Global Research

El Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) dió a conocer el pasado 21 de marzo los resultados de su medición anual en materia de Desarrollo Humano (Índice de Desarrollo Humano – IDH) para el 2016, ubicando a Costa Rica en el puesto 66 (véase, de las pocas editadas en Costa Rica, esta nota de prensa de Elpais.cr).

A nivel global, Costa Rica y Serbia comparten el puesto 66, escoltados por dos Estados isleños del Caribe: Trinidad y Tobago (en la posición 65) y Cuba (en el puesto 68). En la medición anterior correspondiente al año 2015, estos mismos cuatro Estados se situaban en el siguiente orden: Trinidad y Tobago (64), Serbia (66), Cuba (67) y Costa Rica (69).

En el 2016, el primer Estado miembro de la Unión Europea aparece en la posición 4 (Alemania), el primero del hemisferio americano es Canadá en el puesto 10, mientras que el primer Estado asíatico es Japón con la posición 17. El Estado de África mejor ubicado es Mauricio (64), mientras que en la península arábica, es Catar (33).

El IDH en breve

Como bien se sabe, el IDH es un indicador desarrollado por Naciones Unidas desde varias décadas, que clasifica anualmente a los Estados con base en información proporcionada por los mismos Estados. El Informe Global 2016 sobre el IDH (véase texto completo del informe) precisa la metodología y la clasificación obtenida en el 2016. Se lee en esta nota oficial del PNUD que:

“El IDH se creó para hacer hincapié en que las personas y sus capacidades —y no el crecimiento económico por sí solo— deben ser el criterio más importante para evaluar el desarrollo de un país. El IDH índice también puede usarse para cuestionar las decisiones normativas nacionales, comparando cómo dos países con el mismo nivel de ingreso nacional bruto (INB) per cápita obtienen resultados diferentes en materia de desarrollo humano. Estos contrastes pueden impulsar el debate sobre las prioridades normativas de los gobiernos”.

La casilla correspondiente al IDH de Costa Rica medido en el 2016 se puede accesar en este enlace oficial del PNUD: en ella, se desglosa el IDH con los diversos valores numéricos usados para cada una de las variables. Nótese en este desglose que el único valor que no fue asignado fue el de pobreza, con un rubro que se mantiene con la indicación “n.a /not available”. Se ignora si la gran cantidad de estudios y diagnósticos sobre la pobreza realizados en Costa Rica por entidades estatales impide, por alguna razón, a los investigadores del PNUD cuantificar con algún valor numérico esta variable y se esperaría que, con ocasión de la próxima medición del IDH, sea plenamente integrada.

La evolución de Costa Rica en materia de IDH

En el 2015, Costa Rica ostentaba la posición 69 a nivel mundial, según se desprende del Informe IDH 2015 (véase texto). La desmejorada posición para el 2016 puede también ser comparada al IDH de Costa Rica en el año 2003, año en el que Costa Rica ostentaba la posición 42 a nivel mundial. Desde el año 2006, el descenso de Costa Rica ha sido significativo. En el 2011, cayó al puesto más bajo en su historia, el puesto 69, lo cual puede plantear algunas interrogantes sobre los efectos, en materia social, de la gestión de la administración del Presidente Oscar Arias Sánchez (2006-2010). Al haberse mantenido en el 2014 con un IDH en la posición 68, las interrogantes son mayores, al no haber logrado la administración de la Presidenta Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014) mejorar sustancialmente el IDH de Costa Rica: en el 2015, Costa Rica volvió a ocupar la posición 69.

INDICE DE DESARROLLO HUMANO (Costa Rica)

•2003———–Puesto 42 a nivel mundial

•2004———– Puesto 45 a nivel mundial

•2005———-47

•2006———-48

•2007———-48

•2008———-50

•2009———-54

•2010———-62

•2011———-69

(Fuente: Informe Estado de la Nación / PNUD. Informe EdN, XVIII (2012), p. 363. Cabe señalar que en las últimas ediciones del Estado de la Nación, por alguna razón que desconocemos, ya no se incluye en sus listas de indicadores el IDH desarrollado por el PNUD como tal).

El IDH (2016) en el resto de América Latina

En América Latina, mientras que Chile permanece con el puesto más alto (39), Haití se mantiene como el último Estado de América Latina, con el puesto 163.

De manera a comparar el puesto 66 de Costa Rica con el de algunos de los otros Estados de América Latina, el Informe Global IDH (2016) indica lo siguiente: Argentina se sitúa en el puesto 45, Bolivia en el 118, Colombia en el 95, Cuba en el puesto 68, Ecuador en la posición 89, México en la 77, Perú se ubica en la posición 87, República Dominicana en la 99, Uruguay en la 54 y Venezuela en el puesto 71. Una comparación con el Informe IDH 2015 (véase texto), el Informe IDH 2014 (véase texto) y el Informe IDH 2013 (véase texto) permite apreciar quiénes progresan y quiénes no, y quiénes se estancan.

Para el 2016, en América Central, Belize se sitúa en la posición 103, El Salvador en el puesto 117, mientras Nicaragua en el puesto 124, Guatemala en el 125 y Honduras en el 130. Panamá lidera a los Estados de Mesoamérica en el puesto 60.

Foto extraída de artículo de CRHoy del 2012 titulado “20% de las familias pobres apenas concentró el 4,2% del total de ingreso de los hogares”

El irresuelto problema de la desigualdad social

Es de notar que Costa Rica es uno de los Estados de América Latina en los que la desigualdad ha crecido en mayor proporción, así como en República Dominicana. En este estudio de la Comisión Económica para América Central (CEPAL) del 2015, se lee que: “Los cambios en los indicadores de desigualdad de la región han ocurrido de manera gradual y son apenas perceptibles en las variaciones interanuales, pero resultan evidentes al comparar períodos más largos. Durante el período 2002-2013, en 15 de los 17 países considerados se evidencian mejoras distributivas, reflejadas en la disminución del índice de Gini (véase el gráfico I.1). Las excepciones son Costa Rica y República Dominicana, cuyos índices de Gini son superiores en 2013 que en 2002” (p. 14).
Gráfico sobre variación anual del coeficiente Gini en el que República Dominicana y Costa Rica presentan una evolución distinta a la de los demás Estados de América Latina, extraído de este análisis sobre crecimiento y desigualdad (UNAM, 2013)

Al ser considerada América Latina la región más desigual del mundo, figurar en posiciones tan destacadas debió haber interpelado a muchos sobre los correctivos a incorporar al modelo económico actualmente en voga en Costa Rica y en otros Estados de la región: no cabe duda que sin estos, se convierte en un generador de abundante riqueza, la cual tiende a concentrarse cada vez mas en menos sectores, mientras los índices de mayor pobreza aumentan.

La tendencia es confirmada en el último panorama social de América Latina publicado por una entidad como la Comisión Económica para América Latina (CEPAL) (véase estudio), en el que se analizan las medidas correctivas implementadas con algun grado de éxito por algunos Estados de América Latina.

Foto extraída de artículo de prensa (El Financiero) del 2013 titulado “Crece desigualdad de ingresos en Costa Rica según Informe de Estado de la Nación”

El coeficiente Gini en Costa Rica: breves apuntes

Un indicador internacional como el coeficiente Gini que mide la desigualdad social en función del ingreso (véase sitio del PNUD con medición del coeficiente Gini al 2014) advierte que, en el caso de Costa Rica, pasó de 0,485 en el 2005 a 0,524 (2013): en este mismo 2013, un artículo de prensa publicado en Informa-tico se tituló “Costa Rica ya es modelo de desigualdad social en América Latina”. En el precitado estudio de la CEPAL publicado en el 2014 (véase documento), los dos gráficos sobre índices de desigualdad (el Gini y otro denominado Theil en la página 100) evidencian lo anómalo de la situación de Costa Rica en comparación con el resto de América Latina.

En otro acápite del mismo estudio sobre el indice de bipolarización en la distribución del ingreso (índice de Wolfson) se lee que:

“En cuanto a la evolución del índice, en el gráfico II.4 se constata que la bipolarización del ingreso disminuyó en 15 de 18 países entre 2004 y 2012, mientras que aumentó solo en tres países (Costa Rica, el Paraguay y Guatemala)” (p. 105).

En este estudio del 2012 de la Fundación Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung sobre pobreza y desigualdad en América Latina, en el capítulo sobre el caso de Costa Rica, se indica que: “Para el 2009, el coeficiente de Gini se ubica en torno a los 0.44 puntos, cuando en 1990 tomaba un valor de 0.37.5 Como el coeficiente de Gini es más sensible a los cambios en la parte media de la distribución, se puede complementar con otros indicadores de desigualdad como el índice de Theil, más sensible a la parte alta de la distribución, o la varianza del logaritmo del ingreso, más sensible a lo que sucede en la parte inferior de la distribución. Estos otros indicadores ofrecen la misma tendencia hacia el aumento en la desigualdad en las dos últimas décadas” (p.76).

En el caso de Chile, que ha logrado frenar y luego reducir sus niveles de desigualdad en materia social, se precisa en un documento de trabajo del PNUD que aún queda mucho por recorrer: ” No obstante, el país está aún lejos de lograr los niveles de equidad y progreso social que presentan las naciones más desarrolladas. En efecto, la desigualdad de ingresos sigue siendo elevada, por lo que hay diferencias muy marcadas de los estándares de vida que logran distintos grupos de la población. El coeficiente de Gini debe caer aún 20 puntos adicionales, para que la desigualdad del ingreso en Chile converja al nivel promedio de la OCDE” (Véase LARRAÑAGA O., RODRIGUEZ M.E., “Desigualdad de Ingresos y Pobreza en Chile 1990 a 2013”, Documento de trabajo, Dic. 2014, Santiago de Chile, PNUD, p. 37). La mención de Chile en materia de desigualdad social cobra particular relevancia al tratarse de un Estado que ha ingresado a la OCDE, aspiración que tiene Costa Rica desde el 2013.

La evolución del coeficiente Gini en Costa Rica entre 1987 y el 2012 puede ser revisada en este estudio del Informe del Estado de la Nación del 2013 (gráfico p.2). Se ha intentado obtener un gráfico reciente (al 2016) sobre la progresión del coeficiente Gini en Costa Rica con relación al resto de América Latina en los últimos 10 años, sin éxito a la fecha: al respecto, agradecemos desde ya a nuestros estimables lectores el hacernos llegar alguna publicación digital que lo contenga. Posiblemente este gráfico arroje algunos datos que puedan explicar mejor este notable declive del IDH en Costa Rica durante ese período, mientras que otros Estados progresan en materia de Desarrollo Humano.

Con relación a la pobreza en Costa Rica, en el 2014 se leyó en este artículo de La Nación, que: “La pobreza en los hogares de Costa Rica llegó al nivel más alto en cinco años al alcanzar en el 2014 un 22,4%. Esto significó un incremento de casi dos puntos porcentuales frente al 2013 según reveló, la mañana de este jueves, la Encuesta Nacional de Hogares 2014 realizada por el Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC)”. Otro documento del Ministerio de Planificación (MIDEPLAN) del 2016 arroja cifras similares con relación a la pobreza (véase documento). Tanto MIDEPLAN como el INEC son entidades estatales, sus datos no han sido cuestionados, por lo que surge nuevamente la pregunta de saber porqué el IDH 2016 se estableció para Costa Rica sin contar con un valor numérico correspondiente a la variable de la pobreza.

El desmejoramiento de la calidad de los servicios públicos, también puede estar influyendo, entre otros factores, en esta medición en la que Costa Rica se ve superada por ocho Estados de América Latina y del Caribe con respecto al IDH en este último ejercicio correspondiente al 2016.

De otros indicadores y datos preocupantes

En una materia como la ambiental, en la que Costa Rica figura en diversos foros internacionales como un Estado a la vanguardia, un indicador desarrollado por dos universidades norteamericanas (indicador EPI) arrojó en el 2014 un vertiginoso descenso de Costa Rica, pasando del puesto 5 al puesto 54 (véase nota en este mismo sitio). Los investigadores norteamericanos consideraron oportuno elaborar una nota sobre Costa Rica a raíz de algunas declaraciones oficiales de Costa Rica cuestionando la metodología EPI (véase nota).

Posiblemente relacionado con el tipo de partículas que circulan en el aire que respiran a diario los costarricenses, en particular los habitantes de la Gran Area Metropolitana (GAM), este dato se leyó en un reciente artículo en temas de salud: “Cerca de un 12% de la población costarricense padece de asma, de acuerdo con la Iniciativa Global para el Manejo del Asma, en tanto que con un 32%, Costa Rica es el país con mayor prevalencia de asma en niños en América Latina”.

En un ámbito muy distinto, este otro gráfico extraído de un informe del 2014 del Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención (MNP) de Costa Rica (órgano técnico adscrito a la Defensoría de los Habitantes) ilustra otro alarmante síntoma que debería de haber interpelado a los decisores políticos costarricenses desde hace muchos años: el aumento vertiginoso de la tasa de personas privadas de libertad por cada 100.000 habitantes en Costa Rica.

Estos datos (así como muchos otros) permiten evidenciar el notable deterioro del clima social, de la calidad de vida, de la salud, consecuencia lógica de advertencias tan sostenidas como recurrentes de los diversos instrumentos de medición en materia social en Costa Rica.

De algunas iniciativas privadas recientes

Con respecto a estos últimos, resulta oportuno indicar que desde Costa Rica, en el 2013, una alianza entre una entidad como el INCAE Business School y las universidades Oxford y de Harvard (con el generoso apoyo de la Fundación Rockefeller, la Pratham Education Foundation, y la empresa Deloitte) propusó una nueva forma de medir el desarrollo social, con la creación del Indice de Progreso Social (véase nota del INCAE). Se puede consultar la plataforma del Social Progress Index en este enlace. No se ha podido conocer cuáles son las deficiencias detectadas en el IDH que elabora el PNUD por parte del INCAE y de sus socios anglosajones para proceder a crear una nueva metodología de medición, en la que, como era previsible, Costa Rica aparece en una posición privilegiada en América Latina.

De igual forma, el reciente creado Indice de Felicidad (Happy Planet Index), otorga a Costa Rica una envidiable posición como uno de los países “más felices” del mundo.

Es de notar que estas y algunas otras iniciativas de índole privado encuentran mayor eco en los medios de prensa que la medición del IDH elaborada por el PNUD.

A modo de conclusión: la persistente pertinencia del IDH en Costa Rica

Jugar con variables, datos y metodologías para reflejar de la manera más precisa la realidad social constituye siempre un desafiante ejercicio. Con relación a la metodología utilizada para establecer el IDH, es posiblemente perfectible, y podría incluso ser mejorada en el futuro. En el 2014, el economista costarricense Pablo Sauma discutió y analizó algunos aspectos metodológicos relativos al IDH, concluyendo su artículo de opinión publicado en La Nación en los siguientes términos: “En cualquier caso, se concluye que el IDH sigue siendo un indicador importante para comprender la situación del desarrollo a nivel mundial y de Costa Rica en particular, y que con una perspectiva de mediano y largo plazo se confirma que como país hemos perdido impulso en el avance hacia el logro de mayores niveles de desarrollo, por lo que debemos realizar esfuerzos renovados en las dimensiones consideradas, especialmente en educación”.

La posición 66 obtenida por Costa Rica en año 2016, precedida por la posición 69 para el 2015, confirman ambas que, además de haber perdido impulso, los esfuerzos de sus autoridades no han (aún) logrado extraer a Costa Rica de las posiciones en las que la administración (2006-2010) concluyó su ejercicio gubernamental.

Nicolas Boeglin

Un poliziotto sfonda la porta con un ariete portatile, l’altro entra con la pistola spianata e crivella di colpi l’uomo che, svegliato di soprassalto, ha afferrato una mazza da baseball, mentre altri poliziotti puntano le pistole contro un bambino con le mani alzate: scene di ordinaria violenza «legale» negli Stati uniti, documentate una settimana fa con immagini video dal New York Times, che parla di «scia di sangue» provocata da queste «perquisizioni» effettuate da ex militari reclutati nella polizia, con le stesse tecniche dei rastrellamenti in Afghanistan o Iraq.

Tutto questo non ce lo fanno vedere i nostri grandi media, gli stessi che mettono in prima pagina la polizia russa che arresta Alexei Navalni a Mosca per manifestazione non autorizzata. Un «affronto ai valori democratici fondamentali», lo definisce il Dipartimento di stato Usa che richiede fermamente il suo immediato rilascio e quello di altri fermati. Anche Federica Mogherini, alto rappresentante della politica estera della Ue, condanna il governo russo perché «impedisce l’esercizio delle libertà fondamentali di espressione, associazione e assemblea pacifica». Tutti uniti, dunque, nella nuova campagna lanciata contro la Russia con i toni tipici della guerra fredda, a sostegno del nuovo paladino dei «valori democratici».

Chi è Alexei Navalni? Come si legge nel suo profilo ufficiale, è stato formato all’università statunitense di Yale quale «fellow» (membro selezionato) del «Greenberg World Fellows Program», un programma creato nel 2002 per il quale vengono selezionati ogni anno su scala mondiale appena 16 persone con carattertstiche tali da farne dei «leader globali». Essi fanno parte di una rete di «leader impegnati globalmente per rendere il mondo un posto migliore», composta attualmente da 291 fellows di 87 paesi, l’uno in contatto con l’altro e tutti collegati al centro statunitense di Yale.

Navalni è allo stesso tempo co-fondatore del movimento «Alternativa democratica», uno dei beneficiari della National Endowment for Democracy (Ned), potente «fondazione privata non-profit» statunitense che con fondi forniti anche dal Congresso finanzia, apertamente o sottobanco, migliaia di organizzazioni non-governative in oltre 90 paesi per «far avanzare la democrazia». La Ned, una delle succursali della Cia per le operazioni coperte, è stata ed è particolarmente attiva in Ucraina. Qui ha sostenuto (secondo quanto scrive) «la Rivoluzione di Maidan che ha abbattutto un governo corrotto che impediva la democrazia». Col risultato che, con il putsch di Piazza Maidan, è stato insediato a Kiev un governo ancora più corrotto, il cui carattere democratico è rappresentato dai neonazisti che vi occupano posizioni chiave.

In Russia, dove sono state proibite le attività delle «organizzazioni non-governative indesiderabili», la Ned non ha per questo cessato la sua campagna contro il governo russo, accusato di condurre una politica estera aggressiva per sottopporre alla sua sfera d’influenza tutti gli stati un tempo facenti parte dell’Urss. Accusa che serve da base alla strategia Usa/Nato contro la Russia. La tecnica, ormai consolidata, è quella delle «rivoluzioni arancioni»: far leva su casi veri o inventati di corruzione e su altre cause di malcontento per fomentare una ribellione anti-governativa, così da indebolire lo Stato dall’interno mentre dall’esterno cresce su di esso la pressione militare, politica ed economica. In tale quadro si inserisce l’attività di Alexei Navalni, specializzatosi a Yale quale avvocato difensore dei deboli di fronte ai soprusi dei potenti.

Manlio Dinucci

One man’s incredible story, defending the people of Aleppo…

On this past episode of the SUNDAY WIRE SHOW host Patrick Henningsen spoke with a special guest Patrice, a western special forces commando with an incredible story – a man who by happenstance, became caught-up in an emerging conflict, and who found himself leading a platoon on the front lines with the Syrian Arab Army defending the residents of Aleppo against a terrorist occupying army in that country’s six year war against Western and Gulf-backed Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS terrorists.

21st Century Wire’s associate editor, Vanessa Beeley, met with Patrice when she was covering the liberation of East Aleppo in December 2016 and following in the tracks of the Syrian Arab Army and allies, as they cleansed each district of the terrorist and extremist occupiers, releasing the Syrian civilians from a five year brutal, sectarian imprisonment. She had this to say:

“I met Patrice on the night of the official liberation of Aleppo, the 14th December 2016. We celebrated this victory for the Syrian Arab Army, its allies, and above all, the Syrian people, together with various other Aleppo representatives such as Fares Shehabi, independent parliamentarian and head of the Aleppo Chamber of Commerce that had been destroyed by the NATO and Gulf state funded/armed extremist forces, earlier in the conflict. 

Patrice was an ordinary man who took on an extraordinary role to defend Syria. He abandoned his own close knit family in Europe to fight for the freedom of the Syrian people, to determine their own future without foreign, political and proxy, military intervention. He gave up his own freedom and put his life on the line for almost six years because he believed in the sovereignty of Syria and despised the prefabricated campaign to destroy this ancient civilization. 

Patrice talked about the horrors he had witnessed and expressed his sadness at the exploitation of children, in particular, who were used as weapons by the extremist groups, as human shields, as forced fighters, as propaganda props. 

That night, taxi drivers wept with elation, civilians took to their streets in their thousands, gunfire rang out in celebration, and car horns honked deep into the night. Patrice’s celebration was a quiet, reflection on the senselessness of this war and the huge loss he had witnessed and endured.”

The following is the transcript of the interview, followed by the audio recording:

PATRICK: Just tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up fighting in this war.

PATRICE: What you are saying is correct, sadly, when you are there, you watch “foreign news” and it’s all one sided. To someone living there it’s completely irrelevant, there is no truth in it at all. In 2011, obviously we were having a recession in Europe, if you remember from 2007 to 2010. There were good opportunities to do some business in Syria, I actually drove there, I got in my pick-up truck. I thought I will go and see what its like there [Syria], for an opportunity. I was quite impressed, you know, I wasn’t expecting what I saw, in an Arabic country, that is “third world”. It was quite advanced, it was opening up and for my businesses that I was into, there was a good opportunity so I thought I will study the market, see what I can sell there, or take there, or what have you. I picked up a couple of brands, came back to the UK, took the brands, some Italian brands and went back there, that was 2011 summertime, sort of, June 2011.

Unfortunately the troubles started, aggravating itself then, I spent the summer there, made some contacts. Beginning of 2012, the war started breaking out in certain parts of Syria and I thought, probably a good time to exit now, I didn’t want to be caught up with that now, not with my kids, my family who are all in the UK & Europe. First time I felt threatened or even an attempt on my life, it was around maybe January, February 2012, on the Turkish border. I got there to a petrol station in an area just before the border, called Kilis, which is a well known border crossing, as I was filling up my vehicle with petrol to exit Syria.

There was nobody there, little police, no police at all actually. A little kid about 14 or 15, pulled an AK47 on me after I had filled up the vehicle and asked me to dismount. Luckily enough, with my experience, I managed to overpower the guy and take his weapon and get in my car. As I was about to head for Turkey, I saw two motorbikes, little 125cc scooters, and each one had three guys on them. They were all carrying weapons, so I thought that was his back-up coming towards me, and they started firing towards me, obviously they didnt hit me.

So I got in the vehicle and I went back into Aleppo itself and I informed the local police and the local…sort of…military units, that this is what happened and somebody was trying to kill me and take my vehicle and they said “ok we will investigate it”. Nothing happened, nothing came from it, after a couple of months, I tried to exit again, but this time I didn’t make it as far as the border. Three vehicles got shot in front of my vehicle and then they were aiming at my vehicle, so I turned around and came back and since then I couldn’t exit. They had taken over the border, what they call the “rebels”. To me its ridiculous, there is no such thing as “rebels”, to me, it was all money orientated, that’s all it was.

Then, following that, there was a siege on Aleppo. As a Christian, as a Catholic, I couldn’t go through their areas, we had no safety net because they were such extremes, if you are not Sunni, if you are not with them, or if you lived in town or if you lived in a government controlled area, you are considered as an enemy. Basically you are either beheaded, caught for a ransom, it happened to a lot of people I knew there. Even when they paid the ransom, they [the “rebels”] would behead them instead of sending the person back. So, I had no option, and Aleppo got tightened up and tightened up and literally Aleppo was three little areas, like the size of central London, lets say between Knightsbridge, Leicester Square and Covent Garden..and that was Aleppo. It was surrounded, and obviously, we had no option, I had no option but to fight, you know, I couldn’t go through them, I couldn’t get out. If I didn’t fight I would be killed basically, that was the scenario so I am a commander of a big unit. I start training my soldiers because they had no training, weapons were poor, for every hundred soldiers you get AK47, no heavy weapons, a lot of soldiers had to buy their own ammunition. We had to buy our own uniforms, we had to buy our own food. It was a struggle, but it was a fight for survival, most people who fought, fought for their survival more than anything, not for anyone else basically.

Thats how it went basically from around 2012. In Aleppo, nobody spoke about Aleppo and Aleppo suffered more than any other city…you know..like..where I was living, for example, was predominantly a Christian area and there was a lot of bombing on a daily basis, in my street, in my area, at least 18-28 mortars per day. People got scared, people paid a lot of money to the “opposition” to leave them alone, the factories got robbed, everything got robbed, food…we didn’t have any food, basically.. like a pound of tomatoes, rotten tomatoes, would cost 800 [Syrian] pounds in their money, which would normally be about 20 pounds. No petrol, no heating, no water, lot of diseases, lot of stuff.

We worked on a defensive basis until 2015, literally it was just saving our lives and Aleppo itself, was made up of eight fronts, 8 points where there were battles on a daily basis, minimum we had about 2.5 – 3 hours of battle per day, on each front. We started liberating slightly, slowly, sort of expanding. The first operation I did personally, was in 2013, and that was the first time I exited Aleppo, you know…obviously we liberated certain areas. The area was called Dnet Erin, which is near the airport and we started from there and it took us until 2015, a lot of fighting, a lot of tactical stuff, we lost a lot of people, obviously.

The saddest thing about it is, everyone tells you this religious point of view, that Sunni and Shia, and I mean…me being a Christian…I had no role there…they are a minority and the Shia and Alawites are a minority. I commanded 300 fighters in general, 99.9% of them are Sunni and don’t want these radical people to take control..everything they [“rebels”] get is theirs, for example, they take a village, they kill the men, kill the boys, women they turn them into slaves, turn them into Jihadi women, by having sex but with loads of people, really weird stuff.

If they don’t want to use them for that reason, they sell them in markets, which is a common thing with ISIS and Al Qaeda [Nusra Front] and if you live under their rules, it is extreme, extreme..sort of….what they call their Wahhabi, which is like going back to a time 500 years ago where the woman has no rights and where she has to do everything. Its legit to marry a girl of seven, or 5 or 6, thats “fine”, weird stuff..you know..and the irony of it, whenever they hit us in town, in Aleppo, that was surrounded by them, the sad thing is, 90% of the civilians were Sunni Muslim, like them. Hence the reason… the majority of Sunni living in the government side, and they [the extremists] didn’t want that..the TV channels abroad made it out that the Syrian Arab Army is the terrorist and that the extremists were the good guys, which is completely the opposite.

Luckily you can see their videos, posted all over YouTube, and stuff like that. In one battle, a soldier of mine, went to take a piss… literally a room forward, three minutes later, we thought he didn’t come back, so I sent two scouts to see where he was. They went there and they found his head on the floor and his body had disappeared.

It was all scary..what do you call it…all their tactics to scare you…I know you shoot people and they die, this and that…but to them that wasn’t enough, you know, you have to behead the person, you have to chop him up, which is just not humane. If they catch a soldier, or something, they always ask for a ransom and at the end of it they behead him live.

Recently they beheaded a thirteen year old boy which had nothing to do with the conflict, he wasn’t even Syrian, he was a Palestinian refugee, which was all over the news. The same thing in Damascus, about four months ago, some guy sent his daughter who is 9 years old, who cant even speak properly, and his 7 year old, to be a martyr, and she exploded herself in a police station, for example.

Its what we used to see in the Taliban, if you remember the days of the Taliban, the strictness and backwardness, that is what they wanted to enforce. But the reality of the matter is that the people there don’t want that…

PATRICK: The scripting of the conflict has been very much, Assad persecuting the Sunni “rebels”.

PATRICE: To be honest with you, you look at the town itself, Aleppo was like the industrial zone of Syria..and the revenue of the whole government, the country, was…like…70% out of Aleppo, which hasn’t got petrol, just the factories in it, and these factories, for example, when the war started, first thing, these factories got dismantled and sold into Turkey. Their aim is to destroy the country, the wealthiest people in Syria are Sunni. I have friends of mine, for example, there is a guy called Fares Shehabi who is a well known guy and he is one of the wealthiest people, they are actually living better than we are living in Europe.

In my opinion, the war is for two reasons, its to destroy Syria…(A)..they didn’t want it to be too advanced and be a threat to Europe, or our neighbours, the Israelis, or whatever it is, thats one thing, and the second thing is the dispute over the petrol lines and the gas lines because Qatar and Saudi wanted their stuff, its such a complicated thing, but the religious factor is nothing to do with it. The people there, in town, the people living there, the majority of the Sunni don’t want radicals because they are happy how they are, they want their daughters, their wives, their kids to work, to study. Under the “other ones”, the jihadis, you cant do all that, you got no freedom, you cant have TVs, you cant have this, cant have that, you cant study, you cant educate yourself, thats not what the people want there. People there, want to keep their religion but they don’t want to kill each other for their religion if you see what I mean…so this religion story is ridiculous.

The fact is, take an example like my soldiers, who gave their lives, they are all Sunni. You cant say they were fighting for the money..because their wages are ridiculous, equivalent to about $20 per month, and you are putting your life on the line, so its not like we were giving them thousands of dollars… no! They wanted to fight for their way of living, its just ridiculous [the religious story], I don’t know how to put it any other way.

PATRICK: They are patriots at the end of the day, fighting for their families, their relatives, their country. They have been demonized and villainized…by western politicians and media.

PATRICE: I think, any country in the world, anywhere in the world, you have every right as a government, to defend against terrorism, to defend against armed people. Its free in Syria, you can say what you like, its not like people make out, you cant speak etc. The judicial system is good. Me, as a commando, I got stopped and put into prison for 48 days, just for a misunderstanding, but then when they investigated it and found I was right, they let me go, which is a bit extreme, but its right.

I saved a guy from a group that had kidnapped him. I saved him from kidnapping and killing…you know…they were going to kill him… and basically they were asking for a ransom, and I saved them but because I saved them too “quickly” the security thought I was the one who kidnapped him or pretended to save him. So I said, ok fine, go and get your stories right, if you think its me, prove its me, its the other way round.

Its fine, the judicial system is good, maybe its a little over the top but its good, at least you get your chance. We had kids, volunteering to fight, to be in the army, but we couldn’t take them in because under the law they have to be 18 so the six years I was there, I had kids I had known from the beginning of the conflict, they waited and as they got to 18 years old, they came and joined our forces. They didn’t want to live under pressure, they didn’t want to live under someone’s control, they wanted normal lives, stability, to prosper, they wanted their religion to themselves, they didn’t want to force it on you and they didn’t want anyone dictating to them, what they should eat etc.

It even got to the point where they [the extremists] said that a dad should not sit with his daughter in a room, imagine this. I have three daughters, I cant imagine myself not sitting down and cuddling my daughters. ISIS recently came up with this…I dont know what you would call it in English…but their prince or their Sheikh, said that guys can sleep with each other because if they go into battle, into martyrdom, they can carry explosive more easily in their backside..this is the sort of weird stuff you hear on the battlefield. Where do these people come from?

Another thing they recently came up with..that a guy can sleep with his sister or his mum if he is on the battle front for more than a week…imagine this stuff..I mean its ridiculous…

PATRICK: Its just medieval barbarism…

PATRICE: When the fighters take over an area, as I have said, they kill the men and the boys..then the women..they take them for Jihadi Niqah which is…I don’t know the term for it in English..but these girls are like a sexual machine for all the fighters…so in their eyes, its legal for them…its like a “whore house”.. for the fighters…the Sheikh will be there and the fighter will come in and marry her for forty hours, sleep with her, then divorce her, then he walks out and the next one will come in.

In certain operations, we go into the houses and see the Sheikhs/princes there, with serious amounts of alcohol, money, gold. They are a bunch of thieves, even amongst each other. You probably hear, every month or so, a commander gets killed and another takes his place, its all money oriented. They become a commander, rip off the area, fight between each other, get as much money as they can and then exit. Many of them are now living in Europe with millions of dollars.

At one point, we thought we lost the battle to be honest with you…our battles got very aggressive, we had no support, our fighters were not that experienced to be honest with you, a lot of the soldiers were dying because of lack of experience, basic fighting, they dont know how to fight and there its all street fighting..you know…some battle fronts between us and the enemy… were only anything from 2.5m to 12m..so its ridiculous and it taught us a lot.

