they now became foreign investors in South Africa! While the big five companies expressed this process in the most visible manner, the strategy of ‘flying flags of convenience’, even without moving the primary listing to foreign countries, has continued. Today almost half of the biggest companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange are controlled by foreign shareholders. Almost 75% of the companies have 30% or more of their stocks owned by foreign shareholders. This level of ownership is enough to control a company, and with the resources at the disposal of these foreign groups they are able to exert a major influence on the South African economy and on the South African state.
d. Privatization of state enterprises, or starving SOEs of investment
Wall number four was also put up, and this mainly involved pressure on the new South African state to privatize the key assets of the state. If privatization was not possible, the state allowed these assets to fall into neglect so as to allow the “private sector,” meaning the big capitalist, to create “new industries” to substitute the state industries. Private health is one such example – the decline of state health has led to the consolidation of the rise of private health.
The debacle around SASSA is another example of how the decline in the capacities of the state, a direct product of the neoliberal policies pursued by successive ANC administrations with the Finance Ministry at the vanguard, has led to the current situation in which a state organ cannot even process payments, notwithstanding the fact that the South African Revenue Services run an equally large, modern and sophisticated electronic system of filing and payments. Add to this that the entire Department of Home Affairs platform is now digitized and uses modern biometrics, and we can see how the SASSA crisis is one manufactured by vested interests.
Fortress Capitalism
These four lines of defence created a fortress around capitalist organizations and the privileged white middle class, and ensured that their wealth would be preserved. This defence of capitalist and white privilege and power ensured that any new group of black capitalists that wanted to become rich could only be rich on one condition: by the mercy of white monopoly capital. This is how many ANC cadres such as Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Patrice Motsepe became rich. This condition, however, was a recipe for conflict. Not only would the black working class grow restive over time, but the black middle class and the aspiring black bourgeoisie would have to find ways around these walls of defence. This battle was what set in motion the battle for the ANC.
This battle began to take shape around what was called “the class project of 1996” (a code for the capture of the ANC by monopoly capital and neoliberalism); the battle grew into the Polokwane project that brought together Julius Malema and the ANC Youth League, Zwelinzima Vavi and COSATU, the black petty bourgeoisie at the local level (mainly in the bureaucracy of the local state), and sections of the aspiring black bourgeoisie such as Tokyo Sexwale and Ramaphosa. At this point in the battle, people like Nene and Gordhan were part of this broad church.
Corruption and the battle for the ANC
The policies implemented by the government of Thabo Mbeki and Trevor Manuel blocked the emergence of a class of big black capitalists that could challenge white monopoly capital. The rich few blacks they produced were too dependent on white monopoly capital. Their policies also began to have a negative effect on the working class and the small and fragile black middle class. As unemployment rose and the black middle class struggled to survive, the tide turned against Thabo Mbeki’s leadership in the ANC, and he was overthrown at Polokwane in 2007 and recalled in September 2008. This overthrow of Thabo Mbeki was seen as the end of the “class project of 1996,” and a new regime at the Finance Ministry was thought to be at hand with the accession of Pravin Gordhan to the helm. It was not long before the Polokwane bloc came up against the many lines of defence put up by monopoly capital. It must be remembered immediately on becoming president, Zuma was on his way to London to meet “investors.”
Although this bloc had come to political office around the rhetoric of “radical economic transformation” based on the Freedom Charter – much as the Zuma bloc is now again trying to do – they had no real programme or plan on how to break through the stranglehold of monopoly capital and the defences it had put up over more than 20 years (1990 and before, to 2009).
Without any programme, the new Polokwane bloc could not break through three of the four lines of defence put up by white monopoly capital. The economic situation of the middle classes – their key constituency – had been deteriorating and their indebtedness had been rising in the 15 years or so of the new democracy. As an historical bout of bad luck would have it, they also came into political office against the backdrop of a global economic crisis. This meant that even the crumbs that had been dished out to the Tokyos of this world were drying up. Black participation in the JSE began to decline, monopoly capital and its international counterpart demanded fiscal discipline and austerity and the state as a redistributive mechanism was frowned upon even more by those who held economic power in society.
Thus the Polokwane bloc and the class it represented – the petty bourgeoisie, now dependent on their position in the state – had only one option to survive: through corruption, tenders and doing business with the state that employed them.
Earlier I argued that there are four sources of corrupt enrichment in capitalist society. Recall that I argued that the first line is to divert resources from within the capitalist class. The second was to extract resources from within the state through large state contracts. The third was to extract resources from the middle class, and fourthly, from the working class. Three of these remained blocked, and only one (extracting resources from state transfers to the working class) was now open for this class and the Polokwane bloc.
A new situation had arisen because in the Polokwane struggle monopoly capital and its allies in the ANC lost control of the ANC. The Polokwane bloc had breached one of the four walls of defence set up by capital – they had recaptured the ANC. This immediately opened up the possibilities of extracting resources meant for the poor working class communities, especially via the local state. The only option open to a weakened and defeated black middle class was to extract resources from the line that distributed resources from the state to the working class. At all levels of the state, but particularly at the local state, the new black elite has been extracting wealth for its consumption from resources meant for the working class and the poor. The scale of this corrupt extraction can be seen in the reports of the Auditor General year after year since the transition began. Billions and billions of rand are “lost” every year to “wasteful,” fruitless, and unauthorized expenditure. We can see this extraction from broken RDP houses, unfinished school buildings, pot holes on roads across the country, non-delivery of text books, waterworks that are sabotaged in order for fictitious tenders to be created, and the list goes on without end. The SASSA crisis currently unfolding represents a particularly ugly version of how this group is intercepting resources meant for the working class, but it is only the most visible one because it is now unfolding around a single date, April 1.
The control of the ANC by the Polokwane bloc, however, did not bring with it the power to breach the three other lines of defence set up by monopoly capital. The constitutional and legal defences are still intact, and litigation against the Zuma state has intensified at all levels. Also, massive capital flight and export continues, and various means are implemented to accelerate this. Lately, transfer pricing has become a favoured means to export profits to overseas destinations. The swindling of the middle class, especially the affluent white middle class, remains the preserve of big capital and its banks, which are jealously guarding the banking space for new entrants and find all manner of ways of collapsing upstarts that want to disturb the current division of the market into spheres of influence.
The struggle currently underway (Zuma vs. Gordhan) in the ANC owes its specific origins to a number of key developments since the victory of the Polokwane bloc. The basis of these developments is the fact that the Polokwane bloc had no real programme of how to confront monopoly capital. The rhetoric of the SACP and COSATU, themselves closet believers in neoliberal policies, was clearly not enough to confront the “beast” that is monopoly capital. Confronted with these defences, the bloc folded and fractured in a hundred different directions. Some of the key modalities of this fracture included:
Zuma, who had no programmatic or political interest in the struggle against monopoly capital, went back to his old ways of responding to the intractable nature of the transition: petty corruption. Remember that before his rise to the throne, Zuma was facing hundreds of petty corruption charges. What the new situation opened up was more of the same: resource extraction of the pettiest kind. So followed Nkandla, a large dose of petty theft.
The Treasury under Gordhan was recaptured by monopoly capital, as he was forced to continue dishing out all the neoliberal formulas of his predecessor, Trevor Manuel. The continuation of the Treasury’s orientation toward neoliberal economics of monopoly capital was facilitated by the difficult conditions of the global economic crisis on the one hand (he came into the Treasury just after the crisis), and the lack of any programme (besides rhetoric) on the part of the Polokwane bloc. Without any programme, the man who was going to put an end to the “class project of 96” had no clue on what was to be done – and when you don’t know you just keep going. Zuma’s propensity for petty corruption, his lack of any real ideas (big or small) on any issue and his patent helplessness in running the ship of state – all these facilitated Gordhan’s capture by monopoly capital.
The entry, or rather re-entry, of sections of the Polokwane bloc that had pretensions to being big capitalists also dampened any appetite for a fight with monopoly capital. The likes of Cyril Ramaphosa, deeply indebted to monopoly capital, deeply intertwined with it (Lonmin) had no appetite for this fight and did not believe in radical economic transformation. The attitude of this faction was that it could be rich by being “clean,” and were clearly at odds with the Zuma group of petty thieves.
Those who still believed in the rhetoric of the Freedom Charter, like Julius Malema and Irvin Jim, now came face to face with the fact that no amount of radical rhetoric can shift the entrenched nature of monopoly capital. They also came face to face with the fact that the Zuma section of the bloc and the Ramaphosas of this world had no appetite for the fight, and for the rhetoric as well. They split off from the Tripartite Alliance and the ANC, and went on to continue with their rhetoric and theatrics.
In the course of all these struggles (the run-up to Polokwane and the immediate beyond), COSATU became less and less of a force to be taken seriously by the other factions in the Polokwane bloc. The Marikana massacre bled the key actor in the pro-Zuma blocs in COSATU – in particular the NUM – and with Numsa leaving the sorry state of COSATU is there for all to see.
The South African Communist Party (SACP), as usual, puts its head in the sand, throws around a bit of rhetoric, and hopes that history will lead to socialism in the end. Caught between the petty corruption of Zuma and Gordhan’s shift to the right, the SACP defends Rupert (anything but the Guptas), likes the rhetoric of “radical economic transformation,” and in general swings wildly between the two main protagonists in the struggle of the excluded petty bourgeoisie against white monopoly capital.
These lines of fracture of the Polokwane bloc led to the alignments of factions in the ANC that are now playing out a new, and maybe last phase, of the disintegration of the ANC. In the immediate conjucture of the SASSA crisis, the alignments look like this:
In the corner of monopoly capital stands Gordhan. As the conjuncture of circumstances would have it, the SACP and COSATU stand in this corner. As a result of his anti-Zuma orientation, Julius Malema find themselves (temporary?) allies of Gordhan, and therefore of white monopoly capital. In the other corner stands (?) Zuma, his family, the consuming black petty bourgeoisie at the local level, and of course the Guptas.
Enter the Guptas
The arrival of the Guptas on the scene (initially introduced by the Mbeki bloc), and their linking up with the Zuma bloc, has led to an intensification of hostilities in the struggle for the extraction of resources from the state. Up to then, there was no actor in the Zuma or Polokwane bloc more broadly, who had the appetite and resources to fight white monopoly capital. Also, up to then there was no actor that was involved directly in real production – people like Ramaphosa are stock millionaires, not real production capitalists.
The importance of the Guptas in this battle cannot be understated. The Guptas are providing four key elements that have been lacking in the Zuma bloc. First, as we indicated already, the Guptas are a producing capitalist group and not just a group of consuming individuals. Second, the Guptas have financial resources that can “take on” big capital in South Africa. Third, the Guptas have the organizational skills that come with organization of production, and they have had to “organize” the whole bloc, even to the extent of dishing out cabinet posts!
Fourth, if the Guptas succeed in making inroads into the circuits of wealth that run between the state and large capitals – the state enterprises are key in this circuit – they may well break into the heart of the circuits that run within the capitalist class itself. An important project of the Guptas will be that of having its own banking arm. This aspect of the project will also give it access to extracting wealth from the affluent middle classes, or in the beginning from the black middle classes. With the ability to issue loans to the middle class on a significant scale, and backed up by access to large state contracts – it will most certainly be game on!
In the short term, the most important strategic goal is to capture the Treasury, currently the most important bastion of monopoly capital within the state. A common error in the analysis of what is clearly an important strategic project for the Guptas – the capture of the Treasury – is that the Guptas only want to “loot.” Now, the idea of looting is always associated with corruption, in particular with consumption, and not production. This is a fundamental error of theory and analysis.
The Eskom contract around the Tegeta coal mining contracts is a classic example of the processes of the legalization of corruption. It therefore provides an interesting example of how monopoly capital and its “fourth estate,” the media, would cry wolf while they themselves engage in similar kinds of practices. The main purported “sin” of the Guptas is that they got “paid an advance” on coal that they did not have, and in turn used this advance to purchase the mine and later deliver the coal. Now, this kind of financial engineering is standard practice with the likes of Goldman Sachs (see Goldmans Greek debt swindle), derivatives of all kinds (remember that what triggered the global economic crisis was the housing loan derivatives), and in many cases straightforward theft of state resources.
If we leave the world of financial engineering (that is the legalized theft of social wealth) the Eskom deal is classic in another and more important sense. The formation of large capitals in South Africa was underwritten by massive state subsidies over several decades. And guess who was key in the provision of these subsidies? Eskom! For decades, while the black working class had no access to electricity, Eskom ran the lowest electricity price regime in the world for big capitals. A combination of cheap electricity (Eskom), cheap steel (ISCOR) with cheap labour was the recipe that created today’s white monopoly industries. The Tegeta deal is borrowing from an old book.
South African monopoly capital is aware of the threat posed by a victory of the Guptas: the Guptas may just succeed in legalizing their corruption alongside that of white monopoly capital. Sensing this, big capital and its allies are putting up a fierce resistance, and this threatens to break up the ANC completely. The battle for the Treasury expresses this issue most acutely, but the battle is equally acute across all the big state enterprises.
Public Opinion
Of importance in this struggle will be the battle for the hearts and minds of the population. Who will be able to win the battle for public opinion? At this point in the battle the Guptas and Zuma (a minor player in this historical drama) have the odds stacked against them. Almost the entire media sings from the same hymnbook: the Guptas are corrupt, they are a danger to the “nation,” (here xenophobia even comes into it) and they should be denied citizenship, etc, etc. On the other hand, it is easy to mistake the noise of the media for real support for the Gordhan corner.
The Guptas may therefore be under siege, but they have a crucial trump card, so to speak. Although the Polokwane project has broken up, the systemic social, political and economic problems that brought it into being do not only still exist – they continue to deepen. The economics of austerity implemented by Gordhan continue to pulverize the black middle class and the black working class. The levels of indebtedness of South African consumers has been steadily rising, and the only remaining question is when the tipping point will be reached: when are we going to see large-scale and politically explosive defaults among the middle classes?
On the other hand, the ANC has steadily lost credibility in the working class, as shown by the local government elections of 2016. As a result of this, the working class has become a passive force, as shown by its stayaway from the August local government elections. A combination of pressures on the black middle class still dependent on the state and its tenders, and a passive working class mean that Zuma and his faction may have lost the battle for the media, but they remain firmly in charge of the ANC. Sensing this, Zuma and his faction have “conjured up the spirits of the past to fight their current battles”: they have resurrected the rhetoric of “radical economic transformation” that initially launched the struggle against the “class project of 1996.”
These layers of the ANC apparatus see Gordhan’s “clean government” crusade as directed against them. They see a repeat of the “class project of 1996,” and they are learning in the process not to depend on their traditional allies – the SACP and COSATU. Through its various factions in the ANC – in particular the Premier League – this group is digging in for a bitter fight for the ANC. This fight will break the ANC to pieces, but for this class there is no other option.
The consequence of this alignment of forces is that the Gordhan group has to try and launch assaults from outside the ANC. Thus the need for “stalwarts” and all kinds of “eminent persons” that appeal to the Zuma bloc to desist from the road of corruption. Their capacity to contest within the structures of the ANC has been considerably weakened by their association with monopoly capital and its vanguard in the person of Gordhan.
Free and Egalitarian South Africa?
At the heart of the Zupta versus Pravin battle is a battle between two kinds of corruption. On the one side is a corruption that has not yet been able to legalize itself, a corruption of excluded sections of the black middle class and those who aspire to be rich capitalists. At this point this corrupt faction steals directly from the poor, but it seeks to legalize itself and “play” in the greener pastures of corruption in the circuits of wealth that move within the capitalist class and the state itself. On the other side stand the front troops of legalized corruption – the corruption of white monopoly capital. Behind their appeal to the “rule of law,” to “clean government,” to “anti-corruption” stand the defence of privilege that has not only excluded aspiring black capital, but has produced a deep, structural and enduring poverty of millions of working class South Africans.
The prospects of a victory of monopoly capital, a Cyril Ramaphosa victory in the ANC, and therefore a recapture of the ANC is currently looking extremely slim. On the other hand, the Zupta bloc is facing formidable odds as it tries to breach the walls put up by monopoly capital. What South Africa may indeed be facing is what Marx called a “peace of the graveyard,” a “common ruin of the contending classes.” With monopoly capital unable to flush the Zuptas out of the state, and the Zuptas not able to impose a deal that legalizes them as co-thieves of social wealth, we may see a ruin of all classes.
In this whole battle for Treasury and the state between Zuma and Gordhan, the real elephant in the room is this: how did it come to pass that almost 40 million South Africans are dependent on meagre grants handed out by the state? This is the real inheritance of Mbeki, Manuel, Nene and Gordhan and the big capitalist groups they represent.
Both the monopoly capitalists and the Zuptas have corrupted something very precious in South Africa’s history – they have corrupted a proud and militant tradition of struggle for social justice; they have corrupted South Africa’s dream of a free and egalitarian nation.
With a ruin of all classes increasingly looking likely, the only way out is for the working class to come out of its period of apathy – but this will constitute a whole new historical period.
Oupa Lehulere is an activist in the social movements and is currently based at Khanya College, a social justice and movement building institution based in Johannesburg, South Africa. This article first published by Pambazuka News.
Financial war and cyberwar can be more destructive than standing armies, able to cause enormous harm to many millions worldwide, severely damaging and halting government, commercial, and personal online activities.
A statement by US Rep. Ted Lieu (D. CA), House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees member, said the following:
“The massive malware attack that hit multiple countries has caused chaos and has shut down vital institutions such as hospitals. It is deeply disturbing the National Security Agency likely wrote the original malware.”
“I have been working on legislation with industry stakeholders and partners in the Senate to address this problem.”
“Today’s worldwide ransomware attack shows what can happen when the NSA or CIA write malware instead of disclosing the vulnerability to the software manufacturer.”
“(I)t is clear to me that many of our public and private institutions are woefully unprepared for cyberattacks. We live in a brave new world. The time is now for Congress to seriously address cybersecurity issues.”
Security experts called Friday’s malware attack a digital perfect storm. Cyber-security firm Cyberreason believes the incident “is the largest (global attack) in the effect it is having, affecting nearly 100 countries worldwide.”
According to security firm Flashpoint’s Chris Camacho,
“(w)hen people ask what keeps you up at night, it’s this.”
Wikipedia calls ransomware used in Friday’s attack
“computer malware that installs covertly on a victim’s device (computers, smartphones, wearable devices), and that either mounts the cryptoviral extortion attack from crytovirology that holds the victim’s data hostage, or mounts a cryptovirology leakware attack that threatens to publish the victim’s data, until a ransom is paid.”
A message is displayed demanding payment to reverse what’s been locked.
“More advanced malware encrypts the victim’s files, making them inaccessible.”
Computer Master File Tables and hard drives can be locked, preventing users from accessing data, risking its loss by deleting it.
Developed by the NSA for cyberattacks, the malware is now widely available, including to elements responsible for Friday’s incident – maybe a precursor for more widespread attacks against governments, businesses, and virtually any other digital targets worldwide.
Cyber technology threatens everyone connected online. Edward Snowden said Congress should demand the NSA disclose its arsenal of malware tools able to fall into the wrong hands.
According to WikiLeaks,
“(o)nce a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose,’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.”
Separately, WikiLeaks tweeted,
“(i)f you can’t secure it – don’t build it…US cyber weapons (pose an) extreme proliferation risk.”
According to security experts, cyber-criminals used stolen NSA malware, targeting governments, businesses, hospitals, power grids, public services, and individuals opening infected attachments or email links.
Enormous cyber vulnerabilities exist. Friday’s incident suggests more like it to come, perhaps an eventual digital equivalent of dirty nuclear bomb contamination worldwide.
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.”
“There is no indication of a radiological release…” Destry Henderson, deputy news manager for the Hanford Joint Information Center [1]
“The way that I look at this whole thing since the collapse happened …is this is a cover-up of the covering up of the collapsed hole.” – Mimi German (from this week’s interview.)
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
For the first time in four years, on the morning of Tuesday May 9th the US Department of Energy declared a site-wide emergency at the Hanford Site in Washington State. A 20 foot section of a tunnel at the site containing highly toxic and radioactive material had collapsed exposing the contents to the atmosphere.
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is 586 square miles or about 1,500 square km in area and is located in Southeast Washington State, along the Columbia River and about 170 miles (270 km) east of Seattle. This is the site at which the world’s first three nuclear reactors were constructed, and out of which the most of the plutonium for America’s nuclear weapons were produced. [2]
photo courtesy of nuclearhotseat.com
According to Physicians for Social Responsibility, Hanford is home to 60% (by volume) of all of the high level radioactive waste stored in the United States.Fifty-three million gallons of high-level radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 huge underground tanks with more than one million gallons having leaked from these tanks. Nearly 80% of the Department of Energy’s inventory of spent nuclear fuel rods was stored in basins just 400 yards from the Columbia River.[3]
The tunnel which collapsed was located next to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) located in the center of the Hanford Site, in an area known as the 200 East Area. [4] The tunnel had been used to transport spent fuel from the reactors to an area where the plutonium generated in nuclear reactions would be separated from the original uranium. This process generated a lot of highly toxic waste and as a result became highly radioactive.
According to officials, the collapse was discovered during routine surveillance Tuesday morning.[5]
Workers in the affected area, north of the Wye barricade, were told to take cover, that is go indoors and shut off ventillation systems. Later in the day, non-essential north of the Wye barricade were told to go home early.[6]
According to the DOE, beginning the morning of Wednesday May 10th, crews began work filling the hole with 550 cubic yards of soil in 53 trucks were used. The emergency was terminated later that evening at 11:21pm.[7]
Employees have begun to return to work.
On this week’s Global Research News Hour we present perspectives from three people closely observing this crisis.
Tom Carpenter is the executive director of the worker advocacy group Hanford Challenge. Carpenter explains some of the background of the site, he relays what he has been told by workers since the tunnel collapse, and he outlines some of the concerns he has about the responsible authorities putting Public Relations ahead of stewardship to the public and the environment.
Mimi German, a past guest of this program, is a self-identified ‘Earth activist’. She is the founder of Radcast.org and active with the anti-nuclear group ‘No Nukes Northwest.‘ German points to known radiation readings and other contradictory indicators leading her to suspect that the emergency is far from over and that the radiological releases were worse than the officials are letting on.
Susannah Frame is the multi-award winning investigative reporter for NBC affiliate KING5 in Seattle. She broke the story about the Hanford tunnel collapse and updates listeners on the situation (as of Thursday May 11th), explains what is known about what most likely caused it, and outlines how badly things could have gone.
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.
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.
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
Some 70 ISIS members have withdrawn from the town of Tabqah and the Tabqah Dam under a deal with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Pentagon confirmed in a statement at the website of its International Coalition for Operation Inherent Resolve on May 11.
Thus, the US-led coalition officially confirmed rumors that had been circulating about a possible open corridor for the ISIS terrorists operating in the town of Tabqah and the nearby Tabqah dam. This was the second deal of the US-backed force with ISIS that became widely known. Previously, a large group of ISIS members left the town of Manbij encircled by the SDF in the province of Aleppo.
Following the withdrawal from Tabqah, ISIS militants launched an attack on SDF positions in the villages of Ayed Kabir and Al-Mushirfa near Tabqah. Clashes are still ongoing in the area.
According to pro-SDF sources, 26 ISIS militants were killed and 3 vehicles were destroyed. ISIS claimed that five Kurdish fighters were killed in the village of Ajeel south of the Tabqah military airport.
Talal Sallou, spokesman of the SDF said that the next aim of the US-backed force is to isolate Raqqa city from the western, northern and eastern flanks prior to storming the ISIS self-proclaimed capital. Thus, ISIS will have an open way to the south, which means that the US-led coalition may be willing to push ISIS to withdraw into the Syrian desert where terrorists will fight the SAA and its allies.
Leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, announced on Thursday that the group has dismantled its military positions on the border with Syria as the mission of securing the area has been completed and the Lebanese eastern borders have became safe.
The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Hezbollah have captured three hills in the mountains of Shomaria in the eastern Homs countryside after violent clashes with ISIS terrorists. As a result of this advance, pro-government fighters reached the outskirts of the village of Hamida.
Meanwhile, the SAA has been strengthening its forces in the vicinity of the Seen Military Airbase and at the Al-Tanf road. According to some pro-government sources, the SAA aims to take full control of the Al-Tanf road and then the Al-Tanf border area. However, this effort will be linked with clashes against Western-backed militants operating in the area.
Opposition sources announced the formation of a new force of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in northern Aleppo named. The group was named “First Corps” and created with a Turkish support.
The militant groups known as the Sultan Mohammed Al-Fateh Brigade, the Samarkand Brigade, Jaish al-Ahfad, the Al-Muntaser Bellah Brigade, the 101st Division, the Al-Fatah Brigade, the Tala’a al-Nasr Brigade joined the First Corps. The group now includes 10,000 fighters, according to Capt. Abu Kanan al-Homsi. Its militants had received training and equipment from Turkey.
According to opposition sources, the main objective of the First Corps would be to fight ISIS, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), and Kurdish militias (YPG, YPJ, PKK). The group will be stationed in the towns of Al-Rai, Akhtarin and Ghandoura in the northern Aleppo countryside.
In Idlib, the HTS issued a ban on the transfer of anti-tank missiles, Grad rockets and modern weapons and started an effort aimed to confiscate them from all local groups. HTS already arrested some members of Ana’ al-Sham and confiscated their weapons in the northern Hama countryside.
According to local sources, tensions have once again increased in the countryside of Idlib between Ahrar al-Sham and HTS. A new round of clashes in the province of Idlib may start soon.
The Washington Post and New York Times editors are trying to relive the glory days of their youth by comparing Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey to Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre at the height of Watergate. Donald Trump, it seems, is a threat to democracy just as Tricky Dick was more than 40 years ago, so the only thing that can save us is a special prosecutor who will get to the bottom of Russia-gate once and for all.
But not only is this nonsense, it’s pernicious nonsense that itself amounts to a cover-up. Here’s how Russia-gate is not the same as Watergate and why, in fact, it’s the opposite:
Difference No. 1: Watergate was about a real event, the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate Hotel in which five people were caught red-handed in the act. The fireworks began when the burglars turned out to be part of a special security operation known as the White House Plumbers.
This is why Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox ran into a buzz-saw in October 1973. After months of gumshoe field work, he had begun zeroing in on evidence linking the Plumbers with the Oval Office. This was a bridge too far from Nixon’s point of view, and so he ordered him canned.
Cox was thus operating in the realm of hard, cold, tangible fact. But Russia-gate is different since the alleged crime that is at heart of the scandal – last summer’s reported data break-in at the DNC – is so far based on purest speculation. No burglars have been apprehended, no links have been clearly established with the reputed masterminds in Moscow, while Wikileaks continues to insist that the email disclosure was not a hack by outside intelligence operatives at all, but a leak by a “disgusted” insider.
A military parade on Red Square. May 9, 2016 Moscow. (Photo from: http://en.kremlin.ru)
Since the FBI has never conducted an independent investigation – for as-yet-unexplained reasons, the DNC refused to grant it access to its servers despite multiple requests – the only evidence that a break-in even occurred comes from a private cyber-security firm, CrowdStrike Inc. of Irvine, California, that the DNC hired to look into the breach.
Since when do the cops rely on a private eye to look into a murder rather than performing an investigation of their own? CrowdStrike, moreover, turns out to be highly suspect. Not only is Dmitri Alperovich, its chief technical officer, a Russian émigré with a pronounced anti-Putin tilt, but he is also an associate of a virulently anti-Russian outfit known as the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank funded by the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukrainian World Congress, the U.S. State Department and a variety of other individuals and groups that have an interest in isolating or discrediting Russia.
Since the Atlantic Council is also a long-time supporter of Hillary Clinton, this means that the Clinton campaign relied on a friendly anti-Putin cyber-sleuth to tell it what everyone involved wanted to hear, i.e. that the Kremlin was at the bottom of it all. If this strikes you as fishy, it should.
Crowdstrike’s findings seemed weak in other respects as well. A few days after determining that Russian intelligence was responsible, Alperovich issued a memo praising the hackers to the skies.
“Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none and the extensive usage of ‘living-off-the-land’ techniques enables them to easily bypass many security solutions they encounter,” he wrote.
Since the hackers were brilliant, CrowdStrike had to be even more so to track them down and expose their perfidy for all to see.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking at an Atlantic Council event in 2013. (Photo credit: Atlantic Council)
But CrowdStrike then said it was able to pin it on the Russians because the hackers had made certain elementary mistakes, most notably uploading a document in a Russian-language format under the name “Felix Edmundovich,” an obvious reference to Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, as the Soviet political police were originally known. It was the equivalent of American intelligence agents uploading a Russian document under the name “J. Edgar.” Since this was obviously very careless of them, it raised an elementary question: how could the hackers be super-sophisticated yet at the same time guilty of an error that was unbearably dumb?
The skeptics promptly pounced. Referring to Russia’s two top intelligence agencies, a well-known cyber-security expert named Jeffrey Carrwas unable to restrain his sarcasm:
“OK. Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add Iron Felix’s name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released it to the world while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly had a wicked sense of humor.”
Since scattering such false leads is child’s play for even a novice hacker, it was left to John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates and developer of the first commercial anti-virus software, to draw the ultimate conclusion.
“If it looks like the Russians did it,” he told TV interviewer Larry King, “then I can guarantee you: it was not the Russians.”
None of this proves that the Russians didn’t hack the DNC. All it proves is that evidence is lacking. If all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agree that the Kremlin did it, it is worth bearing in mind that the “intelligence community” was equally unanimous in 2002 that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. If they were wrong then, why should anyone believe that they are right now in the absence of clear and unequivocal evidence? (On Monday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper clarified that the repeated claim about the unanimous view of the 17 agencies was wrong; that the report, which he released on Jan. 6, was the work of hand-picked analysts from the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency.)
So, where Cox was dealing with a real live burglary, all we have today is smoke and mirrors.
Difference No. 2: Russia-gate is not about democracy but about neo-McCarthyism and war.
For all the self-serving hoopla and mythology surrounding Watergate, the scandal was ultimately about something important: the dirty tricks and lawless authoritarianism that were advancing smartly under the Nixon administration. But Russia-gate is not about democracy. Rather, it is about an inside-the-beltway battle over the direction of U.S.-Russian relations.
The battle is deadly serious. Since roughly 2008, Cold War II has expanded steadily to the point where it now extends along a 1,300-mile front from Estonia to the Crimea plus the Caucasus and major portions of the Middle East. It has intensified as well and would likely have reached a flashpoint if the hawkish Hillary Clinton had been elected.
But Trump’s surprise victory threw a wrench into the works. This is not to say that Donald Trump is a latter-day Mahatma Gandhi out to bring peace and brotherhood to the world. To the contrary, he’s a loud-mouthed ignoramus who can barely find Russia on the map. But amid all his confused mutterings about foreign policy, one thing that has come through loud and clear is his desire for a rapprochement with Russia.
Given the mounting war fever that has gripped Washington for the last ten years or so, this is nothing short of explosive. Once it became clear in the early morning hours of Nov. 9 that Trump was White House-bound, the pro-war establishment therefore went into overdrive. Every effort was made to undermine the President-elect’s legitimacy.
Evidence was dug up purporting to show that he had colluded with the Kremlin. A Democratic-funded memo by a British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele was produced claiming that Russian intelligence had a video of him cavorting with prostitutes in Moscow’s Ritz Carlton.
But it’s all so much hot air. Nothing of substance has turned up. A 1,700-word front-page exposé about Trump campaign aide Carter Page that The New York Times ran on April 20 was typical. A study in innuendo and unsubstantiated assertions, it said that the FBI became concerned when it learned that “a Russian spy” had tried to recruit him during a visit to Moscow in 2013. But then it disclosed that Page, an academic and energy entrepreneur, had no idea that the person was a spy and merely thought he was talking business with an ordinary diplomatic attaché with Russia’s U.N. mission.
It’s a mistake that any American businessman could make, whether in Moscow or in London or Tel Aviv.
“It is unclear,” the Times went on, “exactly what about Mr. Page’s visit drew the FBI’s interest: meetings he had during his three days in Moscow, intercepted communications of Russian officials speaking about him, or something else.”
But one thing that apparently caused ears to prick up was a talk he gave at a Russian economics institute. The reason according to the Times is that it:
“criticized American policy toward Russia in terms that echoed the position of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, declaring, ‘Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change.’ His remarks accorded with Mr. Trump’s positive view of the Russian president, which had prompted speculation about what Mr. Trump saw in Mr. Putin – more commonly denounced in the United States as a ruthless, anti-Western autocrat.”
In other words, Page drew official notice because he dared to differ with the orthodox view of Putin as a latter-day Lucifer. As a consequence, he now finds himself at the center of what the Times describes as
“a wide-ranging investigation, now accompanied by two congressional inquiries, that has cast a shadow over the early months of the Trump administration.”
Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
So, out of nothing (or at least very little) has grown something very, very large, an absurd pseudo-scandal that now has Democrats gobbling on about special prosecutors and impeachment.
But even though there’s no clear “there” there, the Washington scandal machine has a way of feeding on itself regardless. As Consortium News’ Robert Parry has pointed out (see “The McCarthyism of Russia-gate,” May 7), the Senate Intelligence Committee hit Page with a sweeping order on April 28 to turn over anything and everything having to do with his extensive list of Russian business, personal and casual contacts for the 18 months prior to Trump’s Inauguration.
The order thus informs Page that he must turn over
“[a] list of all meetings between you and any Russian official or representative of Russian business interests which took place between June 16, 2015, and January 20, 2017 … all meetings of which you are aware between any individual with the Trump campaign and any Russian official or representative of Russian business interests … [a]ll communications records, including electronic communications records such as e-mail or text messages, written correspondence, and phone records of communications … to which you and any Russian official or representative of Russian business interests was a party,” and so on and so forth.
Considering that Page lived in Russia for several years, the request is virtually impossible. It thus
“amounts to a perjury trap,” Parry notes, “because even if Page tried his best to supply all the personal, phone, and email contacts, he would be sure to miss something or someone, thus setting him up for prosecution for obstructing an investigation or lying to investigators.”
It also amounts to a self-fueling scandal machine since if Page falls short in any respect, the result will be fuel for a dozen outraged Times and Washington Post editorials accusing the Trump team of covering up. If the investigation into Monical Lewinsky’s little blue dress was a joke, this will be even worse, a scandal without end resting ultimately on thin air.
But to what end? The goal, simply, is to drive Trump out of office or, barring that, to force him to adopt a more warlike foreign policy. The effort has already borne fruit in the form of the April 6 Tomahawk missile strike at a Syrian government airbase that Trump launched less to punish Bashar al-Assad than to get the Democrats, the press, the neocons, and other members of the war camp off his back. The press reception was rapturous, and after labeling Trump a Kremlin stooge on a near-daily basis, Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Dick Durbin responded by patting him fondly on the back.
The more such actions he launches, the more approving such paragons of democracy will become. With amazing accuracy, the Democrats have zeroed in on the one halfway positive thing Trump had to say during his campaign and made it their chief target.
Difference No. 3: Where Watergate was about blocking a cover-up, Russia-gate is about perpetuating one.
Hours after Comey received his termination notice, Ken Gude, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, published an article calling on the Justice Department to
“appoint a special counsel to lead the investigation into links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election.”
The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter conducts strike operations while in the Mediterranean Sea, April 7, 2017. (Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ford Williams)
This was very neutral, objective, and high-minded of him. But the question to ask in this instance is cui bono – who benefits? The answer lies in what the Center for American Progress is and whom it represents.
The answer is that CAP is a major Clinton stronghold. Its founder is John Podesta, who was Clinton’s campaign chairman and whose brother, Tony, is a registered Saudi lobbyist. Its president is Neera Tanden, a long-time Clinton friend and adviser.
Major funders includeGeorge Soros and the United Arab Emirates, which, like Saudis, has long pushed for the U.S. to adopt a more militant posture vis-à-vis Iran, Syria’s Assad government, and Russia, which is allied with both. This means more sabre-rattling towards Moscow, more weapons and support for Saudi-funded jihadis in Syria, and more U.S. backup for the Saudi-UAE war against Yemen, in which more than 10,000 people have died, according to U.N. estimates, and much of the population is on the brink of mass starvation.
This is the real scandal that Russia-gate is designed to cover up. Like any country, Russia wants to steer U.S. foreign policy in a direction favorable to interests. But it’s a very small player in Washington compared to giants like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. These are nations that have given millions to the Clinton Foundation, to the “William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park” in Little Rock, Arkansas (recipient of a $10-million gift from the Saudi royal family), universities like Harvard and Georgetown, and a slew of think tanks, not just CAP and the Atlantic Council, but the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Brookings, the recipient of a $14.8-million contribution from Qatar.
The oil monarchies have thus used their petro-wealth to create a pro-war consensus in Washington that is nearly 100-percent complete. Needless to say, this will not benefit the mass of ordinary Americans, the people who will have to fight and die in such conflicts and whose taxes will pay for them. Instead, it will benefit the oil companies and arms manufacturers with whom the oil monarchies are closely allied, not to mention hawkish politicians hoping to use war fever to propel their careers to ever greater heights.
They will benefit because they have sold U.S. foreign policy to the highest bidder. This is a scandal of the first order. But rather than exposing it, Russia-gate is all about covering it up.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
What would a reunified Korea look like? Where would its capital be? Would it have a single unified military? What would happen to the North’s nuclear weapons?
The election of pro-engagement Moon Jae-in ushers in a new era in North-South relations and makes these questions pertinent again. Moon is expected to resume the long delayed project of inter-Korean cooperation toward reconciliation and peaceful reunification—which began in 2000 after the historic summit between former leaders Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il and was resumed by the late President Roh Moo-hyun before it was halted by the subsequent conservative administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye.
Permanent peace on the Korean peninsula requires a settlement of the ongoing state of war between the United States and North Korea by replacing the armistice (a temporary ceasefire) signed after the Korean War with a permanent peace treaty.
But it’s never too soon to start imagining what a reunified Korea might look like. Dr. Moon J Pak, a long-time proponent of peaceful reunification, shares his vision.
* * *
In any serious effort to peacefully unite the two Koreas in the future, there will be big hurdles of history and geopolitics to overcome.
Due mainly to its unique geopolitical location, surrounded by large, aggressive and ambitious neighbors, China, Japan, Russia, Mongolia, Manchuria and more recently the neighbor across the Pacific, the U.S., the 4,000-year-old history of Korea is tumultuous, to say the least.
The country was invaded, occupied, colonized by all of these neighbors. Although Korea fought back, it has never retaliated and invaded any neighboring countries. Despite thousands of years of troublesome and cruel foreign invasions, Korea has maintained its national, ethnic and cultural identity.
In the evolution of modern Korea, this ancient pattern of competing for dominance over Korea repeated itself. China, Russia and Japan struggled over the peninsula, which resulted in the colonialization of the country by Japan in 1910. Japan considered Korea to be its geopolitical stepping-stone to the continent.
Japan’s ambition for domination over Asia was permanently thwarted in 1945 with the end of the World War II. However, it brought to the peninsula the beginning of another international conflict, the cold war between the U.S. and Soviet Russia, which divided the country into North and South and launched the Korean War, a war of proxy between the two world powers.
The armistice was signed between the U.S. and North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK) in 1953, but the peace treaty promised never materialized. To this date, the enmity exists between the two countries, and no peace treaty has been executed, which has effectively kept the country of South Korea (the Republic of Korea, or ROK) under the military control of the U.S.
Over the past 63 years, since the armistice, or cease-fire agreement, was signed, numerous international efforts have been attempted to bring about the peace and re-unification of the Korean peninsula. Among these have been several committees of the United Nations, and the Six-Party Talks (the six parties being North and South Korea, Japan, Russia, China, and the U.S.). None of these efforts have been successful. This is primarily because none of the countries involved in the effort have been sincerely striving for a reunification agreement of the two Koreas. China wants a friendly North Korea dependent on its favor, and acting as a buffer state between China and allied countries of the U.S. The U.S. wants a friendly South Korea dependent on it, which will provide a force to counter China. Japan would rather have a divided Korea which will never become strong enough to be a threat to them.
Over the past half century, the two Koreas have recovered from the war and reestablished themselves as formidable entities.
The South has become a thriving economic power with a population of 45 million, It has a cutting-edge high-tech industry, a strong information technology industry, along with ship-building, steel production, and auto manufacturing (in fifth place globally). South Korea is 11th in its level of gross domestic product (GDP), considered a measure of economic strength among developed countries. It has also established an armed force of 650,000, and has developed highly advanced armaments.
The North, with 25 million people, in spite of tremendous limitations imposed on it, primarily by U.S. sanctions, military threats and isolation, has developed into a formidable military power with a 1.2 million-armed force, including an air force, a coastal navy with 85 submarines (with some capable of ballistic missiles).
It also has developed a nuclear weapon system with more than 20 units, This include hydrogen bombs, a missile delivery system which is close to development of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The North also has a long-range artillery system with more than 40,000 super gun units placed underground along the DMZ.
With their nuclear deterrence force, the North Koreans have embarked upon the so- called Parallel Plan, placing a strong emphasis on the nation’s economic development, not just growth of the military. However, to this date, North Korea’s GDP is estimated to be about $30 billion, or 1/30th that of South Korea.
The combined population of North and South, more than 70 million, is larger than the population of Italy. If the military were combined, its 1.75 million troops would be the world’s fourth-largest military, after China, India and the U.S.
Koreans are now faced with dealing with what is the ultimate Korean issue of modern times – “Peace and Reunification”. This ultimate issue can only be achieved by Koreans. Neighboring countries have their own strategic self-interests; none really have an interest in reunification of these two separate countries into one strong power.
Actually, the basic tenets of a reunification process are delineated in the so-called “6-15 Joint Agreement,” made June 15, 2,000 between Jong-il Kim of North and Dae-jung Kim of South. The agreement calls for the formation of a confederation between the two governments; it specifies that each government should continue to maintain its own political and economic identity.
For the two Koreas to agree to be re-united, the most important issue must be to erase the enmity which has existed between the two countries since the Korean War (1950-53). Therefore, the first step would be the establishment of “Non-aggression Pact” between the two Koreas. Such an agreement would serve to relax the military stance and therefore the high cost of defense. Most importantly, it would eliminate the need for the U.S. military in the South.
It would lead to U.S. troop withdrawal, and return military control of the ROK army to the ROK government. It would also eliminate the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system, a U.S. weapons system which is intensely disliked and controversial in South Korea right now. It would also lead to the deactivation of the naval base in Jeju Island, and would make the idea of a U.S.-Japan-ROK alliance irrelevant.
The DPRK has used its nuclear weapons system as a way of deterring the U.S. from military action. Any use of nuclear weapon in the peninsula (South on North or the opposite) would mean mutual destruction. North Korea must make its good will toward South Korea clear by “Eliminating any Nuclear Threat to the South”, and even further by declaring that the two Koreas would have “Joint Ownership and Control of the Nuclear Force after Reunification”.
The two Koreas could begin to work together initially by meeting each other’s humanitarian and economic needs. The South (ROK) should start providing unlimited, “Free Food to the North”, while the North (DPRK) ships “Free Mineral Resources to the South”, such as coal, tungsten, lithium and many other rare earth products, directly by way of its Eastern Sea route.
Kaesong, a North Korean city immediately of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is an ancient place, but best-known in recent times as the location of a “North-South Joint Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperative Zone”. This cooperative North-South project was, until recent years, a successful collaboration of Southern technology with Northern labor. Once the idea of a confederation is realized, similar joint venture zones should be established in many other key cities, such as Wonsan, Nampo, Ulsan, Chulwon, and Incheon, among others.
Under a confederation, the military forces of South and North will eventually be united. This single national entity could be called the “No-Nong Minjokgun” (Agrono-Labor National Corps). It will be consisted of a fully-trained, conscripted military of one million men and women serving three-year terms. This force will contribute to the nation’s agriculture, industry, and other nation-building projects.