War teaches you a lot of things, how to adapt, even how to teach you to be a better fighter, you see people die in front of you for no reason, sadly its not how the west portrays it… you got these White Helmets…I mean, for fucks sake…. the guy wearing the white helmet you see him the evening after or the day before as Jabhat Al Nusra [Al Qaeda], a well known terrorist organisation.

When we liberated Aleppo, they said they had no food..the european agencies, the media, were all crying about them. With my own eyes..me and my soldiers went into a house, there was two tonnes of wheat in that house…you know what you could do with that, make enough bread for hundreds of thousands of people. All these UN packages that they send them, food, we found loads of them and the people who came to our side and were shot at by them [extremists] because they came to us, to the government side, they [the people] started talking..they said, you either fight with them to get the food or you do services for them or you pay through the nose to get that food.

First we thought it was just stories so we can feel sorry for them, but when we liberated, it was amazing..I mean..they had medical equipment…in Europe we dont even have the same…an MRI scanner, I think in all of Syria there is one..and we found three in one street…just to give you an idea of the back-up they had. The amount of food was enough to feed all of Aleppo..and it was all just stored…in a military compound. Basically these people [the extremists] controlled and propagandized the way they wanted the west to see it, but they had everything.

We had fighters [extremists] running away from a battle-field, coming to our side and throwing down their weapons, they said, “please, I dont want this, I have been forced, they threatened me if I dont fight with them, they will kill my family that is living there”…it happened a lot.

Unfortunately to the West, its completely different to what it is on the ground..as a military commander, my post never got hit by mortars from the enemy, the only places that they hit…and I have showed it to people….are civilian places, and the majority were either Christian or Muslim Sunni. So..their propaganda..is to empty the town and kill as many as possible…but thank god now…I look at the town..I left about a week ago…and the town is prospering, there is food, they started connecting the water…they said electricity, about two weeks…Five years ago there was no water, none..we had to drink water from rivers which were filthy and we had no petrol, no diesel, no food, no proper food, eating crap basically. And nobody said anything about it in the West, they were right, we were wrong, we were the terrorists.

I don’t think you have ever seen a Syrian soldier eating someone’s heart or liver, or beheading someone. As a soldier, its his job to defend, not to do these…what I consider…beyond humane stuff…

PATRICK: Western propaganda completely inverted the truth…these are the “rebels” that the West has been supporting..

PATRICE: When they [the west] opened the humanitarian corridors the first time, they gave them [the extremists] weapons, Grad missiles, this is a fact, long range Grad missiles…we found ammunition that was dated 2016…brand new and top of the range…I found ammunition that could have lasted the Syrian Army, not just Aleppo, two years of battle..and it was all brand new, dust had not had time to accummulate on the boxes…so they [the West] werent just giving them food, they were giving them weapons…they gave them 100 tanks as well, from Turkey. They [the extremists] were saying on their own TV, that they had received 200 missiles and in my opinion much more than that, because in one day, they hit the airport with 80 missiles and when they attacked Aleppo, to “liberate” it allegedly….in one day we had 180 rockets, Grad rockets which is a destructive rocket and next to my house, for example, one of these rockets hit a market…and that market was full of students and women. Me and my unit, we cleared 18 bodies and they were not bodies in one piece, they were in bits and pieces..

These are civilians, they are from the same religion, why are they killing them?

The Syrians and the Russians said they wanted to check the stuff before it got to the terrorists…but they [UN] didnt want that, they wanted the stuff to reach Nusra Front without being controlled….and every time the SAA accepted the ceasefire, they [terrorists] prepared themselves, got stronger, they got more weapons and attacked Aleppo even more. Dont forget, they attacked Aleppo three times and it was lethal..if you remember…we lost the Academy…we lost the Artillery school…these are well know defensive points so Aleppo was on the brink of falling down to them [extremists] but obviously it didnt happen, thank God.

When we hit…and this is civilians from their side told me this story…he said to me “ you know why they are saying you are hitting civilians?“…I said why?… he said, because, “for example, an anti-aircraft gun for Nusra Front..they wouldnt fire at the Syrian army from a normal point, he would go into a civilian area and launch an attack”.  Obviously, as a defensive, you have to hit it, so I have to hit him back, wherever he is and that is a tactic they used a lot, they used human shields.

PATRICK: That is exactly what they are doing in Mosul, Iraq now..

PATRICE: That is their tactic in Aleppo for the last six years, if they tell you otherwise, dont believe it. Look, whenever they take an area..like now, recently in Damascus..when the Syrian Army feels like its going to do a lot of damage to civilian areas, it pulls back and then it prepares itself, it gets as many civilians out as possible, and then it goes back in.

This has always been our policy…you know..if I tell you this..this is actually quite a crucial point…the war started officially in 2011, we had orders from the High Command of the military that we are not allowed to carry weapons visibly or fire at our enemy without an order…can you believe that? So..we used to get fired at, and by law we couldnt return fire…that was an official order..that was probably the hardest time of the fighting…you are sitting in a corner, behind a couple of sand-bags and people firing at you, you have the weapon but you cant fire back, and that was to avoid bloodshed and to calm it down..it didnt work…the more we did like that…the more aggressive they got.

The good thing is they did their own publicity, you could see it all over YouTube…it wasnt just them [extremists] killing, its unreal..I have seen it for myself..in a battle…I shoot someone who is attacking me….and this guy is under so much drugs…Captagon and stuff like that…you actually have to shoot the guy 18 times until he drops, the amount of drugs in them is unbelievable and we found it in places we liberated…we found needles…we found..you know how can you associate drugs with extreme religion…

PATRICK:  So you came face to face with Nusra fighters, what percentage are foreign fighters?

PATRICE: So this is from my own experience…the foreign ones are highly trained and professional soldiers, as fighters, out of all the fighters we fought, I would say Nusra are probably the strongest fighters and tactically they are superior to anyone else…so when you are fighting someone like that…particularly the foreign ones…you got the Turkistan, the Chechyen, Moroccans, Tunisians, Saudis…these are considered the mercenaries..because I am a professional soldier so I can tell when someone is properly trained…how they move, how they fight, how tactically advanced they are… and some of them are probably the most aggressive fighters I have ever fought..Nusra Front.

Then you get the ISIS…I put them second to Nusra..again, their foreign soldiers are their professional soldiers…so I think these soldiers were bred a long time ago..you know not just trained for a week or two..they are trained for years…another good point…we caught a lot of people smuggling weapons…and these people declared that they have been smuggling weapons since 2005…and receiving money since 2005, so the war is not just an overnight war…its well organised, well paid for…and the propaganda they use..you have Al Jazeera which is purely on their side…Sky News Arabic which is 1000% on their side…BBC the same..France 24..all these companies funded by Saudi Arabia who played a huge role in the war and Turkey probably played an even worse role..because Turkey had no border..literally every single fighter that we caught..foreigners..the last stamp on his passport is Turkey…then he just walks through.

When they tell you that Turkey is fighting terrorism, Turkey brought most of them in because they had no other way to get in, Jordan had a little role as well but not as big as Turkey. Obviously Iraq is on the border, ISIS when they expanded in Iraq, they opened up the border as well.

ISIS is different to Nusra Front. ISIS…like if ISIS take a village from the Free Syrian Army, they do not take the fighters to their side while Nusra make them become Nusra fighters…so both evil units, but each one works in its own way and ISIS work cleverly, I think, because the areas they took initially are oil rich or wheat rich areas..if you actually study where they took, its all financially viable and they made billions of dollars selling petrol from Syria. Syria never realised its the richest country in the Middle East, I always assumed it is Saudi Arabia.

All the petrol, until now, has been sold illegally to Turkey, from ISIS to Turkey and its proven. How can you buy from a terrorist? The whole world claims it is fighting ISIS, if you are buying from them it means you are supplying them..

PATRICK: What does that mean to you? Being in Europe..do you think this war would have been over years ago if Turkey, a NATO country, had not played this role?

PATRICE:  I think if it hadnt been for Turkey and the whole of Europe they [the extremists] would not have reached 1% of what they reached, because everything they had..is just too advanced to be just a bunch of “rebels” …for example..I used a lot of google earth for my war..you know..to map the area..some areas would stay on google earth for 6 months, with a cloud over it…we cant see the area..now you need support to do this..if a picture updates itself every 24 hours or every 3 or 4 days…a cloud could not stay over an area in the Middle East for like 6 months…thats part of their support, that stops my attack on them and gives them the liberty to attack me…so I think, Europe, NATO even the US…how many times, supposedly, by mistake, dropped weapons, guns and ammunition to ISIS..or completely destroy an entire defence force of the Syrian Army while they are fighting ISIS…how could that happen?

In Raqqa, a couple of months ago, I80 soldiers got destroyed, an artillery point got destroyed..even the electrical station in Aleppo was destroyed by American fighter jets, not by ISIS and ISIS had it under their control for 4 years..

You have to excuse my head, 6 years of fighting I cant remember everything. I will give you one example of how brutal they were.

We were liberating one section of East Aleppo..and it was door to door combat..room to room..we cleared the first four buildings..we got into the fifth building which was their second defence line. One soldier with me saw a baby, in the middle of the room. so he went to lift the baby up and the baby was booby-trapped…what kind of soldier in any military in the world would booby trap a baby..

PATRICK: ..and these are the rebels that we are backing and funding in the west. What about the tunnels in East Aleppo?

PATRICE: We called it the war of the tunnels, basically when a fighter jet hits the area it does not actually do any damage or cause any fatalities which I found very surprising but obviously with experience we started knowing whats happening…they got point of control..so on their radios which we listened to a lot, as an aircraft takes off from an airbase, they start sending the alarms..and what protects them is these tunnels. So the aircraft doesnt help us at all in killing the terrorists, it helps us in attacking because it can scare them off and we can attack and we can obviously deal with them one to one or two to one. There were a serious number of tunnels, some you could fit a tank in.

Going back in history the castle of Aleppo, the old castle..from the castle there are tunnels to the outskirts of Aleppo and they reckon there are about 280 tunnels going back 2000 years and after that they dug, their war is all tunnels…every area we would take is full of tunneling…rooms under the ground, ammunition under the ground, fighters under the ground. We got attacked quite a lot that they would come through us under the ground and they would come out in an unprotected area or an area that we think is safe. That happened a lot.

I started using that against them as well..I started using it as a tactic because they were not expecting me to do that..so I started digging towards them..in one operation I went in an liberated a massive zone with 20 soldiers, 10 of them were in the tunnel, I dug it for a month until I got to the heart of the headquarters and that was a successful operation.

They relied on tunnels a lot, I would say 90% of their fighting

PATRICK: What was your military experience prior to this.

PATRICE: Well I learned a lot but I also had a lot of experience before, I am a trained…you could say…special forces..but obviously training and doing it for real are different things…training you do 3 months tactical and how to move, how to use weapons but real battle just teaches you a lot and you become on an auto pilot, you do stuff that you don’t know you know and it gives you a huge amount of experience. We lost a lot of soldiers because they didn’t know how to take cover..they died for nothing, I would say. You get to learn how to take cover properly..its so different to doing a military camp, its so different.

For three or four years, certain areas, we couldnt cross the street..I had to dig holes through walls to reach the other street because if I went across it, there were 6 or 7 snipers controlling the area..it taught us a lot, that war.

I think its a unique war, I dont think any country has dealt with terrorists like this and till the day I die i will say they are terrorists, in 7 years I cannot think of anything positive they have done..i even said to some of their fighters who came to me, just explain to me what have you done that is so positive..like Syria in general..there were no poor people…a poor guy could eat a chicken a day..through the war, for six years, people didnt even smell meat. Butchers started selling bones instead of meat because people cannot afford meat. Thats just to give you the extent of it.

Diesel, for example, used to cost about 14 pence a litre, the government was supporting it, I dont know the percentage, diesel reached 1, 200 lira a litre which is equivalent to about $3 which is someones weekly wage.

The last period of East Aleppo, Nusra Front and Al Zinki were asking people if they wanted to leave to pay them the equivalent of $ 150 which was 150,000 Syrian Lira..someone could work all his life and not save this amount of money but if they had it, they let them out to our side.

As a soldier I worked on the defensive point of view for four years, for four years I was just defending my life and the lives of the civilians in my area, I wasnt attacking, I wish I had been attacking, I could have liberated it ages ago..so how can I be a terrorist or how could the Army be a terrorist if he is basically on a defensive role.

Now some foreign media agencies are bringing out the truth, even my own kids abroad, they didnt know any better…my daughter told me “dad you are a terrorist”..I said no, how could I be a terrorist if I am fighting ISIS and  Al Qaeda? You know..I just want to be out of here alive, I dont want to die and if I dont do what I do, I am going to die whether I like it or not.

PATRICK: Did you learn fluent Arabic?

PATRICE: Well when I was a kid I lived in the Middle East for about 7 years so I had the basis there but obviously the first two years were a bit difficult to remember but then it got ok, obviously, with the conflict. In fact I have lost my English actually…

PATRICK: You have been through a lot fighting under the flag of another country. What did you learn about Syria?

PATRICE: I have to say the people of Aleppo, who were under attack for 5 years…I have nothing but respect. They survived against all odds…they have such history, its a melting pot..going back to the crusades etc, the history they have is phenomenal..its amazing..sadly almost all that is gone..the people are survivors, they just want to go back to how it was before the war. Since we liberated, people who left are coming back to check their homes, their businesses. The day after we liberated Aleppo, the council started cleaning up..I think they are all survivors, if it wasn’t for their will, they would have lost this war years ago..if it were not for their will they could not have withstood the global pressure. As a fighter, I thought the battle was lost in Aleppo but their strength of will won through and their love for each other, they are a very patriotic people..they appreciated everyone doing anything for them…they opened their houses for me, they feed me, showed their appreciation. They are an old race, not a new race, I wish them all the best and I hope they get some peace, enough is enough.

Listen to this stunning interview – the story of an incidental soldier on the front lines of the war in Syria:

Listen to the full episode here.

Will the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc ever really challenge the world financial order? The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) leadership is meeting in New Delhi from 31 March to 2 April with a degree of fanfare unmatched by accomplishments. It is a good moment to assess progress since the BRICS Summit in 2013 when rumour had it that the then host city of Durban would also be the NDB’s home base. (It ended up in Shanghai, launched in 2015.)

BRICS leaders often state their vision of establishing alternatives to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Indeed the NDB leadership began with environmentally-oriented loans last year, and in 2017 wants to add $3 billion in new credits. 

But looked at from the South African vantagepoint, questions immediately arise about key personnel, as well as the willingness of the only local NDB borrower so far – the electricity parastatal Eskom – to support renewable energy, and perhaps most importantly whether the country and the continent can afford more expensive hard-currency loans.

Greenwashing finance as Africa loses IMF power

Why green loans? The original NDB designers were two former World Bank chief economists, Joe Stiglitz and Nick Stern. Although their public endorsements of the NDB stressed sustainable development and climate change, in private Stern offered a different rationale during a 2013 conference of the elite British Academy (which he chairs): 

“If you have a development bank that is part of a [major business] deal then it makes it more difficult for governments to be unreliable.”

Stern asked,

“are there any press here, by the way? OK, so this bit’s off the record. We started to move the idea of a BRICS-led development bank for those two reasons. Coupled with the idea that the rich countries would not let the balance sheets of the World Bank and some of the regional development banks expand very much, and they would not allow their share in those banks to be diluted.”

While this is true, the BRICS gained substantial IMF voting power increases in the 2015 restructuring (e.g. China up 37%, India 23%, Brazil 11% and Russia 8%), but with negligible United States or European dilution. Instead, the rising BRICS shares were as a result of Nigeria and Venezuela losing 41% of their vote, along with Libya at -39%, Morocco -27%, Gabon -26%, Algeria -26%, Namibia -26%, Cameroon -23%, Mauritius -21% and even South Africa lost 21%.

Four BRIC countries stood on African and Latin American heads to get better executive director seats at the IMF table. When they got there, the BRICS directors approved the reappointment of Christine Lagarde in 2016 and after she was convicted on a $430 million corruption charge last December, the IMF directors unanimously endorsed her continued employment.

The NDB’s first loans did boost environmentally-oriented projects, as $300 million went to Brazil, $81 million to China, $250 million to India and $180 million to SA, the latter to connect renewable Independent Power Producer generators to the main grid. But these processes are accomplished with mostly local-currency inputs, hence the US$ loans were inappropriate. Like the other multilaterals, NDB repayments are in US dollars, which adversely affect the borrower’s balance of payments, although the NDB has started fund-raising from yuan and rupee markets so this may eventually change.

But worse, Eskom’s two most recent leaders, Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko, simultaneously announced that they wanted nothing more to do with renewable energy. A massive battle over renewables was only resolved a month ago when Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s Budget Statement recommitted to the IPP contracts. (Koko may well have to step down after last week’s conflict-of-interest revelations involving a scandalous $100 million tender suspiciously won by his stepdaughter’s company.)

In that budget, Gordhan refused Eskom further nuclear energy financing, beyond an initial $15 million: a tiny downpayment on the in-principle reactor purchase agreement that President Jacob Zuma had made to Moscow-based Rosatom, with anticipated costs of $50-100 billion. The principle supplier of raw inputs to the nukes – if they are built – will be Oakbay, a uranium (and coal) company owned by the notorious Gupta brothers.

Gupta gyrations

This week the Guptas are in court fighting Gordhan over his failure to reverse the main SA commercial banks’ boycott of Oakbay and other Gupta-owned firms. This boycott is the widely understood reason that Gordhan was recalled from a UK-US investment trip on Tuesday morning: to be fired.

For the NDB, such turmoil is extremely important because SA’s Governor to the NDB is Gordhan. And the oft-rumoured ascension to the Treasury by Molefe is vital in part because he was SA’s BRICS Business Council leader until recently – following his own humiliating resignation as Eskom chief executive last November. That was the result of the Public Protector’s “State of Capture” report revealing influence over Molefe by the Guptas.

After he (incorrectly) claimed that the Gupta’s luxurious Saxonwold neighbourhood contained a shebeen (pub) that might explain his regular presence there, Molefe’s credibility was utterly destroyed. Nevertheless, in January, Molefe was appointed to parliament amidst fresh controversies over Gupta meddling.

Just before the Eskom resignation, Molefe made an articulate appeal for a replacement of “the current ‘casino’ financial system or ‘law of the jungle’ with a project that expressly promotes the common good among nations, provides credit for high-technology development projects, on youth education and training and meets the growth challenges of the future.”

Molefe bragged that

“BRICS and its allies are taking bold corrective measures by building a world system based on real value and to create a system capable of fundamentally shaping socio-economic growth and development. There have been some significant steps taken, in particular the launch of the NDB, which has already started funding key projects.”

Yet these are the very ‘key projects’ – renewable energy – that Molefe was sabotaging at that time, suggesting his NDB pronouncements simply cannot be taken seriously.

The NDB website itself observes

“a need for Multilateral Development Banks to reinvent themselves” on the one hand, but on the other, its president KV Kamath last September signed a deal with the World Bank for “co-financing of projects; facilitating knowledge exchange… and facilitating secondments and staff exchanges.”

NDB personnel

In contrast to Molefe, two other executives from SA receive regular praise. Ironically, SA’s NDB Director is former Reserve Bank Governor (1999-2009) Tito Mboweni, who had slammed the NDB as “very costly” in 2013. Upon accepting the NDB directorship two years later (as the only one of the five not employed by a BRICS state), he promptly declared that nuclear energy financing “falls squarely within the mandate of the NDB.”

Mboweni is International Advisor to Goldman Sachs. That should have been an embarrassment in January 2016 when according to financial journalists, the bank “identified shorting the rand as one of its top trades for this year due to falling commodity prices and SA’s current account deficit.” At that point the SA currency was rapidly pushed down to its historic low of R18/$. (It since recovered to R12/$ after the speculative wave ebbed, but recent Treasury turmoil just drove it below R13/$.)

SA’s NDB Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Leslie Maasdorp, also worked at Goldman Sachs (and Barclays and Bank of America), led Pretoria’s failed privatisation strategy and was an unsuccessful, short-lived chief executive of privatised education firm AdvTech.

One other NDB job remains open: the much-advertised head of the NDB Africa Regional Centre in Johannesburg. In December 2015, Zuma announced that his 2014-15 finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, would urgently take that job. It appeared to be a fig-leaf appointment, so as to replace the fiscally-conservative Nene with a man – Desmond van Rooyen – considered close to the Guptas.

This caused such an uproar that not only did three top white bankers communicate to Zuma that he must reverse course, but also a “critical intervention” (according to the country’s leading business writer, Peter Bruce) was made by Beijing’s owners of the Johannesburg-based Standard Bank, leading to van Rooyen’s firing within four days, and Gordhan’s appointment.

Zuma, acting as clumsily as usual, never had a guarantee of Nene’s job from the NDB officials, who subsequently stalled the Africa Regional Centre’s launch. It was originally scheduled for March 2016. Then last September, the BRICS Business Council website declared that the new Centre’s Johannesburg headquarters would be ready by November. (The Africa Regional Centre is still to be launched, now more than a year late.)

The location was ‘well received’ in the rest of Africa, according to the Business Council, because the NDB will lend to other countries, not just the BRICS. Leading Ugandan official Louis Kasekende argued that Africa should “have access to credit as quickly as possible at low rates,” especially to “reduce the timeframe of projects finalisation and approval process.”

Inappropriate finance for Africa

Reducing the timeframe would logically mean reducing attention to environmental and social dimensions (the critique of development banks and the NDB most often made by civil society). But the larger problem is the exceptionally high debt burden African countries now shoulder, following the world crash of commodity prices from 2011-15. The NDB would offer Africa only hard-currency loans that are extremely expensive when currencies crash.

As the Financial Times recently reported,

“One factor Africa’s indebted countries have in common is sharp devaluations of their currencies against the US dollar. Since mid-2014, the Mozambique metical is down 56 per cent against the dollar, the Angolan kwanza 41 per cent and the Ghanaian cedi 36 per cent, for example.”

In 2011, 6.3 South African rand bought a US dollar; today it costs twice as much.

After multilateral lenders’ and G7 debt relief in 2006, the foreign debt of SubSaharan Africa was cut by $100 billion, to $200 billion. But thanks mainly to Chinese state loans (associated with the extractive industries), it is now up again above $400 billion, with countries like Angola, Chad and Ghana paying more than 30% of their governments’ revenues on debt servicing.

South Africa’s own payment obligations to the BRICS NDB will become onerous as well. To capitalise the NDB, $680 million was allocated by Nene in 2015-16, rising steadily to $3.2 billion this year and $6.2 billion by 2020. The NDB’s capital base, which is notionally $100 billion, is shared equally by all five (unlike the $100 billion Contingent Reserve Arrangement which treats South Africa the way the IMF does, with a much smaller share of the quota: $10 billion). Other multilateral financiers cost South Africa $19.2 billion in ‘provisions’ made in the current budget (i.e. to be paid when called for by the financier); indeed only the IMF capital subscription will be more costly ($6.4 billion this year, rising to $7.2 billion in 2020) than the NDB.

Paying these substantial subscriptions is onerous, given that they contribute to enforcing the neo-liberal ideology that continues oppressing the continent’s people. But moreover, South Africa also faces a terrifying rise in its own foreign debt, which according to the March 2017 SA Reserve Bank Quarterly Bulletin had risen to $143 billion in September 2016, a $10.6 billion rise over the prior three months. At 50% of GDP, this is the highest debt burden in the country’s modern history; the only prior default was in 1985 when the ratio was 40%.

The main reason for soaring foreign debt is that multinational corporations are taking SA-sourced profits and dividends to London and other offshore financial headquarters, causing a persistent current account deficit. Indeed, as Chinese lenders, Indian steelmakers, other BRICS mining houses and the Gupta family externalise their own funding flows, the tragic irony of the NDB emerges.

In short, the unnecessary NDB loans to Eskom contribute to more BRIC power over the one African country, South Africa, that once had the potential to stand up and fight for justice. But perhaps just like Molefe in the Gupta’s lush Johannesburg suburb, that liberatory rhetirc might just have been Saxonwold shebeen talk.

Meanwhile in Delhi, the NDB annual meeting will be preceded by a day-long critique by the BRICS People’s Forum at the Indian Social Institute on March 30. It’s appropriate to conclude with their similar misgivings:

“the Bank is shrouded under a veil of secrecy. The website of the Bank lacks information about its activities to the extent that more than official records, one has to rely on secondary and tertiary sources of information… the NDB is yet to draft any such [socio-economic and environmental] operational guidelines and redressal… communities may face threats of displacement, evictions, ecological destruction, loss of livelihoods, and severe curtailment of basic rights to life. These issues have recurred for decades due to projects funded by other multilateral development banks. Moreover, as a co-financier with other development institutions, the intensity of NDB’s seriousness on the objectives of promoting transparency, accountability and probity stands questioned.”

Patrick Bond is professor of political economy at the Wits University School of Governance in Johannesburg and co-editor of BRICS: An anti-capitalist critique (published by Haymarket, Pluto, Jacana and Aakar).

The RAND Corporation’s recent piece titled, “Al Qaeda in Syria Can Change Its Name, but Not Its Stripes,” all but admits what was already suspected about designated terrorist groups operating in Syria – that they are undergoing a transition in an attempt by their state sponsors to bolster their legitimacy and spare them from liquidation amid the shifting tides on the battlefield.

The piece, written by Colin Clarke described by the RAND Corporation as a “political scientist at the RAND Corporation and an associate fellow at the International Center for Counter Terrorism,” states:

Following recent infighting with other Syrian rebel groups in the northwestern part of the country, al Qaeda in Syria appears to have recognized the need to secure legitimacy and present itself to the civilian population it seeks to influence as an authentically Syrian entity.

However, this is not simply Al Qaeda’s objective – this is the objective of the United States itself as well as the Persian Gulf states it funnels money and arms through, fueling Syria’s destructive conflict since 2011.

Clarke continues by stating:

The most likely scenario is that the change in nomenclature is merely an attempt to buy time and live to fight another day. Indeed, the rebranding has done nothing to slow down the group’s operations tempo of conducting attacks.

And concludes by claiming:

Six years into the conflict in Syria, al Qaeda’s presence in the country has never been stronger. And while most dismiss the notion of al Qaeda as a political entity in Syria, the same was said 30 years ago about Hezbollah — the Shia group that now holds seats in Lebanon’s parliament and maintains a vast military wing. If jihadist groups linked to al Qaeda in Syria can succeed in rebranding themselves, they can take steps toward positioning themselves as political players if or when negotiations to end the civil war in Syria gain traction.

Clarke notes that militant groups fighting in Syria – being associated with Al Qaeda – has greatly complicated efforts by the US and its collaborators to fund, arm, and otherwise support their efforts in executing regime change against Damascus.

 

Hopes of playing a rhetorical shell game that is long and complicated enough to confuse the general public and produce a front ambiguous enough for the West and its regional partners to more directly and widely support is essential. While the overthrow of the Syrian government looks all but impossible at the moment, the US, Turkey, and various Persian Gulf states appear to be maneuvering to annex territory and place it under the control of these “rebranded” terrorist groups.

As previously noted, across the entirety of the Western media, there is a concerted effort to provide cover for what is the preservation of proxy groups fighting in Syria as the conflict draws to an end. Explaining away how these groups will find themselves protected safe havens abroad, or rehabilitate themselves into legitimate political fronts is merely the latest in a long line of ploys Western policymakers have used to pose as fighting terrorist organizations while simultaneously serving as their exclusive state sponsors.

In reality, however “reasonable” the West’s repetitive talking points may seem, the prospect of a “legitimate” political front composed of Al Qaeda terrorists is only a possibility if the United States and its regional allies provide it recognition. The prospect of Syria, Russia, Iran or other states outside Washington’s sphere of influence recognizing the legitimacy of such an entity is unlikely.

However, considering the immense amount of resources provided to these terrorist organizations since their inception back in the 1980s by the West and its allies, the continuation of this support into the realm of political fronts seems all but inevitable. Yet the crisis of credibility the West has suffered as its project in Syria drags on will only expand if and when such a political front is established and lent legitimacy by the West and its allies.

It is ironic that while RAND cites Hezbollah as an example America’s future Al Qaeda political front may follow, Hezbollah remains a designated terrorist group by the US State Department – despite the fact that the organization serves as one of the primary fronts waging war against both Al Qaeda and its spin-off, the self-proclaimed “Islamic State.”

Geopolitically, the United States has painted itself into a corner where all options are bad options. Its various political ploys are now standing in direct contradiction of one another. The West has placed Islamophobic demagogues into office to further divide and distract their populations while the very governments these politicians pose as leading help establish a political front for Al Qaeda after having provided years of military, financial, and political aid to the terrorist organization on battlefields stretching from Libya to Syria and beyond.

Reading supposedly serious US policymakers and analysts attempting to claim an Al Qaeda-led political front holds any prospect of establishing legitimacy, after nearly two-decades of a so-called “War on Terror,” is particularly surreal. For many, it serves to truly illustrate what terrorism actually is and how it fits into the geopolitical skill-set used by the United States in its pursuit of global hegemony. While the US has paid a high price for its failure in Syria in many regards, perhaps the exposure of its use of terrorism and the double game it has played – posing as enemy against while serving as sponsor for terrorist fronts like Al Qaeda – has cost it the most thus far.

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

This has been a tumultuous week for healthcare reform. First there was the pleasantly quick defeat of the American Health Care Act in the House of Representatives Friday afternoon. Then, that evening, Senator Sanders spoke at a town hall in Vermont with Senator Pat Leahy and Representative Peter Welch where he announced that he would introduce a Medicare for All bill. Medicare for All and Bernie supporters lit up social media with their excitement over the announcement. This should have been great news, but it wasn’t exactly.

Over the weekend, more information was revealed in a series of interviews with Sen. Sanders. Sunday, he said on CNN that single payer legislation wouldn’t have the votes, so the first priority will be to improve the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a public insurance, called a public option, and possibly lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 55.

There are a number of reasons why this isn’t the time for tinkering with the ACA. We have a healthcare crisis now and the means to solve it. The ACA is fundamentally flawed and cannot be tweaked into a universal program. And Sanders’ proposals are exactly the same ones used in 2008-10 to divide and weaken the movement for National Improved Medicare for All. We can’t be fooled into going down that path again.

The Current Crisis and its Solution

Right now in the United States, almost 30 million people have no health insurance. On top of that, tens of millions of people who have health insurance can’t afford health care. When people experience a serious accident or illness, they face a stark choice: seek care and risk financial ruin or go without it and risk disability or death. Hundreds of thousands of families go bankrupt each year due to medical illness and an estimated 29,000 people die each year due to lack of access to care.

Think about how the country galvanized when 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on 9/11 or when the 2,000^th soldier was killed in Iraq, but that amount of death happens ten times a year or more in the US and we hardly hear a peep of outrage.

Health outcomes in the United States are not very good. A recent study found:

“Notable among poor-performing countries is the USA, whose life expectancy at birth is already lower than most other high-income countries, and is projected to fall further behind such that its 2030 life expectancy at birth might be similar to the Czech Republic for men, and Croatia and Mexico for women. The USA has the highest child and maternal mortality, homicide rate, and body-mass index of any high-income country, and was the first of high-income countries to experience a halt or possibly reversal of increase in height in adulthood, which is associated with higher longevity. The USA is also the only country in the OECD without universal health coverage, and has the largest share of unmet health-care needs due to financial costs.”

Yet, of all of the industrialized nations, the United States spends the most per person on health care, in some cases double the amount and those countries cover everyone. We are already paying for universal comprehensive health coverage, but we aren’t getting it because the bottom line of the system in the US is profits for a few rather than health for all.

The US has the most complex and heavily bureaucratic system in the world because it is a market-based system with a few public programs to try to fill in the gaps. A third of our healthcare dollar goes to administration for the hundreds of different insurance plans with their differing coverage, networks and rules. And we pay the highest prices, by far, for health services and pharmaceuticals because there is no rational system to set a fair price.

To begin to solve the healthcare crisis in the US, we need a system that is based on health and the money to pay for it. The proven solution is a universal not-for-profit, publicly-funded system that provides all medically-necessary care. House Resolution 676: “The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” which has 72 co-sponsors, is the model for that system. This would address the fundamental causes of the healthcare crisis.