Under a confederation, “The Heads of the two Koreas will meet regularly, biannually and alternately at each other’s capital cities”- to supervise the re-unification issues, progression of the agreements and resolution of any contentious matters.
Eventually, the re-unified Korea will declare a “Permanently Neutrality”, which is a necessity, given its geopolitical importance. However, by arming itself formidably with a strong, high-tech defense force, its neutrality will be guaranteed by itself. Further, the neutrality of the nation will not depend on the will of its neighboring countries, as is the case with other neutral states, such as Austria or Switzerland. In this scenario, Korea will no longer be a country surrounded by four big powers; instead, it will be one of the five big powers. It will be a centrally-located nation, vigilantly watching its four neighbor nations.
To symbolize a new confederated Korea, I would also propose that a new city be created as a center for the confederation. The city, to be called “Koreana”, could be built on the area known as the “Iron Triangle,” located near the DMZ. This location reminds Koreans of the sad history of division, war, destruction and foreign control;
Koreana will base Korea’s nuclear arsenal jointly owned and controlled,
Koreana will house the Senate of the Confederate Korea elected by the representatives of the professional organizations from both Koreas, south and north,
Koreana will house the President of the Confederate Korea, elected from and voted by the overseas Koreans,
Koreana will house a graduate level university designed to produce nation’s elite intellectuals,
Koreana will allow dual citizenship to any qualified foreigners.
By having a new city to represent the many joint ventures of the new Korea, Koreans will be able to negotiate the structures of a new confederation in a transparent manner, and move through its reunification plan methodically, one step at a time, to the goal of peaceful coexistence.
Moon J. Pak, M.D., Ph.D,is the senior vice-president of the Korean American National Coordinating Council (KANCC) and a physician in Detroit, Michigan.
The two top national security officials in the Trump administration – Secretary of Defence James Mattis and national security adviser HR McMaster – are trying to secure long-term US ground and air combat roles in the three long-running wars in the greater Middle East – Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Proposals for each of the three countries are still being developed, and there is no consensus, even between Mattis and McMaster, on the details of the plans. They will be submitted to Trump separately, with the plan for Afghanistan coming sometime before a NATO summit in Brussels on 25 May.
But if this power play succeeds in one or more of the three, it could guarantee the extension of permanent US ground combat in the greater Middle East for many years to come – and would represent a culmination of the “generational war” first announced by the George W Bush administration.
‘Open-ended commitment’
It remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump will approve the proposals that Mattis and McMaster have pushed in recent weeks.
Judging from his position during the campaign and his recent remarks, Trump may well baulk at the plans now being pushed by his advisers.
The plans for the three countries now being developed within the Trump administration encompass long-term stationing of troops, access to bases and the authority to wage war in these three countries.
These are the primordial interest of the Pentagon and the US military leadership, and they have pursued those interests more successfully in the Middle East than anywhere else on the globe.
US military officials aren’t talking about “permanent” stationing of troops and bases in these countries, referring instead to the “open-ended commitment” of troops. But they clearly want precisely that in all three.
Shifting timetables
The George W Bush administration and the Barack Obama administration both denied officially that they sought “permanent bases” in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. But the subtext in both cases told a different story.
A Defense Department official testifying before Congress at the time admitted that the term had no real meaning, because the Pentagon had never defined it officially.
In fact, at the beginning of the negotiations with Iraq on the US military presence in 2008, the US sought access to bases in Iraq without any time limit. But the al-Maliki government rebuffed that demand and the US was forced to agree to withdraw all combat forces in a strict timetable.
Despite efforts by the Pentagon and the military brass, including Gen David Petraeus, to get the Obama administration to renegotiate the deal with the Iraqi government to allow tens of thousands of combat troops to stay in the country, the Iraqis refused US demands for immunity from prosecution in Iraq, and the US had to withdraw all its troops.
Reversing withdrawals
Now the regional context has shifted dramatically in favour of the US military’s ambitions. On one hand, the war against Islamic State (IS) is coming to a climax in both Iraq and Syria, and the Iraq government recognises the need for more US troops to ensure that it can’t rise again; and in Syria, the division of the country into zones of control that depend on foreign powers is an overriding fact.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, growing Taliban power and control across the country is being cited as the rationale for a proposal to reverse the withdrawals of US and NATO troops in recent years and to allow a limited return by US forces to combat.
Now that Islamic State forces are being pushed out of Mosul, both the Trump administration and the Iraqi government are beginning to focus on how to ensure that the terrorists do not return.
The question of what to do about Syria is apparently the subject of in-fighting between Mattis and the Pentagon, on one hand, and McMaster, on the other.
The initial plan for the defeat of IS in Syria, submitted to Trump in February, called for an increase in the size of US ground forces beyond the present level of 1,000.
But a group of officers who have worked closely with Gen Petraeus on Iraq and Afghanistan, which includes McMaster, has been pushing a much more ambitious plan, in which thousands – and perhaps many thousands – of US ground troops would lead a coalition of Sunni Arab troops to destroy Islamic State’s forces in Syria rather than relying on Kurdish forces to do the job.
Both the original plan and the one advanced by McMaster for Syria would also involve US troops in “stabilisation operations” for many years across a wide expanse of eastern Syria that would require large numbers of troops for many years.
Both in its reliance on Sunni Arab allies and in its envisioning a large US military zone of control in Syria, the plan bears striking resemblance to the one developed for Hillary Clinton by the Center for New American Security when she was viewed as the president-in-waiting.
Reversing Obama’s Afghanistan policy
The Pentagon proposal on Afghanistan, which had not been formally submitted by Mattis as of this week, calls for increasing the present level of 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan by 1,500 to 5,000, both to train Afghan forces and to fight the Taliban. It also calls for resuming full-scale US air strikes against the Taliban. Both policy shifts would reverse decisions made by the Obama administration.
Five past US commanders in Afghanistan, including Petraeus, have publicly called for the US to commit itself to an “enduring partnership” with the Afghan government. That means, according to their joint statement, ending the practice of periodic reassessments as the basis for determining whether the US should continue to be involved militarily in the war, an idea that is likely part of the package now being formulated by Mattis.
But the problem with such a plan is that the US military and its Afghan client government have now been trying to suppress the Taliban for 16 years. The longer they have tried, the stronger the Taliban have become. The US and NATO were not able to pressure the Taliban to negotiate with the government even when they had more than 100,000 troops in the country.
Committing the US to endless war in Afghanistan would only reinforce the corruption, abuses of power and culture of impunity that Gen Stanley A McChystalacknowledged in 2009 were the primary obstacles to reducing support for the Taliban. Only the knowledge that the US will let the Afghans themselves determine the country’s future could shock the political elite sufficiently to change its ways.
Most political and national security elites as well as the corporate news media support the push to formalise a permanent US presence in Afghanistan, despite the fact that national polls indicate that it is the most unpopular war in US history with 80 percent of those surveyed in a CNN poll in 2013 opposing its continuation.
Beltway brawl?
There are signs that Trump may reject at least the plans for Afghanistan and Syria. Only days after his approval of the missile strike on a Russian-Syrian airbase, Trump told Fox Business in an interview,
“We’re not going into Syria.”
And White House spokesman Sean Spicer seemed to suggest this week that Trump was not enamoured with the plan to spend many more years trying to “transform” Afghanistan.
“There is a difference between Afghanistan proper and our effort to defeat ISIS,” Spicer said
Despite Trump’s love for the military brass, the process of deciding on the series of new initiatives aimed at committing the US more deeply to three wars in the greater Middle East is bound to pose conflicts between the political interests of the White House and the institutional interests of the Pentagon and military leaders.
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.
Ahead of the US president’s visit to Saudi Arabia, a series of multi-billion-dollar arms deals have been outlined. The previous US administration suspended some supplies because of human rights concerns.
A senior, unnamed White House official said the US was close to completing a series of deals to sell Saudi Arabia arms and related maintenance worth $100 billion (91.4 billion euros), according to Reuters.
President Donald Trump begins an international tour next Friday with the first stop in Saudi Arabia, followed by visits to Israel, the Vatican, Brussels for a NATO summit and Sicily for a Group of Seven summit.
“We are in the final stages of a series of deals,” the White House official said on Friday.
The arms package could be worth more than $300 billion over a decade, the official said. The US has been the Saudi kingdom’s major arms supplier, delivering F-15 fighter jets and command and control systems worth tens of billions of dollars in recent years.
President Barack Obama had canceled a series of planned weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in the last months of his administration because of the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen which had led to numerous civilian casualties.
Trump has already met with Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who wields much influence in the kingdom due to the frailty of the 81-year-old King Salman. The 31-year-old prince is also defense minister and has led an aggressive campaign both militarily in Yemen and politically against Iran and Shia Muslims.
The UN estimates that 17 million of Yemen’s 27 million people are “food insecure” including 3.3 million pregnant and breast-feeding mothers and children, some 462,000 under the age of five, who are “acutely malnourished.”
Restoring US-Saudi ties
Trump and Salman met at the White House in Washington in March. The Bloomberg news agency reported on Thursday that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund could invest up to $40 billion in US infrastructure.
US national security adviser H.R. McMaster previewed Trump’s first foreign tour to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy and Belgium in a White House briefing on Friday.
“President Trump understands that America First does not mean America alone,” McMaster told reporters. “To the contrary, prioritizing America’s interests means strengthening alliances.”
McMaster said Trump
“will encourage our Arab and Muslim partners to take bold, new steps to promote peace and to confront those, from ISIS to al Qaeda to Iran to the Assad regime, who perpetuate chaos and violence that has inflicted so much suffering throughout the Muslim world and beyond.”
A highly virulent new strain of self-replicating ransomware shut down computers all over the world, in part by appropriating a National Security Agency exploit that was publicly released last month by the mysterious group calling itself Shadow Brokers.
Wcry is reportedly causing disruptions at banks, hospitals, telecommunications services, train stations, and other mission-critical organizations in multiple countries, including the UK, Spain, Germany, and Turkey. FedEx, the UK government’s National Health Service, and Spanish telecom Telefonica have all been hit. The Spanish CERT has called it a “massive ransomware attack” that is encrypting all the files of entire networks and spreading laterally through organizations.
The virally spreading worm was ultimately stopped when a researcher who uses the Twitter handle MalwareTech and works for security firm Kryptos Logic took control of a domain name that was hard-coded into the self-replicating exploit. The domain registration, which occurred around 6 AM California time, was a major stroke of good luck, because it was possible only because the attackers had failed to obtain the address first.
The address appeared to serve as a sort of kill switch the attackers could use to terminate the campaign. MalwareTech’s registration had the effect of ending the attacks that had started earlier Friday morning in other parts of the world. As a result, the number of infection detections plateaued dramatically in the hours following the registration. It had no effect on WCry infections that were initiated through earlier campaigns.
Remember Code Red?
Another cause for concern: wcry copies a weapons-grade exploit codenamed Eternalblue that the NSA used for years to remotely commandeer computers running Microsoft Windows. Eternalblue, which works reliably against computers running Microsoft Windows XP through Windows Server 2012, was one of several potent exploits published in the most recent Shadow Brokers release in mid-April. The Wcry developers have combined the Eternalblue exploit with a self-replicating payload that allows the ransomware to spread virally from vulnerable machine to vulnerable machine, without requiring operators to open e-mails, click on links, or take any other sort of action.
So-called worms, which spread quickly amid a chain of attacks, are among the most virulent forms of malware. Researchers are still investigating how Wcry takes hold. The awesome power of worms came to the world’s attention in 2001 when Code Red managed to infect more than 359,000 Windows computers around the world in 14 hours.
“The initial infection vector is something we are still trying to find out,” Adam Kujawa, a researcher at antivirus provider Malwarebytes, told Ars. “Considering that this attack seems targeted, it might have been either through a vulnerability in the network defenses or a very well-crafted spear phishing attack. Regardless, it is spreading through infected networks using the EternalBlue vulnerability, infecting additional unpatched systems.”
It’s not clear if the Eternalblue exploit is Wcry’s sole means of spreading or if it has multiple methods of propagating. In an update that was notable for its unlikely and extremely fortuitous timing, Microsoft patched the underlying vulnerability in March, exactly four weeks before the Shadow Brokers’ April release published the weapons-grade NSA exploit. The rapid outbreak of Wcry may be an indication that many, or possibly all, of the companies hit had yet to install a critical Windows patch more than two months after it was released.
Other organizations in Spain known to be disrupted include telecom Vodafone Espana, the KPMG consultancy, banks BBVA and Santander, and power company Iberdrola. The Blackpool Victoria Hospital in the UK reportedly pleaded for patients to seek treatment only for life-threatening emergencies after Wcry crippled its network. Portugal Telecom has also reported being infected. Meanwhile, Barts Health Hospital in London is redirecting ambulances to other facilities. At least two train stations showed signs of infections according to display pictures published here and here.
According to an article posted by Madrid-based El Mundo, 85 percent of computers at Telefonica, Spain’s dominant telecom, are affected by the worm, although that figure has not been confirmed. Officials at Telefonica and Spanish energy companies Iberdrola and Gas Natural Fenosa have all instructed employees to shut down computers. While the paper confirmed an attack on Telefonica, it said it was not yet clear if the other two companies had been infected or if they ordered the shutdown as a preventative measure.
Wcry is demanding a ransom of $300 to $600 in Bitcoin to be paid by May 15, or, in the event that deadline is missed, a higher fee by May 19. The messages left on the screen say files will remain encrypted. It’s not yet clear if there are flaws in the encryption scheme that might allow the victims to restore the files without paying the ransom.
People who have yet to install the Microsoft fix—MS17-010—should do so right away. People should also be extremely suspicious of all e-mails they receive, particularly those that ask the recipient to open attached documents or click on Web links.
Dan Goodin is the Security Editor at Ars Technica, which he joined in 2012 after working for The Register, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, and other publications.
A new Wall Street Journal piece, primarily about the ISIS held city of Raqqa on the Euphrates, casts doubt on long term U.S. plans for such an occupation. Its core quote:
“We won’t be in Raqqa in 2020, but the regime will be there.”
There were already doubts that a big U.S. move in east-Syria was really going to happen. Jordan opposes any such move. While the U.S. and Jordan have trained, equipped and paid Syrian “rebels” to hold a zone of control in south-west Syria, little preparations have been seen for a large move in the south-east. The U.S. has so far vetted and trained at most 2,000 local Arab fighters in the area. Fewer are ready to go. Even with U.S. special forces embedded with them these forces are way too small to take an ISIS defended city or to capture or to hold a significant area. At least ten to twenty thousand troops would be needed (likely more) for such an endeavor. The current force is probably only tasked with taking a few border stations to close down the border between Syria and Iraq. (A move that Syrian and Iraqi forces will try to prevent.)
The upcoming taking of Raqqa by U.S. forces and its Kurdish proxies is now endorsed by the Syrian government and its Russian allies. It seems that an agreement has been made without any public announcement. This agreement may well extend to the other eastern areas south of Raqqa. From the WSJ:
The Kurd-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces captured Tabqa Wednesday, a day after the U.S. pledged to arm the fighters. On Monday, the Damascus government for the first time endorsed the group’s battle against Islamic State, with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem complimenting the SDF’s fight against Islamic State at a press conference in Damascus, describing the force as legitimate.The SDF is now the only ground force with both U.S. and Syrian government approval in the fight against Islamic State as the offensive on Raqqa draws near. The group has long co-existed with the Syrian government, unlike U.S.- backed factions that Damascus deems terrorists in light of their goal to oust President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
…
U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear he opposes the expensive nation-building missions that have historically accompanied U.S. counterterrorism operations to support local governments and prevent insurgents from returning.
For these reasons, Western diplomats say the post-capture plan is for the SDF to hand over the administration of Raqqa to a local civilian council friendly to the Syrian regime. That council could eventually transfer control of the city back to the regime, these diplomats said.
…
On Thursday, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Moscow supports the formation of local councils to administer territory taken from Islamic State but said they must not circumvent the Syrian government’s authority, in comments carried by Interfax news agency.
“The U.S. military will be going in [to Raqqa] and trying to figure out who the tribal leaders are,” said an American official involved in the anti-Islamic State campaign. “The regime knows these details. They have a natural home-field advantage and have a way of slowly getting back in. We won’t be in Raqqa in 2020, but the regime will be there.”
Those are unexpected words under two aspects. First – a U.S. government official acknowledges, for the first time, that control of the area will go back to the Syrian government and second – Syrian and Russian officials are informed of and agree with these U.S. plans.
A member of the currently selected Raqqa civilian council denied that the Syrian government will take charge but I doubt that she would be informed of such a high level issue.
It is likely that this scheme extends to other parts of south-east-Syria and even to the north-eastern Kurdish held areas. U.S. Gulf allies and Israel would like the U.S. to occupy the east and to “block” a “Shia crescent” that reaches from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Hizbullah in Lebanon. But any U.S. position there would be a hostile occupation which would have to fight off Syrian government forces, local Arab resistance, remnants of ISIS and Shia militia from Iraq. The “Shia crescent” is anyway a chimera. Iran was well able to supply Hizbullah in Lebanon even as Iraq was occupied by U.S. forces. At that time the road from Iran to Syria was blocked, the alleged “Shia crescent” was interrupted but supplies to Hizbullah still flowed unhindered. Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, will never agree to a Kurdish statelet in north-east Syria. Even a somewhat autonomous Kurdish area will only be tolerated if the Syrian government is in supreme control of it. A U.S. occupied zone in the landlocked Syrian east is of no strategic value to the U.S. It is surrounded by potential enemies and it would permanently require significant military resources. A return to Syrian government control is the best alternative.
But despite a likely agreement the Syrian government forces will continue their moves towards the east. The U.S. can not be trusted. In September 2016 a ceasefire and cooperation deal was agreed upon between Secretary of State Kerry and the Russian government. The fight against ISIS would be coordinate between all countries, including Syria. The U.S. military sabotaged the deal by launching air attacks on Syrian government forces in Deir Ezzor which were besieged by ISIS. This enabled ISIS to take a significant part of the government held areas there and to nearly eliminate all those forces. The U.S.-Russian agreement fell apart.
Any agreement with the U.S. that ISIS areas in Syria will fall back to government control, independent of who liberated them, should be welcome. Military hawks in the Trump administration, the sectarian Gulf countries as well as Israel will try to interrupt such a move. The Syrian government and its allies must therefore continue their own operations and liberate as many ares as possible by themselves. They must stay aware that a Trump administration might, at any time, revert to the old plan of establishing a “Salafist principality” in the area – even when such an unruly proxy would make little sense for it.
On a souvent comparé la construction européenne à un cycliste : s’il n’avance pas, il se trouve en équilibre instable et il tombe à terre. Les dirigeants des Etats et des institutions de l’Union européenne (UE) doivent en effet donner en permanence aux citoyens des raisons d’être ensemble. C’est même la principale activité de la Commission européenne qui produit à jet continu des projets d’actes législatifs baptisés « avancées ».
Le problème se complique lorsqu’il n’y a pas un, mais 28 cyclistes ne pédalant pas tous dans le même sens, et cela dans un environnement international de tous les dangers. Dans un tel cas, la méthode est bien connue : faute de trouver un accord sur les dossiers existants, on en ouvre un nouveau sur lequel des « avancées » seraient possibles et fourniraient le carburant nécessaire à une nouvelle « relance » du projet européen.
Ce dossier est celui de la perspective d’une Europe militaire. La conjoncture est favorable à un tel projet dans la mesure où il peut être présenté aux opinions publiques comme un outil pour se protéger du terrorisme et des autres retombées des conflits armés en cours au Proche-Orient, ainsi que pour faire face aux ambitions prêtées à la Russie.
L’Europe de la défense n’est pas une question nouvelle. Elle s’est posée dès le lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale, dans le contexte de la guerre froide. Deux problématiques ont structuré les débats à son sujet : quelle implication des Etats-Unis dans la sécurité de l’Europe ? quel mode de décision – intergouvernemental ou supranational – dans un éventuel dispositif militaire européen ?
En fait, il n’a jamais existé de projet consensuel d’une défense européenne qui serait assurée exclusivement par les Européens. Tous les gouvernements, à l’exception de ceux du général de Gaulle (1958- 1969), ont considéré que l’Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord (Otan), créée par le traité de Washington (1949), constituait une assurance tous risques contre l’Union soviétique.
La première tentative d’intégration militaire fut la Communauté européenne de défense (CED) sur le modèle supranational de la Communauté européenne du charbon et de l’acier (Ceca), et elle fut rejetée par le Parlement français en 1954. Elle est encore aujourd’hui abusivement étiquetée « européenne » alors qu’elle plaçait une éventuelle armée européenne sous la tutelle du commandant en chef de l’Otan, un général américain nommé par le président des Etats-Unis.
L’échec de la CED a durablement marqué les esprits et il a tracé la « ligne rouge » de toute initiative en matière de défense européenne : pour Londres et pour la quasi totalité des membres de l’UE, le seul véritable outil de défense européenne est l’Otan [1], et toute nouvelle organisation militaire doit être compatible avec cet impératif. Mais l’élection de Donald Trump a brutalement rebattu les cartes en raison de ses déclarations contradictoires au sujet de l’Otan. La confiance des dirigeants européens dans le lien transatlantique s’est érodée. D’où, pour combler un vide et, en même temps, pour « relancer » l’UE, les propositions franco-allemandes de réalisations concrètes (notamment en matière de recherche militaire et de développement de matériels communs). Additionnées, elles finiraient par constituer une politique européenne comme les autres. La grande faiblesse de ce projet est qu’il ne dit pas quelle est la menace à laquelle il est censé répondre. Ce qui, en première priorité, obligerait l’UE à choisir le statut qu’elle assigne à la Russie dans sa doctrine stratégique : partenaire, alliée ou adversaire ?
Many people have wondered whether the leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk wish their young countries to remain independent republics when the war is over or whether they see their long term future in the Russian Federation.
Today, the answer came from Donetsk People’s Republic leader Alexander Zakharchenko.
Speaking at a press conference during a meeting with Russian politicians, Zakharchenko said,
“We have only one goal, returning to the homeland”.
The Donetsk leader spoke fondly of Russia and reminded his audience that the people of Donbass are Russian and always have been. Today, only a war and legal technicalities stand in the way of the inevitable. There are many hurdles yet to jump, but Donbass is on its way home.
Despite a seemingly cordial meeting Wednesday between Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, tensions between the two countries remain high. Reports have come out in recent weeks (see here for instance) that Russian military officials are now convinced the US is planning a nuclear first strike against Russia.
Obviously we are in dangerous times. Articles demonizing Russia are churned out by the media each day. The deep state in Washington (which I would argue includes the owners or CEOs of the major media conglomerates) clearly is trying to incite and foment a conflict. Spreading chaos throughout the Middle East has been their modus operandi for many years now, but the ultimate chaos, of course, would be a nuclear war. And that very much seems to be their fondest fantasy and desire at present. Do they think they can win it? Possibly so. This is what the second article, by Conn Halinan, gets into.
The insanity has of course spread to the UK, where Defense Secretary Michael Fallon recently stated that under certain circumstances Theresa May’s government would consider launching a nuclear first strike–even if Britain was not under attack. Fallon’s idiocies are discussed in the third article, by Felicity Arbuthnot.
Interestingly, Arbuthnot also poses the possibility that the current showdown over North Korea is a “red herring.” While I’m not going to excerpt it, I will provide a link–here–to an analysis on the confrontation with North Korea published by Roberts just over a week ago.
The writer opines that the THAAD anti-missile system Trump is deploying to South Korea has nothing to do with North Korea, and is really intended to target China. A comparable analogy would be the US ballistic missile defense system deployed in Eastern Europe. That “missile shield” supposedly was to protect Europe from Iran, though most astute observers knew at the time that the real target was Russia. The system was first announced more than 10 years ago and finally went operational–in Romania–last year. The theory is that the shield now makes it possible for the US or NATO to carry out a surprise nuclear first strike against Russia, and then take out any Russian ICBMs which may be launched in retaliation. THAAD will presumably give them the same capability with regard to China.
Global Research strives for peace, and we have but one mandate: to share timely, independent and vital information to readers across the globe. We act as a global platform to let the voices of dissent, protest, and expert witnesses and academics be heard and disseminated internationally.
We need to stand together to continuously question politics, false statements, and the suppression of independent thought.
What was the purpose of firing Comey: Cui Bono? Who was behind it? That decision served the interests of the Neocons. It was motivated by US foreign policy and US-Russia relations. It was taken by the Attorney General’s office overriding the Presidency, precisely with a view to removing potential obstacles to the conduct of the Fake “Trump-Moscow collusion” investigation. In this regard, Comey was slated to be removed. He was viewed as unpredictable and uncooperative.
The same standard holds for accusations against Russia, claiming interference in America’s 2016 presidential election. No evidence proves it. None exists. Months of investigations turned up nothing.
Yet the witch-hunt persists, time and taxpayer money wasted. Media scoundrels are especially reprehensible, bashing Trump for the wrong reasons, ignoring the right ones.
US President Donald Trump has accepted a recommendation to ‘dismiss’ FBI director James Comey. Was this a reprisal for the suddenly widened Russia-gate probe into the White House or was there something else at play within the operations of the deep state?
This GRTV report provides evidence of fraud and criminality involving Hillary Clinton and the DNC. It not only dispels the hacking accusations directed against Moscow, it also reveals the bribery of a senior FBI official who was subsequently promoted and put in charge of the investigation pertaining to Hillary Clinton’s State Department Emails.
The language of dismissal regarding the FBI Director was that of an assassination. Comey, came the announcement via Sean Spicer, “has been terminated and removed from office”. The letter to Comey, penned by Trump, cited agreement with US Attorney General Jeff Sessions that “you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.”
The recommendation to fire Comey did not emanate from the White House. It was an initiative of US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who prepared a three page memorandum, which criticized James Comey for his handling of the Clinton email investigation and the release of his October 28, 2016 Second Letter to Congress 11 days before Election Day.
The Attorney General’s office visibly acted in defiance of the White House.
1. Trump was manipulated into accepting and endorsing the Attorney General’s initiative. The media relentlessly displayed a narrative of personal confrontation between Comey and Trump. The propaganda campaign contributed quite deliberately to triggering personal divisions between Trump and Comey. According to the Independent (May 11, 2017) quoting FBI insiders: “James Comey was fired by Donald Trump because of his refusal to end the investigation into links between Russia and the US leader’s presidential campaign team…”
That “authoritative” explanation –which pervades the Western media– is contradictory and nonsensical. It fails to address the fact that Trump accepted verbatim the decision formulated by the Deputy Attorney General.
2. What was the purpose of firing Comey: Cui Bono? Who was behind it? That decision served the interests of the Neocons. It was motivated by US foreign policy and US-Russia relations. It was taken by the Attorney General’s office overriding the Presidency, precisely with a view to removing potential obstacles to the conduct of the Fake “Trump-Moscow collusion” investigation. In this regard, Comey was slated to be removed. He was viewed as unpredictable and uncooperative. Moreover, the decision was also intended to weaken the presidency.
3. The comparison with President Richard Nixon‘s firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox is a red herring (a media diversion) because it was not president Trump who took the decision to fire James Comey. Moreover, the alleged collusion between Moscow and Trump is FAKE. It cannot reasonably be compared to the Watergate investigation, which Nixon attempted to block.
4. A pro-forma letter was sent by President Trump to FBI Director James Comey, which casually endorsed the recommendation of the office of the Attorney General.
Trump did not express his opinion other than supporting the recommendations drafted by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (see screen shot of Trump’s letter below and letter of Jeff Sessions to Trump)
5. Does the firing of Comey serve the interests of President Trump? The answer is NO. The firing of Comey was intended to weaken the president and provide ammunition to the smear campaign against him. The Attorney General’s recommendation to fire Comey will eventually backlash on President Trump in the context of the Russia Probe, namely the investigation into the FAKE collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
6. In all likelihood more compliant replacement candidates for the position of FBI director were contemplated PRIOR to Comey’s dismissal.
7. Who instructed AG Jeff Sessions to make this decision? Not the White House. What political interests are being served?
Ironically, the Democrats have raised the broader issue of the alleged “Russian hacking” of the DNC pointing to the fact that the firing of Comey will jeopardize “the integrity of the investigation”. In recent developments they are calling for the appointment of an independent special prosecutor to take over the investigation into “Russian meddling” prior to the appointment of a new FBI Director.
8. Following the firing of James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has become Acting Director of the FBI pending the confirmation of an “interim” director (and eventually a new director). The relationship between McCabe and Comey is central to an understanding of the James Comey saga.
Divisions within the FBI
This crisis hinges on an understanding of profound political rivalries as well as divisions within the FBI pertaining both to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s State Department email trove as well as to the Russian meddling allegations.
Was Comey “uncooperative” as underscored by several Congressional Democrats in March expressing an “independent” perspective with regard to the investigation into Russia’s alleged support of the Trump election campaign?
Democrats allege that perhaps Comey is biased: They say he was perfectly willing to talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails — though Comey says he commented in that case because it was a closed investigation. Others have said the director is simply being uncooperative.(Washington Post, March 19, 2017)
What was his stance with respect to Hillary’s email trove? Both his First Letter (July 2016) and Second Letter (October 28, 2016) were detrimental to Hillary’s presidential candidacy. It should be understood that the FBI “Russia Probe” and the Hillary investigation are intimately related. One does not go without the other.
Flashback to October-November 2016
Let’s recall some important events leading up to James Comey’s Second Letter to the US Congress regarding the investigation into Hillary’s email trove.
There were serious divisions within the FBI between James Comey and his Number Two Man Andrew McCabe.
Who is FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe? (image left) What is his role? Whose interests is he serving?
There were pressures from the Obama administration as well as attempts from within the FBI to block the investigation into Hillary’s emails, not to mention the fraudulent transactions of the Clinton Foundation. There were also divisions within the investigating team headed by Andrew McCabe.
James Comey was fully aware that Andrew McCabe had been coopted by Hillary Clinton, promoted to the FBI’s Number Two position and put in charge of the investigation of Hillary’s emails.
What motivated the release of the Second Letter to the US Congress, which according to the Democrats contributed to jeopardizing Hillary’s candidacy?
In his Second Letter, Comey called for steps allowing the FBI “to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
The second letter by FBI Director Comey came as a Bombshell. Comey’s initiative points this time to the possibility that a candidate to the presidency of the United States be under criminal investigation by the FBI.
The Second letter pertaining to the Emails opens up a “Pandora’s box” of fraud, corruption, bribery and money laundering. …
This does not solely pertain to the Email scandal, the FBI “has an open investigation into the Clinton Foundation”, which constitutes a hotbed of fraud …” Moreover, a class action lawsuit was launched against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) “alleging fraud and collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign”. And a lot more….(including mysterious deaths). (Michel Chossudovsky, Hillary Clinton: Wall Street’s Losing Horse? Constitutional Crisis? What’s the End Game? Global Research, November 1, 2016)
What triggered Comey’s October 28 decision, less than two weeks before the elections?
Hillary’s “donation” of close to half a million dollars to Andrew McCabe’s wife as well as his “conflict of interest” were made public, following a damning report by the Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ report revealed that “Clinton friend [Virginia Governor] Terry McAuliffe donated money to a [senior] FBI investigator’s wife when she ran for office” . Governor Terry McAuliffe transferred the money on behalf of Hillary Clinton:
“Last night’s revelation that close Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe authorized $675,000 to the wife of a top official at the FBI, who conveniently was promoted to deputy director, and helped oversee the investigation into Clinton’s secret server is deeply disturbing and calls into question the entire investigation,” Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications adviser, said in a statement, The Hill reported. “The fact that this was allowed to occur shows either outright negligent behavior by the FBI or a level of corruption that is beyond belief.The FBI needs to fully address these issues as soon as possible.” (UPI, October 24, 2016, emphasis added)
The “donation” went to the 2015 Virginia state Senate election campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who just so happens to be the wife of FBI official Andrew McCabe who — a few months later in January 2016– was appointed deputy director of the FBI. McCabe was also put in charge of the Clinton Email investigation. How convenient (See WSJ, October 24, 2016).
Hillary Clinton had attempted to “buy legal immunity” by “coopting” a senior police official, a practice which has been widely applied by US organized crime. The only difference is that Clinton was a candidate to the presidency of the United States.
Andrew McCabe became Hillary’s Trojan Horse within the FBI.
Upon the release of the WSJ report, FBI Director Comey, responding to pressure from within the FBI, also with a view to protecting his authority, decided to release a second letter regarding the Clinton Emails.
Did this release have the support of Andrew McCabe who was leading the Hillary investigation (on behalf of Hillary)?. Unlikely.
Whether Comey was acting on behalf of the Trump campaign by releasing damaging information regarding Hillary Clinton eleven days before the election remains to be firmly established. Unquestionably, however, the Second Letter was detrimental to Clinton’s presidential candidacy. And Trump at the height of the Election campaign acknowledged Comey’s courage: “he showed guts”, according to candidate Trump and earned his “respect”. What explain’s his about turn? Why did he accept the recommendations of the Attorney General’s office at face value?
The fact of the matter is that James Comey with some ambiguity took a stance which recognized the need to investigate Hillary Clinton’s alleged criminal wrongdoings, which were being investigated under the helm of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
The Role of the Wall Street Journal
The timing of Comey’s decision to release the Second Letter less than two weeks before the elections was crucial. But it was ultimately the WSJ (and those behind the release of the report on the Clinton-McAuliffe-McCabe affair) which determined the “conflict of interest” of Andrew McCabe who was in charge of the Clinton investigation (on behalf of Hillary). The WSJ is owned by the News Corp conglomerate, one of the most powerful global media groups owned by the Murdoch Family Trust. Rupert Murdoch is a firm supporter of Donald Trump.
Was Comey “uncooperative” in the investigation into the Russian hacking allegations? Opinions are divided on this issue. What is significant is that Comey had not been “co-opted” in the same way as McCabe. And that’s why they wanted him out.
While Comey’s “October Surprise” may have benefited the Trump campaign, the actions of his Deputy Andrew McCabe (who was in charge of the investigation into Hillary’s emails) were geared towards obfuscating Hillary Clinton’s alleged crimes as well as protecting her candidacy (on behalf of the Neocons and her corporate sponsors).
Andrew McCabe was in “conflict of interest”. This is something which Donald Trump raised during the election campaign following the release of the WSJ article.
Comey’s actions were acknowledged by Trump on October 28, 2016 following the release of the Second Letter. During the election campaign Trump “hailed the October 28 letter as an action in which Comey “showed guts”. (See Patrick Martin, World Socialist Website, May 10, 2017)
“This Is Bigger than Watergate” said Trump.
Comey had Trump’s support during the election campaign.
What can be said about James Comey is that he did not act as a political proxy (on behalf of the Neocons) in releasing his Second Letter.
And that is why he was fired.
The Appointment of the Next FBI director
The divisions within the FBI both during the election and its aftermath are intimately related to ongoing political rivalries. And that applies to the appointment of the next FBI director.
At this stage an Interim FBI Director is sought to replace Acting Director McCabe. But McCabe is also a candidate for that position. The moment an interim director is appointed pending Senate approval of a new FBI director, the acting director will be replaced by the interim director.
According to the WSJ, “the temporary chief [interim director] will immediately find himself at the epicenter of the politically fraught investigation into potential collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Kremlin…”
The Neocons seek Compliance
Why is this selection process so important?
What is sought by the Neocons is that the person in charge of the FBI must be fully compliant in conducting the fake investigation against Moscow meddling, while also focussing on the collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
The stakes are high. A power-play is ongoing which has a bearing on the mainstay of US Foreign Policy, which consists in confronting Moscow as well threatening to wage war on Russia.
To sustain their diabolical foreign policy design, the Department of Justice will no doubt seek once again to bypass Donald Trump. As in the case of the firing of Comey, they will push for the selection of a reliable crony to head the FBI with a view to:
1) Actively pursuing the Fake Russia meddling investigation without the FBI acting “independently”. This objective is central to the Deep State’s confrontational foreign policy agenda against Russia. The Dems are pushing for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor.
2) Eventually close down the investigation into Hillary’s email trove (bear in mind that the Russia and Hillary investigations are interrelated).
3) Use the Russia election meddling investigation to reignite the smear campaign against Trump, portraying him as an instrument of Moscow. That process would not have occurred in the same way with James Comey as head of the FBI.
Already, the Stage has been Set in the wake of Comey’s demise. The door is now open to smearing Trump and his immediate political entourage:
“The Senate Intelligence Committee is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, and is looking at sensitive questions about whether anyone in Mr. Trump’s orbit may have coordinated with Russia.” (WSJ, May 12, 2017)
What the Neocons and their allies at the Department of Justice are seeking is a “reliable proxy” to take on the position of interim FBI director.
Comey was fired because he was “unpredictable”. He could not be relied upon to fully endorse the two investigations, one of which had been entrusted to Andrew McCabe (acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton).
Several candidates have been interviewed by AG Jeff Sessions including Clinton’s Trojan Horse Andrew McCabe whose candidacy is supported by the Neocons, yet visibly opposed by President Trump. On the other hand, Trump has interviewed potential candidates in the Oval office.
What must be underscored is that the firing of James Comey suggests that president Trump is either unable or unwilling to take important decisions.
Was Trump aware of the fact that the Sessions-Rosenstein recommendation was ultimately intended to smear him and weaken his presidency?
No doubt Andrew McCabe will be among the Neocons preferred candidates acting on their behalf as proxies. At first glance, McCabe’s appointment appears unlikely. Trump has reason to be dead against him. But the question is whether president Trump will refuse or accept the recommendation of the Attorney General in regards to the candidacy of McCabe or another crony put forth by the Neocons.
One suspects that the candidacy of Andrew McCabe as interim director of the FBI had already been contemplated at an earlier stage prior to the firing of James Comey on May 9, 2017. Update: Andrew McCabe is part of the short list for the position of director of the FBI
There are currently over 6500 #PalestinianPoliticalPrisoners detained by Israel. Over the past 50 years, more than 800000 Palestinians have been imprisoned or detained by Israel.
Virtually every single Palestinian family has been affected by Israeli imprisonment of a loved one. Presently there are more than 500 Palestinians held under Israel’s “administrative detention” (equivalent of Apartheid SA’s “detention without trial”). 25 Palestinian journalists and 13 Palestinian parliamentarians are also currently being incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Israel is also holding 300 Palestinian children (some as young as 13 years old). In the last one year alone Israel has arrested more than 400 Palestinians for social media posts. Click here for infographics.
Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman has responded to the current hunger strike saying:
“I take the approach of Margaret Thatcher” in reference to the former British prime minister who notoriously allowed Irish hunger strikers to die in prison. In addition, Israeli citizens have responded by holding a barbecue braai outside one of the Israeli prison to taunt #PalestinianPoliticalPrisoners who are on hunger strike. The Israelis said that the prisoners “will enjoy breathing in the smoke and suffer from the smell of the meat, and [we will] show them that we will not give in to their whims.”
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South African government ministers are lending their support to the over 1500 #PalestinianPoliticalPrisoners currently on hunger strike (since 17 April). The #PalestinianPoliticalPrisoners, who have gone without any food for almost a month now, are demanding an end to Israel’s detention without trial among other issues.
Some of the government officials who will be participating in the nationwide 24 hour fast in solidarity with #PalestinianPoliticalPrisoners include Dr Aaron Motsoaledi (Minister of Health), Ayanda Dlodlo (Minister of Communications), Naledi Pandor (Minister of Science & Technology), Rob Davies (Minister of Trade & Industry), Ebrahim Patel (Minister for Economic Development), Nomaindia Mfeketo (Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation), Buti Manamela (Deputy Minister in the Presidency), Enver Surty (Deputy Minister of Basic Education), Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams (Deputy Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services), Fatima Chohan (Deputy Minister of Home Affairs), John Jeffery (Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development) and Bongani Mkgoni (Deputy Minister of Police).
Well known personalities, liberation icons, activists and political leaders who have also pledged to participate include: Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (Former African Union Chairperson), Jessie Duarte (ANC Deputy Secretary-General), Faiez Jacobs (ANC Provincial Secretary), Sidumo Dlamini (President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions), Mluleki Dlelanga (YCL National Secretary), Khulekani Skosana (Secretary-General of the Congress of South African Students), Sifiso Mtsweni (NYDA Chairperson), Reverend Edwin Arrison (Chairperson of the National Coalition 4 Palestine), Frans Baleni (Deputy Chair of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and former NUM GS), Allan Kolski Horwitz (SA Jews for Palestine), Issu Chiba (86 year old former Robben Island anti-apartheid political prisoner), Kehla Shubane (former Robben Island anti-apartheid political prisoner), Charles Setsubi (SACP CC member and former MK soldier deployed in Zambia and Tanzania), Bongani Mbindwane (former anti-apartheid detainee and activist), Parks Tau (President of the United Cities and Local Government, Chairperson of SA Local Government Association and former Mayor of Johannesburg) and Mpho Masemola (Chairperson of the Ex Political Prisoners Association of South Africa).
TV presenters Eben Jansen, Hajra Omarjee, Nina Hastie, Kuli Roberts, Shaka Sisulu and media personalities Kay Sexwale, Janet Smith, Jimi Matthews and Yusuf Abramjee have also lent their support to the 24 hour fast. Click here for a regularly updated list of participants.
The 24 hour solidarity hunger strike fast will start at 6pm on Sunday 14 May and end at 6pm on Monday 15 May. Those who would like to join the solidarity hunger strike are invited to submit their names and titles to: [email protected]. Click here for an IOL article on the issue.
Comments Off on In Solidarity with #Palestinian Political Prisoners detained by Israel: South African Government Ministers, Media Personalities and Activists Commit to 24 Hour Fast
Clearly what happened was a false flag, wrongfully blamed on Damascus.
But did any attack occur, perhaps a fake incident instead, creating the appearance of a CW attack, not a real one, giving Washington a pretext to strike Syria’s Shayrat airbase?
Here’s what’s known. Al-Qaeda-connected, Western-supported, anti-Assad White Helmets alone provided unverified images of the alleged attack’s aftermath.
No evidence suggests area residents were victims of toxic sarin or any other CW. None sought medical treatment.
Nothing proves an attack actually occurred, just unverified reports claiming one, falsely blaming Damascus for what appears not to have happened.
Last month, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Khan Sheikhoun areas residents weren’t evacuated to protect them from alleged toxic exposure.
“Neither locals nor pseudo-rescuers have even asked for medicines, antidotes, decontaminants,” or any other help, he explained.
“(T)here are simply no plans to carry out a qualified investigation…by the current ‘schemers’ of the (alleged) chemical attack.”
“(T)he only (so-called evidence of CW use comes from al-Qaeda-connected) White Helmets videos.”
Images of them in Kahn Sheikhoun showed them with no protective clothing – indicating no need because no CW attack occurred, just the fabricated report of one apparently – a pretext for Trump’s aggression.
On May 6, Fort Russ said Qatar-controlled “Al-Jazeera may screen White Helmets fake chemical attacks,” using “rounded up civilians” in Idlib province as props for the deception, providing another pretext for US aggression.
“(T)his information was confirmed by all major Russian media and many publications in the Middle East,” Fort Russ said.
“(A) Syrian military intelligence source earlier this week, said that militants rounded up civilians and filmed one or more fake chemical attacks. Furthermore it has been revealed, that Al Jazeera channel was present there” filming.
According to Russia’s First Channel,
“23 bodies of children were recently stolen from a hospital in Idlib. It seems that the ‘White Helmets’ are going to arrange another theatrical production under a false flag soon. Maybe another chemical attack in order to link it with President Assad.”
All wars are based on deception and Big Lies. Truth-telling defeats them. Public support is needed to wage them.
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.”
A crucial component of concrete, sand is vital to the global construction industry, writes Nick Meynen. China alone is importing a billion tonnes of sand a year, and its increasing scarcity is leading to large scale illegal mining and deadly conflicts. With ever more sand fetched from riverbeds, shorelines and sandbanks, roads and bridges are being undermined and beaches eroded. And the world’s sand wars are only set to worsen.