The good news is that not only do we have the money to pay for this system, but there is also widespread support for it. For decades many independent polls have shown more than 60% support by the general public, plus more than 80% support by Democratic Party voters, rapidly growing support by Republicans who earn under $75,000 and majority support by health professionals.

Why a Public Option and Medicare for Some Plans will fail

Steve Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist, had an interesting statement in the New York Magazine recently. He criticized the Republican’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) because it was “written by the insurance industry.” That same criticism can be made of the Democrat’s ACA, which was basically written by Liz Fowler, a former executive for WellPoint. She also oversaw the regulations’ process.

The ACA is fundamentally flawed because it treats health care as a commodity, not a public necessity. It has achieved the best that it can do, and similar to other attempts at the state level that don’t address the roots of the crisis, it is starting to deteriorate with stagnant coverage and rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

Attempts to improve the ACA with a public insurance or Medicare for some will bring coverage to a few more, but they will similarly fail over time because they will not change the system or control healthcare costs.

Sen. Sanders and others are pushing a public option. This would be a public insurance that people could choose instead of private insurance. It sounds good in theory but has not worked in practice because it draws the sickest patients and struggles to cover their care while keeping premiums and out-of-pocket costs affordable. Private insurers are experts at attracting the healthiest enrolees. In fact, I have argued that a public insurance is just what the private insurers want (though they are unlikely to admit it) because it serves as a relief valve to take sick people off their hands. That leaves private insurers to focus on the young, employed and wealthy, from which they can collect premiums and who won’t need much in the way of health care.

Sen. Sanders is also raising the possibility of lowering the age of Medicare to 55, just as Alan Grayson suggested in 2010. This is another gift to the insurance industry because it takes a group that is more likely to have health problems off of their books. It will place more of a burden on the Medicare system without bringing the cost savings needed to cover health needs. I call this Medicare for some to contrast it with Medicare for all.

The basic reasons that Medicare for all works are because the administrative simplicity of one universal plan provides over $500 billion a year in administrative savings and its ability to negotiate fair drug prices means over $100 billion per year in savings on pharmaceuticals. The savings offset the cost of paying for care and getting rid of out-of-pocket costs that currently keep people from seeking necessary care.

Rather than wasting time and effort on a public option or Medicare for some, which will still leave people out and maintain the high costs of health care, we need to mobilize to win national improved Medicare for all. Like other industrialized nations, we need to create a universal high quality health system. It doesn’t make sense to leave anybody out when we have the resources to achieve it and public support for it. The only thing lacking is support from members of Congress. But as we witnessed last week with the defeat of the AHCA, changing the minds of members of Congress is within the power of the public.

The public option and Medicare for some are being used to divide and distract supporters of Medicare for all in order to weaken them and make them believe they are asking for too much, just as happened during the health reform efforts in 2008-10. We can’t be taken off track again.

What is the real purpose of a public option or lowering the age of Medicare when neither is an effective nor a lasting solution? It is only because the Democrats are unwilling to take on the powerful health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The problem is that we can’t solve the healthcare crisis until we do.

Russian TV covered 1,000,000 Yemeni protesting U.S.-Saudi’s Bombs.

Compare:

Russian TV covered 1,000,000 Yemenese protesting U.S.-Saudi’s Bombs.

Versus:

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/327-jared-kushner-to-tell-senate-intel-committee-about-contacts-with-russian-bank-meet-leah-the-overcomer-a-young-girl-who-is-inspiring-the-world/ (at 11:11-13:11)

U.S. TV covered 8,000 Russians protesting Vladimir Putin’s government.

If they’re both propaganda, then which was more honest, more news that was really worth covering? Both were about foreign affairs, but which was more important, more worthy of being included in an evening’s news-cast?

An anonymous blogger noted the contrasting coverage:

“Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported the million strong rally. Both though reported widely an 8,000 strong demonstration in Moscow led by the ultra-nationalist anti-semitic racist Alexey Navalny (vid). Navalny, who polls less than 1% in Russia, is their great and groundless hope to replace the Russian President Putin.”

So, maybe there was a U.S.-government propaganda-reason for making the Navalny molehill seem like a major political event, but was there also a U.S.-government propaganda-reason for the American press’s non-coverage of the million people in Yemen which urged the U.S. and Saudi governments, “Please stop bombing and starving us!” and for those million people being hidden from (not heard and seen by) the American public?

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

The attack outside and inside London’s Westminster Parliament just before 4 pm local time on Wednesday 22^nd March resulted in five deaths, including the assailant and forty injured. The confirmed British-born attacker, Adrian Elms – but with a number of alias’ including the much quoted Khalid Masood – drove a grey Hyundai SUV over Westminster Bridge, which spans the River Thames as it flows past Parliament, mounting the pavement and mowing down pedestrians crossing the great span, with its panoramic city views.

Some forty people were injured, twenty nine treated in hospital, with seven initially in a critical condition. Speaking in Parliament the next morning Prime Minister, Theresa May listed the injured including twelve Britons, three of whom were police officers returning from an Award ceremony, three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, one Pole, one Irish, one Chinese, one Italian, an American and two Greeks.

Killed was American Kurt Cochran who ran a recording studio from his home in Utah who, with his wife, Melissa had been touring Germany, Scotland and Ireland before arriving in London to celebrate their 25^th wedding anniversary, it was the last day of their visit. Melissa was seriously injured. Also killed was Aysha Frade, originally from the municipality of Betanzos, Spain, an administrator and Spanish teacher at a nearby College, on her way to collect her daughters, aged eight and eleven, from school. Seventy five year old Londoner, Leslie Rhodes also died from his injuries the following night.

The car turned left at the end of the bridge, driving outside the Parliament building, crashing in to the wrought iron railings. The driver then ran through gates in to the New Palace Yard entrance, just below Big Ben, reportedly armed with two knives, fatally wounding unarmed Parliamentary Protection Officer and former soldier, PC Keith Palmer who attempted to stop him.

An act of courage and compassion came from MP Tobias Ellwood, Minister for Middle East and Africa, who gave CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to PC Palmer, in spite of the chaos breaking out after the attacker was shot, ignoring possible threat to his own safety. Ellwood’s attempts failed and his bent body as he looked down at Keith Palmer, his mouth and face smeared with Palmer’s blood as the cuffs of his formerly immaculate shirt and suit are both a haunting image of grief and a tribute to one who gave no thought but to trying to save a familiar face. There was courage from countless police, paramedics, doctors and nurses who rushed unhesitatingly towards potential danger with emergency equipment from the nearby hospital to help the injured.

Ellwood himself is no stranger to violent tragedy having lost his brother Jonathan in the 2002 Bali bombing. He wrote a searing account of dealing with the seemingly endless official bureaucratic “red tape” involved in both countries whilst trying to bring his brother’s body home whilst stricken with grief. “I actually ended up nailing the lid of the coffin down myself,” he said. “That can’t be right.”

Not everyone showed the courage of Mr. Ellwood and others. As Parliament went in to total lockdown with MPs and all staff trapped inside for hours, the Guardian reported:

“Theresa May, the Prime Minister, was rushed into a car 40 yards from the gates outside Parliament where shots were fired minutes after the incident occurred, according to footage filmed by a member of staff.”

“She was ushered by at least eight armed undercover police, some with their firearms drawn, into a waiting black vehicle in Speaker’s Court, the footage seen by the Guardian shows. Loud bangs can be heard in the background as she is ushered into the car, but it is unclear whether the bangs were gunshots.”

Safely back in her official residence, behind Downing Street’s fortified walls and soaring iron gates, guarded by colleagues of PC Palmer, she paid tribute to the emergency services:

“ … these exceptional men and women ran towards the danger even as they encouraged others to move the other way.”

She talked of terrorists targeting Parliament because they hated the: “values our Parliament represents – democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law” and the “spirit of (it’s engendered) freedom that echoes in some of the furthest corners of the globe.

It has to be wondered whether those still under bombardment from the UK or it’s ally the US, in Afghanistan after sixteen years, Iraq after fourteen years, in Libya, Syria, Yemen; Palestinians remembering the decimation the Balfour Declaration has wrought on them for generations – when May had declared that in this, it’s centenary year it is to be remembered in special UK “celebrations” – share quite such a starry eyed view of the “values”, “human rights” and “freedoms” etc., emanating from ”the Mother of Parliaments.”

She concluded:

“ Any attempt to defeat those values through violence and terror is doomed to failure.

“Tomorrow morning, Parliament will meet as normal. We will come together as normal.

“And Londoners – and others from around the world who have come here to visit this great City – will get up and go about their day as normal.

“They will board their trains, they will leave their hotels, they will walk these streets, they will live their lives.

“And we will all move forward together. Never giving in to terror.”

Breathtaking stuff from the woman who gave in instantly, running away, protected by eight armed guards, in a bullet proof limo, rather than remaining in solidarity with her colleagues and the extensive staff who were in lockdown, not knowing whether further unhinged potential assassins were prowling Parliament.

No doubt if challenged she would say that such an emergency demanded she convened the COBRA group – another silly acronym which refers to the crisis response committee which meets in instances of national or regional crisis. However there are plenty of telephones in Parliament and an on line conference is not exactly rocket science.

The following morning she told MPs:

“Yesterday an act of terrorism tried to silence our democracy, but today we meet as normal, as generations have done before us and as future generations will continue to do, to deliver a simple message: ‘We are not afraid and our resolve will never waver in the face of terrorism’.”

Her “resolve” it seems not so much “never wavered”, it collapsed in a pile of dust.

What a contrast to President Bashar Al Assad and his wife, who with their children have never fled in terrorist attacks on their country ongoing since March 2011, terrorist attacks which include entirely illegal, massive bombings by UK and US air power. See for example (1) for just one month’s UK decimation from the UK government’s very own horse’s mouth.

A week before the Westminster attack a suicide bomber blew himself up in the Syrian capitol, Damascus’, Palace of Justice killing reportedly thirty nine people. President Assad and his wife stayed put in their residence in the city. Their “resolve” has absolutely “never wavered in the face of terrorism”, indeed “never giving in to terror”, plotted from inside the US Embassy in Damascus in 2006 and in Washington well before, he has been called by the US, UK and their allies a tyrant, a despot and a war criminal.

The Western backed “moderate” head choppers are now a mere several kilometres distance from Damascus, still the first family remain.

“I was born in Syria and I will die in Syria”, the President has stated. Given that Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi also refused to abandon their people in the face of Western onslaughts and remembering their terrible fates, whatever observers varying views, it is undeniable Assad shows a particular kind of towering courage seemingly rare in the West. George W. Bush of course, on 9/11, although already over 1,000 miles away in Florida, was rushed to a top-secret military bunker in Louisiana.

Not alone the standards but the language differs in the West. Attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, London, are undoubtedly “terrorism.” In Syria attacks of enormity are declared “a rebel offensive” usually quotes provided by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which is allegedly funded by the EU and another government, thought to be the UK. (2) The founder, Rami Abdulrahman, with a couple of other aliases:

“ … has direct access to former (UK) Foreign Minister William Hague, who he has been documented meeting in person on multiple occasions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London and shares (Abdulrahman’s) enthusiasm for removing Assad from power.”

The reaction to an attack in the West also differs. The UK Prime Minister’s office received condolences from Heads of State across the globe. The lights of the Eifel Tower were shut off at midnight, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate was lit, in marks of sympathy. President Putin also conveyed his condolences, in spite of the street level insults he has received from the British parliamentary establishment.

The UN Security Council observed a minutes silence in respect of a tragic, horrific incident, but nevertheless one which would be an unusually quiet day in any of the countries the UK is enjoining in occupying, bombing or has invaded.

A friend also commented succinctly: ‘If “terrorists will not succeed” in the UK and other Western countries, why should the West expect the Syrian government and its allies to allow the Western, GCC, Israeli backed terrorists, to succeed in Syria and seize control of the country after six years of global terror?’ Terrorists from up to ninety countries gaining access via the borders left open by the occupiers of Iraq from the time of the 2003 invasion and via NATO ally Turkey’s borders and blind eyes.

Coincidentally, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said on the morning of the Westminster attack, after a series of verbal spats with European countries that:

“If Europe continues this way, no European in any part of the world can walk safely on the streets. Europe will be damaged by this.” A few hours later he stated that: “Turkey feels and shares deeply in the United Kingdom’s pain” and that it stood in “solidarity” with Britain “in the fight against terrorism.”

If “a week is a long time in politics”, so, clearly, is six hours.

In Iraq in just two “catastrophic” “liberation” assaults on Mosul’s ancient, beautiful city, US “coalition” bombings killed up to three hundred and fifty souls, wiping out entire families in the week before London’s one man attack: “Journalists saw children and a pregnant woman among at least 50 bodies recovered from the rubble, with limbs and shoes protruding from destroyed houses.” (3) No condolences from world leaders, no Eifel Tower or Brandenburg Gate markings for them.

A spokesman for the US led Mosul slaughter: “Operation Inherent Resolve”, responded with:

“The coalition respects human life, which is why we are assisting our Iraqi partner forces in their effort to liberate their lands from ISIS brutality.”

He has clearly forgotten what the US has demonstrated in Iraq – with a brief break – fourteen years of their “respect for human life” – and the comment from a bewildered senior US military man to Major General Antonio Taguba during his investigation in to the horrors, torture and death inflicted by US forces at Abu Ghraib:

“But they were only Iraqis.”

Another friend provided me unwittingly with the conclusion for this inadequate piece on towering double standards. Thank you:

Do we not all bleed the same?

8/3 Kabul, Afghanistan – 49 dead. Silence

9/3 Tikrit, Iraq – 30 dead. Silence

11/3 Damascus, Syria – 74 dead. Silence

15/3 Damascus, Syria – 40 dead. Silence

16/3 Al-Jineh, Syria – 46 dead. Silence

21/3 Raqqa, Syria – 33 dead. Silence

21/3 Westminster, London – 5 dead.

 22/3 Mosul, Iraq – 240 dead. Silence

They say we are all born equal.

But only the (Western deemed) “worthy” die as humans.

The others are simply forgotten.

UK residents have responded with generosity to funds for Westminster’s injured and grieving families with large sums being raised including £500,000 for the family of PC Palmer. Muddassar Ahmed set up the Muslims United for London page after witnessing the attack from Parliament’s Portcullis House: “I happened to be trapped inside the building yesterday, and saw the carnage …” His appeal raised £3,000 in the first hour.

Last weekend hundreds of Muslim women joined hands along Westminster Bridge, in memory and solidarity – as the UK continues to bomb or threaten many of their countries. Their gesture should both humble and shame.

And since the perpetrator of the London attack is dead, it will likely never be known whether it was a coincidence that the attack was on the first anniversary of three suicide bombers killing thirty two people and injuring three hundred and sixteen in Brussels on 22^nd March 2016. (4)

In another other coincidence, on 19^th March, armed anti-terror police carried out “a terrifyingly realistic” boat drill a little further down the Thames: “A sightseeing vessel became the scene of a fierce mock-gun battle between armed officers and police volunteers posing as terrorists shortly after 11am on Sunday …” (5) ‘At least one “body”, played by a police volunteer, was cast overboard, and officers were deployed in an effort to assess the effectiveness of rescue operation tactics in life-like conditions.’

“The multi-agency operation was carried out between the Met, the Port of London Authority, London Coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), London Ambulance Service and London Fire Brigade.”

Police stressed that there was no specific threat but with London on high alert for two years:

“I do hope there is a deterrent effect in this when they see how effective our people are.”

After last Wednesday’s attack Romanian architect Andrea Cristea was pulled from the Thames, alive but badly injured, it is uncertain whether she jumped to escape the car or fell off in the chaos.

On the day of the 7^th July 2005 London tube and bus bombings, Visor Security were running a live exercise outside every tube station affected. Managing Director Peter Power told the BBC:

“At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.” (6)

Tragic fact really can truly be stranger than fiction.

Notes

1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/british-forces-air-strikes-in-iraq-monthly-list/raf-air-strikes-in-iraq-and-syria-july-2016

2. https://www.sott.net/article/329117-Propaganda-spin-cycle-Syrian-Observatory-for-Human-Rights-is-funded-by-US-and-UK-governments

3. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mosul-offensive-isis-islamic-state-latest-iraqi-forces-pause-civilian-casualties-deaths-us-air-a7650136.html

4. http://www.globalresearch.ca/london-terrorist-attack-westminsters-jihadis-come-home/5581670

5. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/19/armed-anti-terror-police-terrifyingly-realistic-thames-pleasure/

6. http://www.globalresearch.ca/7-7-mock-terror-drill-what-relationship-to-the-real-time-terror-attacks/821

Applause broke out at the beginning of the day when the President of the conference to negotiate a treaty banning nuclear weapons, Ambassador Elayne Whyte of Costa Rica, opened the proceedings. Applause also broke out at the end of the day when she declared the first meeting over. Clearly, diplomats and activists alike are excited about this treaty.

They should be. As Ambassador Patricia O’Brien of Ireland said in her remarks,

this “is a pivotal point in our international relations, a time to take stock and honour the testimony of the past, to decide what sort of present we wish to live in and what sort of legacy we wish to leave for future generations.” She noted, “We are not just writing a new and complementary treaty here, we are taking the opportunity to write a new history and in so doing to create a new, more stable, more secure and more equal future for all.”

This is the crux of the ban treaty. It is being negotiated on the basis of courage and hope, rather than fear and inequality. It is an act of states and civil society coming together to stand up to power and violence and say, enough, we are going to craft a different world, whether you like it or not.

Day one of the negotiations could not have gone better. Many delegations issued eloquent explanations of their belief in and hopes for this treaty. Several outlined in detail (in many cases for the first time) what they see as the preferred scope of the treaty in terms of prohibitions, shedding more light than ever on the possibilities for this instrument. The vast majority of countries clearly want a strong, comprehensive prohibition treaty that covers a wide range of nuclear weapon-related activities and that carves out space for future negotiations on nuclear disarmament and related verification measures.

That space is a sign to nuclear-armed states that we have faith in this treaty. That we believe that it will be effective in its normative, legal, political, economic, and social transformation of the nuclear world order and that will help compel them to eliminate their genocidal weapons.

Most of us—whether diplomats, activists, academics—have had to live in the space created for us by the nuclear-armed states that have decided they have the power and authority to determine when and where they will eliminate nuclear weapons. So far their obligations and commitments have amounted to naught, and now one of the states with the biggest arsenals is reconsidering whether it even thinks disarmament is a “realistic objective” that it will continue even as a rhetorical commitment. Yet these states have controlled the narrative and even much of the scholarship for so long that most of the world believes they have the right and legitimacy to do so.

But they don’t.

On Monday morning, a representative of the Trump regime stood outside of the General Assembly Hall to belittle the participants negotiating this treaty. The US ambassador to the United Nations, which is supposed to be the number one venue for multilateralism and the pursuit of cooperative peace and security, denounced the negotiations and suggested that the states pursuing this treaty must not have the security of their own citizens in mind.

Of course, the opposite is true. This treaty, and the pursuit of nuclear disarmament more broadly, is all about trying to protect civilians from harm. The vast majority of governments recognise that nuclear weapons are a risk to human beings and the environment everywhere. Nuclear weapons “are not useful deterrents,” said Ambassador Walton Webson of Antigua and Barbuda on behalf of the Caribbean Community. Rather, they “cultivate a state of insecurity and false defensiveness that only increases the chances of proliferation with devastating impact on all of us.” Thus prohibiting nuclear weapons, Alfredo Labbe of Chile said, is a “liberating initiative,” freeing us from the nuclear threat rather than being a threat to nuclear-armed states. States that have acquired nuclear weapons, he argued, are “captives in the Faustian trap of nuclear deterrence;” this is a way to help them out.

Certainly it is a better idea to try to help them out now then to wait until nuclear weapons are detonated, either by accident or design. As Austria’s Ambassador Alexander Marschik stated,

waiting for a nuclear disaster is not a strategy. We must prohibit nuclear weapons now.

Over the past few years, those advocating for a ban on nuclear weapons have been told we are unrealistic or that we don’t understand the “security dimensions” of nuclear weapons. Echoes of this played out in the sit-in attended by some of the nuclear-armed states outside the conference room on Monday morning. But we are neither unrealistic nor ignorant of security dimensions. We just have a different perspective—a perspective that is rooted in what Ambassador Mr. Amr Aboulatta of Egypt described as “collective security as opposed to selective security.”

We also understand how change happens. It happens “when this discomfort of doing something new becomes less than keeping things the same,” as Ambassador O’Brien said. A nuclear weapon ban treaty is already making nuclear-armed and nuclear-reliant states increasingly uncomfortable. The process of developing this treaty, and as well as its adoption and entry into force, will have a transformative effect on nuclear weapon policies and practices. It is only a matter of time.

The picture beside (see bigger one here and the drone video here) shows yesterday’s rally in Sanaa, Yemen where up to 1 million people were condemning the war Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the UK and the U.S. have been waging on them for two years.

 

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported of the million strong rally. Both though reported widely of a 8,000 strong demonstration in Moscow led by the ultra-nationalist anti-semitic racist Alexey Navalny (vid). Navalny, who polls less than 1% in Russia, is their great and groundless hope to replace the Russian President Putin.

The war on Yemen was launched to show the manliness of the Saudi princes. Well, that may not be the proclaimed reason but it is the only one that makes sense. The U.S. takes part in the war because … well – no one knows:

The morning after that NSC news release was posted on the White House webpage two years ago, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin, commander of the U.S. Central Command, was asked about the objectives of the U.S. support. His stunning reply remains the most accurate characterization from a U.S. official: “I don’t currently know the specific goals and objectives of the Saudi campaign, and I would have to know that to be able to assess the likelihood of success.” Other than dropping weapons with an unconscionable lack of discrimination and proportionality, it appears there are no clear goals and objectives to this day.

The Saudis claim their coalition has dropped 90,000 bombs during the two year war. Those are 123 bombs per day. 5 each and every hour for no good reason. It hasn’t helped them at all. The Houthi/Saleh alliance the Saudis fight claims (vid) to have destroyed 176 AFVs, 643 MRAPs, 147 MBTs, 12 Apaches, 20 drones, 4 aircraft. Additionally 109 tactical ballistic missiles were fired. Many of those (certainly exaggerated) Houth/Saleh successes happened on Saudi ground. Its southern desert does not protect Saudi Arabia, it opens it up to attacks.

The U.S. provides planning, intelligence, air-refueling and the ammunition for the Saudi bombing. Without U.S. support this war would not happen at all!

The United Nations claims that the death toll of the war is a mere 5,000. Others speak of 7-8,000. These numbers are laughable. One Saudi attack alone, a “double tap” on a Sanaa funeral hall, killed more than 800. The real death toll of the war is by now likely beyond 100,000. Especially in north-west Yemen, along the Saudi border, each and every Yemeni town and city has been bombed into ruins. Where are the people who once lived there?

The Saudis have simply threatened the UN that they will stop to provide any money for any of its relief efforts should it make any noise. The UN folded.

Yemen is starving. Even before the war, 90% of Yemen’s staple food was imported. The Saudis have since bombed each and every food production facility, chicken farm and port. All larger bridges have been cut. There is no longer any way to import food into the capital Sanaa and the other areas the Saudis besiege. Too small official relief efforts are still running through the Hodeida port on the western coast. The port itself is controlled by the Houthi/Saudi alliance the Saudi want to eliminate. But the port is blockaded from the water side. The Saudis navy and airforce destroys all ship who try to enter or leave it. Some official relief ships are allowed to pass but they have difficulties to unload. All large cranes in the harbor have been destroyed by air attacks.

Still – to deliberately starve off all of the 17 million Yemenis who are “food insecure”, i.e. extremely hungry and nearly starved, the port needs to be closed down for good. That is why the UAE and the Saudi plan to invade, conquer and occupy it. The fighting about the port will be a good excuse to close it down for good until no one in Sanaa is left alive.

The Pentagon is now requesting a free hand to help the Saudis to conquer and occupy the Hodeida harbor. Why the U.S. would do this? Well – the reason is at least as good as the one given two years ago:

[I]f decisions are not made soon, the senior administration official said, “we’re afraid the situation” in Yemen may escalate, “and our partners may take action regardless. And we won’t have visibility, and we won’t be in a position to understand what it does to our counterterrorism operations.”

So if the U.S. does not “help” (i.e. organizes) to close down the last source of food for the millions besieged by the Saudis then it may not be able to understand what that means.

Now there is a really good reason to put boots on the ground! “Unless we do it, we will not know the consequences and that is something we would want to know, right?”

The South African government is currently embarking on streamlining a decision-making processes in mining. To many this sounds like more top-down decision-making at the expense of those communities that will have to host mines and paves the way for more violent conflict, warns Jasper Finkeldey.

Last year South Africa’s bountiful Wild Coast saw the assassination of Sikhosiphi Rhadebe, activist against proposed dune mining on his homeland. The commemoration of Rhadebe who went by the name Bozooka coincided with this year’s Human Rights day. At least 500 people came to stand together in solidarity to call for an end to violence under the glaring sun of the Wild Coast far off the tarred national roads.

Saluting the deceased Rhadebe, leader of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, gun shots were fired in the air giving a vivid demonstration of the sound of death that was heard on the Wild Coast a year ago. Mark Caruso, CEO of the company that applied for a permit for titanium mining on the Wild Coast had (according to local media) previously bragged in an internal email:

“I am enlivened by [the] opportunity to grind all resistance to my presence.”

Violence and mining do not meet spontaneously – they are uncanny bedfellows.

Acclaimed mining scholar Anthony Bebbington calls the choice communities are facing when mining companies approach “Faustian in the extreme”. Companies offer compensation (mostly money) for multiple forms of dispossessions; namely dispossession of “land, territory, landscape and natural resources”. According to Bebbington, no matter if mining is to go ahead or not it will irrevocably divide communities over the question. Defying the notion of win-win situations invoked by mining companies’ global examples show that mine-affected communities typically lose while a class of investors, CEOs and some local managers wine and dine on the generous revenues.

Blockadia in the making?

But as the Wild Coast people testify quite a number of activists are not shying away to take on mining Goliaths. Environmental justice activists are putting themselves in the frontlines of a global battle that Naomi Klein calls “Blockadia” – a new conflict zone “cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill, whether for open-pit mines, or gas fracking, or tar sands oil pipelines.” The struggle of Standing Rock is a case in point where indigenous activists faced the heavily armoured police.

But media attention to extractive struggles is rarely that persistent. And even in cases in which the media reports diligently from these conflict zones, time seems to be on the side of mining companies and oil firms. If extractive operations face resistance the nature of mineral resources allows companies to change strategies and come back when resistance is at its weakest.

Death toll of mining

The imbalance of resource also plays to the hands of companies as they have the means to bring delinquents on their side. In an academic paper entitled Conflict and Astroturfing in Niyamgiri, which is very instructive beyond the confines of academia, Romy Kraemer and others tell the story of a young tribal activist who received global attention for his fight against bauxide mining in India. In the cause of the struggle however the company manages to buy the activist out and provide him with a scholarship away from his native land. This is a rather peaceful case if one considers how many violent conflicts are reported around extraction worldwide. Ken Saro-Wiwa who died in the struggle against Shell as well as environmental justice activist Berta Cáceres from Honduras paid with their lives for their vocal oppositions. Their names, just as much as Sikhosiphi Rhadebe’s, echo in the struggles against exploitative extractivism of today.

The number of casualties in operating mines should not be forgotten either. In a single accident in the Turkish coal mine in Soma in 2014, at least 301 miners died in an underground fire. Even in the absence of major accidents miners are pressured to take ever higher risks in anticipation of the ever greater emphasis on production.

Increasingly struggles over mining are fought under environmental banners. The Environmental Atlas mapping of the social and environmental impacts of mining and other invasive developmental projects counts 158 conflicts over coal as well as 105 reported escalations over natural gas – the list is far too long to complete it. To get an overview it is certainly worthwhile to have a look at the globe full of colourful dots marking conflicts in virtually every region of the planet.

Consent or choice?

Is this just another case of the resource curse thesis suggesting that countries with large amounts of mineral endowment are worse off than their resource-poor counterparts? The answer is not that straightforward. In an ideal world communities could decide freely on whether or not they opt for mining in their community. In cases in which they opt in favour of mining communities should benefit from operation at every stage which would require the involvement of local entrepreneurs and schemes to upskill locals (I am still talking about an ideal world). Initiatives such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples demand free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). This might not go far enough as critics argue that “consent” should be replaced by “choice”. This seems easier said than done in the face of cosy relationships between mining capital and elite politicians.

South Africa’s impasse

Let me go back to South Africa where I currently do research on popular mobilization around the extractive industries. According to Corruption Watch, South Africa’s mining industry is at high risk of corrupt practices. Evidence certainly suggests that companies and governing African National Congress (ANC) politicians are working together quite closely.

President Jacob Zuma‘s son is heavily and controversially involved in mining ventures. Vice-president Cyril Ramaphosa held large shares of the mining company which saw 34 of its miners shot down in 2012. It is because of these conflicting interests that political economy professor Patrick Bond does not trust South Africa’s decision-makers to oversee mining relations. He likens them to a drunk nephew who

“finds the key to the cupboard containing the family jewels, and he takes them all away, then finds a sleazy foreign buyer on the street corner who pays him a small portion of the value of the jewels, at which point the nephew goes to the bottle store and gets the most vile booze available, swigs it down and comes home to the same house, and vomits it all up, passing out and leaving the Auntie to clean up the mess.”

So the challenge will be to become sober about how to manage mining relations in a country in which close to 10 percent GDP comes from mining operations and where countless other sectors are connected to mining. Under the current fast-tracking methodology Phakisa, the South African government is currently embarking on streamlining decision-making processes in mining. To many this sounds like more top-down decision-making at the expense of communities that will have to host mines.

The T-shirts on Human Rights day on the Wild Coast read: “No mining on our land”.

We will see more of those where people’s freedom of choice becomes violated.

Jasper Finkeldey is a PhD researcher at the University of Essex studying social and environmental impacts of mining in South Africa. He is currently based at the Centre for Civil Society in Durba.

Russian track and field athletes, plus the entire Paralympics team, were banned from the Rio Games last summer. 

This was based on the first McLaren report commissioned by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).

The second McLaren Report was published in December 2016 and immediately accepted by the western media and political establishment as “proof” of the accusations about institutional corruption and doping conspiracy in Russia.

The following “open letter” is a critical review of the second McLaren Report and accusations of ‘state sponsored doping’ in Russia which have been promoted in the West.

***

Dear WADA President Sir Craig Reedie and Executive Committee,

Dear IOC President Thomas Bach and Executive Committee,

I hope you will persevere and overcome the differences and disagreements between WADA and the International Olympic Committee and Russia. Many people around the world were displeased with the controversy last summer. The contentious situation and mutual accusations distracted from the Rio Olympics, reduced attendance and appeared to undermine the goals of the Olympic Charter against national discrimination.

We are at a point where things could get better or worse. Russian President Putin has said that while they do not accept the accusation of ‘state sponsored doping’, they acknowledge doping violations which need to be prevented in future through coordination with WADA. Some WADA officials have responded favorably. Yet there are countervailing efforts. The U.S. Congress recently held a hearing to further politicize the situation. Meanwhile the Institute of National anti-doping organizations has opposed proposals for independent testing and aggressively criticized the IOC.

As you know, the banning of Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics and Paralympics was largely based on the private statements and first report of Richard McLaren. The evidence supporting these accusations along with details of the “athlete part of the conspiracy” are said to be in McLaren Report #2 issued in December 2016.

To determine the best way forward in keeping with the goals of WADA and the IOC, it is important to look at the facts objectively. As shown below, there are significant inconsistencies, inaccuracies and errors in McLaren Report #2. The problems range from the lack of specific evidence to distortion of the findings of the “toolmarks expert”.

Clearly the situation has been politicized. We need you to resist the pressures and reject calls for blanket condemnations which hurt innocent and guilty alike. Please reject the politicization of doping in sports.