Dubai is a fairytale world. Back in 1995 a jeep brought me to a region where you do not want to run out of fuel: Rub’ al Khali or the Empty Quarter.
Think of Lawrence of Arabia and a thirsty death. This is the largest continuous sand desert in the world, a sandpit as big as France.
Today, Dubai has a mile-long artificial peninsula in the form of a palm tree that is packed with hotels and expensive villas. When the global recession hit Dubai in 2009, the world stood still.
Well, at least the work on Dubai’s artificial island project called ‘The World‘ stopped. By that time, it had already moved a massive 321 million tons of sand, but the islands were left empty.
Elsewhere, the building boom went on. The Burj Khalifa is now the highest tower in the world. According to its website, there are about 330,000 cubic meters of cement in the tower – one fourth of it comprises sand. How easy for the Burj and other Dubai skyscrapers to have all that sand in their backyard, right?
The desert that has run out of sand!
As it turns out, the tons of sand in the Burj Khalifa came from Australia because there is not enough sand for concrete available in that region itself.
The largest continuous sand desert in the world is unusable for concrete. It is not even good enough to build those islands. The wind has free play in the desert and makes the sand grains too round, so that they do not stick together.
Marine sand is better but the lion’s share of the marine sand on the coast of Dubai has already been used up for the palm islands. And the salt in sea sand does not work well with the steel in reinforced concrete. Dubai desalinates its water but that is way too costly a method to use to clean marine sand. It also requires oil, and unfortunately for Dubai, its oil stock is dwindling. The city already imports more petroleum products than it exports and in a decade or two the wells will be dry.
The World Expo in 2020, to be held in Dubai, will probably be one of the world’s most pompous of shows. A tower even higher tower than the Burj Khalifa is being built for it.
In 2012, the British business bank Barclays amended the popular adage that ‘pride comes before a fall’ with a study that shows that ‘high-rises come before a fall‘ – demonstrating that there is a strong chance of financial crashes following a boom in the construction of skyscrapers.
If you look past the palaces in Dubai and its sinking oil, water and construction sand reserves, then the question is not whether but when the desert will blast Dubai’s bling into decor more suitable for an apocalyptic film.
Singapore: stockpiling sand
Nearly 6,000 km to the South East of Dubai is Singapore, which stockpiles sand. It imports massive amounts of this resource and keeps it as a reserve, comparable to a strategic stock of oil. Singapore needs sand to continue to grow – the city-state has increased its land mass by 22% in the past 50 years.
Initially, this was easy. Its neighbours sold it their sand. But in 1997, Malaysia officially stopped selling sand to Singapore. Indonesia and Cambodia stopped in 2007, and Vietnam in 2009. The entire international sand business became a political mine field. Populations tend to dislike the idea of selling pieces of their country for the purpose of expanding another country, especially if violence against them and their environment is involved.
In some cases, the export went underground. The non-governmental organisation Global Witness found that in Cambodia – the most corrupt country in South East Asia according to anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International – contracts worth millions were still ongoing, with officials involved.
In practice, companies dig sand in vulnerable natural areas and local fishermen lose their key capital: fish. Investigative reporting has shown that this happened in Vietnam, also as a result of the illegal export of sand to Singapore.
The sand mafia also swept 24 Indonesian islands off the map to sell the sand in Singapore. This caused a dispute over the exact location of the international border between Singapore and Indonesia. At one point, Singapore had to pay $190 per tonne of sand, making it more expensive than a barrel of crude oil.
Singapore’s sand story has occasionally made it to the news, but today it becomes ever more obvious that the scarcity of sand across the world is spreading and affecting all of us. The growing sand shortage is putting sand in the machine called ‘industrial civilisation’, and leading to deadly conflicts.
The sand mafia in India
Sumaira Abdulali, 55, is now a public figure in India. The media call her the ‘Minister of Noise’ because of her activism against noise pollution in Mumbai. But she first became famous for her fight against the sand mafia.
In 2004, she noticed that the beach near her house in Alibaug, near Mumbai, was shrinking. She heard trucks at night that she suspected were carting the sand away, and decided to take action. She called the police, took her car and drove to where the road ended at the beach.
“Instead of rushing to the scene of the crime, the police warned [off] the illegal sand miners”, said Abdulali.
As she waited in her car for the police to arrive, the men present at the mining site pulled her out and assaulted her. She survived the beatings, but needed to be hospitalised.
As she was beaten, one of the miners asked:
“Do you know who I am?”
He was the son of a local politician, also the owner of a construction company.
Two years later, Abdulali started a lawsuit against the sand mafia in Maharashtra. In 2010, the Bombay High Court banned sand mining: first only in areas that came under the ecologically-sensitive Coastal Regulation Zone and later in the entire state of Maharashtra, whose capital, Mumbai, is the base of the Hindi film industry, popularly known as Bollywood.
With more than 20 million inhabitants, Mumbai is also one of the 10 largest cities in the world – with a huge appetite for sand by its construction industry. Despite that, the ban on sand mining remained in force until protective measures were turned into laws, which did not happen until 2015.
Abdulali sums up the effects of sand extraction in India: soil erosion, landslides, water table loss, infertility of farmland, disturbances of ecosystems and marine life, beach disappearances – all the way to collapsing bridges.
Once Abdulali made a surreal video of a train crossing the Vaitarna railway bridge while machines were extracting sand from the riverbed. That bridge is in Virar, north of Mumbai, and the city’s sole link to North India. Last August, when the Mahad bridge, across the Savitri river, on the Mumbai-Goa highway collapsed, killing at least 28 people, several activists including Abdulali blamed the incident on sand mining on the riverbed.
Around that time, railway officials also admitted that they were concerned that the Vaitarna bridge’s foundation had been weakened by illegal sand mining on the riverbed. A senior Western Railways officer told The Hindu newspaper:
“We believe there is a nexus between the sand mafia and certain state government departments. Due to the illegal sand mining, the flow of the Vaitarna has been altered, which is a dangerous sign for the bridge’s health.”
Attempted murder – and guess who the police sided with
In 2010, Abdulali took a journalist and photographer on a field visit to Raigad – the Maharashtra district where the Mahad bridge is located – where sand extraction was in progress despite the ban. They pretended to be looking to buy land, but then filmed illegal and industrial exploitation of sand.
Their return to Mumbai did not go well. Their car was attacked and they were forced into a car chase on a dirt track, with two cars trying to push them into a ravine. Abdulali said that on the main road, a truck was also waiting to crash into them, but it also missed.
“What saved our lives is that my husband is a professional rally driver and he taught me some of his driving skills”, said Abdulali. “Again, the police were in cahoots with the mafia. I wanted to report an attempted murder attack, but they wanted to give me a speeding ticket! Once again, a powerful local politician controlled the illegal trade in sand.”
Earlier this year, journalist Sandhya Ravishankar, who wrote a four-part series on illegal sand mining along Tamil Nadu’s southern beaches, which was published in the online magazine The Wire, said that she had been receiving death threats and was facing online abuse, which she blamed on a sand-mining company that she had named in her reports.
She filed a complaint in connection with the threats and harassment with the Chennai police in March.
Recycling rubble into sand? Nah … !
Abdulali says that the people in control of the business usually make sure that they also get into the local village council, or at even higher political levels.
For instance, the father of one of the men who beat her up in 2004 became a minister of state in Maharashtra. He claims he is out of the sand business now, but still owns the largest sand storage site. He has shifted his business interests to the next goldmine: stones.
Abdulali said that recycling construction material would help reduce the demand for new sand.
“To reduce the demand for new sand, you need to evolve into a circular economy”, she said. “Big cities in India crush many old buildings to make room for new, but the debris ends up at landfills. In some countries, the use of primary material is only allowed after the demolition waste is used up.
“In the Netherlands, 90% of all demolition waste is recycled. Even poorer countries like Vietnam are now reusing demolition waste. You can build roads with a lot less sand, by recycling plastic as a resource. We have to do that. If we continue like this, India will dig a grave for itself and pay a very expensive price. The circular economy is a much better option.”
Today you can also drink beer for the sake of beaches. A machine reduces empty beer bottles to a kind of sand that is useful in construction. But a circular economy also needs energy. The beer campaigners do have a point: beaches worldwide are in trouble. Rivers transport sand to the sea. Take the sand out and you end up without a beach. In Sri Lanka, they found that out the hard way.
The most eroded coastline in all of Sri Lanka is around the delta of the Maha Oya river, which, not by accident, is also the river with the most sand mining. In some places the beach recedes by 12 metres to 15 metres each year. Thousands of families here have lost their land by the sea.
When the damage became too rampant and too evident, a ban on mechanical sand extraction in the river was called for. But here too, the sand mafia keeps digging.
The sand mafia is not limited to South Asia. In Elmina Bay in Ghana, the sand mafia even digs sand just in front of the few beach resorts the country has. Hotels have lost 30 metres of beach. The sea now comes to their doorstep. The Environmental Justice Atlas contains the details of at least 64 conflicts around sand, gravel and quarries.
Even the most mined material in the world has become scarce. The resulting struggle for what is left is getting ugly. In the future, that could be a violent struggle in a big way.
The coming sand wars
Worldwide, we use twice as much sand as all the rivers in the world transport. So we have started digging elsewhere. The majority of all the sand we now use is marine sand. As a result, two thirds of all beaches in the world lose sand – just as sea levels are rising due to warming climate.
Northwest Europe fetches more than 100 million cubic meters of marine sediment from the North East Atlantic, mainly sand from the shallow North Sea. But marine sand is less suitable for concrete because salty sand does not go well with concrete reinforced with steel. To use marine sand in construction, you need to wash it with fresh water. Unfortunately for us, that is another problem.
Seventy percent of the earth is covered with water, but only 0.007% of that is fresh water available for consumption. Fred Pearce, the acclaimed author of When the rivers run dry: Water, the defining crisis of the twenty first century, pointed out a while ago that if everyone today lived like the average meat, beer and milk consuming westerner, all the water in all the rivers in the whole world would not be enough.
Forget the one or two litres of water you drink every day. Making one average ice cream uses up 1,000 litres of water, one steak takes 5,000 litres.
The world’s soils provide twice as much food today as they did a generation ago, but in that period we also diverted three times more water from rivers and the surface to agriculture. At one point, hard choices will need to be made between using fresh water for food crops or for washing marine sand. The interests of the construction industry and those of farmers will clash.
Another hard choice to be made is that between the beaches and our buildings. Oddly enough, in the US, despite a federal ban on sand mining on beaches, there is just one company openly digging away on a beach in California, using a legal loophole. The building company that is literally making America smaller has its headquarters in Mexico.
But that conflict is an anecdotal side-show compared to the one between the world’s two superpowers. The demand for sand increases annually by more than 5%, mainly due to rapid urbanisation. In 20 years, the production of cement – which requires sand – has tripled. China uses about half of all sand used globally and makes 58% of all the cement in the world. Shanghai built more skyscrapers in 10 years than New York ever did.
China’s billion tonne a year sand habit – and that’s just imports
The Chinese hunger for sand is immense, and sand mines on the mainland are no longer low-hanging fruit. Poyang Lake, China’s largest lake, is also the largest sand mine in the world: 236 million cubic metres of sand are extracted from it every year. Because of this, the water table near the lake has dropped, hurting fauna and flora, and also the locals who live in the vicinity.
China today imports one billion tonnes of sand a year. That is five times more than its annual coal imports. In the South China Sea, China is busy pumping sand on pieces of rock that would otherwise stay under the water – thus creating islands. These islands strengthen its claim on the disputed South China Sea, securing shipping lanes, and access to new oil and gas reserves.
The tensions with other countries claiming parts of the same sea have increased in recent years, sometimes resulting in deaths – as was the case in a conflict between China and Vietnam.
But the bigger issue is the rising tension between China and the US. The Trump administration does not appear very willing to accommodate China as a rising superpower. Trump’s strategist and right-hand man Steve Bannon once said that the US and China will be at war within five to 10 years, and that such a war would begin in the South China Sea.
Trump’s Foreign Minister Rex Tillerson, formerly the CEO of oil giant Exxon, claimed that China should not be allowed access to the islands it is building in that sea. This prompted China to remind Washington that the US was not a party to the conflict in the South China Sea and it would be wise to keep it that way.
Since World War II, the US has been the dominant navy in Asia and in the South China Sea. However, China’s construction of islands in the South China Sea is accompanied by an expansion of its military presence in the area.
Although most media attention regarding those troubled waters is related to potential oil sources and the strategic importance of the disputed islands to China, The Economist wrote in February 2015 that there is another reason why China is so eager to control that sea: sand.
Capitalism goes into self-destruct mode
Sand Wars was the title of a popular 2013 documentary by the European channel ARTE. It prompted the United Nations to draft a report called Sand. Rarer than one thinks. It all makes this author think about one book from the 1930s.
In that era of emerging fascism, in his book War with the Newts, the Nobel Prize-nominated author Karel Capek satirised the short-sightedness of appeasement, the slow erosion of norms and a raw capitalist expansion strategy that ended with the loss of our coastlines by the very same creature humans created.
Little could he know that a century later, facts are trying to catch up with his science-fiction.
Nick Meynen is one of The Ecologist’s ‘New Voices’ contributors. He works at the EnvJustice project in the European Environment Bureau but he is also a journalist and an author. The sand series is part of Nick’s new book the title of which translates to: ‘Frontlines. A journey through the shadows of the world economy‘.
The political crisis gripping Washington sharpened Wednesday in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s surprise firing of FBI Director James Comey.
Trump triggered a political firestorm Tuesday when he abruptly dismissed Comey, who was heading up the most active investigation into alleged Russian government hacking of the 2016 US election and accusations of collusion between the Trump election campaign and the Kremlin.
Democrats in the Senate and other party officials lined up as a bloc on Wednesday to demand the appointment of a special prosecutor or the establishment of an independent commission to take the investigation out of the hands of Trump appointees, a demand that was firmly rejected by Republican congressional leaders.
Neither the Democratic Party nor the intelligence agencies have produced any substantive evidence to support their claims that Moscow hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign director John Podesta in order to tip the election in Trump’s favor. But this is treated as undisputed fact by the bulk of the corporate media and used to agitate for a policy that leads inexorably to war with the world’s second-largest nuclear power.
The Democrats’ response to Comey’s firing has once again made clear that their opposition to Trump has nothing in common with the mass popular opposition to his assault on health care, education, environmental regulations, the rights of immigrants and democratic rights in general. It is instead focused on US imperialist foreign policy and allied with powerful factions within the intelligence and military establishment that consider Trump insufficiently aggressive in the confrontation with Russia.
To the extent that the Democrats criticize Trump’s authoritarian methods, it is out of fear that they will further discredit the entire political system and spark an uncontrollable movement of the working class.
Trump’s official rationale for the dismissal of Comey has no credibility. The letter from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein released Tuesday cites Comey’s violation of Justice Department protocol in holding a press conference last July to announce his decision not to criminally prosecute Clinton for her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, while unfairly criticizing her “extreme carelessness” in handling classified material. It also cites Comey’s extraordinary letter to Congress 11 days before Election Day announcing the reopening of the email investigation, a move that Clinton claims cost her the election.
The problem is that Trump never raised Comey’s decision to circumvent the Justice Department’s chain of command. He then congratulated the FBI director when he announced the reopening of the email probe in the run-up to the election. Nor did the official narrative explain why Comey was being fired now for things he did months ago.
Late Wednesday night, the Washington Post reported that Rosenstein threatened to resign on Tuesday night “after the narrative emerging from the White House on Tuesday evening cast him as a prime mover in the decision to fire Comey and that the president acted only on his recommendation.”
A series of developments over the past week make clear that Trump fired Comey because he was not only resisting White House pressure to end the Russia investigation, but expanding the probe.
Press reports reveal that in recent days federal prosecutors working under Comey have issued grand jury subpoenas for records of associates of Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. Flynn was fired in February for allegedly misleading the White House about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the US concerning sanctions that had been imposed by President Obama in retaliation for Russia’s supposed interference in the US election.
It has also been reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own investigation of the Russian hacking charges, sent a request to the Treasury for financial records of Flynn associates. Finally, members of Congress report that Comey told them he sent a request to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein last week for more money to conduct the FBI investigation.
Comey was scheduled to testify Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Trump was already enraged over his March 20 congressional testimony, in which Comey announced that the FBI was conducting an investigation into the Russian hacking allegations, including charges of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Trump was also reportedly incensed over Comey’s failure to back up his claim that Obama had tapped the telephones at his Trump Tower campaign headquarters.
On Wednesday morning, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer took the unusual step of calling on all Democratic senators to be present for the opening of the session. Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opened the session and flatly ruled out the appointment of a special prosecutor or other form of independent investigation.
Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Schumer in response asked,
“Were those investigations getting too close to home for the president?”
Schumer called for separate closed, and, if necessary, classified briefings of all senators by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to answer questions on the Comey firing, as well as an all-senator session to question Comey. He demanded that a special prosecutor be appointed, not by a Trump appointee in the Justice Department, but rather by a high-ranking career department official. The Democrats then froze all committee hearings, bringing the Senate virtually to a halt for the day.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez spoke before several hundred people at a rally outside the White House called by Moveon.org that featured Russian flags and signs reading “Free Comey!” He called the firing of Comey “worse than the Saturday Night Massacre” (a reference to the Nixon Watergate scandal) and said the Senate should block confirmation of any replacement until the administration agreed to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia.
The supposed representatives of the Democratic Party “left,” senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, rushed to solidify themselves with the anti-Russia witch hunt. Sanders issued a statement declaring,
“We need an independent investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Warren gave an interview to CNN in which she attacked Trump for his ties to the Russian “enemy” and tacked on the completely unsubstantiated charge that the Russian government was behind the pre-election hack of the campaign of Emmanuel Macron in France and was preparing similar efforts to manipulate the upcoming elections in Britain and Germany.
For the most part, the media adopted similar positions, a notable exception being the Wall Street Journal, which defended the firing of Comey. The New York Times posed an editorial Tuesday night under the headline “Trump’s Firing of Comey Is All About the Russia Inquiry.” The Times wrote,
“Mr. Comey was fired because he was leading an active investigation that could bring down a president.”
The Washington Post was even more strident, concluding its editorial with an ominous call for an independent commission to
“not merely…determine if anyone should be charged with a crime, but to develop a complete picture of Russian capabilities and intentions, as well as recommendations for mounting a defense of US democracy.”
There were some significant Republican defections from the position of full support for Trump taken by Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. A number of senators, including the Republican chair of the Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, said they were “troubled” by the timing of the Comey firing. But only Lindsey Graham, who backed the firing, joined with John McCain, who denounced it, in calling for a special congressional committee to investigate alleged ties between Trump and Moscow.
At a White House press briefing Wednesday afternoon, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sandersdenied that the firing of Comey had anything to do with the Russia investigation. In reply to questions about its timing, she said that Trump had been considering firing Comey ever since his election—an assertion that flatly contradicts numerous statements by Trump and his spokespeople expressing complete confidence in the FBI director.
A “big catalyst” for the final decision, she said, was Comey’s May 3 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he defended his decision last July to call his own press conference on the Clinton email investigation without even informing the attorney general or other Justice Department officials. Calling this circumvention of normal channels an “atrocity,” she declared,
“Director Comey made a pretty startling revelation that he had essentially taken a stick of dynamite and thrown it into the Department of Justice by going around the chain of command.”
This was perhaps her only statement that had a ring of truth. It is entirely plausible that Trump was alarmed by Comey’s testimony, interpreting it as a signal that he would not bow to pressure from the White House to rein in his investigation, prompting Trump to pull the trigger and fire him.
On May 5 the role of Pentagon forces inside the Horn of Africa nations of Somalia was further exposed when Navy Seal chief petty officer Kyle Miliken reportedly died in a gun battle with al-Shabaab fighters.
This encounter was said to have taken place during a mission 40 miles west of the capital of Mogadishu.
The White House war against Somalia reemerged over a decade ago when the-then administration of President George W. Bush, Jr. encouraged the intervention of the military forces of neighboring Ethiopia aimed at eliminating the bases of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). These developments were accompanied by an aerial campaign carried out by Washington and London designed to enhance U.S. influence over the political situation inside the country.
With respect to the death of Navy Seal Miliken, the initial reports claimed that he was acting alongside Team 6 while serving in an advisory capacity to the Somalia National Army in line with the policy shift mandated by the current administration of President Donald Trump. Contrasting this story only several days later, the official Pentagon military spokesperson revealed that the U.S. soldiers were engaging al-Shabaab fighters embedded with the local troops in a purported counter-terrorism operation.
An article in the New York Times reporting on the proceedings of a security conference in the Southern African state of Malawi, noted that:
“Brig. Gen. David J. Furness, the commander of the military’s task force for the Horn of Africa, offered a different account on Tuesday (May 9), saying that American and Somali forces were traveling together in a single group when they came under fire. No Somali forces were hit. General Furness, in an interview at the African Land Forces summit meeting in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, said he did not believe that Americans had been specifically targeted because it was dark and it was unlikely that the assailants were wearing night vision goggles. ‘We were there on an advise, assist and accompany mission,’ General Furness said.'”
Other statements suggested that the joints efforts by the Somalian army and the Team 6 Navy Seals were a failure. Prior to arriving at the location of the search and destroy mission against al-Shabaab, the U.S. and local forces were ambushed by Islamic guerrilla units.
Captain Jeff Davis of the Department of Defense also said of the incident that two ranking military officials of al-Shabaab were killed by the U.S. and its Somalian allies. Nonetheless, two other Navy Seal troops were wounded in the exchange.
Although a recent commentary published by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson praised the role of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) consisting of 22,000 regional troops which are trained and subsidized by the U.S. and the European Union (EU), in establishing stability in Mogadishu and other areas, an escalation of fighting in the southern region resulted in the deaths of 17 people. Johnson said in his opinion piece in the Globe and Mail that despite the years in which al-Shabaab had controlled large swaths of territory to the point where British diplomatic officials would dare not venture into the oil-rich Horn of Africa nation and largely operated from neighboring Kenya,
“Today, all that has changed. Brave African soldiers mobilized by the African Union Mission in Somalia – known as AMISOM – turned the tide against al-Shabaab, driving the terrorists out of Mogadishu and liberating thousands of square miles.” (May 10)
However, a fierce battle in a southern town prompted the retreat of Somalian National Army troops in early May. Garowe Online (GO) reported on May 9 saying:
“al-Shabaab militants seized Goofgaduud district from the joint Somali government and Southwest state forces on Tuesday following a deadly attack that left at least 17 soldiers dead…. The fall of Goofgaduud which lies about 30 km north of Baidoa town, the regional capital of Bay region, is the latest town taken by the militant group attempting to topple the Western-backed Somali government. Col. Abdullahi Sheikh Mohamed, a senior Somali military commander confirmed to GO that the allied forces pulled out of the town in a tactical move, and will recapture it back from the militant group.”
The Voice of America (VOA) even admitted that the impacted area in Goofgaduud housed a Somalian military base. The base was attacked by al-Shabaab forcing the U.S.-backed units to abandon their positions.
Quoting an eyewitness who wanted to remain anonymous, the VOA noted:
“About 100 heavily armed militants attacked the base with rockets and heavy machine-guns. The fighting lasted about an hour. The government forces in the camp were forced to retreat, but came back to their base immediately.” (May 9)
An unnamed Somalian military spokesperson also said of the fighting:
“The militants ambushed a convoy of government soldiers heading to Goofgaduud as reinforcements. First, they attacked with a land mine and then gunfire. They killed six soldiers and wounded two, and seized one of our military vehicles.”
Radio Andalus, which is controlled by al-Shabaab, said that their forces had taken over the town resulting in the deaths of 17 government troops.
Famine Threatened Amid Growing U.S. Military Presence and Oil Explorations
President Donald Trump in late March announced that his administration was loosening supposed restrictions on Pentagon military operations inside of Somalia. Nevertheless, nothing has been said in regard to providing assistance to the civilian population which is suffering from monumental food and water deficits.
The overall population of the country has been estimated to be between 12 and 14 million people. Petroleum resources in the breakaway region of Puntland in the north are being exploited by a Canadian firm Africa Oil Corporation. Offshore resources are thought to be quite substantial as well near the central and southern regions of the country. Concession agreements were signed during the late 1980s with Shell and Exxon Mobil.
Notwithstanding these business dealings, the monetary compensation for these contracts has not reached the masses which are living in an increasing perilous situation. Humanitarian agencies are appealing for immediate assistance in order to avert massive starvation due to lack of food and water.
Relief Web stressed in a recent report that:
“Massive drought-related displacement continues across Somalia, with most of the displaced people moving from rural to urban areas or other rural areas. According to the UNHCR-led Protection and Return Monitoring Network (PRMN) more than 680,000 people have been displaced by drought since November 2016. In the last week, a total of 63 people crossed into Dollo Addo town of Ethiopia. Nearly 420 people were displaced from Xarardheere district to Cadaado town as a result of forced child recruitment and heavy taxation by non-state armed actors.” (May 9)
A security conference on Somalia beginning on May 11in London is designed to win pledges for monetary support to continue the AMISOM presence beyond 2018. Despite this initiative, a military solution which has guided western policy for the last decade has not won the peace or genuine socio-economic development.
Until the AU Peace and Security Council along with regional bodies can bring the warring parties together for a permanent solution the crises will not abate. State actors must find a solution to their own political problems in order to eliminate the rationale for ongoing Pentagon and EU presence in East Africa.
The surprise firing of FBI Director James Comey, announced late Tuesday afternoon, is a sign of a deep and intensifying crisis of the Trump administration. Trump’s firing of Comey smacks of desperation on the part of a White House under siege.
The firing sparked widespread condemnation by Democrats and some Republicans, along with demands for the appointment of a special prosecutor or independent commission to investigate charges of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 election campaign.
Powerful sections of the US ruling elite are moving against the Trump White House, which is so steeped in corruption that any one of a series of scandals, not just the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections, could leave it politically crippled.
There were numerous media comparisons to the “Saturday Night Massacre” during the Watergate scandal of 1973–74, when the attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned rather than carry out orders from President Richard Nixon to dismiss special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. That effort to torpedo an investigation failed: ten months later, Nixon was forced to resign as president.
Unlike Watergate, however, there is no democratic principle being asserted, even in a limited fashion, by the Democratic Party opponents of the Trump administration. This is a conflict within the US ruling elite and its military-intelligence apparatus, driven largely by differences over foreign policy.
No significant evidence has been produced in support of the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. The real purpose of the campaign of Russia-baiting is to push the Trump administration into a more confrontational foreign policy in Syria, Central Asia, North Africa and Eastern Europe, where US imperialism regards Moscow as its principal obstacle.
Trump has attempted to satisfy these concerns with last month’s missile strikes against Syria and a harsher rhetorical line towards Iran and Russia, but the divisions persist, as shown in the hearing Monday before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. (see: “Senate hearing revives Democratic campaign over alleged Trump-Russia connections”)
The circumstances surrounding Trump’s decision to fire Comey remained murky Tuesday night, with the White House withholding further comment following the announcement of Comey’s firing at 5:41 p.m. Press reports suggest that the decision had been in preparation for at least a week, and that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who took office on April 26, had been commissioned to provide a rationale.
The New York Times reported on its website,
“Senior White House and Justice Department officials had been working on building a case against Mr. Comey since at least last week, according to administration officials. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been charged with coming up with reasons to fire him, the officials said.”
The argument for the firing elaborated in a three-page memorandum prepared by Rosenstein has no credibility. The memo focuses on Comey’s decisions about the investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, condemning him not for the substance of the decision that there was no crime to prosecute, but for holding a press conference to announce that decision and proceeding to attack Clinton’s conduct as “extremely careless.” The memo also criticizes Comey for the October 28 letter in which he informed Congress that the FBI was reopening the Clinton investigation, only 11 days before Election Day.
Trump’s expressed opinions are the direct opposite of the Rosenstein memorandum. Last July, he denounced Comey’s decision not to prosecute Clinton, while “lock her up” became a standard chant at Trump rallies and at the Republican National Convention. Later, Trump hailed the October 28 letter as an action in which Comey “showed guts.”
Earlier this week, Trump tweeted that Comey had been “the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton,” and that his decision on the email server prosecution was “a free pass for many bad deeds.”
There are further contradictions. Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared during his confirmation hearing that he would recuse himself from any actions relating to the case against Clinton, because of his own role in the Trump election campaign. Yet he has now countersigned the decision to fire Comey, supposedly because of the FBI director’s actions in the Clinton investigation.
Sessions also said that he would recuse himself from decisions related to the ongoing investigation into possible collaboration between the Trump campaign and alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The firing of Comey removes the head of the agency conducting that investigation.
It is absurd to suggest that Trump fired Comey for his transgressions against Hillary Clinton, particularly when he has attacked the FBI director for going easy on her. Moreover, all the events cited in the Rosenstein memo took place before the 2016 election, while Trump reiterated his support for Comey continuing in office—he was serving a fixed ten-year term until 2023—as recently as February.
What has changed in the interim? On March 20, at a nationally televised House Intelligence Committee hearing, Comey confirmed for the first time that the FBI has opened an investigation into possible connections between the Trump campaign and alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Since then, a series of former campaign advisers and aides has been interrogated by the FBI, each undoubtedly pressured to save their own skins at the expense of those higher up, in a chain leading inexorably to Trump himself.
Most serious appears to be the attention given to Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who has been publicly accused of failing to report significant income from individuals and businesses linked to Russia, and who was so close to Trump that he was actively considered as a possible running mate.
The extreme sensitivity in the White House to Comey’s role in the Russia investigation was indicated in the second paragraph of the official letter from Trump to Comey informing him of his dismissal.
“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” Trump wrote.
The White House apparently informed only a handful of congressional leaders ahead of the firing, including Senators Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee that oversees the FBI. Graham publicly endorsed the firing, while Feinstein did not oppose it.
Among other Democratic senators and congressmen, however, there was near-unanimous opposition.
Senate Democratic Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois, speaking on the Senate floor, condemned the firing.
“Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues,” he said. “We await clarification by the White House as soon as possible as to whether this investigation will continue and whether it will have a credible lead so that we know that it’ll have a just outcome.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer noted Trump’s firing of acting attorney general Sally Yates, US Attorney Preet Bharara and now Comey, saying on Twitter,
“If we don’t get a special prosecutor, every American will rightfully suspect that the decision to fire Comey was part of a cover-up.”
Even more significant were the statements from two leading Republican senators. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, which is conducting an investigation into the Russian hacking allegations, declared,
“I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Jim Comey’s termination. I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order.”
Senator John McCain, former presidential candidate and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, reiterated his support for a special investigating committee.
“I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement. “The president’s decision to remove the FBI director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.”
It is the first single country-focused mission center established by the U.S. intelligence agency.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency announced Wednesday the establishment of a Korea Mission Center dedicated to addressing North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile threat, ramping up already rising tensions.
“Creating the Korea Mission Center allows us to more purposefully integrate and direct CIA efforts against the serious threats to the United States and its allies emanating from North Korea,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
The Korea Mission Center is the CIA’s 11th mission center, but it’s the first to focus on one single country.
“The new Mission Center draws on experienced officers from across the Agency and integrates them in one entity to bring their expertise and creativity to bear against the North Korea target,” the statement said.
Recent tensions between North Korea and the U.S. had accelerated as North Korea conducted a series of ballistic missile tests last month. It also threatened to conduct its sixth nuclear test “at any time.”
“Just as the threats facing our nation are dynamic, so too must the CIA continue to evolve to address them,” CIA spokesman Jonathan Liu said, according to AFP.
North Korea last week accused the CIA and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service of a plot to assassinate its leader Kim Jong-un with a biochemical weapon.
Pyongyang said on Thursday it will bring to justice the “terror suspects” involved in the plot.
“The Central Prosecutor’s Office will ask for the handover of those criminals and prosecute them under the relevant laws of the country,” Han Song Ryol, vice foreign minister of North Korea, told foreign diplomats and reporters, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.
The CIA and the White House declined to comment, while the South Korean intelligence service said the charge was “groundless,” Reuters reported.
It is not known how many people would be arrested and where they were, but North Korea has vowed to “hunt down to the last one of the suspects in every corner of the earth.”
There is no shortage of water in Haiti. Yet, everywhere on the island, Haitians travel for miles to get water, pay dearly for it if they can find it, and sometimes die on their journey to collect it, like so many antelopes snatched by predators on their way to drink. How does a thing like that happen in a country that gets reliably drenched with more than 50 inches (130 cm) of naturally distilled rainwater per year?
Haiti is blessed with two rainy seasons: April to May, and August to October, but even during the driest months of December to February, the country gets about 1.5 inches per month. The Artibonite River alone carries more than 26,000 gallons (100 cubic meters) of fresh water per second! Another 13,000 gallons per second flow through nine other rivers that crisscross the mountainous landscape. As if that were not enough, Haitians also sit on about 15 trillion gallons of groundwater.
The latest foreign occupiers of Haiti would like us to believe that they found the country in a state of wilderness, with Haitians defoliating the trees and bouncing between the bare branches like monkeys that had not yet discovered fire or the wheel. In reality, Haiti has had a system of pipes where communities could collect their drinking water since 1841. About 40 years after that, households began to be equipped with their own water, so that by the early 20th century, this group represented one third of the population.
Haiti’s position with regard to potable water rivaled anywhere in the world and was contemporary with the construction of waterworks in cities of the United States. Keep in mind that it was in the mid-19th century that about 20,000 Londoners died of epidemics of Asian cholera. Their drinking water had become contaminated with the wastes of the upper classes, who had just become fond of water closets and did not care where their untreated wastes flowed. If this brings to mind the more recent contamination of Haiti by the United Nations “peacekeepers,” yes, plus cela change, plus c’est la même chose.
As in most places and for good reason, in Haiti the control of water distribution was the purview of cities. The Autonomous Metropolitan Drinking Water Authority (Centrale Autonome Métropolitaine d’Eau Potable, CAMEP) handled the water distribution in Port-au-Prince. Branches of the National Drinking Water Authority (Service National d’Eau Potable, SNEP) provided water in 28 other cities. Many of Haiti’s smaller communities and cities also built their own fountains and dug their own wells.
The average Haitian consumes very little water: about 10 gallons a day. By contrast, residents of most so-called developed countries consume 5 to 15 times more water, with the US being the most wasteful. This massive waste is directly linked to the advent of tap water inside of houses. According to the writer Ivan Illich, in the US,
“wherever tap water reached the households, water consumption increased by a factor of between twenty and sixty, which meant that a rate of thirty to 100 gallons a day became typical.”
Indeed, a major reason for the low consumption by Haitians is that almost no clean water is allowed to flow down a drain. Most Haitians, who are poor, collect their water in containers for drinking, cooking and washing. And even those who are more prosperous customarily lack water toilets or faucets inside their homes. The water is supplied to small outbuildings for cooking or showering and is used with a minimum of waste.
As Port-au-Prince’s population grew, the water authorities, as well as private concerns, added new branches to some of the water pipes. Tanker trucks also joined the delivery system. Thus the water system became privatized in a limited and chaotic way by the political class. According to a United Nations study, in 1976 the delivery of water to Port-au-Prince by CAMEP was about 17 million gallons per day, one half of which was wasted or redirected. This was certainly unfortunate for CAMEP, which was losing funds that might have been spent on its administration. On the other hand, Port-au-Prince’s population was less than 450,000, and even with the supposed waste or redirection, about 20 gallons of water were still supplied by the government per capita, per day.
Foreign aid and finance agencies like the US Agency for International Development (USAID), World Bank, and Inter American Development Bank (IDB) had gained a foothold in Haiti with the ascendance of the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1971. As these agencies set about to drive small Haitian farmers into bankruptcy to create surplus labor for new sweatshops in the capital, they also financed a series of studies of the country. Superficially, these studies were meant to guide the eradication of poverty, but their real purpose was to provide information on how exacerbate poverty to its absolute limit and profit from it.
One study in 2005, to identify the owners of Haiti’s water networks, was done by the Haitian branch of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which goes by the pretentious name, Foundation for Knowledge and Freedom (Fondasyon Konesans Ak Libète, FOKAL). This was an interesting detour for FOKAL, which appears to focus on cultural projects to catalyze the Americanization of Haitians. In 2006, the International Foundation of the Red Cross (IFRC) reported that 81 percent of Haitians lacked access to decent toilets, i.e. water closets. Consequently, the IFRC declared Haiti to be the world’s most unsanitary country and the only one that had become less sanitary in the previous decade. It did not matter that nearly all Haitians had access to latrines that were more sanitary than the water closets whose untreated wastes were dumped into bodies of water. The study also overlooked the heavy burden posed by the influx of more than 60,000 massively wasteful Westerners from non-governmental organizations (NGO), including the United Nations’ so-called peacekeepers, starting in 2004, and the Red Cross itself.
In general, the studies of Haiti’s water agreed that its population had outgrown its municipal water delivery systems, and this was true, especially in Port-au-Prince, where the population had reached 1.9 million by 2009 through a sustained and deliberate depopulation of the rural areas. It was nevertheless also true that there was ample water around for that population. New infrastructure would have to be built. The country could have dug more wells to expand its potable-water system and built water-treatment systems. Alternatively, or in combination, it could have widely adopted rainwater harvesting. This practice is common in regions like Central America and the Caribbean, with seasons of abundant rainfall, and it is especially well suited to countries like Haiti, whose mountainous terrain poses a great challenge to the installation of systems of water pipes.
Furthermore, rain-catchment systems are inexpensive to install and maintain. None of these things were done. Instead, the government created the National Water and Sanitation Authority (Direction Nationale de l’Eau Potable et de l’Assainissement, DINEPA) in 2009 to control all the drinking water of the country.
Despite its socialist sounding name, there is nothing nationalistic about DINEPA. It is a foreign organization with a Haitian front: a director general who often reminds poor Haitians that DINEPA “carries out its mission around the implementation of investments, network development, sector regulation, and stakeholder control,” which is gobbledygook for centralization and privatization.
The main stakeholders and financial backers of DINEPA are the World Bank, IDB, Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Agencia Espanola de Cooperacion para el Desarrollo, AECID), US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). Haiti’s contribution, through its Fund for Economic and Social Assistance (Fonds d’Assistance Economique et Sociale, FAES), is trivial compared to the others, as is its influence.
The main beneficiaries of these international funds have been the two largest water-privatization companies in the world: Veolia Environnement S.A. and Suez Environnement S.A., both multibillion-dollar French corporations. Veolia was initially contracted by DINEPA on April 1, 2010, less than three months after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, supposedly to assist the humanitarian emergency there. After DINEPA contracted Suez in February 26, 2011 to rebuild Port-au-Prince’s water system, Veolia moved on to the other cities, where its operations expanded with the cholera epidemic of October 2010. By a strange coincidence, starting around 2011, throughout Haiti, potable-water systems have suffered a rash of sabotage and required reconstruction.
There is nothing remotely humanitarian about the privatization of water. The idea is pure evil and its practice should be a crime. It ablates the life savings of hard working people, displaces, and kills them. This plague does not stop in Haiti. It has already reached the poorer cities in rich countries like the US. In every case, the same forces combine to turn water into a commodity. Veolia and Suez, which are at the forefront of the project to privatize the world’s waters, have an impressive history of lawsuits. One of the more recent ones was Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s civil lawsuit against Veolia in December 2016. This lawsuit alleges that the company fraudulently submitted false and misleading statements to the public after its analysis of the water in Flint, Michigan. Contamination of this water with lead and other substances was associated with about 9,000 cases of lead poisoning in children younger than six, and an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease that caused 12 deaths.
In subsequent parts of this series, I will dissect the mechanisms by which water is snatched from municipal authorities in places like Haiti and Flint, Michigan, and privatized.
In George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel, 1984, information that no longer is consistent with Big Brother’s explanations is chucked down the Memory Hole. In the real American dystopia in which we currently live, the information is never reported at all.
On April 26—16 days ago—Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznihir, Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, stated at the Moscow International Security Conference that the Operations Command of the Russian General Staff has concluded that Washington is preparing a nuclear first strike on Russia.
The Times-Gazett in Ashland, Ohio, was the only US print media that a Google search could turn up that reported this most alarming of all announcements. A Google search turned up no reports on US TV, and none on Canadian, Australian, European, or any other media except RT and Internet sites.
I have been unable to find any report that any US Senator or Representative or any European, Canadian, or Australian politician has raised a voice of concern.
No one in Washington got on the telephone to tell Putin that this was all a mistake, that the US was not preparing a nuclear first strike on Russia, or ask Putin how this serious situation could be defused.
Americans do not even know about it, except for my readers.
I would have expected at least that the CIA would have planted the story in the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR that General Poznihir was expressing his personal opinion, nothing to be taken seriously. But apparently Americans and their European vassals are not to even know that such an accussation was made.
As I reported some time ago and more recently in my column about North Korea, the Chinese leadership has also concluded that the US intends a nuclear first strike against China.
Alone either Russia or China can destroy the US. If they act together, the destruction of the US would be redundant. What is the intelligence, if any, and morality, clearly none, of the US leadership that recklessly and irresponsibly invites Russia and China to preempt Washington’s attack on them with an attack on the US?
Surely not even insouciant Americans are so stupid as to think that Russia and China will just sit there and wait for Washington’s nuclear attack.
I lived through every stage of the Cold War. I participated in it. Never in my life have I experienced the situation where two nuclear powers were convinced that the third was going to surprise them with a nuclear attack.
I supported Trump because he, unlike Hillary, said he would normalize relations with Russia. Instead he has raised the tensions between the nuclear powers. Nothing is more irresponsible or dangerous.
We currently are in the most dangerous situation of my lifetime, and there is ZERO AWARENESS AND NO DISCUSSION!
How can this be? Putin has been issuing warnings for years. He has told the Western presstitute media on more than one occasion that they, in their dishonesty, are pushing the world to nuclear war. Putin has said over and over,
“I issue warnings and no one hears.” “How do I get through to you?”
Maybe the morons will hear when mushroom clouds appear over Washington and New York, and Europe ceases to exist, as it will if Europe continues the confrontation with Russia as is required from Washington’s well-paid vassals.
Within the last several years I reported the Chinese government’s reaction to US war plans for a nuclear strike on China. The Chinese showed how their submarines would destroy the West Coast of the US and their ICBMs would finish off the rest of the country.
I reported all of this, and it produced no response. The Memory Hole wasn’t needed, as neither Washington nor the presstitutes nor the Internet noticed. This is insouciance to the thousandth degree.
In America and its subservient, crawling on their knees vassal states, the information never gets reported, so it never has to be put down the Memory Hole.
If you convince someone that you are going to kill them, they are going to kill you first. A government, such as what exists in Washington, that convinces powerful countries that they are targeted, is a government that has no respect whatsoever for the lives of its own people or the peoples of the world or for any life on planet Earth.
Such a government as Washington is evil beyond all measure, as are the media whores and European, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese vassal states that serve Washington at the expense of their own citizens.
Despite all their efforts to believe otherwise, the Russian and Chinese leaderships have finally arrived, belatedly, at the realization that Washington is evil to the core and is the agent of Satan.
For Russia and China, the Satanic Evil that rules in the West has reduced the choice for Russia and China to them or us.
A free press and right to dissent are endangered. Western media operate as virtual press agents for power, reliable independent media called fake news.
In America, digital democracy is threatened, truth-telling assaulted. Trump’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai calls Net Neutrality’s days “numbered,” wanting an online level playing field for everyone abolished.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu shuttered Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) with less than two hours notice, ending a near half century of public broadcasting, a staple on Israeli television, its first news program – IBA to be replaced by Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC).
On its final night, anchors openly wept. Journalists blasted the shutdown on air. The final broadcast ended with staff singing Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, sounding more like a dirge because of grief felt by all.
Anchor Haim Yavin on air called closure of IBA and its Mabat news program
“stupidity, idiocy, a crime…the whim of one man who happens to be the prime minister.”