Inaccuracies and distortions in the final McLaren Report include:

(1) McLaren’s Report #2 falsely claims the first report was not challenged. On page 7 McLaren says “The fundamentals of what was described in the 1st Report have neither been the subject of criticism nor contested …” That is untrue. Here are a few examples:

* Forbes published a concise but devastating editorial titled “Russian Complaints about McLaren Report on Alleged State Sponsored Doping Have Merit”. The author, a well known sports and ethnics attorney, identified three ways in which the McLaren Report #1 violated due process. He talked of the significance of this failing:

“Due process is not an empty phrase.  Without it, there cannot be justice. Surely it should be required before a major sporting nation’s athletes are banned from the Olympics and Paralympics.”

* The British Sports Integrity Initiative published a detailed critique of McLaren Report #1 with the following conclusion: “WADA has an important task that deserves support, but not if it becomes a politically biased crusade. As shown above, the McLaren Report has major deficiencies. The targeting of Russia and indiscriminate punishment of their athletes is a betrayal of the Olympic spirit.”

* The Italian Dirito Penale Contemporaneo published a Critical Analysis of the Report of Richard McLaren. The 13 page analysis concludes that the McLaren Report #1 possesses “inconsistencies and exaggerations” and is “biased and unsubstantiated”.

(2) McLaren is inconsistent in his accusations against Russian athletes and knows the evidence may be weak. On page 2 he says “Over 1000 Russian athletes …. can be identified as being involved in or benefiting from manipulations to conceal positive doping tests.” On page 5 there is less certainty as he says “over 1000 Russian athletes … appear to have been involved ….” On page 20 the previous certainty is reduced even more as he says “246 athletes can be identified as potentially knowingly participating in manipulation…”  (underlining added). On page 18 McLaren acknowledges the evidence may be weak as he says “the IP has not assessed the sufficiency of the evidence to prove an ADRV by any individual athlete.” (For readers unfamiliar with the acronyms, McLaren is the “Independent Person” or “IP” and “ADRV” is anti-doping rule violation).

(3) Sports Federations are now confirming that McLaren’s evidence is weak. The lack of evidence is confirmed in the recent findings by different athletic federations. For example the International Biathlon Union recently evaluated McLaren’s information and cleared 22 of 29 Russians who had been implicated. Investigation of the other 7 continues. Even if all 7 are ultimately found guilty that means that 76% were not and suggests that McLaren’s accusation of 1000 complicit Russian athletes was a huge exaggeration.

(4) McLaren accuses Russian officials and institutions without providing evidence. On page 20 he states “The cover up and manipulation of doping control processes involved officials in the Ministry of Sport (“MofS”), CSP , and Federal Security Service (“FSB”) as well as other sport officials and coaches. Also included were both the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (“RUSADA”) and the Moscow Laboratory.” It is widely known that Rodchenkof and the Moscow Laboratory were at the center of doping violations. What is new and requires evidence are the accusations that officials from the Ministry of Sports, Security Services and RUSADA were part of a conspiracy.

When this author contacted Richard McLaren asking where the evidence is, he replied“The EDP is divided into categories so you can locate the documents you are looking for.” The “Evidence Disclosure Package” contains 1,031 evidence documents. A chart assigns each document among twelve general categories. McLaren’s major accusations do not reference a specific document. In effect, the Independent Person tells readers to find it for themselves. This is a very curious way to persuade or convince anyone. It raises the question whether the evidence is weak or non-existent. McLaren admits that there is “no direct evidence of ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) involvement in the conspiracy.”

By contrast, when McLaren explained why he declined the request of the Vice Chairman of the IOC Ethics Commission, he refers to a specific letter which documents the communication (EDP1164). When McLaren describes the WADA directive telling Moscow Laboratory to save samples, he documents the communication (EDP1160). If McLaren has evidence of the “institutional conspiracy”, why does he not identify or present the evidence?

(5) McLaren smears all Russian athletes, innocent and guilty alike. On pages 46-47 he says “doping manipulation and cover up of doping control processes was institutionalized … It is unknown whether athletes knowingly or unknowingly participated in the processes involved. However they may be part of the conspiracy… Together, all of these parties were implicated parts amounting to a conspiracy….” With this logic, McLaren says all Russian athletes are guilty – whether or not they knew, whether or not they participated.

(6) McLaren claims that Rodchenkov followed the directions and instructions of high officials in the Ministry of Sports but provides no evidence. For example, on page 82 McLaren says “On Deputy Minister Nagornykh’s instructions, the first phase in developing the sample swapping technique was launched.” On page 83 he says “At the direction of the MofS, these athletes would collect clean urine in baby bottles, Coke bottles or similar containers and supply it to the CSP.” On page 84 he says, “By direction of Minister Mutko and Deputy Minister Nagornykh all pre-competition washout samples for testing were to be collected only ‘under the table’ in unofficial containers.” If this is true, why does McLaren not provide the evidence in the form of emails or other communication?

(7) McLaren suggests without evidence that the Ministry of Sports was responsible for distributing performance enhancing drugs (“PEDs”). On page 64 he says “Centralizing and controlling distribution of PEDs to athletes became an increasingly important element of the doping control system and manipulation.” This is contradicted by the fact that Rodchenkov was previously arrested for possession and distribution of PEDs and his sister was convicted for this activity. It is contradicted by the fact the Rodchenkov and coach Melnikov received payments for the drugs and falsified tests. Many piece of evidence confirm the guilt of McLaren’s principal witness, Dr. Rodchenkov, but none give proof of collusion or direction by the Minister of Sports or another high official.  In a footnote on page 68 McLaren says “it appears that athletes had to pay Coach Melnikov and Rodchenkov for positive samples to be clean.” This suggests a profit making or extortion scheme rather than state organized.

(8) McLaren makes sensational accusations based on erroneous or misleading references. For example on page 74 he refers to the ‘hijacking of the London 2012 Games’. To substantiate this extraordinary claim,  McLaren refers to the 2016 IOC media release “IOC sanctions eight athletes for failing anti-doping test at London 2012” . It is implied these are some of the Russian athletes who “hijacked” the London Games.  This is misleading because only two of the eight disqualified athletes were Russian.

(9) McLaren bases his “forensic analysis” on the findings of a “world renowned expert in firearms and toolmarks examinations” but mysteriously keeps his identity secret and does not cross-check or validate his investigation results. Richard McLaren says his conclusions are based on “immutable facts” and “forensic analysis”. The lofty words largely boil down to this:

– A toolmarks expert determined there was a way to open the supposedly tamper-proof urine sample bottles to   allow exchange of dirty urine with clean urine. However the clandestine bottle cap opening would leave some slight marks. The marks were found to be of two types.

– Based on advice from Rodchenkov, McLaren did an investigation of select Russian sample bottles from the Sochi Games and afterwards and found that the samples were contaminated and either had mismatched DNA or impossible salt content.

– The toolmarks expert studied a small number of sample bottles from during and after the Sochi Games, again based on Rodchenkov’s suggestions, and determined that most of them had the “marks” suggesting they had been clandestinely opened.

Given the importance of the investigation, and the fact it was presumed to be impartial and objective, it is reasonable to ask some questions: Why is the expert anonymous? How was his evaluation and testing cross-checked and validated?  Why was the Swiss manufacturer of the sample bottles (Berlinger) not involved in the examination and testing? That should have been done for two reasons:

1. because Berlinger has technical staff who are the most knowledgeable about these urine sample bottles
2. to assist in correcting any flaw in the design, if it actually exists, to prevent future abuse.

In addition, it is important to note the highly selective nature of this examination. The Sochi Olympic and Paralympic athletes’ samples that were investigated were selected by the person who was said to be at the heart of the corruption.

(10) McLaren distorts the findings of the “toolmarks expert”. On page 103 McLaren says “the forensic testing, which is based on immutable facts, is conclusive… The results of the forensic and laboratory analysis initiated by the IP establish the conspiracy that was perpetrated at the Sochi Games.” However, the toolmarks expert makes no such claims.  The findings in the “Forensic Report” (EDP0902) are much more qualified:

1. McLaren asserts that “marks” on the inside of the urine sample bottle confirm tampering. However the expert does not say that. Regarding “Type 1 marks”, the expert concluded that “these marks were reproduced and found to be present after screwing the lid on forcefully”. This means that if a user over-tightened the bottle cap trying to insure no urine leakage, it would cause similar marks.
2. Regarding “Type 2 marks”, the expert found that “If there was manual manipulation of the metal ring and spring steel washer before the lids were screwed on for whatever reason, marks similar to some of the Type 2 marks were reproduced. This could for example result from fingers or cloth being used to wipe the inside of the lid to clean it.”
3. On page 22 of the “Forensic Report”, the expert concludes with the following warning: “These marks on their own should not be considered to be conclusive evidence of opening the bottles or attempts to open the bottles ….”. (underlining added). This is opposite to what McLaren claimed.

Finally, I note the following: If the goal was to discover whether or not there was widespread tampering with sample bottles from one country, then it could be done by examining random sample bottles from many different countries to see if there are telltale marks from only one country. That would also be a strong indicator that the marks were from tampering and not from the incidental causes which the toolmarks expert warned of. This was evidently not done.

Conclusions

It’s clear that there were doping violations by some Russian athletes with collusion and assistance by the Moscow Laboratory Director Rodchenkov and some others. Despite McLaren’s accusations of “state sponsored doping” and an “institutional conspiracy”, he has presented little or no evidence showing this.

If there is clear evidence in the Evidence Disclosure Package, why is it not identified?  What does it say about the integrity and fairness of someone in authority who makes sensational accusations which grab the headlines while knowing the evidence is weak and many of the accused may be innocent? What kind of ethics and “fair play” does this demonstrate?

It seems clear there needs to be an independent and NOT nationally-based testing authority which can implement common standards and prevent doping use, evasion and false accusations.

In closing, I appeal to the leaders of WADA and IOC to please find a way to reduce the politicization of doping in sports and resist the demands of those saying they wish to “protect clean athletes” by taking away the rights of other clean athletes based on national discrimination.

Due to the international media’s continued claims about the «annexation of Crimea», it’s been difficult for the citizens of the US and Europe to make sense of the details of the peninsula’s recent history. Exactly three years ago, on March 16, 2014, the Crimeans were offered a choice: to rejoin Russia or to return to the constitution of 1992 that proclaimed Crimea a legal, democratic, secular state whose relationship with Ukraine was based on bilateral agreements. That constitution was unilaterally abolished by Kiev on March 17, 1995, and here’s what’s surprising: no one at that time in the West demanded that the Ukrainian government stop violating the provisions of international law and the rights of the inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula. And then in 1995, special ops forces from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU) landed in Crimea and Sevastopol in order to establish «Ukrainian law and order», seizing the building housing the Supreme Council of the republic, where the administration of the acting president of Crimea, Yuriy Meshkov, was also headquartered, and demanding that he be turned over. Since Meshkov refused to vacate his office, they tried to poison him. Much later he described how his drink had been poisoned, and that later in the hospital he was refused proper medical care. Only an emergency evacuation to Moscow miraculously saved his life.

Yuriy Meshkov, Crimea President in 1991-1995

In this manner, the real annexation of Crimea by Ukraine, which no one condemned, was completed in 1995. It all began in 1991 with a power grab by the Ukrainian parliament, which annexed the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, forcibly joining it to Ukraine despite the results of the January referendum about re-establishing Crimea’s autonomy. The annexation by Ukraine culminated in the revocation of the constitution and the liquidation of the office of the president of Crimea. However, no one in Europe or America introduced sanctions against this new Ukrainian state that had flagrantly trampled on the right of nations to self-determination: according to the 1989 census, three-quarters of the population of Crimea were not ethnic Ukrainians.

From standpoint of the overwhelming majority of Crimea’s residents, a historical injustice was redressed in March 2014: Ukraine was stripped of what it had obtained illegally between 1991 and 1995 using deception and military force. In the eyes of Crimeans, Ukraine’s claims to the peninsula and the support of those claims by the West look very odd. In the 1990s, the world «overlooked» Ukraine’s annexation of Crimea, and no one was concerned that the rights of the inhabitants of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic had been violated. But when those citizens again took it into their heads to determine their own destiny in 2014, an international scandal blew up that still burns today.

A rally in Simferopol in support of Crimea sovereignty, June 1992

Furthermore, Ukraine is floating the idea of dragging the peninsula «back» under its jurisdiction, knowing perfectly well that the Crimeans themselves are overwhelmingly and unequivocally opposed to this. It is very strange that over the course of the last three years the international community has not once listened to the voice of this majority. Moreover, international sanctions have not been imposed against Ukraine for its attempts to leave the inhabitants of the peninsula without water or electricity. Kiev has actually been working against the Crimeans, under the slogan:

«Crimea will either be Ukrainian or uninhabited!»

In 2014, Kiev ordered the North Crimean Canal (built by the USSR between 1961 and 1971) to be cut off, as a result of which the acreage of irrigated land in Crimea declined by 85%. At the end of September 2015, a group of Ukrainian «activists», representing the ultra-right organizations Right Sector and Azov battalion as well as several fugitives from the Mejlis of Crimean Tatar People organized a transportation «blockade of Crimea»: the highways into Crimea were shut down to prevent Ukrainian goods from reaching the peninsula, with the intention of thereby triggering a food shortage and a rise in food prices, due to the complexity and expense of obtaining supplies from mainland Russia by sea, air, or across the Kerch Strait.

Later, when it turned out that the plan had come to naught and that the «food blockade» had mostly caused harm to small shops owned by Crimean Tatars, the chairman of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, unexpectedly claimed that the blockade «was instigated by several people, including the leaders of the Mejlis, but it had no connection with the institution of the Mejlis itself». As a result, Ukrainian businesses, which were deprived of the opportunity to sell food to Crimea, suffered the most from the actions of the «blockaders». In the peninsular, however, wholesale merchants quickly adapted to obtaining their supplies from Russia, domestic producers got a shot in the arm, and traveling markets popped up, offering products from as far away as Belarus.

By late 2015, the sponsors of the «trade blockade» of Crimea realized that they had not achieved their goal: there was no sign of hunger, nor a significant increase in food prices, nor social protests on the peninsula. In addition, many residents of Crimea began to ridicule the blockade on social media, publishing photographs from markets and stores that showed nothing resembling a food shortage, on the contrary they documented that meat, bread, milk, and cereals were easily available and that fish and fruit were in fact abundant. Then formally uncontrolled by Kiev Crimea Tatar activists led by Lenur Islyamov blew up electricity pylons in the neighboring Kherson region of Ukraine supplying the peninsula. Crimeans were left without electricity on the eve of winter. Since at that time the energy bridge from Russia had not yet been built, a state of emergency was declared on the peninsula. Kiev then set about to blackmail the inhabitants of the peninsula: they were offered electricity in exchange for signing an agreement with an electric company that included a line acknowledging Crimea and Sevastopol to be part of Ukraine. This blackmail ended in a massive failure. Only 6.2% of the Crimean residents surveyed supported the Ukrainian proposal, and 93.1% rejected it, agreeing to endure their difficult conditions for several months. The contract with Ukraine was not finalized on Kiev’s terms.

For three years the Western democracies have been turning a blind eye to the historical choice made by the people of Crimea. Ukraine has repeatedly tried to challenge this choice through provocations, blockades, and blackmail. However, the people of Crimea used to live without electric lights or heat and to endure inconveniences and deprivations, if only to avoid becoming once again part of Ukraine.

Another conspicuous result of Crimea’s transition to Russian jurisdiction is also telling: it turns out that, contrary to Ukrainian and Western propaganda, there are no conflicts between the Russian and Ukrainian populations in their shared home. Without the Ukrainian nationalist element in Crimea, it becomes clear that between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples there is no enmity, no tensions, and no reason to fight one other. Three state languages are officially recognized in the republic: Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar. And Muslim mosques peacefully coexist with Russian Orthodox churches. Were it not for the warmongers who are trying to jump-start the underground activities of Hizb at-Tahrīr and other radical organizations in Crimea, Crimea would have no other problems, except one – coping with the devastation wrought by Ukraine.

New mosque in Crimean Tatar Voinka village, build in 2010 on donations by the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov

Throughout all the years of its independence, Ukraine enjoyed what it had inherited from the USSR in Crimea, without investing a cent in the peninsula, as a result of which Crimea today lags noticeably behind Russia’s flourishing Kuban region. For the last three years Russia has been actively investing in Crimea (annual subsidies amount to more than $600 million, which does not include the multi-billion-dollar investments in the construction of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which is a separate line item in the budget). Despite the enormous pressure from the international sanctions, these measures are already bringing real benefits to people’s lives. And in the next article I’ll tell you all about life today on the peninsula.

On March 27th, Syrian government forces launched a military operation against the ISIS terrorist group in northeastern Sweida. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) captured Al Masiydah, Al Asfar, Al-Saqiyah, Al-Janinah, Shinwan, and other sites in the area.

Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army and allied elements continued their own advance against ISIS terrorists in the same area, recapturing the villages of Shunwan, Beir Al Awra, Beir Al Qunyat, Rajm, Al Dawla. According to reports, a majority of ISIS militants had withdrawn from the Sweida province to Deir Ezzor and Raqqah.

In northern Hama, the SAA and the NDF took control of Maazraf and Kafr Amim from the joint militant forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The sites had been controlled by Jaysh al-Izza and Abnaa al-Sham fighters that, in general, were less motivated than their counterparts from HTS. However, Jaysh al-Izza actively uses US-supplied TOW anti-tank guided missiles against the government military equipment and manpower inflicting notable damage and casualties. Intense clashes continued along the whole frontline in the area.

Rumors have been circulating that the Russian Air Force had stricken fighters of the Syrian Arab Army’s Tiger Forces near the government-held town of Qamhana in northern Hama. Allegedly, the Russian airstrikes resulted in the killing of 33 Tiger Forces members and the wounding of about 40 others. However, no photos or videos were provided from the site of the alleged airstrikes and independent local sources were not able to confirm that the incident had even taken place.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued their advance west of Raqqah, aiming to take control of the town of Tabqa. The advance on the Tabqa dam resulted in no gains because of a threat to damage this strategic facility.

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

Why can’t 21st century media just report news and separate opinion? Maybe straight news that allows readers, viewers, and listeners to discern the truth is just inefficient. Maybe the few who own all our information channels are trying to save the people from thinking too much? US President Donald Trump has made headlines for revealing so-called “Fake News” – but what’s behind the new media madness? Here’s a look at the lily pads floating in the swamp a US president claims he’ll drain, and the oh so many croaking frogs drowned out truth.

Small Time Henchmen

This Guardian piece disgruntled Russian journalist and notable Putin hater Alexey Kovalev is a fine example of frog-croaking. Most readers of NEO would simply blow off “In Putin’s Russia, the hollowed-out media mirrors the state” as just another fake news bit attacking Putin and Russia. But Kovalev, the former RIA Novosti editor (turned globalist freedom fighter) provides contrast for my story today. In the west the neo-liberal media lambasts Russia and independent media as “propaganda”, when in reality it’s the mainstream that is propagating the lies about Trump, Putin, Le Pen, Farage, or anybody in opposition to a system of control that is, quietly frankly, unbelievable. WikiLeaks revelations about massive CIA and intelligence community surveillance scarcely makes headlines in America, but Donald Trump slicing a wedge shot at one of his golf courses is a Russian conspiracy. It’s all sensational, unbelievable, crazy, and scary. But the craziness gets even scarier once we see how it’s all planned, rather than simply grass roots activism and idealism.

Call me strange, but I always do a bit of research about the people beneath the stories we read. From authors like Kovalev, to loose associations and comrades of the message of the New Democratic Order, it’s interesting for me to discover the roots of a message, even the source of an idealism. Of media, I guess I know as much as anybody. This includes the new editors at places where Alexey Kovalev once worked in Russia. These are people I’ve come to trust and admire, for both their sincerity and professionalism, and friendship. I mentioned this because I asked several of them to tell me how Kovalev left the RIA Novosti family, but none would respond. This leads me to the logical conclusion he was canned. Like ousted oil oligarchs, some journalists in the west are just natural Putin enemies, while others are paid by said oligarchs. The end media result ends up being the same. But these are not the most dangerous kind, for they are easy to spot. The real enemies of truth are a little bit harder to identify.

Manufacturing Fake News

There’s a lot of nonsense floating around about Vladimir Putin having an army of “trolls” doing his messaging. Alexey Kovalev is one of those propagating this message. As one of the world’s best known “Kremlin trolls”, I can absolutely destroy any notion such a paid army even exists. But I can also show you a globalist army that is paid, does exist. While RT and Sputnik, and other state funded media do promote a nation’s best side (Germany and the UK included), the real manufacturers of your truth are far more powerful and widespread. Vladimir Putin’s media geniuses, Dmitry Kiselyov and Margarita Simonyan would take over the universe with the budgets of this New Democratic Order. Let me reveal for you one billion dollar arm of this monster – the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and its offspring.

You never heard of this organization, I’ll bet. Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and affiliated with the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, this organization has a network of vast proportions established mainly thru donations, grants and fellowships in the industry. Like billionaire George Soros’ societal tentacles inside European nations, he creates a breeding ground for the “right” ideas, a path to controlled messaging paved with influence and dollars. At the head of this organization, Alberto Ibargüen is one of the most connected and powerful media persons on Earth – and another somebody I’ll bet you never heard tell of. But this story on Inside Philanthropy tells of this influence, and of a Donald Trump enemy far more deadly than a spying Barack Obama. Ibargüen is more or less a Rockefeller captain, an extraordinary media genius who dictates the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants (over $1.0 billion since 2005). Alberto Ibargüen is Trump enemy number one when it comes to leveraging younger journalists to hate conservatism and love the New Democratic Order. I’ll give you some examples.

MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid was a 2003 Knight Center for Specialized Journalism fellow. I made this connection by tracking down NATO trolls who had accused me and other independent journalists of being the world’s worst Kremlin trolls (interestingly). And while I am actually proud of my leading role as Putin praetorian (it tells the right people I’m no sellout), the nasty folks tied to western Fake News should be ashamed. Reid is an unapologetic Obama groupie, a bombastic myna bird set in place at MSNBC just to squawk the part line. She makes some money compiling Obama speeches and selling them on Amazon, and gains neo-liberal following by slamming Melania Trump for a speech goof, Ivanka’s role at the White House, and casts dispersion on Christians who are conservative. She’s a perfect example of this Knight Fund’s underlying intention. But to cement this idea, allow me to quote from David Callahan’s Inside Philanthropy piece on a new initiative by Alberto Ibargüen:

“The new First Amendment effort was launched before Donald Trump won the presidency, and if the next administration does veer in an authoritarian direction, you can see Ibargüen and Knight stepping up with new funding to defend free speech and civil liberties.”

Reid is but one of hundreds of examples, as is the Knight Center’s current boss. In the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, these New Democratic Order forces have gone unchecked. We now have a true army of minions, hammering at the foundations of real democracy. The Knight Foundation, Open Societies, the Rockefeller or Ford Foundations, the Clintons or Bill Gates, technocrats running the Washington Post, what you see is a takeover basically, only Donald Trump has made a big deal out of it. And Putin is blamed for St. Petersburg “troll factories” – the idea is ludicrous.

Strange Bedfellows

Ibargüen, the former CEO of PBS, board member at American Airlines, director of AOL and Pepsico, and member of the Council of Foreign Relations is bent on protecting our rights – by investing in cheating us out of them. His most recent tweet about “tyranny” made him think, and it made me think too. “How did I find this guy searching the first follows of globalist/NATO trolls?” – this was my first thought. The answer was a trail of breadcrumbs from a nefarious Twitter operator @SkeddyRuxypin – who it just so happens followed Joy Reid first, and then Newsweek madman Kurt Eichenwald second. I won’t dig further into this “rabbit hole”, but Ruxypin is a NATO troll that recreated an account in 2016. I only include this footnote for the purposes of exposing the real “troll armies” out there. Another critical intersect here is one with the founder of Internet Haganah, Aaron Weisburd, who is behind making “lists” of Kremlin sympathizers for the purpose of labeling them “terrorists”. Weisburd is a subject too deeply tied into the NATO troll and Israeli intelligence network to discuss here. I first became familiar with him when I was labelled a Putin Praetorian on one of his charts. The point here is that the Kremlin’s organic support network is miniscule when compared to the forces arrayed against a peaceful order. The networks are established and they sit in direct opposition as in the case of Weisburd following Alexey Kovalev and several hundred others collaborators across real and fake social accounts.

The reader should walk away from this article in a bit of a state of wonderment, actually. Look at the far-fetched nature of all this. If anyone had told me 5 years ago this kind of collusion and polarity were possible, I’d have laughed myself. And it is the “polarization” we see that is the biggest telltale sign our reality is being manufactured – that the one side is demonizing the other more vehemently. How could so many would be advocates (or trolls) come into being over left versus right wing ideals? This is the question everyone should ask. In truly diverse societies (and story lines) myriad perceptions and goals emerge. Not today though. And this is unnatural in the human experience.

The powerful forces behind pushing the world toward a major crisis. I see the “aggressor” in all this as the force making the greatest expenditure, the force waging all its assets for creating some new order of things. And that force is not Vladimir Putin. The list of actors arrayed against is extensive, and includes lesser known moguls like RT and the other media in question have a miracle working for them. The other side has almost all the money and infrastructure – this is undeniable. As more and more revelations come out about potential collusion in between the intelligence community and corporate interests like Google, Apple, Microsoft and others, people need to take the steps to take sides. We are seeing a gravitational pull on humanity – a splitting of everything we were told is true.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The post-Cold War world order was expected to be peacefully unipolar. However, the quarter century since has seen the continuation of war – with the Gulf war, Western intervention in the former Yugoslavia, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and more recently in Libya, Mali, Ukraine, Yemen and Syria – and witnessed a progressive and ongoing shift toward multipolarity as the world’s economic centre of gravity shifts away from the US and the West. The effects of this shift portend further shifts in the established world order and its seemingly stable alliances and increasing the danger of war.

Wars are ongoing in Ukraine and Syria heightening tensions between the West and Russia. They are also changing international alliances, introducing new tensions in relations between the European Union and the US. NATO-member Turkey is being buffeted by the war in neighbouring Syria and the historic demands of the Kurdish people for national rights. On the other side of the ‘world island’–the Eurasian landmass, international tensions are rising in the South China Sea thanks to Western support for Japan’s claims on the Senkaku/Daioyo islands and other challenges to China’s political sovereignty.

Our event seeks to address this situation. There is much simplification by politicians and the mass media concerning contemporary dangers to international peace and security. In particular, we want to focus on the current situation with NATO increasing pressure on Russia and the wars in Ukraine and Syria. These conflicts are major foci for Canadian foreign policy with the Canadian military stationed along the Russian border in Eastern Europe and in norther Iraq. If Canada, through its NATO membership and obligations, is to be drawn into a major conflict the most likely occurrence will be war in Europe against Russia.

GERG, along with the University of Winnipeg Manitoba Chair for Global Governance Studies, the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities and Peace Alliance Winnipeg are happy to present panel discussions and lectures by three distinguished speakers, Paul Kellogg, Roger Annis and Mahdi Nazemroaya on the dangers on Western militarism and the place of NATO in a changing post cold-war world. There will be both a daytime and an evening event. For details please see below.In order to reach a wide audience we propose to hold two events.

Post-Cold War NATO: Why conflict continues, and what prospects for peace?

Roger Annis

Understanding NATO requires understanding how imperialism has evolved over the decades and how it rules today.  Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the transition of its constituent republics to capitalism, NATO continues an aggressive strategy of ‘containment’ against Russia and it is embroiled in deadly conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. NATO’s trajectory raises critical questions. Is a world without war and military alliances possible? How can a world awash in war hope to confront the global warming emergency?

Addicted to War – The corporate foundation of U.S. militarism

Paul Kellogg

The United States is addicted to war and militarism. Its massive permanent military establishment – accounting for nearly half of the world’s military spending – allows it to pose as the global police force, keeping the world economy open for (capitalist) business. While it is often justified for the jobs and investment it creates, the US’s enormous debt is almost entirely attributable to its military spending. This expenditure and have locked United States into a cycle of militarism, debt, financialization and decline. However, as the behaviour successive US administrations has shown, challenging US militarism is not possible without challenging the corporate power behind it.

From the Atlantic to the Indian and Pacific Oceans: What Role does NATO have in the South China Sea and broader Asia-Pacific?

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The South China Sea and the broader region of the Asia-Pacific are becoming the increasing focus of security concerns by the United States and its military allies. The People’s Republic of China is increasingly being demonized and portrayed as a violator of international law and the sovereignty of other states. In this context, Washington is building a network of military alliances in the Asia-Pacific. Though it is not widely known, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is also playing a role in the Asia-Pacific. This is part of the broader process of the globalization of NATO as a force in the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean.

Sponsors

Geopolitical Economy Research Group
Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba
Department of Political Science, University of Winnipeg
Manitoba Chair of Global Governance Studies
Institute for the Humanities, University of Manitoba
Peace Alliance Winnipeg

 

Speakers Bios

Roger Annis is a longtime socialist and retired aerospace worker living in Vancouver BC. He began his political activism with the Young Socialists of the day in Nova Scotia in the early 1970s. Since then, he has lived in most regions of Canada, including in Montreal where he became fluent in French. Roger writes regularly on topics of social justice and peace. He has written extensively about Canadian involvement in Haiti and, more recently, in Ukraine. He is a founding editor of the website The New Cold War: Ukraine and beyond, which was launched in October 2014.

Paul Kellogg teaches interdisciplinary studies at Athabasca University. He has written extensively about Canadian and international political economy, social movements and Marxist theory. In particular, he has sought to explore and develop an understanding of contemporary Imperialism. His most recent book is a critique of the dominant Left Nationalist tradition in Canadian political economy, Escape from the Staple Trap and he is now working on another book on the military industrial complex in Canada and the United States.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a sociologist, award-winning author and geopolitical analyst who currently teaches at the University of the Philippines. He is the author of The Globalization of NATO, a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, a peer-reviewed journal of geopolitical science in Italy. He lectures widely at universities around the world on his work.

“If the building starts to break up, protect yourself w[sic] mattresses, rugs etc under strong table or hold onto solid fixture.” -Queensland Ambulance, Twitter, Mar 28, 2017

The eerie sense that something is about to happen, with unsolicited fulsome vicious force was hard to avoid.  There is a pregnant sense in the air, the pre-moisture in the winds that tease the leaves, caress the branches with harshness, the palm leaves bending painfully in worship before a divine storm.

Whilst sultry, the air is dry enough to suggest that the cyclone is short of breath, free of moisture. No greater mistake can be made. She is ready, pouting, and a natural consequence of all that heaving moisture she has been gathering in making her journey from Papua New Guinea. It is like waiting for a ridiculously overqualified date, a creature with more credentials than a Nobel Prize winner. When she appears, you know you have been had.

The weather maps released with each tracking announcement from the meteorology department start looking more strikingly consistent, a beautiful set of inner circles of velocity: the most destructive winds located in a red inner core, the slightly less disastrous ones following the middle rim and then mere destructive gale force winds on the outer. For the rest, it is biblical deluge.

People were scurrying into their suburban hutches (well, homes) and darting about the suburbs with excitement, securing the necessaries. The cut lawns fill the nostrils, and the bins that are so characteristic here are still out.

“If you are to put out the rubbish bins on this Monday, it will be collected,” claims a jocular radio presenter on a pop radio station. “Do not do so on Tuesday.  Your bin will be elsewhere.”

Cars were being re-parked into areas of seclusion before the ghastly divinity’s roar and fury. Everybody knew that Cyclone Debbie was on her way, a huge weather system threatening with 230 km per hour, then increasing to 240, a busting wondrous effort of nature that would remind us where our car and house insurance papers were.

The journalists not otherwise familiar with north Queensland were getting ready to cover the disaster story with a lecher’s relish over a fleshy encounter. Scribblers and anchors from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne were waiting to see the hicks swim and flail against the tropical disaster.

Locally, the complacent went about fishing at weirs and dams with their ineffective weapons, awaiting a catch as the sun dipped into the blood red horizon, the pastel coloured fluorescence before the storm dazzled eyes now more attuned to numbing Facebook than attuned literacy.

Cyclone Debbie had barely had much of a resume (we were told by the Bureau of Meteorologists that she would be impressive) but here she was, howling with green adolescent insistence that there was something worth considering.

She, in short, was out to make an impression, the debutante about to remind everybody that she was the great show on the stage. And my, had she grown, from a tropical depression to a raging Category 4 force able to rip homes from their supports.

The entire disaster response team was there to cheer her on. The great contradiction on responding to disaster in Australia is that it is phlegmatically assumed, much like a bad toilet motion. For that reason, teams for “disaster management” are created in advance of imminent disaster. It is the embryonic assumption, the sense that the worst will happen. For that reason, we need the paperwork inked even before Debbie makes landfall.

The residents in Bowen, North Queensland were already claiming that they were waiting for her, a sort of reverse date. (The idea of gendering and sexing a cyclone is itself absurd, but this was what was happening.) Tables were taken in though no gourmet assortments would be on offer.  If Debbie liked canned food well and good, but most preferred her to stay outside.

But the language, in an artificial sense, was the same as one anticipating a rendezvous with someone dashing. This was cyclonic erotica, the sense that the immensity approaching had a presence worth noting, a catwalk of destruction making her presence felt with more than nudging appeal. She had the full show, like a Kardashian and more so: an update every hour as she approached in vengeful awareness, a true live show.

The walk towards the Irish liquor dispensary – or bottle shop, as it is termed in Australia – was itself revealing. Dan Murphy is the name associated with cheaper options Australians flock to, filling their shopping trolleys to the point of immobility. Here, in Townsville, the thirsty punters were crowding and ready: they knew that Dan’s would be off the radar of purchase for some days. The cities of Mackay, Townsville, and Bowen would be hitting the bottle hard. Truly, cities driven to drink.

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

It never fails to amaze me the rank hypocrisy of Western politicians such as Theresa May whose countries are members of the NATO military alliance.

While bereaved relatives and a shocked population have to endure the bitter aftermath of an attack we hear the same automated platitudinous statements delivered in the defiant statesman posture such as:

1. “We will never give in to the terrorists”.

2. “Hate and evil will not destroy our freedoms and our democracy”.

3. “Our values will remain intact”.

Yet, the sum “freedoms” that the British people have built up for centuries have been slowly but surely been denuded by a series of Parliamentary Acts including the recent Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, the so-called ‘Snoopers Charter’, the passage of which was presided over by Prime Minister May’s government.

This law gives the state extraordinary powers of surveillance over its citizens. It effectively nullifies personal rights related to privacy as activity over the Internet can be intercepted at will. The security and intelligence services have been given carte blanche to monitor the day-to-day activities of citizens through a variety of means including the reading of private emails.

Thus it makes no sense for politicians to monotonously keep on asserting that “terrorism will not be allowed to destroy our democracy and take away our freedoms”.

When it comes to “values”, people need to re-examine what precisely is meant by this. Are these the “values” sanctioned by both Parliamentary and executive action which has enabled Britain to contribute to and otherwise support invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria; actions that have led to the wanton destruction of human life and infrastructure? The accumulated loss of life over the past decade and a half runs into the millions.

If the average Briton nods in agreement to the sentiment expressed about “not giving in to terrorism”, I trust that the average person who hopefully does not have the sociopathic traits of the average politician is capable of empathizing with those civilians in Yemen who are presently being massacred by bombs and munitions supplied by Britain to the government of Saudi Arabia.

One would hope that the average citizen is informed of current events to an acceptable level so that they are aware of the recent massacre of over 200 Iraqi civilians in Mosul via the “collateral damage” of a US-led bombardment. Or of the fate of 33 people from 50 displaced Syrian families ripped to pieces at the Badiya Dakhilya school in Mansoura, a village located on the outskirts of Raqqa.

One would hope that the average Briton would recognise the stunning levels of hypocrisy by contrasting Western media reportage of the Russian bombardment of Aleppo with that of the US-led coalition bombing in Mosul. One would also hope that they are aware of proven Western facilitation of Islamic extremist groups in Syria which were created to overthrow the legitimate government of that country.

They must surely keep in mind the legacy of British involvement in illegal military actions in both Iraq and Syria as well as the curious case in 2015 where the trial of a man charged with terrorist activities in Syria collapsed on the grounds that Britain’s security and intelligence services would have been “deeply embarrassed” because of their covert support for anti-Assad (Islamist) militias.

Are the millions in these lands who have been maimed, dispossessed or who have otherwise had to endure the physical destruction of their loved ones also expected to refuse to bow to “terrorism”?

It is incumbent on the British population and citizens from other Western countries that are members of NATO to re-examine their understanding of the term “terrorism” as well as the “values” they profess to cherish.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Last weekend, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), mostly consisting of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), entered the Tabqa Airbase and took control of some nearby villages, including Ayed Kebir, from ISIS terrorists in the province of Raqqah. With this advance the SDF deployed in a striking distance from the ISIS-held town of Tabqa. If the town of Tabqa, the Tabqa Airbase and the Tabqa dam fully captured, the US-backed force will obtain an important base of operations southwest of the ISIS self-proclaimed capital of Raqqah that will allow the group to continue its operation to isolate this city.

The ISIS-linked media outlet “Amaq” reported that the Tabqa dam north of Raqqa is on the verge collapse after a number of US airstrikes had hit the facility. The dam reportedly went out of service and all of the dam’s gates shut automatically. The water level is increasing. A source among the dam workers informed Al-Mayadeen Channel that the dam was closed because of damage suffered from airstrikes. The US-led coalition said in a statement that the dam had not been structurally damaged, arguing that the coalition does not target the dam with strikes.

The SDF, backed up by the US Special Forces and the US Air Force, is now in control of the northern part of the facility. Clashes are ongoing in the area.

In the province of Aleppo, government forces liberated the villages of Rasm Jays, Abu Maqbara, Abu Maqbara Saghirah from ISIS. The Syrian army also entered the village Rasm Khamis Gharbi but it still has to be secured. Thus, government troops are now in less than 3km from the important crossroad town of Mahurah controlled by ISIS.

The Syrian army and its allies have once repelled a Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-led attack on the town of Qamhana which is an important government defense site in northern Hama. Besides these clashes continued in the areas of Breidij, al-Mugheer, Kafr Nabbudah front, al-Bana and Tal al-Sakura. The situation remains very tense for government forces. However, deployed artillery units and Russian and Syrian warplanes allowed them to stabilize the situation in the area.

In eastern Damascus, government forces have got a full control over the industrial area separating Jobar and the Qalamun pocket. Fighting is continuing in the vicinity of the Qalamoun pocket.

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

Another “puff” piece of hypocritical “justification” appeared in the Portuguese daily O Publico (24 March 2017) p. 5. It is the kind of standard issue article (Mockingbird-like) that appears in all the mainstream media to reiterate the official line that State-funded and managed mercenary operations are independent and that armed propaganda is motivated by foreign religious doctrines.  

Indians had no cannon

Algerians, Kenyans, Koreans,

Congolese, all Africans,

not to mention a few Chinese

For centuries past,

in century present

with aims sincere

could no gentle

(white) man

endear.

Where are those

Western values

cherished

at whose hands

whole peoples perished?

Where is that order

here maintained

closing hospitals and schools

profits to maintain?

Who feeds their armies

to starve the poor

Whose mouths

with stolen wealth

are fed

Whose bombs

destroy Syrian hospital beds?

Whose wolf

alone in Benghazi breeds?

Who owns the pack,

Who sows the seeds?

For centuries past

in century present

white gentlemen

defend their fellows

slaying soft targets

black, brown or yellow.

Fake News: The Unravelling of US Empire From Within

By Prof. John McMurtry, March 27 2017

What is really behind the deep-state infighting over the U.S. elections and the “wire tapping” of the Trump campaign? Why was the CIA-Neocon axis vehemently lobbying against Trump? What foreign interests and what money is involved in this? Answers to these questions are now emerging.

The former director of the CIA under Clinton, James Woolsey, went to the Wall Street Journal and offered some information (likely some true and some false) on the retired General Flynn and the lobbying businesses he was involved in. Woolsey is an arch-neoconservative. He had worked on the transition team of Trump but got fired over “growing tensions over Trump’s vision for intelligence agencies.” Flynn is the former National Security Advisor of Trump who later also got fired. Woolsey was a board member of Flynn’s former lobbying company FIG.

Woolsey claims: In September 2016 he took part in a meeting between Flynn and high level Turkish officials, including the Turkish foreign minister and the energy minister who is the son of the Turkish president Erdogan. During the meeting, Woolsey claims, a brainstorming took place over how the Turkish cult leader Fethullah Gülen could -probably by illegal means- be removed from the U.S. and handed over to Turkey.

Gülen is accused by the Erdogan mafia of initiating a coup attempt against it. The U.S. claims officially that there is no evidence for such an accusation and that Gülen can therefore not be rendered to Turkey. Gülen is an old CIA asset that helped the U.S. deep state to control Turkey.  Erdogan divorced from the Gülen organization after it became useless for his neo-Ottoman project.

Here is the WSJ report on the Woolsey claims and a video clip with parts of his WSJ interview. Woolsey also went on CNN where he repeated his WSJ story.

Flynn was accused by the anti-Trump campaign to have worked for Russia. He had taken several $10,000 for speeches he gave in Moscow. He also, at times, had argued for better U.S. relations with Russia. But Flynn’s pro-Russia stand was probably honest. (Or the bribes involved were just smaller than the ones paid by others.) The money he got on the speaker circus was rather small for a man in his position.

Flynn’s real corruption was on another issue. After having been fired from the Trump administration, Flynn retroactively filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). His lobbying firm had a contract over $530,000 to work for a company near to the Turkish president Erdogan:

In its filing, Mr. Flynn’s firm said its work from August to November “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn’t paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.

This lobbying, not the alleged Flynn-Putin relation, is the real scandal and part of the Trump/CIA/Clinton deep-state in-fighting.

The meeting Woolsey described was under the “Turkish” Flynn contract. The Turkish business man, and owner of Inovo, Ekim Alptekin is a member of the Erdogan gang. But hidden at the very end of the WSJ story is the real key to understand the shady network:

Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments.

It was the Israeli gas company, not the Alptekin outlet, that drove the issue.

The Leviathan (and Tamar) gas fields in the Mediterranean along the Israeli coast are a huge energy and profit resource IF the gas from them can be exported to Europe. Several companies are involved in the exploration and all are looking for ways to connect the fields to the European gas network. There are (likely true) rumors that huge bribes have been paid in Israel, Jordan and elsewhere to win exploration contracts and to sell the gas. Negotiations between Israel and Turkey over the pipeline have been on and off. They depend on a positive climate towards Israel in the Turkish government which again depends on the often changing political position of the Erdogan gang.

The picture evolving here (lots of sleuthing and sources) is this:

An Israeli company (or whoever is behind it) wants a gas pipeline to Turkey. It hires Flynn and Alptekin to arrange a positive climate for the Leviathan pipeline within the Turkish government. It offers Flynn more than half a million for a little (4-month long) influence work. His job is to create a “friendly atmosphere” for the deal by using his influence in the U.S. to accommodate Erdogan. A major point that is expected from Flynn is to arrange the handover of Gülen, by whatever means, from the U.S. to Erdogan.

After accepting the (lobbying) bribe Flynn-the-whore suddenly changes his former anti-Turkish, pro-Russian, pro-Kurdish political position into a pro-Turkish, neutral-Russian and anti-Kurdish one. (His lobbying firm also makes some smaller payments related to the Clinton email-server scandal. This may be related to links between the Clinton family and the Gülen school empire.) He has a meeting with the Turkish government/Erdogan officials part of which is a discussion of a removal of Gülen to Turkey. He pens a pro Erdogan anti-Gülen op-ed which is published on the day of the election and he denigrates the Pentagon plan to work with the Kurds in Syria.

The NSA, CIA and the FBI are listening to Flynn’s conversations with Turkish and Israeli interests. (For the old and long history of such “wiretapping” of Turkish and Israeli connections and various dirty and criminal deals they revealed read and ask Sibel Edmonds.)

The projects which Flynn is involved in, especially removing Gülen, are against the long term interests of the (neoconservative-driven) CIA. Selected tapes of his talks are transcribed and distributed within the anti-Trump campaign. This is the origin of the “wiretapping” of the Trump Tower the U.S. president lamented about. The stuff the CIA dug up about Flynn’s dealing was and is used against Trump.

Woolsey is caught up in this as he also worked for Flynn’s lobbying firm. (His neocon-pro-Zionist history suggests that he is the senior Israeli watchdog over Flynn in all this.) He is now engaged in damage control and is “coming clean” and selectively leaking his anti-Flynn stuff to exculpate himself. (There is probably also some new, better deal involved that will pay off from him.)

The Israeli-Turkish pipeline and the related deep-state fight are not the only issue involved in the campaign against Trump. There are also British interests and British intelligence involvement especially with the accusations against Russia of “hacking” of the DNC. If and how these fit in with above has not yet been revealed.

The road to Raqqa is now blocked by U.S. forces and their allies. The chances that Raqqa (and the surrounding region) will be returned to Syria are now slim to none. Foreign armies and their proxies are sharpening their carving knives.

U.S. Special Forces and Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters have just captured a “strategic air base” from Islamic State in northern Syria; in doing so, they have also “blocked” the advance of the Syrian Army as it approaches Raqqa from the west:

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on Sunday that they captured the Tabqa air base, 45km west of Raqqa, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group’s de facto capital in Syria.

Earlier this week, US forces airlifted SDF fighters behind ISIL lines to allow them to launch the Tabqa assault, and on Friday the alliance reached one of the dam’s entrances.

SDF forces were within 10km of Raqqa from the north, and aimed to effectively surround the city before launching an assault.

But as RFE/RL quietly notes:

Besides recapturing the dam, SDF said the U.S.-backed operation also aimed to block any advance by Syrian government forces from the west.

The landing forces airdropped into Syria seized four small villages in the area west of Tabqa and cut a main highway that links the provinces of Raqqa, Deir al-Zor, and Aleppo, Scrocca said.

The SDF cut the last main road out of Raqqa earlier this month, narrowing in on the city from the north, east, and west.

The only way in or out of Raqqa now is over the Euphrates River that borders the city to the south.

Incredible, isn’t it? A foreign army that is illegally operating in a sovereign nation can just march in and cut off the legitimate army of said sovereign nation from liberating its own city from terrorists.

What a world — and so much for international law.

It will be interesting to see Moscow’s reaction. Was this always part of the “deal” in Syria? Or is Washington hoping that Syria, Iran and Russia will accept Raqqa’s U.S.-ordained fate?

Stay tuned.

Yemen is Obama’s war, now Trump’s, complicit with Saudi terror-bombing, massacring civilians indiscriminately, causing vast destruction, human suffering and starvation.

A previous article explained millions of Yemenis face slow, painful deaths from lack of food needed to survive, blockaded coastal areas preventing it from entering the country.

Amounts airlifted in are woefully inadequate. The mainstream media suppress the ongoing horror, ignoring US responsibility for genocide.

On March 26, the Washington Post-owned Foreign Policy magazine headlined “Pentagon Weighs More Support for Saudi-led War in Yemen,” saying:

“Several Defense officials told Foreign Policy the prospect of more American help for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen was under discussion even as the administration examines its broader strategy in the region, including looking at ways to counter Iran and to defeat Islamic State militants.”

“The Pentagon views increased support for the Saudi-led coalition as one way of potentially pushing back against Iran’s influence in Yemen, as well as shoring up ties with an ally that felt neglected by the previous administration.”

What’s likely is escalated US-orchestrated aggression in a nation already devastated by two years of imperial war – besides years of US drone war since launched by the Bush/Cheney administration in January 2002, civilians overwhelmingly harmed.

Intensifying combat operations assures far more mass slaughter, destruction, chaos and human suffering, besides what’s already intolerable – achieving nothing but endless conflict, benefiting war-profiteers at the expense of countless numbers of innocent victims.

According to one unnamed Defense Department official, “(w)e’re interested in building the capability of the Saudis” to operate in Yemen and elsewhere regionally – free to commit atrocities with US help.

In a Saturday address, marking the second anniversary of imperial war on Yemen, Ansarullah movement leader Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi denounced Saudi terror-bombing war crimes, including use of chemical and other banned weapons – accomplishing nothing but mass slaughter and destruction.

Denouncing aggression on its second anniversary, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis demonstrated in Sana’a’s al-Sabin Square, waving national flags, chanting anti-Saudi slogans.

Supreme Political Council president Saleh al-Samad praised effective resistance against Saudi aggression, despite unlimited resources, weapons, munitions, and US-led Western aid.

Now in its third year, Washington apparently wants conflict escalated, not ended. The longer it continues, the greater the human toll.

The lives and welfare of millions of Yemeni civilians are at risk. Countless more numbers may perish before conflict ends.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Over thirty year ago a savvy Colombian peasant leader told me, “Whenever I read the word ‘peace accords’ I hear the government sharpening its knives”.

In recent times, ‘peace accords’ (PAs) have become a common refrain across the world. In almost every region or country, which are in the midst of war or invasion, the prospects of negotiating ‘peace accords’ have been raised. In many cases, PA’s were signed and yet did not succeed in ending murder and mayhem at the hands of their US-backed interlocutors.

We will briefly review several past and present peace negotiations and ‘peace accords’ to understand the dynamics of the ‘peace process’ and the subsequent results.

The Peace Process

There are several ongoing negotiations today, purportedly designed to secure peace accords. These include discussions between (1) the Kiev-based US-NATO-backed junta in the west and the eastern ‘Donbas’ leadership opposed to the coup and NATO; (2) the Saudi US-NATO-armed terrorists in Syria and the Syrian government and its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies; (3) the US-backed Israeli colonial regime and the Palestinian independence forces in the West Bank and Gaza; and (4) the US-backed Colombian regime of President Santos and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC).

There are also several other peace negotiations taking place, many of which have not received public attention.

Past and Present Outcomes of Peace Accords

Over the past quarter century several PAs were signed – all of which led to the virtual surrender of armed anti-imperialist protagonists and popular mass movements.

The Central-American PA’s, involving Salvador and Guatemala, led to the unilateral disarmament of the resistance movement, the consolidation of oligarchical control over the economy, the growth and proliferation of narco-gangs and unfettered government-sponsored death squads. As a consequence, internal terror escalated. Resistance leaders secured the vote, entered Congress as politicians, and, in the case of El Salvador, were elected to high office. Inequalities remained the same or worsened, and murders matched or exceeded the numbers recorded during the pre-Peace Accord period. Massive numbers of immigrants, often of internal refugees fleeing gang violence, entered the US illegally. The US consolidated its military bases and operations in Central America while the population continued to suffer.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations did not lead to any accord. Instead ‘negotiations’ became a thin cover for increasing annexation of Palestinian land to construct racists ‘Jews-Only’ enclaves, resulting in the illegal settlement of over half a million Jewish settlers. The US-backed the entire farcical peace process, financing the corrupt Palestinian vassal-leaders and providing unconditional diplomatic, military and political support to Israel.

US-Soviet Union: Peace Accord

The Reagan/Bush-Gorbachev ‘peace accords’ were supposed to end the Cold War and secure global peace. Instead the US and the EU established military bases and client regimes/allies throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic and Balkans, pillaged the national assets and took over their denationalized economies. US-based elites dominated the vassal Yeltsin regime and virtually stripped Russia of its resources and wealth. In alliance with gangster-oligarchs, they plundered the economy.

The post-Soviet Yeltsin regime ran elections, promoted multiple parties and presided over a desolate, isolated and increasingly surrounded nation – at least until Vladimir Putin was elected to ‘decolonize’ the State apparatus and partially reconstruct the economy and society.

Ukraine Peace Negotiations

In 2014 a US-sponsored violent coup brought together fascists, oligarchs, generals and pro-EU supporters seizing control of Kiev and the western part of Ukraine. The pro-democracy Eastern regions of the Donbas and Crimean Peninsula organized resistance to the putsch regime. Crimea voted overwhelmingly to re-unite Russia. The industrial centers in Eastern Ukraine (Donbas) formed popular militias to resist the armed forces and neo-Nazi paramilitaries of the US backed-junta. After a few years of mayhem and stalemate, a ‘negotiation process’ unfolded despite which the Kiev regime continued to attack the east. The tentative ‘peace settlement” became the basis for the ‘Minsk agreement’, brokered by France, Russia and Germany, where the Kiev junta envisioned a disarming of the resistance movement, re-occupation of the Donbas and Crimea and eventual destruction of the cultural, political, economic and military autonomy of the ethnic Russian East Ukraine. As a result, the “Minsk Agreement” has been little more than a failed ploy to secure surrender. Meanwhile, the Kiev junta’s massive pillage of the nation’s economy has turned Ukraine into a failed state with 2.5 million fleeing to Russia and many thousands emigrating to the West to dig potatoes in Poland, or enter the brothels of London and Tel Aviv. The remaining unemployed youth are left to sell their services to Kiev’s paramilitary fascist shock troops.

Colombia: Peace Accord or Graveyard?

Any celebration of the Colombian FARC – President Santos’ ‘Peace Accord’ would be premature if we examine its past incarnations and present experience.

Over the past four decades, Colombian oligarchical regimes, backed by the military, death squads and Washington have invoked innumerable ‘peace commissions’, inaugurated negotiations with the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and proceeded to both break off negotiations and relaunch full-scale wars using ‘peace accords’ as a pretext to decimate and demoralize political activists.

In 1984, then-President Belisario Betancur signed a peace accord with the FARC, known as the ‘Uribe Agreement’. Under this agreement, thousands of FARC activists and supporters demobilized, formed the Patriotic Union (UP), a legal electoral party, and participated in elections. In the 1986 Colombian elections, the UP candidates were elected as Senators, Congress people, mayors and city council members, and their Presidential candidate gained over 20% of the national vote. Over the next 4 years, from 1986-1989, over 5,000 UP leaders, elected officials and Presidential candidates were assassinated in a campaign of nationwide terror. Scores of thousands of peasants, oil workers, miners and plantation laborers were murdered, tortured and driven into exile. Paramilitary death squads and landlord-backed private armies, allied with the Colombian Armed Forces, assassinated thousands of union leaders, workers and their families members. The Colombian military’s ‘paramilitary strategy’ against non-combatants and villagers was developed in the 1960’s by US Army General William Yarborough, Commandant, US Army Special Warfare Center and ‘Father of the Green Beret’ Special Forces.

Within five years of its formation, the Patriotic Union no longer existed: Its surviving members had fled or gone into hiding.

In 1990, newly-elected President Cesar Gaviria proclaimed new peace negotiations with the FARC. Within months of his proclamation, the president ordered the bombing of the ‘Green House’, where the FARC leaders and negotiating team were being lodged. Fortunately, they had fled before the treacherous attack.

President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2001) called for new peace negotiations with the FARC to be held ‘in a demilitarized zone’. Peace talks began in the jungle region of El Caguan in November 1998. President Pastrana had made numerous pledges, concessions and reforms with the FARC and social activists, but, at the same time he had signed a ten-year multi-billion dollar military aid agreement with US President Clinton, known as ‘Plan Colombia’. This practice of ‘double-dealing’ culminated with the Colombian Armed Forces launching a ’scorched earth policy’ against the ‘demilitarized zones’ under the newly elected (and death-squad linked) President Alvaro Uribe Velez. Over the next eight years, President Uribe drove nearly four million Colombian peasants into internal exile. With the multi-billion dollar funding from Washington, Uribe was able to double the size of the Colombian Armed Forces to over 350,000 troops, incorporating members of the death squads into the military. He also oversaw the formation of new paramilitary armies. By 2010 the FARC had declined from eighteen thousand to under ten thousand fighters – with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and millions rendered homeless.

In 2010 Uribe’s former Minister of Defense, Juan Manual Santos was elected President. By 2012 Santos initiated another “peace process” with the FARC, which was signed by the end of 2016. Under the new ‘Peace Accord’, signed in Cuba, hundreds of officers implicated in torture, assassinations and forced relocation of peasants were given immunity from prosecution while FARC guerillas were to face trial. The government promised land reform and the right to return for displaced farmers and their families. However, when peasants returned to claim their land they were driven away or even killed.

FARC leaders agreed to demobilize and disarm unilaterally by June 2017. The military and their paramilitary allies would retain their arms and gain total control over previous FARC- liberated zones.

President Santos ensured that the ‘Peace Accord’ would include a series of Presidential Decrees – privatizing the country’s mineral and oil resources and converting small family farms to commercial plantations. Demobilized peasant-rebels were offered plots of infertile marginal lands, without government support or funding for roads, tools, seed and fertilizer or even schools and housing, necessary for the transition. While some FARC leaders secured seats in Congress and the freedom to run in elections unmolested, the young rank and file FARC fighters and peasants were left without many alternatives but to join paramilitary or ‘narco’ gangs.

In summary, the historical record demonstrates that a series of Colombian presidents and regimes have systematically violated all peace agreements and accords, assassinated the rebel signees and retained elite control over the economy and labor force. Before his election, the current President Santos presided over the most deadly decade when he was Uribe’s Defense Minister.

For brokering the peace of the graveyard for scores of thousands of Colombian peasants and activists, President Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In Havana, FARC leaders and negotiators were praised by Cuban President Raul Castro, President Obama, Venezuelan President Maduro and the vast majority of ‘progressives’ and rightists in North and South America and Europe.

Colombia’s bloody history, including the widespread murder of Colombian civil rights activists and peasant leaders, has continued even as the documents finalizing the Peace Accords were being signed. During the first month of 2017, five human right activists were murdered by death squads – linked to the oligarchy and military. In 2015, while the FARC was negotiating over several clauses in the agreement, over 122 peasant and human rights activists were murdered by paramilitary groups who continued to operate freely in areas controlled by Santos’ army. The mass media propaganda mills continue to repeat the lie that ‘200,000 people were killed by the guerillas (FARC) and the government’ when the vast majority of the killings were committed by the government and its allied death squads; a calumny, which guerilla leaders fail to challenge. Prominent Jesuit researcher Javier Giraldo has provided a detailed factual account documenting that over three quarters of the killings were committed by the Army and paramilitary.

We are asked to believe presidential regimes that have murdered and continue to murder over 150,000 Colombian workers, peasants, indigenous leaders and professionals are suddenly transformed into justice-loving partners in peace. During the first three months of this year, activists, sympathetic to the peace agreement with the FARC, continue to be targeted and killed by supposedly demobilized paramilitary murderers.

Social movement leaders report rising political violence by military forces and their allies. Even peace monitors and the UN Human Rights Office admit that state and paramilitary violence are destroying any structure that President Santos could hope to implement the reforms. As the FARC withdraws from regions under popular control, peasants seeking land reform are targeted by private armies. The Santos regime is more concerned with protecting the massive land grabs by big mining consortiums.

As the killing of FARC supporters and human rights activists multiply, as President Santos and Washington look to take advantage of a disarmed and demobilized guerilla army, the ‘historic peace accord’ becomes a great deceit designed to expand imperial power.

Conclusion: Epitaph for Peace Accords

Time and again throughout the world, imperial-brokered peace negotiations and accords have served only one goal: to disarm, demobilize, defeat and demoralize resistance fighters and their allies.

‘Peace Accords’, as we know them, have served to rearm and regroup US-backed forces following tactical setbacks of the guerrilla struggle. ‘PA’s are encouraged to divide the opposition (’salami tactics’) and facilitate conquest. The rhetoric of ‘peace’ as in ‘peace negotiations’ are terms which actually mean ‘unilateral disarmament’ of the resistance fighters, the surrender of territory and the abandonment of civilian sympathizers. The so-called ‘war zones’, which contain fertile lands and valuable mineral reserves are ‘pacified’ by being absorbed by the ‘peace loving’ regime. This serves their privatization programs and promote the pillage of the ‘developmental state’. Negotiated peace settlements are overseen by US officials, who praise and laud the rebel leaders while they sign agreements to be implemented by US vassal regimes . . . The latter will ensure the rejection of any realignment of foreign policy and any structural socio-economic changes.

Some peace accords may allow former guerilla leaders to compete and in some cases win elections as marginal representatives, while their mass base is decimated.

In most cases, during the peace process, and especially after signing ‘peace accords’, social organizations and movements and their supporters among the peasantry and working class, as well as human rights activists, end up being targeted by the military and para-military death-squads operating around government military bases.

Often, the international allies of resistance movements have encouraged them to negotiate PAs, in order to demonstrate to the US that ‘they are responsible’— hoping to secure improved diplomatic and trade relations. Needless to say, ‘responsible negotiations’ will merely strengthen imperial resolve to press for further concessions, and encourage military aggression and new conquests.

Just ‘peace accords’ are based on mutual disarmament, recognition of territorial autonomy and the authority of local insurgent administration over agreed upon land reforms, retaining mineral rights and military-public security.

PA’s should be the first step in the political agendas, implemented under the control of independent rebel military and civil monitors.

The disastrous outcome of unilateral disarmament is due to the non-implementation of progressive, independent foreign policy and structural changes.

Past and present peace negotiations, based on the recognition of the sovereignty of an independent state linked to mass movements, have always ended in the US breaking the agreements. True ‘peace accords’ contradict the imperial goal of conquering via the negotiating table what could not be won through war.

Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative reality both for people in targeted countries and for American citizens, a structure that expanded U.S. influence abroad and quieted dissent at home.

The documents reveal the formation of a psyops bureaucracy under the direction of Walter Raymond Jr., a senior CIA covert operations specialist who was assigned to President Reagan’s National Security Council staff to enhance the importance of propaganda and psyops in undermining U.S. adversaries around the world and ensuring sufficient public support for foreign policies inside the United States.

Raymond, who has been compared to a character from a John LeCarré novel slipping easily into the woodwork, spent his years inside Reagan’s White House as a shadowy puppet master who tried his best to avoid public attention or – it seems – even having his picture taken. From the tens of thousands of photographs from meetings at Reagan’s White House, I found only a couple showing Raymond – and he is seated in groups, partially concealed by other officials.

But Raymond appears to have grasped his true importance. In his NSC files, I found a doodle of an organizational chart that had Raymond at the top holding what looks like the crossed handles used by puppeteers to control the puppets below them. Although it’s impossible to know exactly what the doodler had in mind, the drawing fits the reality of Raymond as the behind-the-curtains operative who was controlling the various inter-agency task forces that were responsible for implementing various propaganda and psyops strategies.

Until the 1980s, psyops were normally regarded as a military technique for undermining the will of an enemy force by spreading lies, confusion and terror. A classic case was Gen. Edward Lansdale — considered the father of modern psyops — draining the blood from a dead Filipino rebel in such a way so the dead rebel’s superstitious comrades would think that a vampire-like creature was on the prowl. In Vietnam, Lansdale’s psyops team supplied fake and dire astrological predictions for the fate of North Vietnamese and Vietcong leaders.

Essentially, the psyops idea was to play on the cultural weaknesses of a target population so they could be more easily manipulated and controlled. But the challenges facing the Reagan administration in the 1980s led to its determination that peacetime psyops were also needed and that the target populations had to include the American public.

The Reagan administration was obsessed with the problems left behind by the 1970s’ disclosures of government lying about the Vietnam War and revelations about CIA abuses both in overthrowing democratically elected governments and spying on American dissidents. This so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” produced profound skepticism from regular American citizens as well as journalists and politicians when President Reagan tried to sell his plans for intervention in the civil wars then underway in Central America, Africa and elsewhere.

While Reagan saw Central America as a “Soviet beachhead,” many Americans saw brutal Central American oligarchs and their bloody security forces slaughtering priests, nuns, labor activists, students, peasants and indigenous populations. Reagan and his advisers realized that they had to turn those perceptions around if they hoped to get sustained funding for the militaries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as well as for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, the CIA-organized paramilitary force marauding around leftist-ruled Nicaragua.

So, it became a high priority to reshape public perceptions to gain support for Reagan’s Central American military operations both inside those targeted countries and among Americans.

A ‘Psyops Totality’

As Col. Alfred R. Paddock Jr. wrote in an influential November 1983 paper, entitled “Military Psychological Operations and US Strategy,”

“the planned use of communications to influence attitudes or behavior should, if properly used, precede, accompany, and follow all applications of force. Put another way, psychological operations is the one weapons system which has an important role to play in peacetime, throughout the spectrum of conflict, and during the aftermath of conflict.”

Paddock continued,

“Military psychological operations are an important part of the ‘PSYOP Totality,’ both in peace and war. … We need a program of psychological operations as an integral part of our national security policies and programs. … The continuity of a standing interagency board or committee to provide the necessary coordinating mechanism for development of a coherent, worldwide psychological operations strategy is badly needed.”

Some of Raymond’s recently available handwritten notes show a focus on El Salvador with the implementation of “Nation wide multi-media psyops” spread through rallies and electronic media. “Radio + TV also carried Psyops messages,” Raymond wrote. (Emphasis in original.) Though Raymond’s crimped handwriting is often hard to decipher, the notes make clear that psyops programs also were directed at Honduras, Guatemala and Peru.

One declassified “top secret” document in Raymond’s file – dated Feb. 4, 1985, from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger – urged the fuller implementation of President Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive 130, which was signed on March 6, 1984, and which authorized peacetime psyops by expanding psyops beyond its traditional boundaries of active military operations into peacetime situations in which the U.S. government could claim some threat to national interests.

“This approval can provide the impetus to the rebuilding of a necessary strategic capability, focus attention on psychological operations as a national – not solely military – instrument, and ensure that psychological operations are fully coordinated with public diplomacy and other international information activities,” Weinberger’s document said.

This broader commitment to psyops led to the creation of a Psychological Operations Committee (POC) that was to be chaired by a representative of Reagan’s National Security Council with a vice chairman from the Pentagon and with representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department and the U.S. Information Agency.

“This group will be responsible for planning, coordinating and implementing psychological operations activities in support of United States policies and interests relative to national security,” according to a “secret” addendum to a memo, dated March 25, 1986, from Col. Paddock, the psyops advocate who had become the U.S. Army’s Director for Psychological Operations.

“The committee will provide the focal point for interagency coordination of detailed contingency planning for the management of national information assets during war, and for the transition from peace to war,” the addendum added. “The POC shall seek to ensure that in wartime or during crises (which may be defined as periods of acute tension involving a threat to the lives of American citizens or the imminence of war between the U.S. and other nations), U.S. international information elements are ready to initiate special procedures to ensure policy consistency, timely response and rapid feedback from the intended audience.”

Taking Shape

The Psychological Operations Committee took formal shape with a “secret” memo from Reagan’s National Security Advisor John Poindexter on July 31, 1986. Its first meeting was called on Sept. 2, 1986, with an agenda that focused on Central America and “How can other POC agencies support and complement DOD programs in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama.” The POC was also tasked with “Developing National PSYOPS Guidelines” for “formulating and implementing a national PSYOPS program.” (Underlining in original)

Raymond was named a co-chair of the POC along with CIA officer Vincent Cannistraro, who was then Deputy Director for Intelligence Programs on the NSC staff, according to a “secret” memo from Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Craig Alderman Jr. The memo also noted that future POC meetings would be briefed on psyops projects for the Philippines and Nicaragua, with the latter project codenamed “Niagara Falls.” The memo also references a “Project Touchstone,” but it is unclear where that psyops program was targeted.

Another “secret” memo dated Oct. 1, 1986, co-authored by Raymond, reported on the POC’s first meeting on Sept. 10, 1986, and noted that “The POC will, at each meeting, focus on an area of operations (e.g., Central America, Afghanistan, Philippines).”

The POC’s second meeting on Oct. 24, 1986, concentrated on the Philippines, according to a Nov. 4, 1986 memo also co-authored by Raymond.

“The next step will be a tightly drafted outline for a PSYOPS Plan which we will send to that Embassy for its comment,” the memo said. The plan “largely focused on a range of civic actions supportive of the overall effort to overcome the insurgency,” an addendum noted. “There is considerable concern about the sensitivities of any type of a PSYOPS program given the political situation in the Philippines today.”

Earlier in 1986, the Philippines had undergone the so-called “People Power Revolution,” which drove longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos into exile, and the Reagan administration, which belatedly pulled its support from Marcos, was trying to stabilize the political situation to prevent more populist elements from gaining the upper hand.

But the Reagan administration’s primary attention continued to go back to Central America, including “Project Niagara Falls,” the psyops program aimed at Nicaragua. A “secret” Pentagon memo from Deputy Under Secretary Alderman on Nov. 20, 1986, outlined the work of the 4th Psychological Operations Group on this psyops plan “to help bring about democratization of Nicaragua,” by which the Reagan administration meant a “regime change.” The precise details of “Project Niagara Falls” were not disclosed in the declassified documents but the choice of codename suggested a cascade of psyops.

Other documents from Raymond’s NSC file shed light on who other key operatives in the psyops and propaganda programs were. For instance, in undated notes on efforts to influence the Socialist International, including securing support for U.S. foreign policies from Socialist and Social Democratic parties in Europe, Raymond cited the efforts of “Ledeen, Gershman,” a reference to neoconservative operative Michael Ledeen and Carl Gershman, another neocon who has served as president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), from 1983 to the present. (Underlining in original.)

Although NED is technically independent of the U.S. government, it receives the bulk of its funding (now about $100 million a year) from Congress. Documents from the Reagan archives also make clear that NED was organized as a way to replace some of the CIA’s political and propaganda covert operations, which had fallen into disrepute in the 1970s. Earlier released documents from Raymond’s file show CIA Director William Casey pushing for NED’s creation and Raymond, Casey’s handpicked man on the NSC, giving frequent advice and direction to Gershman. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA’s Hidden Hand in ‘Democracy’ Groups.”]

Another figure in Raymond’s constellation of propaganda assets was media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who was viewed as both a key political ally of President Reagan and a valuable source of funding for private groups that were coordinating with White House propaganda operations. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Rupert Murdoch: Propaganda Recruit.”]

In a Nov. 1, 1985 letter to Raymond, Charles R. Tanguy of the “Committees for a Community of Democracies – USA” asked Raymond to intervene in efforts to secure Murdoch’s funding for the group.

“We would be grateful … if you could find the time to telephone Mr. Murdoch and encourage him to give us a positive response,” the letter said.

Another document, entitled “Project Truth Enhancement,” described how $24 million would be spent on upgrading the telecommunications infrastructure to arm “Project Truth, with the technical capability to provide the most efficient and productive media support for major USG policy initiatives like Political Democracy.” Project Truth was the overarching name of the Reagan administration’s propaganda operation. For the outside world, the program was billed as “public diplomacy,” but administration insiders privately called it “perception management.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Victory of Perception Management.”]

The Early Years

The original priority of “Project Truth” was to clean up the images of the Guatemalan and Salvadoran security forces and the Nicaraguan Contras, who were led by ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza’s ex-National Guard officers. To ensure steady military funding for these notorious forces, Reagan’s team knew it had to defuse the negative publicity and somehow rally the American people’s support.

At first, the effort focused on weeding out American reporters who uncovered facts that undercut the desired public images. As part of that effort, the administration denounced New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner for disclosing the Salvadoran regime’s massacre of about 800 men, women and children in the village of El Mozote in northeast El Salvador in December 1981. Accuracy in Media and conservative news organizations, such as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, joined in pummeling Bonner, who was soon ousted from his job. But such efforts were largely ad hoc and disorganized.

CIA Director Casey, from his years crisscrossing the interlocking worlds of business and intelligence, had important contacts for creating a more systematic propaganda network. He recognized the value of using established groups known for advocating “human rights,” such as Freedom House.

One document from the Reagan library showed senior Freedom House official Leo Cherne running a draft manuscript on political conditions in El Salvador past Casey and promising that Freedom House would make requested editorial “corrections and changes” – and even send over the editor for consultation with whomever Casey assigned to review the paper.

In a “Dear Bill” letter dated June 24, 1981, Cherne, who was chairman of the Freedom House’s executive committee, wrote:

“I am enclosing a copy of the draft manuscript by Bruce McColm, Freedom House’s resident specialist on Central America and the Caribbean. This manuscript on El Salvador was the one I had urged be prepared and in the haste to do so as rapidly as possible, it is quite rough. You had mentioned that the facts could be checked for meticulous accuracy within the government and this would be very helpful. …

“If there are any questions about the McColm manuscript, I suggest that whomever is working on it contact Richard Salzmann at the Research Institute [an organization where Cherne was executive director]. He is Editor-in-Chief at the Institute and the Chairman of the Freedom House’s Salvador Committee. He will make sure that the corrections and changes get to Rita Freedman who will also be working with him. If there is any benefit to be gained from Salzmann’s coming down at any point to talk to that person, he is available to do so.”

By 1982, Casey also was lining up some powerful right-wing ideologues to help fund the “perception management” project both with money and their own media outlets. Richard Mellon Scaife was the scion of the Mellon banking, oil and aluminum fortune who financed a variety of right-wing family foundations – such as Sarah Scaife and Carthage – that were financial benefactors to right-wing journalists and think tanks. Scaife also published the Tribune Review in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A more comprehensive “public diplomacy” operation began to take shape in 1982 when Raymond, a 30-year veteran of CIA clandestine services, was transferred to the NSC. Raymond became the sparkplug for this high-powered propaganda network, according to an unpublished draft chapter of the congressional Iran-Contra investigation that was suppressed as part of the deal to get three moderate Republican senators to sign on to the final report and give the inquiry a patina of bipartisanship.

Though the draft chapter didn’t use Raymond’s name in its opening pages, apparently because some of the information came from classified depositions, Raymond’s name was used later in the chapter and the earlier citations matched Raymond’s known role. According to the draft report, the CIA officer who was recruited for the NSC job had served as Director of the Covert Action Staff at the CIA from 1978 to 1982 and was a “specialist in propaganda and disinformation.”

“The CIA official [Raymond] discussed the transfer with [CIA Director] Casey and NSC Advisor William Clark that he be assigned to the NSC as [Donald] Gregg’s successor [as coordinator of intelligence operations in June 1982] and received approval for his involvement in setting up the public diplomacy program along with his intelligence responsibilities,” the chapter said.

Gregg was another senior CIA official who was assigned to the NSC before becoming Vice President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser.

“In the early part of 1983, documents obtained by the Select [Iran-Contra] Committees indicate that the Director of the Intelligence Staff of the NSC [Raymond] successfully recommended the establishment of an inter-governmental network to promote and manage a public diplomacy plan designed to create support for Reagan Administration policies at home and abroad.”

War of Ideas

During his Iran-Contra deposition, Raymond explained the need for this propaganda structure, saying:

“We were not configured effectively to deal with the war of ideas.”

One reason for this shortcoming was that federal law forbade taxpayers’ money from being spent on domestic propaganda or grassroots lobbying to pressure congressional representatives. Of course, every president and his team had vast resources to make their case in public, but by tradition and law, they were restricted to speeches, testimony and one-on-one persuasion of lawmakers. But President Reagan saw the American public’s “Vietnam Syndrome” as an obstacle to his more aggressive policies.

Along with Raymond’s government-based organization, there were outside groups eager to cooperate and cash in. Back at Freedom House, Cherne and his associates were angling for financial support.

In an Aug. 9, 1982 letter to Raymond, Freedom House executive director Leonard R. Sussman wrote that

“Leo Cherne has asked me to send these copies of Freedom Appeals. He has probably told you we have had to cut back this project to meet financial realities. … We would, of course, want to expand the project once again when, as and if the funds become available. Offshoots of that project appear in newspapers, magazines, books and on broadcast services here and abroad. It’s a significant, unique channel of communication” – precisely the focus of Raymond’s work.

On Nov. 4, 1982, Raymond, after his transfer from the CIA to the NSC staff but while still a CIA officer, wrote to NSC Advisor Clark about the “Democracy Initiative and Information Programs,” stating that “Bill Casey asked me to pass on the following thought concerning your meeting with [right-wing billionaire] Dick Scaife, Dave Abshire [then a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board], and Co. Casey had lunch with them today and discussed the need to get moving in the general area of supporting our friends around the world.

“By this definition he is including both ‘building democracy’ … and helping invigorate international media programs. The DCI [Casey] is also concerned about strengthening public information organizations in the United States such as Freedom House. … A critical piece of the puzzle is a serious effort to raise private funds to generate momentum. Casey’s talk with Scaife and Co. suggests they would be very willing to cooperate. … Suggest that you note White House interest in private support for the Democracy initiative.”

The importance of the CIA and White House secretly arranging private funds was that these supposedly independent voices would then reinforce and validate the administration’s foreign policy arguments with a public that would assume the endorsements were based on the merits of the White House positions, not influenced by money changing hands. Like snake-oil salesmen who plant a few cohorts in the crowd to whip up excitement for the cure-all elixir, Reagan administration propagandists salted some well-paid “private” individuals around Washington to echo White House propaganda “themes.”

The role of the CIA in these initiatives was concealed but never far from the surface. A Dec. 2, 1982 note addressed to “Bud,” a reference to senior NSC official Robert “Bud” McFarlane, described a request from Raymond for a brief meeting.

“When he [Raymond] returned from Langley [CIA headquarters], he had a proposed draft letter … re $100 M democ[racy]  proj[ect],” the note said.

While Casey pulled the strings on this project, the CIA director instructed White House officials to hide the CIA’s hand.

“Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.”

But the formation of the National Endowment for Democracy, with its hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government money, was still months down the road. In the meantime, the Reagan administration would have to line up private donors to advance the propaganda cause.

“We will develop a scenario for obtaining private funding,” NSC Advisor Clark wrote to Reagan in a Jan. 13, 1983 memo, adding that U.S. Information Agency Director “Charlie Wick has offered to take the lead. We may have to call on you to meet with a group of potential donors.”

Despite Casey’s and Raymond’s success in bringing onboard wealthy conservatives to provide private funding for the propaganda operations, Raymond worried about whether a scandal could erupt over the CIA’s involvement. Raymond formally resigned from the CIA in April 1983, so, he said, “there would be no question whatsoever of any contamination of this.” But Raymond continued to act toward the U.S. public much like a CIA officer would in directing a propaganda operation in a hostile foreign country.

Raymond fretted, too, about the legality of Casey’s ongoing role. Raymond confided in one memo that it was important “to get [Casey] out of the loop,” but Casey never backed off and Raymond continued to send progress reports to his old boss well into 1986.

It was “the kind of thing which [Casey] had a broad catholic interest in,” Raymond shrugged during his Iran-Contra deposition. He then offered the excuse that Casey undertook this apparently illegal interference in domestic politics “not so much in his CIA hat, but in his adviser to the president hat.”

Peacetime Propaganda

Meanwhile, Reagan began laying out the formal authority for this unprecedented peacetime propaganda bureaucracy. On Jan. 14, 1983, Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 77, entitled “Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National Security.” In NSDD-77, Reagan deemed it “necessary to strengthen the organization, planning and coordination of the various aspects of public diplomacy of the United States Government.”

Reagan ordered the creation of a special planning group within the National Security Council to direct these “public diplomacy” campaigns. The planning group would be headed by Walter Raymond and one of its principal outposts would be a new Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America, housed at the State Department but under the control of the NSC. (One of the directors of the Latin American public diplomacy office was neoconservative Robert Kagan, who would later co-found the Project for the New American Century in 1998 and become a chief promoter of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.)

On May 20, 1983, Raymond recounted in a memo that $400,000 had been raised from private donors brought to the White House Situation Room by U.S. Information Agency Director Charles Wick. According to that memo, the money was divided among several organizations, including Freedom House and Accuracy in Media, a right-wing media attack organization.

When I wrote about that memo in my 1992 book, Fooling America, Freedom House denied receiving any White House money or collaborating with any CIA/NSC propaganda campaign. In a letter, Freedom House’s Sussman called Raymond “a second-hand source” and insisted that “this organization did not need any special funding to take positions … on any foreign-policy issues.”

But it made little sense that Raymond would have lied to a superior in an internal memo. And clearly, Freedom House remained central to the Reagan administration’s schemes for aiding groups supportive of its Central American policies, particularly the CIA-organized Contra war against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Plus, White House documents released later revealed that Freedom House kept its hand out for funding.

On Sept. 15, 1984, Bruce McColm – writing from Freedom House’s Center for Caribbean and Central American Studies – sent Raymond “a short proposal for the Center’s Nicaragua project 1984-85. The project combines elements of the oral history proposal with the publication of The Nicaraguan Papers,” a book that would disparage Sandinista ideology and practices.

“Maintaining the oral history part of the project adds to the overall costs; but preliminary discussions with film makers have given me the idea that an Improper Conduct-type of documentary could be made based on these materials,” McColm wrote, referring to a 1984 film that offered a scathing critique of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. “Such a film would have to be the work of a respected Latin American filmmaker or a European. American-made films on Central America are simply too abrasive ideologically and artistically poor.”

McColm’s three-page letter reads much like a book or movie pitch, trying to interest Raymond in financing the project:

“The Nicaraguan Papers will also be readily accessible to the general reader, the journalist, opinion-maker, the academic and the like. The book would be distributed fairly broadly to these sectors and I am sure will be extremely useful. They already constitute a form of Freedom House samizdat, since I’ve been distributing them to journalists for the past two years as I’ve received them from disaffected Nicaraguans.”

McColm proposed a face-to-face meeting with Raymond in Washington and attached a six-page grant proposal seeking $134,100. According to the grant proposal, the project would include “free distribution to members of Congress and key public officials; distribution of galleys in advance of publication for maximum publicity and timely reviews in newspapers and current affairs magazines; press conferences at Freedom House in New York and at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.; op-ed circulation to more than 100 newspapers …; distribution of a Spanish-language edition through Hispanic organizations in the United States and in Latin America; arrangement of European distribution through Freedom House contacts.”

The documents that I found at the Reagan library did not indicate what subsequently happened to this specific proposal. McColm did not respond to an email request for comment about the Nicaraguan Papers plan or the earlier letter from Cherne (who died in 1999) to Casey about editing McComb’s manuscript. Freedom House did emerge as a leading critic of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and also became a major recipient of money from the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, which was founded in 1983 under the umbrella of the Casey-Raymond project.

The more recently released documents – declassified between 2013 and 2017 – show how these earlier Casey-Raymond efforts merged with the creation of a formal psyop bureaucracy in 1986 also under the control of Raymond’s NSC operation. The combination of the propaganda and psyop programs underscored the powerful capability that the U.S. government developed more than three decades ago for planting slanted, distorted or fake news. (Casey died in 1987; Raymond died in 2003.)

Over those several decades, even as the White House changed hands from Republicans to Democrats to Republicans to Democrats, the momentum created by William Casey and Walter Raymond continued to push these “perception management/psyops” strategies forward. In more recent years, the wording has changed, giving way to more pleasing euphemisms, like “smart power” and “strategic communications.” But the idea is still the same: how you can use propaganda to sell U.S. government policies abroad and at home.

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

Security measures are often exercises in futility. Resembling placebos, they are the reassurance authorities make as acts of intrusive inconvenience. Queues are increased at airports in the vain hope that an elusive gel carrier will be nabbed before the next detonating device is activated on a flight. Shoes are checked to see if they pass muster. Devices are scrutinised.

Now, depending on certain routes, an electronics ban on carry on items has been imposed, most notably directed by the United States and United Kingdom. This latest exercise in Anglo-American futility has again done its bit to cause disruptions in the name of the questionable. A security “source” claimed that the ban was occasioned by a plot that would have involved the use of a fake iPad, amongst other factors.

The argument for such measures never changes: they might happen because of one incident that was an exception proving the rule. Such a case took place on a Somali plane in February 2016, involving a bomb possibly concealed in a laptop. It hardly justifies such electronic measures across eight countries in North Africa and the Middle East.

The other aspect of such responses is that it falsely layers a policy of supposed soundness with thoroughness. Prohibitions of such order, by their nature, tend to require a certain fanatical dedication to vigilance. Such vigilance is never going to be effective in the way asymmetrical lateralist thinking is. A potential terrorist might be a doctrinaire in thought, but not necessarily in method.

Airport security, whatever the delays, the piousness and the faith shown by officials to make the life of a passenger harder, is never able to entirely patch or plug gaps in what is so charmingly termed the architecture of the enterprise. Cheek and daring will out.

A look, then, at these measures, suggests unevenness. For one, the devices can be simply relocated to checked-in luggage, leaving the business classes irritated at a long-haul flight where work might be done. It also flies in the face of other aviation safety rules.

Another point is made by Shashank Joshi, defence and intelligence specialist at London’s Royal United Services Institute. Having such restrictions on “a tablet-sized, non-metallic bomb” might be sound (he, at least, believes the British officials might be on to something), but the scope would have to measure up.

Intelligence officials in other countries differ on this point, throwing various cats amongst flocks of pigeons. The restrictions between Britain and the UK, for instance, also vary, suggesting a postmodernism of sorts in the intelligence fraternities of the countries.

“This raises questions,” notes Joshi, “about why they have arrived at different conclusions, and specifically suspicious as to whether unstated political factors may be influencing the Trump administration.”

There was little surprise that the actions of the United States targeted eight countries, following the travel ban effort by the Trump administration which initially went for seven, then revised the number to six. It covers flights from 10 airports in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.[1]

The UK ban is specific to tablets, laptops, games consoles and devices larger than a mobile phone. Routes covered include inbound flights from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey.

This ban was an exercise that had the notable ancillary outcome of affecting the highly competitive Gulf carrier market and airlines that have been doing rather well over the last few years in a cut throat aviation market.

Western counterparts have been shrunk and shunned off those routes, with the US market receiving considerable interest from the airlines of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

“The billions of dollars in illegal Gulf carrier subsidies,” protested American, Delta and United in recent an open letter to Donald Trump, “are brazen violations of our Open Skies agreements and a perfect example of the type of trade cheating that President Trump abhors.”[2]

The US Department of Homeland Security was attempting to advance another rationale, claiming in a press release that,

“Evaluated intelligence indicates that terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation, to include smuggling explosive devices in various consumer items.”

Members of the legal fraternity and some policy makers have already noted a lukewarm, rather than enraged response, to the ban on large electronic devices. Trump’s March 6 executive order seemed to be considered of a different order, while an administrative and security measure of daft content is deemed more comical than a threat to liberties per se.

In the words of Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin, this suggests that the claim that Trump’s “hands are tied” by legal challenges is far from the case. A lawyer retained by Hawaii, Neal Katyal, has similarly observed that,

“Policies like that one, justified with respect to a particular (even if unspecified) new threat, implemented without accompanying statements of animus towards Islam, and in harmony with Congressional policies and the policies of our allies, raise no constitutional concerns.”[3]

As long as you keep Islam off the books of derision and criticism, and tailor nonsensical responses to the temper of Congress, such orders and actions are bound to sail through. Forget, however, the merit of logic in whether these are necessary, let alone effective, to begin with.

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

Notes

On the morning of Sunday, March 19, Israeli tax authorities barged into the home of Omar Barghouti, the prominent Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for the freedom, justice and equality of the Palestinian people. They detained and interrogated Omar and his wife Safa for 16 hours that first day. Omar is currently enduring a fourth day of interrogation.

Below is the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee’s (BNC) response to these developments and the Israeli government’s systematic efforts to criminalize the BDS movement, intimidate activists and stop free speech:

A prominent Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, has for years been subjected to intense threats, intimidation and repression by various arms of the far-right Israeli government, particularly after it considered the movement a “strategic threat” to its entire system of injustice against Palestinians.

At a March 2016 conference in occupied Jerusalem, several Israeli government ministers threatened Omar and key BDS human rights defenders with severe measures, including “targeted civil elimination” – a euphemism for civil assassination. The Ministry of Strategic Affairs last year established a “tarnishing unit,” as exposed in the Israeli daily Haaretz. This unit’s job is to tarnish the reputation of BDS human rights defenders and networks.

It is in this context that the Israeli tax department’s investigation of Omar and his wife, Safa, must be understood. After failing to intimidate them through the threat of revoking Omar’s permanent residence in Israel, and after the effective travel ban imposed on him proved futile in stopping his human rights work, the Israeli government has resorted to fabricating a case related to Omar’s alleged income outside of Israel to tarnish his image and intimidate him.

The fact that this investigation includes a travel ban and that it comes a few weeks before Omar Barghouti is scheduled to travel to the U.S. to receive the Gandhi Peace Award jointly with Ralph Nader in a ceremony at Yale University proves its true motive – repression.

The fact that the Israeli government publicized the inflammatory fabrications against Omar just 24 hours after he was taken in for investigation shows beyond doubt that the investigation’s real goal is to tarnish his reputation.

No matter what extreme measures of repression Israel wields against the BDS movement or its human rights defenders and vast network of supporters, it cannot stop this movement for human rights. Bullying and repression can hardly affect a grassroots movement that grows in people’s hearts and minds, empowering them to do the right thing – to stand on the right side of history, against Israel’s fanatic regime of apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing, and for freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinian people.

This latest desperate chapter of repression and intimidation by the Israeli government against Omar Barghouti is the strongest indicator yet of the failure of the Israeli regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid to slow down the impressive growth of the BDS movement for Palestinian rights.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Visit www.bdsmovement.net and follow @BDSmovement.

Bajo una fuerte y sostenida presión política y deliberativa mediática del alto mando castrense, el Congreso mexicano discute sendas iniciativas que buscan dotar de un marco jurídico ad hoc la intervención de las fuerzas armadas en tareas de seguridad pública, funciones que la Constitución define como propias de las policías. Entre ellas, la prevención e investigación del delito; la detención de infractores de la ley; el aseguramiento de la escena del crimen y la evidencia; recoger testimonios; realizar peritajes penales, e instalar retenes para inspeccionar bienes y personas.

Las medidas y planes de la nueva presidencia estadounidense que apuntan al proteccionismo en lo comercial y a un incierto repliegue en lo estratégico sugieren la hipótesis de un declive pronunciado del liderazgo global de Washington. Y puestos a ello, no falta quien sugiera a la segunda potencia económica del mundo que asome como un posible relevo. En un adelanto quizá de pronóstico, el presidente chino Xi Jinping no dudó en presentarse en Davos, en el mayor cónclave de la elite capitalista pro-globalización, como campeón del liberalismo comercial. Pero, ¿es verosímil a corto plazo esta posibilidad?

Desde 2009, China es el mayor exportador global de mercancías. En los últimos años, el proceso de transformación que impulsa internamente para dejar de ser solo la gran fábrica del mundo tiene un fuerte componente exterior. El expansionismo de su influencia económica llega a todos los rincones del planeta y se ha dotado de instrumentos propios para reforzar la seriedad de dicho envite. China es ya el mayor socio comercial de hasta 120 economías del mundo.

La ciudad de Xiamen, en el sur de China, acogerá en septiembre de este año una nueva cumbre de los BRICS, que atisba en el horizonte su primera década de existencia. El lugar elegido, una de las primeras Zonas Económicas Especiales del país, parece reiterar el mensaje de apertura y desarrollo como claves esenciales en las que este grupo de países debiera apostar ante la adversa perspectiva que con sus planes proteccionistas sugieren otros actores internacionales relevantes.

La cumbre de los BRICS en China llegará después del encuentro del G20 celebrado en Hangzhou en 2016. Y, previamente, en mayo, Beijing acogerá una gran cumbre mundial sobre la Franja y la Ruta de la Seda, el proyecto bandera de Xi Jinping. Todas estas iniciativas empujan en la misma dirección. Se trata de integrar las políticas económicas, exterior y de seguridad para avanzar en el objetivo de crear una esfera de predominio en comercio, comunicación, transporte y enlaces de seguridad.

¿Aspira China al liderazgo global?

El tema no es nuevo. Se ha especulado mucho sobre las implicaciones de la emergencia de China para el sistema internacional y su propio propósito. Nunca ha habido consenso sobre la existencia o no en Beijing de una voluntad hegemónica o revisionista en relación al orden global. Partiendo del abandono del enfoque ideológico de otros tiempos y la asunción del pragmatismo también en este ámbito, el objetivo de una gradual recuperación de la posición central en el sistema se acompañó de la reivindicación de la multipolaridad y la “comunidad de destino compartido”.

A esa finalidad de evitar a toda costa la Trampa de Tucídides, una resolución violenta y traumática de la alternancia en la hegemonía global, sirven diversas plataformas creadas en los últimos años, desde la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái a los citados BRICS, en las que China se ha cuidado hasta ahora de moderar su predominio a fin de no incomodar a sus socios pero también para evitar su señalamiento como amenaza.

Lo cierto es que, tradicionalmente, China siempre ha rehuido posiciones de liderazgo prefiriendo actuar, en el mejor de los casos, a través de terceros y cuidando de “no encabezar la ola ni portar la bandera”, en palabras de Deng Xiaoping. Ese perfil bajo parte de la premisa de que la asunción de mayores responsabilidades internacionales le puede acarrear más problemas que beneficios.

En estos años, la mayor presencia global ha servido al objetivo interno de acelerar su desarrollo y no tanto a destacar internacionalmente. En este plano, sus acciones se han orientado a reivindicar reformas en el sistema y no a sugerir la conformación de poderes alternativos, a lograr en suma un mayor reconocimiento de su posición y en paralelo a fortalecer la legitimidad de unas instituciones que en buena medida hoy día han quedado obsoletas en su representatividad.

Esos intentos de modificar la actual configuración del poder global discurren en paralelo a la vocación de facilitar que sus hipotéticos aliados ganen autonomía con respecto a EEUU. Para recortar distancias, China pretende atraer a otros para evitar que participen de una hipotética estrategia de contención; otra cosa es que persiga consolidar una coalición para asaltar el  cetro del poder global.

Las autoridades chinas, por otra parte, en su discurso rehúyen cualquier vocación mesiánica. Su modelo económico no es exportable e insisten incluso ante sus más fervientes imitadores en que cada cual debe buscar su propio camino; su modelo político tampoco goza de predicamento incluso entre sus admiradores más entusiastas; su arquitectura social presenta grietas profundas que reclaman reparaciones en justicia; su cultura particular, muy desconocida globalmente, no tiene la dimensión suficiente para generar el acompañamiento universal que suscita Occidente; en el orden de la seguridad y la defensa, carece aún de atributos solventes.

China no está en condiciones de disputar la hegemonía militar, ni el papel del yuan puede suplir al dólar como principal moneda de reserva y tardará en situarse a la cabeza de la innovación científico-tecnológica a pesar del ingente esfuerzo inversor de los últimos ejercicios. Por no hablar del poder blando. Aunque su ascenso económico es evidente, ni de lejos dispone de los activos y recursos determinantes del poder global.

A China se le puede pedir que participe más, que asuma más responsabilidades y tal como señaló Xi Jinping en Davos recientemente, está en disposición de hacerlo; pero tanto por circunstancias estructurales como por sus propias taras internas, no dispone de la capacidad hoy día para sustituir a EEUU y Occidente en el liderazgo global, al menos  conforme a los patrones al uso.

Un pato cojo

Cabe recordar que la segunda potencia económica del mundo ostenta la posición 90 en Índice de Desarrollo Humano. Mejora posiciones, es verdad, pero le falta lo suyo. El desarrollo interno, de una parte, y el incremento de su influencia regional como trampolín para aumentar su proyección a escala global son sus prioridades. Su liderazgo no puede ser inmediatamente mundial. Eso no significa que China renuncie a ejercer más influencia o a reclamar reformas en el sistema global con más insistencia, ya sea en lo político, financiero o comercial. En esas está hoy día.

China abriga desde hace tiempo un sentimiento de exclusión de las grandes decisiones económicas y políticas mundiales. No se conformará con ser un socio menor y no secundará propuestas que suenen a subordinación o comparsa. Espera su momento y este podría estar al llegar.

La estratégica oportunidad que ahora parece abrirse con Donald Trump le facilitará el reforzamiento de su papel global pero la elevación precipitada y exacerbada de su perfil internacional puede alentar conflictos indeseados afectando negativamente a su ritmo de modernización. Algo de todo ello habrán podido constatar ya en su propio patio trasero en los años que llevamos de mandato de Xi Jinping quien puso bajo siete llaves la tradicional modestia del gigante asiático.

Xulio Ríos

Xulio Ríos: Director del Observatorio de la Política China.

This report is yet to be fully confirmed (GR Editor)

Inside Syria Media Center has obtained proofs of plans to create a state of Great Kurdistan.

According to the documents at our disposal, the U.S. authorities and the Syrian Kurds reached an agreement past week on the boundaries of the Kurdish autonomy in the territory of Syria, which had been guaranteed to Kurds in case of capturing Raqqa and Al-Tabqah (34 miles to the West of Raqqa). This confirms the reports about the U.S. plans to divide Syria.

In addition, Washington has already defined the boundaries of the new state of the Great Kurdistan on the territory of Syria and Iraq. It is to be created after ISIS defeat and the final collapse of Syrian Arab Republic. According to the U.S. military, Kurds remain the only force capable of defeating ISIS.

Map of Great Kurdistan

In order to strengthen its positions the new U.S. administration announced the upcoming liberation of the so-called ISIS capital, Raqqa. To grease the wheels the Americans resorted to money, their weapon of choice. They bribe ISIS field commanders and increase payments to YPG and FSA units.

The U.S. government intends to capture Raqqa by April and to eliminate ISIS in Syria and Iraq this summer. The implementation of these plans requires making concessions to Kurds. This is why the U.S. promises them an independent state in case of victory.

Cuando China y América Latina se topan a comienzos del nuevo milenio, la historia económica de ambas venía de transitar por caminos diferentes. Mientras la primera evidenciaba un crecimiento económico sin paralelos en la historia documentada de la humanidad, producto de una reforma económica pragmática, la segunda se encontraba inmensamente debilitada como resultado de la ideología neoliberal. La avalancha de los productos chinos de bajo costo vino, como en el caso de las afeitadoras de doble hojilla, a repasar a aquellas industrias que no habían caído con la súbita apertura de nuestros mercados.  

China evidenciaba sin embargo una importante virtud que la redimía: era voraz consumidora de nuestras materias primas y productos básicos. Es decir, lo que en economía se conoce como commodities. Gracias al apetito chino el precio de los mismos, excluyendo metales y energía, creció 60% en términos reales entre 2002 y 2006. En el caso de petróleo y metales el aumento en precios durante ese período alcanzó 150% y 180%, respectivamente. Por contraste, en las cinco décadas precedentes al boom de precios empujado por China, los commodities habían venido cayendo a una tasa anual de 1.6% en relación a los bienes manufacturados (BernardoKosacoff  y Sebastián Campanario, La Revalorización de las Materias Primas y sus Efectos en América Latina, CEPAL, 2007).

Así las cosas mientras la base industrial de la región sufría un segundo golpe de grandes proporciones, el precio de los commodities subía con fuerza inusitada. El 70% del crecimiento de las exportaciones latinoamericanas se sustentaba en aquellos, con China teniendo un efecto directo y otro indirecto sobre dicho proceso. Lo primero en virtud de un incremento del 370% en las ventas a China desde el año 2000. Lo segundo en virtud del aumento global en el precio de los commodities, empujado por la demanda china (Kevin Gallagher and Roberto Porzecanski, The Dragon in the Room, Stanford, 2010).

Como resultado de lo anterior las tasas de crecimiento económico se dispararon en un conjunto de países latinoamericanos que representaban el 69% del PIB regional y que eran, precisamente, aquellos conectados a China o dependientes de commodities. Más aún, y a diferencia de los años signados por el Consenso de Washington, el período comprendido entre 2002 y 2011  dominado por el comercio con China, produjo importantes avances en lo social. El PIB per cápita promedio de la región se incrementó en casi 25% mientras que las tasas de pobreza decrecieron significativamente, con más de 50 millones de personas emergiendo de la pobreza moderada (World Bank, “Latin America and the Caribbean’s Long Term Growth: Made in China?”, Washington D.C., September 2011).

Sin embargo la relación con China resultó compleja. Para algunos representó la oportunidad de un crecimiento económico sostenido, conjugando mercado para sus productos e inversiones para sus economías. Para otros, por el contrario, sustrajo mercados tanto domésticos como de exportación y desvió inversiones. Entre esos dos extremos  aparece un grupo intermedio que ganaba por un lado pero perdía por el otro. Chile, México y Brasil son ejemplos nítidos de las tres opciones anteriores, dentro del mismo orden citado.

No obstante debido a la reducción en las tasas de crecimiento de China, al enfriamiento del comercio mundial y a la caída en los precios del petróleo, el ciclo expansivo de los commodities llegó a su fin en 2013. En palabras de Francisco Rojas Aravena: “El valor de las exportaciones de mercadería de la región muestra una importante contracción que alcanzó al 14%…Los países más afectados por la contracción de las exportaciones han sido los sudamericanos, como consecuencia en los precios de los productos básicos, el petróleo y la minería, principalmente por la caída en la demanda de los países asiáticos. Las exportaciones sudamericanas en 2015 alcanzaron a un menos 21%” (“América Latina en un ciclo de baja, pero con señales esperanzadoras”, Pensamiento Iberoamericano, enero, 2016).

Esta contracción de 21% genera un importante riesgo que Rojas Aravena expresa en los siguientes términos: “Uno de los principales peligros para la estabilidad democrática en la región está ligado al temor real de importantes segmentos de la población de recaer en la pobreza. Dicha situación impacta directamente sobre las aspiraciones generadas al ascender a clases medias” (Idem). Nada conlleva mayor potencial desestabilizador que el regreso a la pobreza de quienes habían ascendido a las clases medias.

Lo anterior resulta tanto más preocupante cuanto que no hay indicios de pronta recuperación por parte de la economía mundial. La era proteccionista iniciada por Donald Trump, a contracorriente de dicha recuperación, viene a echar más leña al fuego de la incertidumbre. Su controversia comercial con China y México, ahora acompañada del anuncio de revisar los acuerdos de libre comercio firmados con los demás países de la región, afectarán sin duda a América Latina.

Alfredo Toro Hardy

Alfredo Toro Hardy: Diplomático y académico venezolano.

Republicans demand a healthcare bill (or medical system) that will simultaneously (and without sacrificing quality of healthcare) reduce their total expenses on medical care — including their insurance premiums and their out-of-pocket costs — and that will also be more free-market (with less government involvement and regulations) than in existing U.S. healthcare policy (both before and after Obamacare began); they want more free-market, and less cost, and also no sacrifice on quality.

The economic data show that (by far) the most cost-effective medical care is in countries that have socialized healthcare; the least cost-effective (meaning the least efficient) medical care is in countries that have not socialized healthcare, and the middle that’s between those two extremes is countries (there is only one: Switzerland) that are between those two categories: countries that legally require everyone to have health insurance but that remove the profit-motive from health insurance by having (as Switzerland puts it)

“60 government-approved non-profit insurance providers offer basic mandatory insurance and optional loss-of-earnings [disability] insurance in accordance with legal requirements and the supervisory authority’s directives.”

America’s propagandists for Obamacare had been saying such things as “Switzerland Has Its Own Kind of Obamacare — and Loves It”, and mentioned that “For many Americans, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which makes health insurance mandatory, is a bitter pill to swallow” but that it’s really “a victory for common sense,” but they were misrepresenting the extent to which the Swiss system is similar to Obamacare, and also misrepresenting (over-praising) the Swiss system’s track-record of performance.

Besides the Swiss system’s using only approved non-profit insurers, it importantly has nothing like Obamacare’s “insurance mandate.” One might wonder: how, then, could coverage be “mandatory” in Switzerland? The answer is that, “If you fail to insure yourself within three months, the canton will choose a provider for you and you will be sent a premium bill by the provider.” Consequently, whereas Switzerland really does have “universal coverage” (meaning 100% of citizens are insured), Obamacare leaves 10.9% of Americans uninsured. Prior to Obama’s coming into office, 14.6% of Americans had no health insurance; so, Obamacare increased the pre-Obama 85.4% of Americans who had health insurance, to 89.1%. He increased the insured percentage by 3.7%.

That’s all — nothing like increasing it to “universal insurance” (100% insured) which is what every other OECD nation has (besides their having better health care, at far lower prices, as will be documented in the paragraph immediately below). Democrats propagandize about their achievement, by comparing the current 10.9% figure versus the 18.0% peak figure that was the all-time high percentage of Americans who had no insurance, which was right before the Obamacare exchanges opened for business, on the first day of October in 2013.

Millions of Americans had simply dropped their existing insurance as Obama’s promised health insurance system came closer to reality, and especially after the U.S. Supreme Court gave it the go-ahead; but for propagandists to compare the 10.9% figure versus the 18% figure is fraudulent, which is par for the course in U.S. politics and government — thoroughly untrustworthy, like in a dictatorship. (Jimmy Carter calls the U.S. an “oligarchy” instead of a democracy; he’s correct, and an oligarchy is a dictatorship by the super-rich.

Democracy is impossible with a misinformed public, such as here. “Oligarchs” need it to be that way.) The Democrats’ touting that 18% pre-Obamacare uninsured figure includes the additional 3.4% of Americans who, after Obama became elected in 2008, abandoned insurance, because they were hoping for the Democrats to provide a much better health insurance system; but the Democrats, immediately after Obama’s win in 2008, yanked much that was best in their promised plan — for example, the promised “public option” was immediately abandoned by Obama; he never really intended it, except as an attractive campaign line. He knew that the insurance companies didn’t want to be competing against that, and he had a top executive, Elizabeth Fowler from WellPoint, America’s largest health insurance company, actually draft his Obamacare plan, in the Senate office of his buddy U.S. Senator Max Baucus.

The U.S. has the most-free-market healthcare system, and by far the most inefficient, with super-high costs, and the worst performance, among all the OECD countries. Here are the facts: the detailed data are right here. Look at it. Life-expectancy is used there as the measure of healthcare-quality, because the reliable data for calculating it in a trustworthy way are available for almost every nation on Earth.

So, look there at the graph, “Life expectancy vs. health expenditure over time, 1970-2014” and what you’ll see is shocking: The U.S. is alone in one category, of astounding inefficiency — high cost combined with low quality — and all other OECD nations are clumped close together in a very different category, where they all are remarkably similar, all of them having vastly higher efficiency: far higher life-expectancy, and far lower cost, than the United States. It looks like the U.S. is rip-off-ville — Reagan’s City on a Hell, to reverse his exaggerated claim, toward the extremity that it’s actually getting far closer to: his greed-is-good libertarian ideal (the Republican predilection) — the place where defrauding the public reigns without any effective challenge at all. Then look further down that page, at the “Appendix: Latest available data on life expectancy and spending on health per capita in OECD countries.” The exact figures are given there, “Life expectancy” and “Health spending per capita.”

Okay: so, Democrats are deluded when they say that Obamacare is anything close to the best that we can do, but Republicans are blithering fools who demand that we do even worse than we already are.

To make healthcare more free-market, with lower prices and without cheapening the quality, is proven by all the data to be a ridiculous ideal, which, the more that it is pursued, will suck up an ever-bigger percentage of the total national economy, while it makes the public sicker, shortens the public’s lifespan, makes the public more disabled, lowers workers’ productivity, and drives down the entire nation’s economic international rank. Such a nation is in decline, as compared to its economic competitors. Anyone who would want to buy that package, I would want to sell a bridge in Brooklyn to; and, to such a person: Good luck charging tolls on it, while motorists sue you for its potholes and the damages it has done to their cars and trucks (if not also to themselves).

Free-market-extremism can be very costly to a country, because anything that builds a country’s physical infrastructure (such as roads) or human capital (such as healthcare) is far more efficiently provided by the government than by the private sector; and this fact is recognized practically everywhere on Earth except in the suckered-by-oligarchs United States. And what results from that — the failing, and the falling — is now clear in the data.

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

March 25^th was the EU’s birthday. It was celebrated in London and elsewhere by anti-Brexit demonstrations. Initially organised by Unite for Europe, supported by European Movement and the 3 Million group of EU citizens living in the UK, there were some unhappy arguments about whether the London march should go ahead because of the terrible killings at Westminster three days before.

When it appeared that people were going to turn up anyway, the European Movement grudgingly issued a statement saying people should attend, while the press enjoyed publishing pieces about ‘infighting’ in the anti-Brexit camp.

Be that as it may, the police were happy for the march to go ahead and when I arrived in London, it was obviously business as usual. Policing was light, polite and friendly, and no, they weren’t all armed and wearing flak jackets, despite having to deal with a bigger demonstration than forecast.

Since the EU referendum many people have become angry about how the result was being portrayed. ‘An overwhelming win for Brexit’ claimed the Leave campaigners. Not so. The figures give a different picture:

Of the total votes recorded, 52 per cent voted to Leave the EU, and 48 percent wanted to Remain. But – 28 percent of the total electorate did not even vote; which means that 37 per cent voted leave and 35 per cent voted Remain. That, say the Remainers, is rather more ‘underwhelming’, and as more information on the perils of Brexit are revealed, people are changing their minds.

What has fueled the anger is that the Prime Minister Theresa May is leading her team to a ‘hard Brexit’ result, absolutely regardless of what half of the UK wants. That half is simply not being listened to. Saturday’s demonstration was their chance to make their voices heard.

The start of the march was delayed as far more people than expected were turning up. Many thousands came, much to the fury of the right-wing media which has been extolling the (very questionable) glories of a life outside the EU.

The original estimates were for 16-25,000. One media tweet, surprised at the numbers, said, “I’ve been standing here for 10 minutes and they are still going past!” Actually, it took over 2 hours. The media then gave estimates of ‘between 25-100,000’. Can’t they tell the difference? One police estimate was, at one point, given as 50,000. It was certainly well over that, and maybe it did approach 100,000. Who knows?

I joined the crowd waiting in Trafalgar Square for the march to arrive from its start in Park Lane. Straight away I was meeting fellow minds and instant friends. Everyone except me appeared to have come prepared with small and large EU flags and banners. At times it was like standing in a sea of blue and yellow. “Amazon must have made a fortune,” said the man I was talking to, implying everyone had ordered the flags online. And he kindly gave me the flag he was holding, which I carried – all the way back home.

What was obvious was that the whole event was a celebration of what Europe could and should be. From little babies to the very old, from large groups to people walking by themselves, citizens of the UK and from all other European countries were united. United in their determination to stop the ruination of their lives, and united most of all in their delight at being together, whatever their colour, their culture or nationality.

From Trafalgar Square, we marched down White hall to Parliament Square where the march would end and the speeches begin. I’d had my doubts some days before as to whether Parliament Square would be big enough. I was right.

At one point along White hall a loudspeaker was belting out John Lennon singing ‘All you need is love’ while the marchers sang along. One woman was playing the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, on her clarinet as she walked. People chanted and cheered – and stopped outside Downing Street for the obligatory boo at the Prime Minister’s residence.

The joy and happiness of being with each other was palpable. We were being fed on the strength of being together. It seemed possible, after all the depression and despair felt by so many, that somehow we really could stop Theresa May’s incompetent government from wrecking our British and European lives.

Parliament Square rapidly filled up and the speeches began. Police directed marchers to other areas around the Square. But more kept coming and marshals had to tell people that no more could enter the Square, because it was so crowded.

The speeches ended, but still they were marching down White hall. Walking back towards Trafalgar Square, I wondered when I would find the end of the march. All I could ever see were more waving EU flags turning into White hall, and more placards to appreciate and photograph.

The placards were a joy. Most were handmade, in turns angry and funny, rude, despairing and clever.

Children everywhere had their personal versions of ‘I want my future back’

Dogs (and there was more than one taking part) said ‘Bones before Brexit’

Theresa May was not treated kindly. There were irreverent images of her, along with some plain messages:

No to Mayhem

No May – we’re here to stay

No we won’t let it Lie (referring to the fact that the Brexit campaign was based on lies)

Mrs May – the brewery is in Brussels (for non-British readers, someone judged incompetent is described as ‘can’t organise a piss-up in a brewery’.  It also refers to the fact that most people recognise the EU needs reforming. But that does NOT mean Brexit.)

There were the witty messages:

Sprout with Brussels or whither with Brexit

Brexit grass is greener because it is fertilised with bullshit

Brexit is a dog’s breakfast.  Make mine a Continental.

Some were based on quotes.  From a song:

You say democracy, I say right-wing coup – let’s call the whole thing off

And from a poem:

No man is an island, No country by itself.

And this:

British

Right wing coup

Extreme

Xenophobic

Ill-informed

Tosh

Watching the last of the march enter White hall, I spoke to a man who’d come down from the North of England (a very pro-Brexit area) for a short holiday with his wife. “I didn’t know this was going on,” he said, thrilled by what he saw. “I had to come and see – isn’t it wonderful!”

Mrs. May – when you trigger Article 50 on Wednesday, spare a thought for the sea of blue and yellow flags outside Parliament. The half of the United Kingdom that voted to stay with Europe, and the 3 million Europeans who live and work here aren’t going away, they won’t be silenced, and after Saturday’s demonstration are more united than ever in their anger and determination to stop your government from wrecking this country and their lives.

And Mr Corbyn – isn’t it time you acted as a real Leader of the Opposition and spoke up for all those people who didn’t vote to leave? That includes the many thousands who, like me, joined the Labour Party because of your socialist policies, and who are looking to you to fight for the rights and protections we have because of being part of the EU.

I walked back to the station, tired out but full of hope and happiness. I’ve been on many a demo, but none had left me feeling that I had just experienced such a happy, positive day. Getting off the train after a long journey home, someone spotted my little EU flag. “You were on the march,” he said.  He’d been there with his daughter. “Wasn’t it great!” he exclaimed.  “Yes,” I replied, “Yes.”

Yes, it was.

The alternative media community, especially its social media iteration, is experiencing collective psychosis in hallucinating that “Israel” and Russia are on the verge of war with one another.

The prevailing narrative is that Israeli “Defense Minister” Lieberman’s threat to destroy Syria’s air defense systems is tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia, with the assumption being that Moscow is on a crusade against Zionism and has thus become Tel Aviv’s worst enemy.

There’s no diplomatic way to say this, but the presumptions on which such a crazy conclusion has been reached are absolutely and utterly wrong.

Far from being Israel’s hated nemesis like many in the alternative media community wishfully pretend that it is, Moscow is one of Tel Aviv’s closest allies, and this is entirely due to President Putin’s deliberate policies. Not only does he enjoy a very strong personal friendship with Netanyahu, but President Putin also sees a lot of opportunity to advance his country’s interests in Israel through the large Russian diaspora there.

Russia wants to compete with the US for influence in Israel for several interrelated reasons.

Firstly, Judaism is one of Russia’s four official religions as stipulated by the 1993 constitution, thus partially making Russia a “Jewish State” in the technical-legal sense. To be fair, though, Russia is also an Orthodox, Muslim, and Buddhist country too by the same measure.

Coupled with the Russian diaspora in Israel, Moscow seeks to leverage these religious-personal connections in order to acquire greater clout over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which in turn would be expected to boost Russia’s global Great Power prestige (which is exceptionally important to its leadership).

As a “reward” for its positive involvement in helping to resolve this seemingly intractable issue, Russia might expect Israel to grant its state companies important contracts in building, servicing, and/or investing in any potential Eastern Mediterranean pipeline from the offshore Leviathan gas field to the EU, which would exponentially increase Moscow’s influence on the global energy market and consequently on world affairs in general.

To be absolutely clear, I respectfully disagree with this approach for principled reasons, though I understand why Russia has embarked on it, and what it hopes to reap from its multifaceted engagement with Israel.

Returning to the current context and topic of this article, there’s no way whatsoever that Russia would ever even consider lobbying a volley of nuclear missiles at Israel no matter what Netanyahu does in Syria, even if he delivers on his government’s threats to destroy the country’s air defense systems.

In such a frightful scenario, Russia would assuredly issue a sharp diplomatic rebuke against Israel and probably take symbolic measures to express its disapproval, but it won’t ever preemptively intervene and stop Israeli jets from bombing Syria because its mandate is strictly to fight terrorism, and not defend Syria’s borders from outside state aggression.

Moreover, it’s an open fact that Russia and Israel have established mechanisms to coordinate their military action in Syria so as to avoid inadvertent clashes, which is hardly the behaviour that anyone would expect from two parties on the brink of an all-out nuclear exchange against each other.

Let’s face it — Russia and Israel are high-level and comprehensive strategic allies with one another, though this by no means signifies that Moscow is incapable of “balancing” its relations between Tel Aviv and Damascus.

In fact, it’s this very tricky diplomatic “balancing act” which might actually be somewhat restraining Israel from taking more aggressive action in Syria, as it understands that there’s a certain limit to what it can do and “get away with” before it overly embarrasses Russia and negatively impacts on bilateral relationships.

Everyone knows that Russia has deployed S-400 air defense missiles in Syria, and this fact was reported on with much fanfare and enthusiasm in the alternative media community, both through its professional outlets and on social media. Many people naively assumed that this would put a stop to Israel’s occasional strikes in Syria, yet several high-profile ones have occurred in the time since, in spite of the presence of the S-400s.

This can only be interpreted as proof that Russia has no desire to overstep its anti-terrorism mandate and defend Syria’s external borders, nor would it even want that heavy responsibility if Damascus offered it.

In addition, the fact that these strikes happened without any noticeable interference from the Russian side can be taken as visible confirmation that the mechanisms earlier described between Moscow and Tel Aviv are working properly in avoiding any inadvertent clashes between the two sides.

This does not mean, however, that Russia condones Israel’s illegal military activity in Syria (especially its latest bombing), but just that it passively stands by and chooses time and again to avoid becoming involved in what Moscow sees as a strictly bilateral issue between Tel Aviv and Damascus.

Nevertheless, a blatant act of state-on-state aggression such as attempting to obliterate Syria’s nationwide anti-air defense systems wouldn’t be tolerated by Russia, and would probably compel President Putin to freeze relations with “Israel” due to the unacceptable diplomatic embarrassment that Netanyahu would have inflicted on Moscow.

Netanyahu, for his part, is keenly aware of the limits of what he can and cannot do in Syria without risking Russia’s genuine ire, so it is extremely unlikely that he will carry through on his Defense Minister’s threat. That being said, however, Israel — being the quintessential rogue state that it is — might backstab Russia by doing this anyhow so long as its leadership believes that the “cost-benefit” calculation “justifies” such action.

The only realistic scenario for that to happen would be if Israel was convinced — whether “rightly” or wrongly — that Iranian and Hezbollah activity in Syria posed an “imminent threat” to its interests that would surpass any perceived indirect negotiating/”balancing” benefits vis-a-vis these parties that Tel Aviv’s alliance with Moscow provides.

It’s been speculated that Russia is very understanding of Israel’s concerns about Iran and Hezbollah in Syria, and that Moscow might even be discretely pressing for Damascus to draw up a “face-saving” plan for ensuring these forces’ post-war withdrawal from the country, so if that’s the case, then Israel has no reason to further escalate its aggression against Syria under the false pretexts of combating these two Resistance actors.

The fact that Tel Aviv issued its latest threats, however, indicate that this speculation might not be entirely true, since it would logically follow that any successful Russian efforts on this front would negate whatever “reason” Israel might have for jeopardizing its mutually advantageous alliance with Moscow.

Another possible explanation might be that Syria doesn’t agree with Russia’s rumored suggestions in this respect and therefore isn’t going along with them, which from Tel Aviv’s perspective might cause it to recalculate that its alliance with Moscow is disposable because it has failed to bear fruit on one of its most important fronts.

Much more likely, however, is that there isn’t any secret Russian-Israeli understanding to conspire against Iran and Hezbollah’s post-war presence in Syria, and that Israel’s latest threat was issued independently of its relationship with Russia, though of course only time will tell what the truth really is.

To get back to the topical issue at hand, any large-scale state-to-state attack that Israel might launch against Syria probably wouldn’t be stopped by Russia, but it would definitely ruin the relationship between Moscow and Tel Aviv. Russia isn’t going to go to war against Israel for the sake of saving Syria and formally going beyond its specific mandate, no matter how much millions of people might wish that it would under those circumstances.

Even so, Russia is a proud and dignified civilization-state which won’t accept the global humiliation that would ensue from passively allowing such a massive aggression to occur under its watch, despite it legally not being Russia’s responsibility to protect Syria’s external borders or to prevent state aggression against its military, which is why it would be forced to freeze all ties with Israel in response.

In that scenario, Russia’s “balancing” policy would come to an abrupt end and Moscow might reactively realign its regional priorities with the Resistance Bloc of Iran and Hezbollah instead of remaining “impartial” like it currently is, though still taking care not to do anything which could be perceived as stoking Israel’s paranoia that Russia might also be in the process of becoming a “threat” to it too.

To wrap everything up, no realistic case can be argued that Russia is on the verge of war with Israel. Historical facts such as the unprecedented Russian-Israeli Strategic Partnership, the public existence of bilateral military coordination mechanisms in Syria, and the sincere personal friendship between President Putin and Netanyahu, categorically disprove any such claims.

While it might be “fashionable” to pretend that Russia is opposed to Israel, that’s simply not true at all, no matter how much people in the alternative media community might deeply wish for it to be so. Even in the disastrous event that Israel decides to launch an all-out conventional attack against Syria and escalate its presently ongoing Yinon Plan of divide-and-rule “Arab Spring” Hybrid War into something much larger, there’s no way that Russia would intervene, although it would clearly be displeased and would have to take appropriate diplomatic countermeasures in order to save its prestige.

The bottom line is that supporters of the Syrian Arab Republic mustn’t let their optimistic well wishing desires cloud their analytical judgment and objective appraisal of reality, because failure to do so will only result in the creation of an alternative universe totally divorced from the world in which we truly live.

And that, folks, leads to legitimately “fake news” such as the hysterical claims that Russia is about to go to war with Israel.

 

On January 15th, he told the Washington Post: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody. … There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

On September 27th of 2016, while campaigning against Hillary Clinton he told CBS “60 Minutes”:

Donald Trump: By the way. Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private.” But —

Scott Pelley: Universal health care?

Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.

Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of how?

Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably —

Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?

Donald Trump: — The government’s gonna pay for it.”

But on CBS’s “Face the Nation, on Sunday, March 19th, Mick Mulvaney, Director of the White House Budget Office, said that Trump had lied on both occasions there:

DICKERSON: You mentioned getting care. The president has said as a candidate, he said about health care, “there was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it,” meaning health care, “that’s not going to happen with us.” He’s talking about universal care there. That’s not — you’re not going to have universal care after these changes.

MULVANEY: We don’t have universal — the only way to have universal care, if you stop to think about it, is to force people to buy it under penalty of law. So with this —

DICKERSON: So was he mistaken when he said there should be —

MULVANEY: OK, but keep in mind what we’re replacing. What you’ve got now is, we’re forcing people to buy it under Obamacare under penalty of law and people are still looking for a way not to buy it. So clearly the government mandate doesn’t work. The better process, the better function is exactly what we’re trying to do now, which is to encourage people and enable them to buy a policy they want and can afford.

DICKERSON: But with that — but universal care was not really a promise he could made.

MULVANEY: Again, universal — the only way to get truly universal care is to throw people in jail if they don’t have it.

DICKERSON: Right.

MULVANEY: And we are not going to do that.

DICKERSON: Let me switch to the budget.

Dickerson, there, having just begun to get deep enough into this crucial matter so as to be breaking major national news about what Trumpcare will provide — that Donald Trump had promised universal care before becoming President and abandoned it immediately when he became President — just proceeded to the next question on his list, as if there weren’t reason to explore further and dig deeper here, such as, for example, “And what was Trump talking about on January 15th and on September 27th, when he promised universal care?”

The next question on Dickerson’s list was about Trump’s many trips to his Mar-a-Lago vacation resort: “What does a coal miner or a single mom say about these trips down to Florida?” After all, Dickerson is a ‘news’ person, so he has a list he must read from, and get all the questions done before going home to dinner.

Besides, Dickerson already had accepted Mulvaney’s PR for the White House, that “universal care was not really a promise he could have made … right.” He thinks his viewers are that stupid. (After all, every other OECD nation has it, plus higher lifespans, and far less expensive healthcare — 100% universal, and it’s better, and far cheaper, than what we have — but ‘news’ persons aren’t interested in such trivia as policy-realities — nor, apparently, is the President of the United States (even if he knows what the realities are).

But the public are interested in it — and Trump’s lies like this, will eat away inexorably at his approval-rating. At the start of his Presidency, only people who hadn’t voted for him were noticing, and gloating, over his lies — after all, they were mainly about his taxes and other personal details, not about the policies he’ll pursue as President. But now, when the government rubber actually hits the policy road, even people who voted for him are noticing, because it’s real public policies he’s getting into — and they’re not gloating.

The failure of the Trump Presidency will thus become evident far faster than the failure of the Obama Presidency did, and the failure of the G.W. Bush Presidency did. Of course, there still are people who would vote for Bush (Republicans) or for Obama (Democrats), but at this rate, Trump soon won’t even have many Republican supporters remaining: his lies on policy will start embarrassing his Party, after Republicans can no longer deny that he’s not the man, and doesn’t support the policies, that he had said he was and does. Trump’s Presidency is heading off into a ditch. If there is a policy road, then the driver here, Donald Trump, cannot even see it.

Sooner or later, incessant lying about major public-policy issues depresses even the voters in that politician’s own Party. He has lied himself into a corner, and now will get eaten up by the creatures who are waiting for him there.

One by one, the policy-lies — about not only health care, but negotiating with Russia, ending America’s invasions, and placing the interests of the public above the interests of Goldman Sachs, Exxon/Mobil, Lockheed Martin, and etc. — will become evident, as they pile up higher and higher. Even Republicans will start to see that he’s just a big bluffing nothing-burger, a puffy bun with nothing inside it except, maybe, ketchup and mustard.

Perhaps he’s more afraid of being called a ‘socialist’ (dread, dread: but it’s normal in Europe), or even ‘Putin’s puppet’ (shiver, shiver), than he’s afraid of doing a lousy job as the U.S. President. Maybe, he’s so afraid of his enemies, that he’s even handing them the White House. The worst things about Hillary Clinton, which made her clearly unacceptable for me to vote for, Trump is turning out to be, himself. And the voters widely despised both candidates. This is a ‘democracy’?

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

Setting the Stage of the Press-President War

US ruling ideology and Washington power have become unstuck as never before. A war of opposing certitudes and denunciations is waged day to day between the long-ruling US corporate media and the White House. Both continuously proclaim ringing recriminations of the other’s ‘fake news’. Over months they both portray each other as malevolent liars.

US bully pulpits are now beyond show disagreements and successful media inquisitions of the past. Slanderous accusations long confined to vilifying the designated Enemy have crept into accusations of the President himself. ‘The Russians are coming’ is returning as the final recourse of smear to stop deviations from the global program of hugely profitable enemy hate and perpetual preparations for foreign war.

The ruling big lies of the US money party and corporate globalization have divided into opposing camps. The Press and the President denounce each other non-stop on the public stage, while US dark state agents take sides behind the scenes.

Fake news is the medium of battle.

Tracking the Real Fake News Built into Corporate Globalization

Beneath the civil war of official narratives, cognitive space opens for truth long suffocated by ‘the Washington Consensus’. Even the US-led G-20 has recently agreed not to automatically condemn ‘protectionism’ as an economic evil. The battle slogan of transnational corporate rule over 30 years has been quietly withdrawn on the global stage.

Is the big lie of ‘free trade’ finally coming to ground? It has long led the hollowing out of societies and life support systems across the world in a false mass promotion as “freedom and prosperity for all”.  In fact beneath the pervasive fake news, a closed-door transnational corporate command system forces all enterprises across borders into a carbon-multiplying trade regime with thousands of rules to protect the transnational corporate looting and ruin of home economies and environments as the only rights enforced.

Propagandist names and fake freedoms are proclaimed everywhere to conceal the reality. The corporate-investor regime has stripped out almost all evolved protections of workers, ecologies and social infrastructures. Non-stop liquidations and roboticizations of local jobs and enterprises are reversed in meaning to ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ and ‘higher living standards’, the very opposite of the facts. Destabilization and bombing wars attack resource-rich and air-defenceless societies outside the circle of treaty subjugation.

False news allows every step. Even the happy-face Trudeau regime is taken aback by the tidal shift to national priorities. Its ministers scuttle around the US in near panic to find common cause for restoring the unaccountable regime. Multiplying carbon, disemployment and ecological plunder are ignored throughout in the longest standing fake news of all –‘economic growth”.

In fact, there is no real economic growth in universal life necessities or reduction of waste. The only growth is of volumes and velocities of transnational money exchanges, foreign commodities, and private profits to the top.

‘More prosperity for nations and the world’ means, decoded, more transnational corporate-state treaties to deprive nations of their rights to organization and production for citizens’ real needs as well as organically regulated protection of environments and ecosystems.

The consequences covered over by pervasively false cover stories are speeded-up ecocidal extractions, permanent disemployments, and wastes hemorrhaging into cumulatively more polluted oceans, air, atmosphere and life habitats. Corporate-state solutions of carbon markets for pollution rights have nowhere reduced any of these life-and-death crises, but only further and selectively enriched transnational corporations.

As for the Obama solution, “we need more Canadas”, fake news again conceals the reality. Beneath the global celebrity hype covering empty and broken promises, Canada’s Trudeau  regime is essentially a brand change of PM rhetoric to advance transnational corporate dictates as ‘free trade’ and to ensure oil pipelines out of the most polluting oil basin in the world, Alberta’s tar-sands, are built through water basins and indigenous lands across Canada and the US. One cannot help but observe this is Trump’s plan too, and overrides Trudeau’s promises to protect Canada’s first peoples.

I recently sent a letter to my local MP requesting evidence for what PM Trudeau promises over months of repetition that “more free trade” means “a better life for those in the middle class and those wanting to join the middle class”. As always, there is no evidence to support the non-stop false news from the PMO. Revealingly, the “middle class” turns out to be people making $180,000 a year slated to get significant tax cuts.

Trump’s rogue elephant charge on Washington-led lies, war, and dispossession of the working class is no solution to life-blind corporate globalization. Trump in office is a US nationalist oligarch commanding policies even more blindly rapacious in despoliation of the environment and transferring far more public wealth to the rich.

The common ground of all our lives, collective life capital, does not exist for any government in ‘the free world’ or any policy of ‘globalization’.  The lies that must be promulgated to advance the private corporate agenda are built into its transnational command system from the beginning.

Out of the Ruling Memory Hole with the Internet Commons

Joining the dots shows that every step of US money-party ‘globalization’ has, in fact, been driven by fake news.

No corporate media tolerance has been given in a quarter of a century to any voice demanding accountability to the common life-ground of citizens. A new game of numbers has proceeded instead. At most, a euphemistic ‘climate change’ has been endlessly debated while the totalizing destabilization of human and planetary life cycles remains without a name or collective response. Only more profitable market panaceas which do not reduce any pollution continue to divert from the deepest degenerate trends destroying the planetary life host.

On the upside, the big lies of ‘free trade’ and ‘humanitarian wars’ have been called into official question for the first time by the Trump presidential campaign, and he has been elected against the official line. Yet opposing camps are still at each other’s throats. So the perpetual fallback on accusing the long-designated foreign enemy is triggered by the fallen establishment. The fake news chorus of Russia’s aggressions now includes collusion of the Trump administration with its officials to win the US election. This mainspring diversion from reality is called back from the dead witch-hunts of the past. As then tool, facts do not count, only accusations do. The official media line is almost predictable: Russia is behind Trump’s election victory. As always, reverse projection is the mass-psyche operation to blame an official Enemy to divert attention from the life-and-death facts. The Enemy is once again accused of doing what the US has always done worse as the reason for attacking It. Russia is the usual placeholder in this reverse-blame operation. The 2016 US election of Trump is the latest variation.

Meanwhile throughout the election and its aftermath, the new transnational internet commons including Wiki-leaks over a decade has increasingly laid bare the greatest propaganda machine in history now in many-leveled crisis. The long normalized half-truths, one-sided slanting of the facts, and non-stop fallacies of inference are coming out into the open as never before.  The pretexts and lies for US imperial bullying and war are exposed beyond any corporate-media gate.

This time the accusation is “interference and attack on the US presidential election” with no evidence of wrongdoing or vote manipulation whatsoever. Yet as in the long past, the method is smear with no evidence for the accusations. Ever more media repetition and shadowy insinuation does the job. It has always worked before, why not again since all the other media buttons pushed on taking down the Trump peace initiatives with Russia and opposition to globalization of US jobs have failed.

Having wondered during the election campaign whether we could be “friends with Russia” and promoted diplomatic relations into his administration, Trump can be named as the enemy in hiding to be rooted out. The real problem the fake news never mentions is that he threatens the cornerstone of the US war state over 70 years.

So when Trump won the election with his heresy still intact, the ever-ready accusation of evil-Russia connection moves into high gear although the target is the opposite of communist and an epitome of capitalist riches and connections. We see here the historical mind-lock compulsion to blame the Enemy Russia and smear whoever dissents from it, even if it is a bully-capitalist president. There are very big stakes in keeping the game going.

Yet the no-profit and unpaid analyses from the internet commons have no such ulterior motive and interest in false accusations. With more objectively informed analysts than the commercial press and unimpeachable facts like WikiLeaks going to tens of millions of readers across the world, the genie is out of the bottle. The official grand narrative and its normalized big lies are coming apart at the seams.

So blame as usual is diverted onto the accepted Enemy, now conniving with Trump to attack the 2016 US presidential election. Beneath the fake news, the fact is that positive diplomatic relations with Russia not only threaten to stop the highly profitable permanent war against it, but spike the longest pretext for US war and military domination now moving through Ukraine.

The free internet commons cannot be gagged for telling the truth. Freedom of speech in the US cannot be openly stopped without fatal loss of legitimacy of rule.

So the rest follows. All the non-corporate and non-profit messages from the critical sites on the internet commons which are speaking against the US war state inside are now vilified as ‘fake news’. A third, unofficial protagonist has entered the battle with no private profit or career motive or corporate boss to serve and a wealth of proven professional knowledge and talent at work. It has to be denounced to sustain the big lies of the ruling money-war game which is in deepening crises and conflicts all the way to the unprecedented US President-Press civil war.

The Harvard Proclamation of a New Memory Hole

The innermost fount of US ideology and war, Harvard University, has now stepped in. It is officially naming and denouncing US-critical internet sites for ‘fake news’.

Not even the medieval Church went so far in its Index Librorum Prohibitorum of prohibited writings. It was at least innocent of scientific method and openly declared its dogmas. Not Harvard.

Underneath notice, all the sites it attacks are internet commons, and none are financed by private corporate donors and captive institutions while Harvard and the corporate media are. This is the real battle agenda underneath, the long war  to privatize the news for profit as everything else with anti-establishment internet criticism now the target.

In the background, Harvard University has long propagated an unexamined academic method. It normally cuts off any faculty or learned source of opposition to the private corporate rule of America and the wars of aggression to impose it on the world.  Accordingly, the underling grand narrative equations of the US is Good and the designated Enemy is Evil is not questioned. It is presupposed. Malevolent motives are always assumed of the designated Enemy, down to Harvard-produced geostrategic economic and war models. So when a host of internet commons sites challenge the grand narrative framework, Harvard and satellites denounce them to stop people reading them. A long list of critical sites is accused without criteria, proof or evidence as all spreaders of ‘fake news’.

What is not recognised here is that only on the internet commons can the process of truth be free from ruling pressures to control message for external sponsors.

Here there is no commercial-profit condition to speak and write, and no livelihood dependence on private profit. There is no inducement to avoid life-and-death issues in academic obfuscation or ad-vehicle style. Internet authors not on the payroll can be free of the game of all games behind the scenes – enriching the rich further with no life-coherent criterion of truth.

These underlying conditions of the internet commons and free speech itself cannot be recognised by the academy or the corporate press without undercutting their proclaimed status as the only legitimate founts of truth. The internet commons is a new world of competitive capacities to research, understand and disseminate not bound by private money patronage (as over centuries in Harvard University).

When challenged in this way, Harvard (and the official press) are set back on their heels. They cannot think the facts through because their instituted presumptions have long been what they must presuppose and not question to acquire their credentials and pay for public speech. They must attack what calls all this into question if it effectively speaks truth to power to expose or de-legitimate the ruling system narrative as false. Harvard and the US press thus follow the reigning method of reverse projection. They accuse the effective opposition of ‘fake news’.

The most revealing fact here is that Harvard authority as other academic administrations proceed in name-calling without any valid argument or demonstration – the very basis of reasonable conclusion. Yet this is such a long tradition of presumptive accusation allowed against anyone designated as the Enemy, and anyone else exposing the falsehood of the ruling US story of moral superiority over all others and God’s blessing to lead the world by force or money.

This is why only dissenting sites from the official storyline of US freedom and rightness in all things are accused as ‘fake news’. Accusation of opposing positions is so well-worn into conditioned brains that endless repetition locks it in as self-evident. This is why attributions of vile motive are automatic from Harvard or the New York Times for any outside leader opposing US interference in their countries including elections. US hypocrisy here is staggering, but unreported. In fact, Harvard’s life-blind elite of war criminal geo-strategists, economic modellers and so on are fawned upon within the wider corporate rule they serve.

None can engage critical facts and thought challenging the US moral superiority assumptions because they have never been required to consider them. So they denounce them as once the Church denounced apostasy. In the end, US system worship is a war-state religion. It eliminates all enemies to its right to rule. Its globalizing system institutes the market laws of God. War crimes are God-blessed justice.

Freedom of Speech, the Process of Truth, and the US Constitution

Led by senior academics, journalists and technical expertise, the internet commons provide for the first time impartial witness and free speech open to public examination and circulation across borders. They are free from corporate-rank dictate and private copy-right control.

In consequence, the internet commons are liberated from private corporate profit as controlling goal. Those who know what they are talking about can speak truth to dogma and power without words to appease editors, business boards and ad revenues. Truth itself is not defined, but its principle of process is a more inclusively consistent taking into account towards life-coherent conclusion

Despite Google black-holing of radical legal facts, CIA penetration of Wikipedia, and so on, the internet commons’ freedom of speech is far beyond anything guaranteed in the US constitution. In fact, the ‘sacred US Constitution’ that all presidents give oath to “preserve, protect and defend” guarantees in the end only freedom of public speech to private money demand.

Long before the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision reverse-titled as “Citizens United”, the US constitution was structured to one overriding end –  to remove prior limits to private-money right over all else, including to begin, the rule of British law and  the lands of the first nations West of the Appalachians.

This is why no common life interest exists in the US Constitution from the start. People’s universal human life necessities of water, food, protection and liveable environment are ruled out a-priori.  This is why civil rights themselves were first federally enforced by the ‘commerce clause’ protecting freedom of commercial bus passengers including blacks to cross borders.

It is also why the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the equal rights of freed slaves ended up being the legal basis for private-profit corporations and wealthy funds to acquire the constitutional rights of living persons (e.g., to freedom of speech for big money to buy elections and to avoid government access to financial records).

Even the iconic rights of “life, liberty and happiness” turn out to be in fact only private market rights which allow corporate ‘fictive persons’ to unlimited money wealth, protection against public redistribution, and the freedom of private wealth alone to  speak to America by buying corporate self promotions and election attack ads.

The US Constitution fix goes all the way back to 1787. As professor of constitutional law at Chicago’s iconic Kent College of Law, Matthew Stanton, explains in personal correspondence:

“[The fix] goes all the way back to the 1787 coup where the 39 signatories to the Constitution sequestered themselves in a Philadelphia meeting house, with locked doors and shuttered windows, to ostensibly make adjustments to the Articles of Confederation, but instead delivered an entirely new document that enabled creating a federal system centralizing control of the economy by  propertied wealth”.

Russia the Enemy: the Deus ex Machina of Fake News

We may recall that the corporate-press and Wall-Street-enriched candidate for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, started the accusation of ‘fake news’ to explain her defeat. As establishment mask of the politically correct masses with the money-war party as her paymaster, Clinton blamed her fall in the 2016 US election on the new enemy she saw arising against the official story and herself. When the ‘glass mirror’ story line did not take, she joined forces with the corporate media on another plane. ‘Fake news’ misled Americans. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the TV Networks, and other establishment tale tellers saw pay-dirt far beyond Clinton’s failed bid for president.

In fact, the corporate mass media were losing marketability by the escalating appeal of free social media. The once all-powerful press propaganda system has been increasingly deserted. The ‘fake news’ story provided a media base to condemn free internet news and commentary as immoral. The 2016 election became the leverage for a big market grab back.

Very soon it was not just ‘fake news’ to spike news cycles and subscriptions. War as peace and corporate globalization as freedom found its long place of rule – the enemy of Russia to blame. Now the news can be that Russia hacked and attacked the lost 2016 election. Russia may be a hollowed-out shell by global corporate and oligarch dispossession. But it can still continue as pretext for US-NATO war crimes and aggression reverse-blamed on it. As the European breadbasket and newly discovered fossil-fuel rich nation, Ukraine is a very big prize. Now in Ukraine’s US-led coup aftermath and ethnic civil war, evil Russia can be an ace card again to accuse for attacking the US election.

Since Russia led by Putin is drawing the line as in Crimea to support the Russia-speaking region against US-led war crimes under international law (documented in previous articles), all roads connect. “Russia’s uncontrolled aggression” is  reverse-projected onto the victim again in  a glorious new use. Reverse blame it  for interference in the US election of Trump and kill Russia-US peace initiatives at the same time. No fact is required to verify the accusation, and no law broken is needed to insinuate treason of whoever relates with Russia’s officials in peace initiative. It can work even against an elected US president.

At the same time, the US’s own record attacking other nations’ elections and societies is thereby erased as well – continually orchestrating mass-murder and dictatorship to sabotage the electoral process from Vietnam and Chile to Ukraine in 2010 and Latin America social democracies since.

If it were a story of reverse projection by a mass-murderous psychopath, it would be too much to believe. Yet it now runs the US news cycle as the big story unfolding with no evidence of US illegality, force, or non-compliance with international law. The accusations run by themselves in US media culture and across the empire. So as 2017 Spring breaks, endless media insinuations of treason seep into the populace from corporate media sites across borders with backrooms and Congress setting up for another presidential inquisition.

It is interesting to observe two precedents. Past inquisitions were unfolded soon after Bill Clinton said in India, “it’s time to level up rather than down in global trade” and Richard Nixon founded the Environmental Protections Agency, stopped corporations from outsourcing US jobs, and made peace with China as Trump sought with Russia.

The ludicrous hypocrisy, factual vacuum, and war-drums of blame-the-enemy go into high-volume operation again, led by an attack-dog media against the elected US president whose only action has been to have business-like relations with Russia. Few observe the immense stakes of the US media and war establishments in this process. Cui bono? – who benefits? – is the question never asked.

What’s new?  The perpetual red herring of ‘Russia aggression’ takes everyone’s eyes off the ball – including the continuing US-drone mass murder and ecological wars built into the Trump agenda. Canada’s oil and mining corps and big banks sneak behind the pervasive fake news with a smiling Trudeau front. NATO demands more money behind Trump now fulsomely praising what he earlier campaigned on as “obsolete”, as he has done with the CIA he also condemned. Those hoping for a new departure under Trump from the big lies and war crimes as normalized operations watch in a combination of horror and hilarity.

Who connects the dots? Beneath official notice, the ruling goal of US empire is blind to its consequences of human and planetary life ruin. It has to cover itself in false news to carry on. This is why fake news is not a temporary phenomenon of the Trump era. It is the necessary veil of illusion of an eco-genocidal system. The symptoms and trends are everywhere. But a US-led prism of false inversions of reality regulates consciousness, perception and reaction to ‘steer the course’.

This is true of both sides of the Trump divide, and also in corporate Canada as the US’s largest trading partner, branch-plant and resource cornucopia. What is new is that the ruling illusions are divided against themselves at the top of the US political and ideological system. The Trump phenomenon reflects the rupture. The US empire is in deep crisis from its cumulative destruction of social and natural life support systems. Its carcinomic multiplication of private money demand with no tie to the production of means of life is the reality beneath all the false news.

Nothing is life secure. The ‘global security system’ protects only money values and sequences through life hosts. Peoples everywhere compete to make it go faster to survive. The ruling concept of ‘economy ‘inverts the systematic depletion, degradation and despoliation of the life capital of organic, social and ecological life. Universal necessities of human and fellow life are stripped, polluted and wasted as ‘efficiencies’.

President Trump has gone into the political ring to fight it out with the political establishment on a nationalist capitalist level. He is losing money in the short term. But his program in office is completely eco-blind, and the opposing mass media follow suit. All they can focus on is demonizing normal relations with the official Enemy Russia. Meanwhile Trump has all but abolished the EPA and cut off all federal funding for restoration of the Great Lakes, the most important source of fresh water heritage on the planet.

These supreme crimes under international law are recognised by none on stage. In Canada, a Nazi progeny and neo-Nazi supporter of the violent coup and civil war in Ukraine is made Foreign Affairs Minister and hustles her connections throughout the US to keep the attack-Russia juggernaut going as in the past under  a continuous barrage of ethnic prejudices and fake news.

The pattern is clear but unspoken. The Enemy Russia is the auto-pilot of fake news to divert from US and client leadership failure on almost every level. Relations of mutual respect with Russia’s ambassador are ‘collusion’ and taboo.

The Reality Beneath the Questions not Asked

How does disclosure of Hillary’s Clinton’s apparatus theft of the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders get blamed on Russia? The question is not asked. The Washington mass media and visible Congress focus instead on accused “collusion with Russia” with very big stakes in the new inquisition show. Suspicions without substance run free in the mass media once the designated Enemy is smeared onto the target, even if elected president.

Who knows that the US joined the armed forces of Britain, colonial Canada and Japan to crush the 1917 Russian Revolution on behalf of the Czarist autocracy and Western capitalism? More deeply, who names the governing objective behind all the shows of force and accusation over a century since? To be managed successfully, attention must be diverted from the facts of US-led war crimes and public looting within and without US empire proclaimed as ‘world freedom’.

The new President and his Exxon Secretary of State seek business-like relations with Russia. Very big powers are coming into conflict over business and war within the US empire. Big oil in both leviathan countries are pitted against the US Enemy-and-smear establishment which has long run the show with big oil formerly leading it. Now transnational big oil in the US and Russia are leading out of the blind alley of war against each other which has so totally failed to bring benefits to either side in the long term, and has almost reversed civilization.

The dots again are not joined. The completely counter-productive war against Russia to keep the US money-war state going is deepened by Wall Street. The falling price of oil is driven beneath notice by Wall Street which has successfully short-future-traded oil down to establish its money-printing powers by debt as supreme over its rival substitute, while diverting everybody’s attention from the greatest fraud in history still going. Observe that Wall Street remains untouched even from its multi-trillion dollar heist from public and pension coffers from 2007 on.

Blame Russia is the normal chorus which Wall Street benefits from as the ultimate leader of the ruinously anti-productive money-war system. It pays off so well to the money party in more public dollars appropriated by its control and issue of money debt for everything that exists; the pervasive military-industrial complex which never gets reversed even in the peace after the planned destruction of the ‘Evil Empire’; and the corporate mass media in front turning the fake news system over continuously to promote, idealize and divert from the global empire’s war and occupation powers. The neo-con and neo-liberal war strategists alike are built into the dark state as managers uniquely dependent on Russia as the Enemy.

So it is in all their self-maximizing interests to sustain perpetual accusations of some enemy’s evil as the great cover-up story of US empire and it inherited war-crime system. Joined to despotic local oligarchies, this axis dismantles ever more societies for corporate, bank and military plunder and jackal payoffs everywhere (including the academy). There is no limit or borders to the established system invasion, and all is at the expense of public treasuries and of life support systems across domains.

President Trump does not break the fatal ruling cycle. He demands that vassal states should pay for their US military protection, a new global extortion supporting new NATO oligarchies against change which accompanies his stripping of environmental protections to pay for more war powers. Trump behind his populist bluster is a paradigm example of instituted US capitalist greed and aggression. Yet the fact that hate of the Enemy is smeared even onto him for not hating Russia too reveals the ultimate pretext of the US-NATO war machine. Behind the US-led perpetual arms build-up, border threats and bombings of mostly innocents across the globe while blaming the terrorists for the horrors now built into the global ‘growth’ system is fake news as continuous cover story. The war-criminal drone mass murders continue on unnoticed. The bank looting of public wealth is instituted more broadly. The universities, health systems and public infrastructures are privatized for profit with no life criteria of outcomes.

Trump is dispossessing the American common wealth for big US money in line with the Reagan public-looting machine before him. It drained  public revenues into a black hole of US debt, blamed acid rain on trees, and portrayed orchestrated mass murderers of socialists in Afghanistan and Nicaragua as ‘freedom fighters’. What has changed in the corporate media’s fake-news today?

Trump in office is the opposite of the anti-establishment candidate he promised to be. He wars on the US Environmental Protection Agency (its only collective life protective organization). He fractions corporate taxes in a giveway to the rich beyond Reagan’s $500-billion tax cut. He privatizes the public’s falling infrastructure for speculators and developers’ long-term private tolls, profits and control for private profit at taxpayers’ expense.

Who in the corporate media or Congress questions any of it?

The Trudeau  regime to the north imitates the new massive scheme of privatizing public infrastructure. But it disguises it in terms of public investment in public goods. The big banks and speculators on both sides of the border are the winners whatever the corporate media and state cover story. The common wealth is sold off under pervasive fake news masquerading as responsible and for the public good. But the drive-wheel policy mechanisms for ever more dismantling of the living earth and redistribution of more public wealth upwards to the rich march on beneath conscious comprehension.

Trump does not hide the privatization for profit of America’s public infrastructure and stripping of public health and environmental protection policies once he has rising stockholder support in office. The Trudeau Liberal party masqueraded as the social democrat NDP in promising whopping public investment to win the election, but when in office lets the giant privatization boondoggle trickle out in sunny  avoidance of the facts.

The monumental schemes of robbing the commonwealth at every level are led by slanted and selective reports through every step across ever more domains. But a constant across US empire is Russia the Enemy to justify it all. In the deepening life support crises of this ruling axis, Russia’s projected ‘attacks’ still lead the show.

The Life-Blind Moral DNA of US Rule

With no common ground but belief in God’s blessing over all nations and the greatest killing machine in history to enforce it, US ideology may seem to be a psychopathic rationalization writ large.

Yet the US national morality tale governs perception so that the a-priori life-blindness is not recognised even by philosophers. The US continues to be ruled at home and abroad without life-value ground or compass. So as the US-led global market system multiplies its demands on organic, social and ecological life systems, it moves inexorably towards a few multibillionaires with more wealth than 99% of the population, steering planetary depredation to ruin as freedom and growth.

How else would a global cancer system behave? Yet almost none recognise that this system overrides life requirements at every level. The reformer Trump selects for even more wealth and power to the home rich. He attacks evolved environmental research and regulations with no better alternative. He seeks to repeal Obamacare with no public option considered. His nationalist and cost-cutting program is essentially life-blind.

The baseline of crisis goes all down to the moral DNA of the US project and its evolved economic, political and ideological system. The innermost value driver is long presupposed without question by even US moral philosophers and social scientists as the first principle of their models. Atomic self-maximization towards more private money-value without limit is the meta-program.

In consequence, the ‘global free market’ the US leads and imposes has no feedback loops to protect human or planetary life against hollowing them out for transient commodities, private profit and wastes on every level. The ruling system is structured only to ensure more money demand and commodities to those who have money to pay. Any accountability to universal life necessities is ruled out a-priori from the US Constitution, ruling market doctrine, and received theories.

As I have commented in articles prior to his presidency, “Trump is America come to meet itself”. But the US cover story has not yet been decoded in its master functions of legitimation and idealization. What makes the eco-genocidal system acceptable to human consciousness is an ultimate story line and moral syntax that transforms it into heroic liberty, individualism and moral supremacy.

This moral syntax has been imprinted into US empire since its original revolution against Britain to invade the America West to the Pacific Ocean to appropriate and  destroy all the life and life support systems of the developed first peoples there as ‘freedom’, ‘development’ and ‘self-defense’. What is required for the grand narrative’s success is to hide the reality of continuous eco-genocide by continuous false representations as the virtue and truth others fail to understand.

This first principle the justifying morality tale entails the second – that an alien Enemy must always be blamed for the system’s destructive attacks on barriers and resistance to it. Conversion of all life and life support systems to limitless self-maximization of the US system and its richest citizens then proceeds under cover of fake news with wars of acquisition and control represented as courageous and beneficent for all.

For-profit private corporations are the ever more empowered legal vehicles of this transnational system which is set to select for systematic self-maximization of the rich by all market, state and war means that can be constructed to enable it, starting with the US Constitution (as explained above). This set-point is built into the legislative, judicial and executive branches so that today the system outcome is a constitutionally ordered money-party control of all three branches of government as well as the funding systems of social sciences and philosophy.

Fake news in the widest sense provides a continuous cover story to mask and justify the underlying program which is not seen – the money-war party’s limitless take from life within and without the US that depends on a designated Enemy as perennial pretext to strip the US and global commonwealth against effective opposition or change.

Prof. John McMurtry FRSC is the author of The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Solution  and the three-volume study, Philosophy and World Problems,  UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Paris-Oxford. 

On a superficial level, Trump and Bush couldn’t be more different from Clinton and Obama. Indeed, pollsters say that many people voted for Trump because they wanted change … Just like they voted for Obama because he promised “hope and change” from Bush-era policies.

But beneath the surface, Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton are all very similar on 4 core issues.

More War

Bush intentionally lied us into the Iraq war … a war which had no relation with U.S. security or defense.

Clinton and Obama intentionally lied us into various “humanitarian wars” … which had nothing to do with our security or defense.

And the same idiots who lied us into the Iraq war are now trying to lie us into a cold (or maybe even hot) war with Russia.

And what about Trump?

He campaigned on peace and non-interventionism …

But he’s already ramped up the war in Syria.

And the war in Yemen. … where the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are committing war crimes.

And he’s already increased drone strikes by 432%.

And Trump’s top advisor is predicting war with China and Russia. He said:

We’re going to war in the South China Sea … no doubt

So it doesn’t look like peace is going to break out any time soon.

And sadly, top experts say the geopolitical policies pursued by Trump – which are very similar to those pursued by Obama, Bush and Clinton – will lead to more terrorism.

Lap Dogs for Wall Street … Making the Rich Richer

Obama, Bush and Clinton all pushed economic policies which made the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Bush and Obama bailed out the big banks, threw fistfuls of money at the banksters, and otherwise rewarded Wall Street and penalized Main Street.

Clinton repealed the Depression-era law which separated regular deposit banking and speculation (Glass-Steagall), allowed the giant banks to grow into mega-banks, and acted as a cheerleader for unregulated derivatives. And Clinton – like Bush and Obama – decided that white collar financial fraud didn’t exist, or at least shouldn’t be prosecuted.

What’s the effect of these policies?

Rick Baum notes, using official U.S. governments statistics, that inequality steadily increased under all 3 presidents:

Real wages plummeted through the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.

What about Trump?

He’s appointed the same old bankster cronies.  Nothing will change. (And unfortunately, it’s not too early to criticize a new president.)

Spying On Americans

The NSA’s mass surveillance on Americans started by 1999 or earlier … under the Clinton administration.

3 months before 9/11, the head of the NSA admitted that the NSA was collecting so much information from spying that it was drowning in too much data.

Mass surveillance expanded under Bush … and then even more under Obama.

It’s gotten to the point that the government is spying on virtually all of our electronic communications and transactions.

And Trump?

Given that he’s called for whistleblowers like Snowden and Assange to be executed for treason, and quickly implemented gag orders as soon as he took office, he is almost certain to continue the expansion of mass surveillance on the American people.

In other words, a president who severely punishes anyone trying to reveal the extent of spying on Americans probably has no intention of reigning it in.

Supporting Dictators Who Support Terrorism

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest sponsor of radical Islamic terrorists. The Saudis have backed ISIS and many other brutal terrorist groups. And the most pro-ISIS tweets allegedly come from Saudi Arabia.

According to sworn declarations from a 9/11 Commissioner and the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry Into 9/11, the Saudi government backed the 9/11 hijackers (see section VII for details). And declassified documents only amplify those connections. And the new Saudi king has ties to Al Qaeda, Bin Laden and Islamic terrorism.

Saudi Arabia is the hotbed of the most radical Muslim terrorists in the world: the Salafis (both ISIS and Al Qaeda are Salafis).

And the Saudis – with U.S. support – back the radical “madrassas” in which Islamic radicalism was spread.

And yet the U.S. has been supporting the Saudis militarily, with NSA intelligence and in every other way possible through the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.

Trump?

He’s selling them massive amounts of arms, keeping them off of the list of restricted countries for immigration, and supporting Saudi war crimes in Yemen.

It appears that the voters have been played … again.

Postscript:  If you think that the presidents are more different than we’re giving them credit for, then you must conclude that they have been overridden by other forces. In that case, you may wish to consider whether the Deep State and big banks have more power than democratically-elected officials.

Introducción

Hace unos treinta años, un sagaz campesino colombiano me dijo: “Cuando oigo hablar de `acuerdos de paz´, escucho al gobierno afilar sus cuchillos”.

Últimamente se ha hablado mucho de acuerdos de paz en todo el mundo. En casi todas las regiones o países que sufren una guerra o una invasión se ha mencionado la posibilidad de negociar “acuerdos de paz”. En muchos casos, estos llegaron a firmarse y todavía no han logrado acabar con los asesinatos y el caos provocados por la parte beligerante apoyada por Estados Unidos.

Vamos a repasar brevemente algunas de estas negociaciones del pasado y del presente para comprender las dinámicas de los “procesos de paz” y los resultados subsecuentes.

El proceso de paz

Actualmente están en marcha diversas negociaciones supuestamente diseñadas para lograr acuerdos de paz. Entre ellas podemos citar: las discusiones en Ucrania entre la junta, con sede en Kiev y respaldada por la OTAN y EE.UU., y la dirigencia de la región de Donbas, situada al este del país, opuesta al golpe y a la OTAN; en Siria, entre la coalición saudí-EE.UU.-OTAN-terroristas armados y el gobierno sirio y sus aliados rusos, iraníes y de Hezbolá; en Palestina, entre el régimen colonial israelí respaldado por EE.UU. y las fuerzas por la independencia palestina en Cisjordania y la Franja de Gaza; y, en Colombia, entre el régimen del presidente Santos apoyado por EE.UU. y las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC).

Hay otras negociaciones de paz en marcha que no han recibido atención pública.

Resultados de acuerdos de paz del pasado y del presente

A lo largo del pasado cuarto de siglo se firmaron diversos acuerdos de paz, todos los cuales llevaron a la rendición tácita de los protagonistas antiimperialistas armados y de los movimientos populares de masas.

En América Central, los acuerdos firmados en El Salvador y en Guatemala condujeron al desarme unilateral del movimiento de resistencia, la consolidación del control de la economía por la oligarquía y el crecimiento y proliferación sin trabas de bandas de narcotráfico y escuadrones de la muerte auspiciados por el gobierno. A consecuencia de ello se produjo una escalada del terror interno. Los líderes de la resistencia consiguieron votos, entraron en el parlamento como políticos y, en el caso de El Salvador, ocuparon altos cargos. Las desigualdades se mantuvieron o empeoraron al igual que los asesinatos, que llegaron incluso a superar las cifras del periodo previo al acuerdo de paz. Un gran número de emigrantes, con frecuencia refugiados que huían de la violencia de las bandas armadas, entraron ilegalmente en EE.UU. Este país consolidó sus bases y sus operaciones militares en América Central, mientras la población seguía sufriendo.

Las negociaciones de paz israelí-palestinas no produjeron ningún acuerdo, pero sirvieron para proporcionar una ligera tapadera al aumento de la anexión de tierras palestinas para construir enclaves racistas “solo para judíos”, provocando asentamientos ilegales a más de medio millón de colonos judíos. Estados Unidos respaldó por completo la farsa del proceso de paz, financiando a los líderes-vasallos corruptos palestinos y proporcionando apoyo diplomático, militar y político incondicional a Israel.

Estados Unidos-Unión Soviética: El acuerdo de paz

Se suponía que los “acuerdos de paz” entre Reagan-Bush y Gorbachov acabarían con la Guerra Fría y lograrían la paz global. Pero, en lugar de ello, Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea (UE) establecieron bases militares y regímenes clientelares por toda Europa Oriental, el Báltico y los Balcanes, saquearon los recursos nacionales y se apropiaron de las economías desnacionalizadas. Las élites con sede en EE.UU. dominaron el régimen vasallo de Boris Yeltsin y despojaron virtualmente a Rusia de sus recursos y su riqueza. En alianza con los oligarcas gansteriles, hundieron su economía.

El régimen postsoviético de Yeltsin compitió en las elecciones, promovió la multiplicidad de partidos y presidió un país desolado, aislado y cada vez más rodeado; al menos la elección de Vladimir Putin sirvió para “descolonizar” el aparato del Estado y reconstruir parcialmente la economía y la sociedad.

Las negociaciones de paz de Ucrania

En 2014, un golpe de Estado violento patrocinado por Estados Unidos unió a fascistas, oligarcas, generales y simpatizantes de la UE, que tomaron en control de Kiev y de la parte occidental de Ucrania