Journalist Yaakov Ahimeir asked
“(w)hat is this notice, two hours in advance? What are we, criminals?”
The way it was done is a “stain” on Netanyahu’s already deplorable legacy.
Hundreds of newspersons and staff are out of work. As communications minister, as well as foreign minister and prime minister, Netanyahu oversaw enactment of a new broadcasting entity, government having more control over its editorial content, able to censor and suppress criticism of his hardline rule.
What’ll he shut down next – maybe any print or electronic news source criticizing his rogue governance!
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.”
A significant event took place last week, but you wouldn’t know it if you reside in North America or Europe.
This past Thursday, a three-page memorandum was signed in Astana, Kazakstan calling for the creation of four “De-escalation Zones” in Syria. This latest proposed peace deal is the latest product of the Astana Process chaired by three nations, Russia, Iran and Turkey, an effort designed to support the previous UN Security Council Resolution 2254.
This document is controversial to say the least, because it calls for the establishment of “islands of safety,” which are analogous to Washington’s previously called for ‘Safe Zones.’ These four zones include the northwestern province of Idlib, the Al-Rastan Plain just north of the city of Homs, the area of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, and areas in the Daraa’a and Al Quneitra governorates of southern Syria.
According to the memorandum, the aim of the agreement is to try and end violent clashes between militant groups and the Syrian and Russian military, and to “provide the conditions for the safe, voluntary return of refugees.” The ceasefire will also be used to send humanitarian relief and essential supplies to the four de-escalation zones.
IMAGE: The four Astana De-escalation Zones, or ‘Safe Zones.’
Critics of the plan are opposing it for a number of reasons, including Iran’s involvement and accusations that it will lead to an eventual break-up of the current Syrian nation state.
For the Syrian government and its people, the ceasefire could provide a much-needed window to restore some essential services and repairs to damaged infrastructure.The Syrian government in Damascus is supporting the proposal, although previously President Bashar al-Assad had referred to parts of the plan as “not a realistic idea at all.”
The issue of international peace keeping forces on the ground to enforce ceasefires has not met with benevolence from everyone either. This week, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem dismissed the idea of having international forces in Syria to patrol the four ‘safe zones.’ Al-Moallem told AP,
“There will be no presence by any international forces supervised by the United Nations.” He added, “The Russian guarantor has clarified that there will be military police and observation centers.”
Also in attendance at Astana was the UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura and somewhat surprisingly, the US also sent its Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Stuart Jones. According to RT International, the US decision to send Jones as an observer was preceded by a “very good” phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. For the time being, the US has no choice but to acknowledge, albeit begrudgingly, the Astana Process. US officials have issued a statement which expresses ‘guarded optimism’ but falls short of endorsing the plan, mainly because of Iran’s role as a signatory and military guarantor.
The agreement does not, however, cover any other contested areas where the Syrian government is fighting designated terrorist group Jabat al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria), or ISIS.
There is the danger that al Nusra fighters will simply rebrand or change their armbands in order to avoid being targeted by Syria and Russia. This has always been a risk, and by now it’s safe to assume that both Russia and Syria understand this dynamic and are studying any possible deviations by groups in question.
For the average Syrian, however, this agreement won’t necessarily change much on the ground in places where a multitude of terrorists led by Jabat al Nusra and ISIS are still active – both groups will remain legitimate targets for the Syrian Arab Army, and for Russian and Syrian air missions. The threat of terrorism is still a day to day reality for Syrians everywhere.
Moscow Sets the Pace, Agenda
To be sure, Washington cannot be too pleased about this agreement. It has no seat at the table in this discussion and, has once again, found itself playing catch-up with Moscow on the diplomatic front.
Ever since it entered the Syria battle theatre in autumn of 2015, Russia has been consistent and effective in maintaining pole position in Syria. It gained that position from the moment the Russian General convened a brief meeting at the US Embassy in Baghdad on September 30, 2015, just after Russian President Putin took to the podium some 6,000 miles away at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. From that moment on, Eurasia’s Grand Chessboard suddenly tilted – eastward. Russia realised one of the fundamental advantages in the Art of War, the element of surprise. Washington was playing catch-up. Prior to that, Moscow had offered a full range of support items for Syria including equipment, technical support, missile defense systems and most importantly its diplomatic support, particularly by the hand of a canny Sergey Lavrov (right) who seized the initiative in September 2013 by brokering the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks, thus diffusing a potential pretext for an impending US-led, all-out attack on Syria following a highly questionable ‘chemical weapons’ incident in East Ghouta in August of that year.
As helpful as this was for Syria, it was not enough to repel a foreign invasion of hundreds of thousands of foreign mercenaries and takfiri terrorist fighters who poured in and out of Syria, through Turkey and Jordan’s giant revolving doors at their borders from 2011 onwards. While the US was busy flying hundreds of innocuous air sorties over Syrian airspace from the summer of 2014 purporting to be ‘fighting ISIS,’ Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah were busy fighting terrorists, and dictating facts on the ground in the process. When Russian airpower legally (key word) arrived by way of the expressedinvitation of Damascus in October 2015, it was a game changer for Syria. Arguably, this was a major factor in the eventual liberation of Aleppo from terrorist occupation in December 2016, which remains one of the pivotal turning points in this long war. Beyond the battlefield in Syria, the move had global implications. Unlike in Iraq and Libya, by taking the initiative, Russia had set the pace, and therefore was setting the agenda for Syria, and the region.
During my travels here in Syria, one remark has often been made. It seems to be widely understood by Syrians that had Russia not arrived when they did, and in dominant fashion, it’s possible that at least half of Aleppo could still be under Al Nusra occupation, and that many other areas around the country, including significant parts of Damascus could have met a similar fate. In fact, it was the liberation of East Aleppo that initiated the current progression of Russian-brokered ceasefire talks which has led to this current series in Astana, Kazakstan.
Presently, most of the populated areas in Syria are already liberated from ‘rebel’ terrorist control, so as far as Russia is concerned a military victory has already been realised, and the Astana agreement is a logical progression forward. Learning from the mistakes of the West, Russia may be keen to avoid the same sort of ‘mission creep’ which has defined the US-NATO quagmire in Afghanistan. For Russia, this next phase may be about coming to grips with some of the wider geopolitical power-plays in and around Syria, rather than proclaiming some comprehensive ‘fix’ to the crisis in Syria.
Eastern Center of Gravity
Another problem is the US, UK and its NATO partners, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others – have been directly arming and bankrolling these extremists, thus prolonging the conflict considerably. Knowing all this (which Russia and its Astana partners do), it is almost physically impossible for East and West to hold any meaningful multilateral negotiations regarding Syria. To borrow a term from former US Secretary of State John Kerry, both sides are inhabiting ‘parallel universes’ when it comes to this crisis – only the US side of that parallel universe is considerably further away from a realistic centre, or its natural centre of geopolitical gravity. This brings us to the second key aspect of the Astana talks, which will never be spoken of in western mainstream media, that with Astana, the centre of gravity on this issue has shifted away from Washington and Geneva, drifting eastward to Moscow and Astana.
The only thing which needs to happen now, for the sake of Syria and its roughly 20 million citizens and millions of displaced refugees both foreign and domestic, is for Damascus to be more integrated into that geopolitical orbit. In other words, the time needs to come when serious international negotiations have to take place in Damascus, too. However, for the time being, it’s likely better for Syria that Russia is leading the international diplomatic agenda, and not the United States.
21WIRE’s Patrick Henningsen talked to RT International on Thursday May 4th as the agreement was signed; he discusses some of the main aspects of the Astana Talks:
Sabotaging Ceasefires
Still, ceasefires have proved difficult to enforce on the ground – not because of what Russia or the Syrian government were doing, but because of infighting and even outright sabotage by the various and sundry ‘rebel’ terrorist factions marauding in conflict zones. Just before the agreement was signed, rival militants in Eastern Ghouta attacked each other, killing at least 40 people in the first 24 hours of hostilities. Many of the rival factions are vying for territory, weapons, status, and of course money, which is not much different than gang warfare – which is where the situation is at right now in many ‘rebel-held’ districts.
There is also the danger that the US, or one of its allies could sabotage a ceasefire agreement.
These are not new issues. Back on September 9, 2016, Russia and the US actually agreed on a ceasefire plan with similar objectives to Astana: a cessation of Syrian government airstrikes in certain ‘de-escalation’ areas and for Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the US Secretary of State John Kerry to cooperate on joint efforts against terrorists. Lavrov announced this after marathon talks with John Kerry. Like Astana, Russia and US were seeking some mutual recognition of the core obstacle to any multilateral agreement – that Jabat al Nusra was ‘blending’ with the west’s so-called moderate opposition. Kerry even admitted then that,
“going on Al-Nusra is not a concession to anybody” but “is profoundly in the interests of the US.”
Incredibly, Kerry also agreed to the establishment of the Russian-US Joint Implementation Centre (JIG) with the “delineation of territories controlled by Al-Nusra and opposition groups in the area of active hostilities.”
Yes, they were nearly on the same page, until…
On September 17th, the US-led a one hour-long airstrike which massacred over 70 Syrian Army soldiers and wounded 100 others near the city of Deir al-Zour. Here the US was in gross violation of any and all ceasefire agreements. Coincidentally (or not), that US attack allowed ISIS forces to advance on the government-held position. Of course, the initial US reaction was to blame Russia, followed by a public meltdown at the UN by then ambassador Samantha Power.
That fragile international pause was plunged into further turmoil on September 20th, following another improbable stroke of luck for the terrorist confabs Jabat al Nusra, Arar al Sham, and Nour al din al-Zenki who were operating near Aleppo and in the nearby Idlib province. Suddenly a UN sponsored international humanitarian aid convoy was attacked and burned in Urm al-Kubra, a village west of Aleppo. Immediately, the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office blamed both the Syrian and Russian airforces for the attack, even before any investigation was carried out. Miraculously (as is always the case) the infamous White Helmets were on the scene with their cameras filming away (while the trucks were still on fire) and claiming the convoy was attacked by Syrian Army ‘barrel bombs’ and Russian jets, although they never could make up their mind which one it was. As it turns out, all available evidence suggests that this incident was staged, but the damage had already been done.
After the UN convoy incident, once again, Samantha Power launched another shrill tirade at the UN which indicated that there might be some US ulterior motive in both of these unlikely incidents. At the time, many analysts believed the State Department was being undermined by the hawks in the Pentagon. All available evidence indicates this was likely the case. That could have been the turning point in Syria’s long war – and would have also helped to repair US-Russia relations with the two powers agreeing to target both ISIS and al Nusra in Syria. That never happened. Perhaps Washington’s Deep State had already ‘priced in’ a Hillary Clinton victory in November. Regardless, the damage was done, and Syria continued to bleed. To be sure, it was this chain of events that spawned the Astana Process.
These two improbable events, Deir al-Zour and the UN Aid Convoy, damaged US-Russian relations and stalled any hope of upholding any multiparty ceasefire. By that time, enough of the western public had come to understand what Syria, Russia and Iran already knew: where ever you found them, Jabat al Nusra dominated all ‘rebel’ fighting groups in Syria. So no multiparty solution was viable unless al Nusra was prioritised alongside ISIS. In addition, it is a fact terrorist factions and their support groups like the White Helmets are equipped and financed by the US, UK, NATO member states, as well as Gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. One could reasonably conclude that on occasion the US-led Coalition could at any time employ their proxies on the ground in Syria in order to forge facts on the ground, and in doing so dictate the military and diplomatic agenda going forward. It worked, but only temporarily.
It’s important to note that these are the chief highlights of US ‘diplomacy’ in Syria, and its string of screw-ups. Washington and its partners have only themselves and these fabricated crisis situations to blame for being sidelined on any potential diplomatic solution for Syria.
Astana Memorandum was signed last week (Image: Wikicommons)
Redefining the Language of the Conflict
Throughout this long war, the Washington-led coalition has relied on creative language to characterise its clandestine proxies and partners on the ground, by referring to radical militants as either “moderate rebels,” “armed opposition” and even as “political opposition” – rather than calling them what nearly every single Syrian knows them as – which is terrorists. And these terrorists are using local civilian populations as human shields.
This brings us to another key point which is being overlooked by the international media when it comes to the Astana Process. Astana is also redefining the language of the conflict – away from the western terms and definitions. This means that any new terms and conditions of any agreement going forward will be codified by refined definitions. This is extremely important, because by accurately defining and agreeing on who exactly are the extremists or terrorists operating in and around Syria, all the legal stakeholders on the ground, Syria, Russia and Iran, are able to actually track measurable results. This was not possible under the US formulated terms and labels. Any such results were impossible by relying on intentionally vague, distorted terms like ‘moderate rebel.’ Russia knows this, and of course Damascus and its allies do as well. Contrast this approach to the US-led Geneva process which has, in all practical terms, rendered meaningless, simply by nature of the fact that US and its allies refuse to classify certain extremist fighters in Syria as the radical salafist and Wahabi terrorists that they actually are (including the Free Syrian Army), or acknowledge that their leadership ranks are comprised mainly of foreign commanders and mercenaries.
More powerful than any military campaign, this western propaganda project has helped to sustain the long and dirty war against Syria. Part of the West’s success in carrying on the diplomatic charade for so long has been because of a highly coordinated, multibillion dollar propaganda campaign against Syria, led by TV giants CNN, NBC, FOX, the BBC, Al Jazeera, Channel 4, along with mainstream publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, TIME Magazine and countless others. Since 2011, the talking points have become institutionalized, namely,
“Assad is a brutal dictator who is slaughtering innocent Arab Spring protesters,” followed by,
“Assad must go, Syria needs a political transition [regime change]” followed by,
“Assad is using chemical weapons against his own people, he must be removed from power,” followed by,
“The West needs to support the rebel freedom fighters,” followed by,
“We, the US [UK, France, etc] need to fight ISIS because Assad and the Russians aren’t doing it,” followed by,
“Assad and Putin are targeting schools and hospitals, killing children,” and finally,
”Sunnis, Shias and Kurds can no longer live together in Syria now, and so the country must be partitioned,” etc.
Due to this program of mass media conditioning, for the most part, people in the West are generally clueless about what has been, and what really is happening in Syria.
This propaganda campaign has also provided a false backdrop to the US-echoed claim the Geneva Process is all about finding a “long term political settlement for Syria” – which is physically impossible if armed militants are allowed to continue terrorizing the population of Syria. Any Syrian will tell you this is what they have been doing over the last 6 years. And that’s the rub: by correctly labeling militants as terrorists it automatically delegitimizes what the West have insisted on calling “rebel opposition” and makes them foreign-backed hostiles instead. That’s why Washington has been fighting tooth and nail all along with its ‘name game’ for extremists operating in Syria, and even going so far as to give political cover and an air of legitimacy to terrorists in Syria.
The other important point of language which is being redefined by the Astana Process is the concept of ‘Safe Zones’ and ‘No Fly Zones.’ In the US-led version of this language, a No Fly Zone is synonymous with Safe Zone and means that no one can fly in the areas except US Coalition aircraft – who we’re told need to do so in order to enforce the no-fly policy. So in reality, a US-led no-fly zone is not really a no fly zone, as we’ve already learned from Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Any US or NATO-administered no-fly zone will ultimately become a Coalition bombing zone, as the West use the overlord status to wipe out any potential adversaries on the ground, as well as government facilities and key infrastructure. By contrast, according to the terms of this Russian-led proposal, ‘no fly’ means no fly, period. That also means that no US aircraft will be allowed to fly over the four newly designated de-escalation zones. Should militants resume hostilities on the ground, the ‘no-fly’ part of the deal could then be suspended citing interests of both civil and national security. This is a fair proposition, especially considering the incredible volume of violence already perpetrated by ‘rebel’ terrorists against Syrians across the country.
‘Rebel Walk-Out’
Inviting your enemy to the table is not an easy thing, but if it can change the terms of the relationship, then it’s a definite option.
As soon as Thursday’s agreement in Astana was announced, one of the ‘rebel’ leaders, Yasser Abdul Raheem, the representative of rebel “Sham Legion,” exploded in front of conference delegates shouting, ‘Iran is a criminal and we will not accept its signature!’ Perhaps this visible tantrum for the cameras came at the instruction of his US and Gulf sponsors, but his performance only furthers Syria’s extremely valid case that the “rebels” are not actually fit to engage in any real civilized diplomacy, much less lead a nation, or govern over a populace. So much for the ‘revolution.’
Over the course of the Astana Process, opposition groups in attendance have included the likes of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Jaysh al-Islam, Faylak al-Sham and Jaish al-Mujahideen, under the somewhat inflated and pretentious banner of the “High Negotiation Committee.” Some of the groups have actually sent delegates to the Astana negotiations, while others like known terrorist group and CIA affiliate, Arar al Sham, declined to attend. By attending, militants are entered into the process, and henceforth are automatically defining themselves as a subgroup, nested underneath the nation state members in attendance, and as long as they are there, they are subsequently bound by the terms of the ceasefire process. By not attending, or not agreeing the participate, these groups are simply confirming what Syria, Russia and Iran already knew – that they are rogue militants who have no place the table. Either way, the process places everyone into a hierarchal position. This is what the Astana Process is: an opportunity to define the playing field, and to allow anyone who believes they are a serious stakeholder an opportunity to come forward and prove that they are. By participating in the process of de-escalation and reaching some ceasefire accord, they will be judged according to their actions, present and future. If they want a seat at any future political table, then they will have to change their program. If they are unrepentant terrorists, then they will not have much to offer the process in the long run, and will eventually disqualify themselves altogether which could very likely be the case with most militant groups.
That said, there are many in Syria who believe this new deal is giving way too much quarter to the militant groups, and will be used by ‘rebel’ terrorists to re-arm and resupply.
Many Syrians might also be wary of any deal reached with Ankara, considering the central role that Turkey has played in harboring extremists and in the destruction of the Syrian economy, particularly in the systematic dismantling and organised theft of Aleppo’s industrial sector. Granted, Syrians may never forgive Turkey for what they’ve done throughout the crisis, but de-escalation is still a higher priority.
The whole process is both risky and unprecedented, but the alternatives might be even worse for Syria. There is no more grand modus operandi or masterplan. After 6 years of violence, the country has had enough of war.
IMAGE: US President Donald Trump went head over heals for the alleged ‘chemical attack’ in Khan Sheikhun, Idlib on April 4, 2017, Idlib.
Western Miracles
Time will tell how the Astana agreement plays out, but the important point here is that the new eastern coalition comprised of Russia, Iran, Turkey – is spearheading this latest effort, and thus defining the terms of the conflict and any meaningful peace process going forward.
The timing of Astana is important because it preempts the coming Geneva Talks, and for the time being this puts Astana on equal footing with Geneva – and that is extremely significant in the current context because it symbolises a bona fide geopolitical realignment. If Washington, London and Paris are still married to their old imperial ways, they cannot be happy about such a shift, and you can be certain that there are already plans being drawn-up to undermine any progress in Astana, and in Syria… either by way of another miraculous ‘chemical weapons’ event or some other ‘humanitarian outrage’ drama which will be played out for Western media audiences and used to justify increased US-led intervention, followed by predictable calls for regime change in Damascus.
Naturally, Washington and the Trump Administration would like to declare a ‘win’ in Syria, presumably in its assumed epic, existential “fight against ISIS,” and as the US would like to stage-manage this war, it has no real control over events because it is not dictating facts on the ground this time. The Battle for Mosul should be a lesson to the new White House administration that victory is neither quick, nor clear-cut in this multi-layered military theatre.
Another more likely miracle which you can expect to materialise for Washington’s Coalition and used to reverse any gains made in Astana – is that ISIS might magically manifest (as they so often do, and always on cue) in one of the four ‘De-escalation Zones’ designated in the Astana agreement. Again, this would allow the US to then barge in and disrupt the Astana Process and increase its military footprint in and around Syria.
RAQQA & IDLIB: Two terrorist strongholds in Syria, with battles coming soon (PHOTO: Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE)
Northern Front: Last August, Turkey invaded Syria in what was dubbed “Operation Euphrates Shield,” in an effort to stop Kurdish forces from connecting Afrin in northwestern Syria with the strategic town of Manbij. This was eventually followed by US ground forces in the form of Ranger Units and Marines deployed to support the newly formed ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF), who are essentially Kurdish YPG militias with an additional patch on their arm and more US money and weapons. This is part of the Race to Raqqa, dubbed by the SDF as “Wrath of the Euphrates” – an operation designed to defeat ISIS there, where a very complicated and potentially dangerous conclave has already formed which includes terrorist militants ISIS, FSA, Al Nusra, along with US forces, Russian Special Forces, Kurdish militia, Turkish forces, British Special Forces, French Special Forces, and of course the Syrian Arab Army (let us not forget it’s their country, too). Kurdish SDF forces are doing the the heavy lifting against ISIS and a number of front lines are forming including Deir ez-Zor, Tal al-Samam and Tabaqa. Aside from Syria, Russia and the Kurdish militias, none of those international deployments inside Syria are legal, but they are being tolerated, and the situation is being managed, in the interests of not triggering a major conflagration between the major powers.
Meanwhile, Turkey has publicly declared the Kurdish militias as ‘terrorists’ and a threat to their national security. This is one reason why Turkey moved to sign the Astana agreement. Immediately after Astana, the US seemed to have seen Turkey’s raise – announcing this week that it will now be arming the Kurdish YPG fighters directly (in “the fight against ISIS”) rather than through middle men and the US confab SDF forces. Washington’s bold move is sure to anger Turkey, and Turkey has warned the US that US assets on the ground could be caught in the crossfire.
As the Race to Raqqa intensifies this month, it will no doubt place additional pressure on resources needed to hold the Astana Process.
Southern Front: The is a second US-led front emerging along the Syrian and Jordanian border, and one which could cause some major problems for Syria should it spill into Syria. Back in 2016, the US released its latest militant construct, the “New Syrian Army” trained in Jordan by NATO member states like the US and Norway, and with the supposed mission of ‘defeating ISIS.’ They were defeated in their first clash with ISIS at the Syrian border town of Bukamal last summer. Despite their complete failure, the project is still alive in Jordan, where renewed US-led efforts are underway to ‘train and equip’ other US-backed militants including a new FSA brigade. This time, they might be backed by actual US, British and Jordanian forces, as well as French and Polish Special Forces – who have all been gradually amassing on the border inside Jordan under the banner of ‘Operation Eager Lion‘ from May 2016. In theory, any subsequent US-led effort would be used to support the advance to Deir ez-Zor, again under the guise of “defeating ISIS” but in reality this could quickly lead a de facto US-UK-Jordanian occupation of parts of southern Syria.
ISIS will eventually be defeated in Syria. At that point, the question then remains: will the remaining foreign occupying forces remain in Syria and will this lead to a partitioning of Syria?
Israeli Ambitions
If a US-backed invasion from the southern front occurs, you can expect that Israel will use this opportunity to take strategic points in the Syria’s southern Golan Heights region most likely under the guise of ‘stopping Hezbollah.’
Ever since the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was forced to withdraw from the demilitarized zone separating contested Syrian and Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, as if by magic, both ISIS and Jabat al-Nusra terrorists quickly took over the surrounding area. ISIS and Jabat al-Nusra had already infested Daara in the south, as well as key junctions like Quneitra, and also in the Damascus suburb of Yarmouk.
On April 22nd, Israeli rockets were fired from Golan and hit targets in Damascus. No doubt, this was a test salvo from Israel. Tel Aviv knows very well that any move it decides to make against Syria here will be met with no resistance from the West, therefore they are free to act with total impunity against Syria. But Israel will still be cautious on this front, and would need an excuse to make any serious move into the Golan. Most likely, it would have to be for ‘security concerns’ – perhaps even ‘ISIS concerns’ – which would radically change this conflict.
Here we can see ISIS and Al Nusra playing a perfect made-to-order recipe for Israel to achieve its own long-held territorial ambitions.
Partitioning Syria and Irony of ‘Rebel’ Walk-out at Astana
The main reason for the ‘opposition’ walk-out at Astana, punctuated by the public unhinging of Yasser Abdul Raheem from the Sham Legion, is the fact that Iran has been listed as a military guarantor of this stage of the peace process. The ‘rebel’ delegation appears also to be concerned about the potential that this deal might trigger the eventual break-up of Syria proper. What’s interesting about this part of the drama is that since 2011, the so-called ‘rebels’ have been aiding and abetting the apparent US and Israeli long game for Syria – which is to partition or break-up the country, weakening it in the process. Could these ‘rebels’ have been so naive or just plain dumb to not see that the foreign governments like the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and others, who have been sponsoring them with cash and arms and giving them political backing for the last 6 years – have used this conflict to weaken the Syrian nation state, before pushing to partition and carve-up Syria? It certainly seems so.
On its surface, this situation may appear to defy conventional logic up to this point, but it’s possible Syria’s unity could actually be helped by the Astana Process. You only have to look at who is opposing the deal – the ‘rebels,’ the US, and the Gulf States – all enemies of Syria from the onset.
There is a risk of partitioning, especially if international peace keepers are inserted into this equation. For both Syria and Russia, once multilateral peacekeepers are inserted, the battle lines are essentially frozen at that point, albeit temporarily. This is a legitimate fear for those opposing federalisation or partitioning in Syria. To be sure, this is why Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem has openly opposed such an idea. From a Syrian point of view, and based on the successes it has already achieved with Russia through the reconciliation center, Syria and Russia are capable of administering the four ‘safe zones.’ Beyond that however, this plan may need to be reevaluated, and would require additional international support.
It’s interesting to note also that Turkey may not have signed the Astana Memorandum if it had had serious deep seated fears the signing might lead to decentralisation, or a federalised break-up of Syria into semi-autonomous ‘state lettes.’ From Ankara’s perspective, such a scenario might also encourage similar repercussions for Turkey’s own increasingly centralized state. The idea of an autonomous Kurdish canton in northern Syria could be seen by Turkey as a major threat, in that it would encourage Kurdish autonomy in parts of Turkey, and in neighboring Iraq, too. This scenario is regarded as ‘the ultimate nightmare’ for Ankara.
As much as Washington would like a sectarian Syria, complete with a confessionalist, Lebanese-style government divide based on religion, leading to a weak central government, this simply cannot happen in Syria because the idea of a tolerant, multi-faith society is a central part of the Syrian national identity. Neoconservatives might be slow to grasp this reality, only because many of them are still intoxicated by their success in creating a sectarian nightmare in Iraq which has left that country in ruins, and with a weak central state, completely reliant on various sources of foreign aid.
Surprisingly, the US has had little to say about the structure of the Astana agreement and the terms laid out. As with the ‘opposition,’ the inclusion of Iran seems to be a major deal-breaker. According to US State Department officials,
“Iran’s activities in Syria have only contributed to the violence, not stopped it, and Iran’s unquestioning support for the Assad regime has perpetuated the misery of ordinary Syrians.”
US protests against Iran’s involvement in the process should be viewed through an Israeli lens, and no doubt AIPAC has circulated Tel Aviv’s talking points on Capitol Hill in advance of any agreement.
Despite US and ‘rebel’ protests, the reality is that Iran’s contribution of reinforcements to Syria has helped with maintaining overall security and has helped to give stability to many areas liberated from terrorist control, like East Aleppo. Washington and Israel might not like this, but what should really count in any international agreement is what the majority of Syrians see as the benefit of Iran’s involvement to date – which is increased security for liberated, government-controlled areas in Syria. Not surprisingly, this is something that ‘rebel’ groups have shown no genuine interest in since 2011.
Divine Intervention: Home Grown Terror, or Chemical Weapons ‘Intelligence’?
The other scenario for a Western Miracle is divine humanitarian intervention.
When you see statements like this in prominent White Helmet PR vehicles likeThe Guardian, citing the BBC, it should be a cause for concern:
“America’s initial reluctance to jump behind the Russian safe zone plan is underscored by reports that western intelligence believes it knows the location of three sites where the Syrian government is still making chemical weapons in breach of undertakings given to the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”
“The BBC reported the intelligence documents showed chemical and biological munitions were being produced at three main sites near Damascus and Hama. All three are branches of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, a government agency. They allege that both Iran and Russia, the Syrian government’s allies, have knowledge of Syria’s activity.”
That’s right – more vague WMD ‘intelligence’ from unnamed ‘sources’… just in case. It’s an endless narrative. Wait, but there’s more:
“The French government last month published an intelligence report claiming: “France considers that Syria, despite the commitment to destroy all its stocks and capacities, has maintained a productive capacity.”
The US, along with the UK and France are looking to re-occupy the center of this discussion and thus dictate the pace and the process, there exists a clear pattern of events and behaviour.
If we look back at past events over recent years, the US has not engaged in any serious all-party diplomacy but instead has relied on increasing its military power in and around Syria to build its hand at the table. The main pretext to re-ignite a US, UK and French intervention is the ultimate prime mover, national security. The trigger for this has always been some random ‘ISIS-inspired’ terrorist attack somewhere in North America or Europe, or a some unlikely ‘chemical weapons’ event. ‘Home-grown’ ISIS attacks are normally well-timed events which open the door for military deployments in the Middle East.
Likewise chemical weapons incidents also seem to be timed to perfection, followed by loud displays of righteous indignation in the West, followed by damning tweets from Ken Roth at Human Rights Watch, and general calls in the West for a humanitarian intervention. Make of that what you will, but it’s a proven pattern of behaviour by now. Before the alleged ‘chemical attack’ at Khan Sheikhun in Idlib, Syria on April 4, 2017, the US and its new President were trailing behind the Astana Process and fighting for foreign policy coherence around the Syria conversation. Then, in “decisive” fashion, the Pentagon fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles hitting Shayrat Airbase near Homs, suddenly Washington seemed to be back in the game, sort of. Suddenly, CNN et all (the same mainstream media who were raking him over ‘Russian Influence’ hearings) began gushing over “President” Trump. Even Democrats were flirting because they saw this move as a move against Russian interests. Trump got a much-needed bounce in the polls and it was all happy Tweets and smiles from the golf course as the President finally discovered his path to public approval – war. But the revelry was short-lived. To date, there has been no forensic investigation into the Khan Sheikhun incident on April 4, 2017, partly because an independent investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is being blocked, namely the US and the UK. As a result, skepticism is growing, even in the West, that the infamous ‘sarin gas’ attack in Idlib was nothing more than a well-choreographed, staged event orchestrated in part by the US and UK-funded Oscar winning ‘first responder NGO’ embedded exclusively with terrorists Jabat Al Nusra, the White Helmets, and amplified by the western media – exactly like other improbable ‘WMD’ events like East Ghouta in August 2013, and mirroring shades of Iraq in 2003.
The reality is that on numerous occasions to date, the ‘rebel’ militants have been caught using chemical weapons and killing civilians. Incidents include chlorine, mustard gas, (crude) sarin, and white phosphorus. A recent report by the OPCW concluded that terrorists in Aleppo used banned chemical weapons against civilian populations. So the body of evidence points to the ‘rebels’ but these findings are conveniently ignored by the western mainstream media, its politicians and bureaucrats.
Doubling Down on Sanctions
This week President Trump renewed economic sanctions on Syria for another year, based on those same alleged ‘war crimes by the Assad Regime’ i.e. chemical weapons.
To people the US sanctions are viewed as a fairly sterile affair – freezing the assets of government officials, and banning trade with Syria. The policy reads:
“[In] accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 USC 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared with respect to the actions of the Government of Syria.”
We’re told in the West that these are designed to ‘change the behavior of the regime,’ as if collective punishment of the Syrian people will encourage them to rise up and perform another Arab Spring for the cameras. In fact, sanctions are responsible for the failing economy, shortages of essential supplies including medicine, rapid inflation, mass unemployment, mass migration, crippling infrastructure, and contribute to the recruitment of thousands of young men into extremist militias, including terrorist groups. In other words, they undermine peace and stability on the ground. And that’s not a mistake on the part of Washington and its allies – it’s by design.
Either way, be sure that the War on Terror Troika – Washington, London and Paris, will try to reserve the right to strike at a place and time of its choosing in order to ‘fight ISIS’ wherever ISIS appears – including in any of Astana’s four designated ‘Safe Zones.’
It’s important to note, in case it has been completely forgotten, that any US, Turkey, Israel or other NATO member state deployments on the ground in Syria or over its airspace – is completely illegal by International Law, and also unconstitutional by respective western legal standards.
Since the onset of the conflict, the US, its Coalition – especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have conveniently used the chaos they themselves have sown in Syria by arming and financing ‘the rebellion’ – in order to further their own military and geopolitical objectives in the region. In doing so, the US and its Coalition have damaged their own credibility and in doing so have really forfeited any place at any peace negotiations table. How can countries like the US, UK, EU member states, the Gulf states or Jordan, be involved in any accords if they have been directly involved in giving material support to extremists thus fomenting the violence on the ground and further the war itself?
For this reason, all of the Geneva meetings on Syria cannot be a leading forum, and are effectively another ineffective talking shop, as the US-led Coalition has basically ditched International Law when it comes to Syria. The same argument could be extended to Yemen as well.
Al Nusra fighters were among the evacuees from al-Waer in Homs in April (PHOTO: Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE)
Syria’s Reconciliation Process
In the background, behind the high-profile scenes in Astana, something truly incredible is taking place – and it’s something that neither the Western mainstream media, nor the politicians want the public to hear about.
One of the most under-reported and most incredible stories talking place right now in Syria is the progress being made through Syria’s reconciliation process. The initial program was launched in 2012, led by Dr. Ali Haidar. The program allowed for a“reconciliation” process for those Syrian ‘rebel’ terrorists who laid down their arms and engaged in the “reconciliation” process. If successful, they could either return to regular life in the community, or they could join the Syrian Arab Army to fight extremist militants on the government side. Then in February 2016, the Russian and Syrian governments ramped-up this program to another level, with Moscow spearheading the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria. Through this joint venture, the Syrian government has managed to secure signed Cessation of Hostilities agreements from numerous militant groups in multiple provinces. The program allows militants and terrorists a clear path to evacuate, with their families, out from what the West refer to as “rebel-held” (and what most Syrians refer to as “terrorist-held”) conflict zones to further afield extremist strongholds in the north like Idlib and Jarablus. These evacuations have already happened in heavy fighting areas like al-Waer near Homs, Daraa, Jabab and more recently this week from Damascus suburbs of Barzeh and Qaboun.
According to the center, the number of populated localities in Syria that have joined this process is now over 1,400, with the number of armed groups signing on so far totaling around 140. Both Russia and Turkey are cooperating to act as guarantors to the ceasefire deals and also to share the responsibility of monitoring violations. Like Astana, this program does not extend to ISIS, although some al Nusra fighters have been among the militants making their way to Idlib.
One amazing thing about this program is that the Syrian and Russian governments have guaranteed safe passage for militants out of areas in order to bring hostilities to an end. From a public relations standpoint, any success here is ultimately bad for the West, the Gulf states and the ‘rebels’, because it flies in the face of everything they have been saying about ‘the brutal regime’ in Damascus. Contrast this to some of the absolute heinous acts perpetrated by ‘rebel’ terrorists – against civilian evacuees, including the mass murder of innocents from the villages of Foua and Kefraya at Rashidine near Aleppo in April.
Overall however, the program is generating some success and reducing fighting in many areas, while extremists are shipped north into areas with high concentrations of extremists, like Idlib (the second ‘Islamic State’ in the making), although numerous reports suggest that some rather well-off terrorists and ‘rebel’ leaders are taking the spoils of their lucrative enterprises (foreign cash, trafficking in weapons, stolen goods, drugs, extortion rackets and other items accumulated over 6 years of war) and settling in Turkey.
This program somewhat reflects the Astana Process, in that it’s a huge calculated risk which brings temporary respite in conflict zones, but doesn’t necessarily eradicate the core problem of the violent extremists. Like Astana, there is no guarantee it will be a complete success, but it is allowing for temporary relief in many areas which is important to the Syrian public.
Astana ‘Compromise’ vs World War III
Just the idea of allowing foreign troops from “observer nations” to be deployed along the various demarcation lines of the four ‘Safe Zones’ appears like a giant red flag to many who believe that the Astana Process is the same as previous Western calls for safe zones in Syria – which will lead to the break-up of the country.
To some skeptical committed supporters of Damascus, this might seem like Russia is ‘selling out’ Damascus in order to realize its own geopolitical ambitions. To reach such a conclusion would require that the Astana terms and conditions are the same as those drawn up by the West – which they clearly are not. Neither are the players involved here or the intention behind the agreement.
No one knows Syria better than Syrians. Already, the war has broken up into multiple potential geographical disputes. What’s important here, is that all interested parties acknowledge that the situation in Syria has escalated to such a degree and the list of international and regional participants is now so vast, that the wider geopolitical picture may have eclipsed the issue of Syria itself. Put another way, the Russian-led effort could also be viewed as an attempt to avoid a dangerous impasse, at least in the short to near term. After so many years of US and its allies’ efforts to deliberately undermine and destabilize its country, Damascus is well aware that any US-led efforts will not be positive for Syria and will likely disregard any national interests. With that in mind, Damascus is placing a tremendous amount of trust in Russia which is considering the interests of Syria.
If regional cantons are lost in the short term to some internationally recognised, or internationally imposed federal lay-out, this does not necessarily mean that they cannot return into the Syrian national fold. Damascus could very well re-incorporate them a later point in time, although such a future scenario also presents a huge risk for Damascus.
There is no guarantee that this agreement will hold, nor will it guarantee a just settlement for Syrian people in the future. What it does guarantee is a start to a process, led not by the West, but by the East. For that reason, both the Reconciliation Process in Syria and the Astana Process aregroundbreaking efforts.
Sometimes peace comes at a price. In the short term, Syria may have but a few viable options, and therefore a calculated risk would seem more attractive than the other alternative – which is a complete collapse of a nation, or World War III breaking out over your homeland.
In matters of state and dealing with empires, Syria has over 6,000 years of experience, which is something the war hawks and nation-builders in Washington may never understand.
In US judicial proceedings, beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest standard of proof required.
In civil litigation, it’s either proof by a preponderance of evidence or by what’s clear and convincing – establishing a high probability of truth.
In criminal cases, the high proof standard of reasonable doubt is especially important because a defendant’s freedom or possible execution is at stake.
The same high standard is most important when one nation accuses another of criminal actions. War could follow false accusations accepted as factual.
Last March, neocon Dick Cheney called alleged foreign interference in America’s election an “act of war” – despite none occurring, baseless accusations alone.
In judicial proceedings, if prosecutors can’t prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, jurors or judges are obligated to exonerate defendants.
The same standard holds for accusations against Russia, claiming interference in America’s 2016 presidential election. No evidence proves it. None exists. Months of investigations turned up nothing.
Yet the witch-hunt persists, time and taxpayer money wasted. Media scoundrels are especially reprehensible, bashing Trump for the wrong reasons, ignoring the right ones.
Endless investigations into fabricated accusations claiming Russian US election hacking will continue discovering nothing because no interference occurred.
Sacking Comey should be a nonissue. America’s intelligence community as it now operates, including the FBI, should be fired, replaced by responsible agencies operating legally, serving all Americans equitably, opposing imperial lawlessness and governance serving privileged interests exclusively – polar opposite the way things are in Washington.
Hysterical NYT editors were over-the-top headlining “Trump’s Firing of Comey Is All About the Russia Inquiry,” saying:
His sacking jeopardizes “the viability of any further investigation into what could be one of the biggest political scandals in the country’s history.”
Fact: It’s hard finding words harsh enough to condemn this reckless comment. The real scandal is America’s fantasy democracy, a bipartisan conspiracy against peace, equity, and justice, the nation’s endless wars of aggression, its deplorable media scoundrels, producing disinformation and fake news, not real journalism, supporting Washington’s sinister agenda instead of condemning it.
The anti-Russia witch-hunt should be terminated at once, clear statements explaining no interference in America’s presidential election occurred, and putting an end to what never should have been initiated once and for all.
The Times debunked the notion that Comey failed to follow-through responsibly on investigating Hillary’s criminality, instead saying:
He “was fired (for) leading an active investigation that could bring down a president” – possible only by producing fabricated accusations about what never happened, no other way.
The Times:
“(T)he need for…a (special) prosecutor is plainer than ever…The president…crippled the FBI’s ability to carry out an investigation of him and his associates.”
Fact: Holding Trump accountable for deplorable domestic and geopolitical policies is warranted and necessary, not pursuing a witch-hunt to oust him from office for fabricated reasons, as The Times supports.
Comparing Comey’s sacking to Nixon’s October 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, as its editors claim, is utter rubbish. There are no hidden White House tapes, no subpoenas for presidential documents, no Justice Department resignations, just recommendations.
Hysteria substitutes for sensibility. Trump has been in office less than four months. Calls for impeaching him for the wrong reasons should shock the public conscience.
So should fake accusations of Russian US election meddling. The absence of evidence should put the issue to rest once and for all.
Instead it festers interminably – testimony to a system too debauched to fix, and deplorable media scoundrels, refusing to do their job responsibly.
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.”
The failure of neoliberal policies (free trade, privatization, and freedom of movement for capital) in the Global South has led to a new discourse by the World Bank – promoting ideas of sustainable development aid; not eliminating debt and allowing countries to pursue sovereign forms of economic development, but repackaging neoliberal policies through aid. To no one’s surprise, the mantra of sustainable development also became an epic failure.
According to DPR’s vice commander Eduard Basurin, Ukrainian armed forces committed 51 ceasefire violations in the past 24 hours, 331 in the past week, firing 2,122 shells, mortar rounds and other projectiles at Donetsk – flagrant Minsk violations, continuing regularly.
The WFTU also issued a statement
A bigger question is why Democracy Now would host Gopal on its program at all. Why would Democracy Now allow Gopal to run interference by painting Russia and Syria as mass murdering nations and the US as an arbiter of peace? It has been well-documented since 2011 that US involvement in Syria has always been about overthrowing the Syrian government. Defense Intelligence Agency documents confirm that the 
Today the world is more unstable than even at the height of the cold war. The approach to international security we have been using since the 1990s has simply not worked. 
Corrupt groups in society – such as the ANC cadre or groups of new capitalists like the Afrikaner capitalists after 1948 – draw the wealth they transfer to themselves from different parts of society. There are four main sources of wealth, or circuits of wealth, from which the corrupt groups can steal. The first is from the capitalist class itself. There are many cases of this corruption in the financial markets, and daily we hear of reports of “insider trading,” which is corruption between and among financial market traders to steal from the capitalist class itself. The second is from the state. The third is to steal directly from the middle class, and fourth, they can steal directly from the working class. Corrupt groups focus on the lines along which wealth is distributed in society, where they “intercept” this wealth behind the scenes and direct it to themselves and friends. The wealth can be “intercepted” within the circuits of wealth of particular classes, as well as when wealth moves between the different circuits. Corrupt groups do not in general create wealth, they redirect it and consume it once it is produced.
Of importance in this struggle will be the battle for the hearts and minds of the population. Who will be able to win the battle for public opinion? At this point in the battle the Guptas and Zuma (a minor player in this historical drama) have the odds stacked against them. Almost the entire media sings from the same hymnbook: the Guptas are corrupt, they are a danger to the “nation,” (here xenophobia even comes into it) and they should be denied citizenship, etc, etc. On the other hand, it is easy to mistake the noise of the media for real support for the Gordhan corner.
The South has become a thriving economic power with a population of 45 million, It has a cutting-edge high-tech industry, a strong information technology industry, along with ship-building, steel production, and auto manufacturing (in fifth place globally). South Korea is 11th in its level of gross domestic product (GDP), considered a measure of economic strength among developed countries. It has also established an armed force of 650,000, and has developed highly advanced armaments.
d Cox is a red herring (a media diversion) because it was not president Trump who took the decision to fire James Comey. Moreover, the alleged collusion between Moscow and Trump is FAKE. It cannot reasonably be compared to the Watergate investigation, which Nixon attempted to block.
Quoting an eyewitness who wanted to remain anonymous, the VOA noted:
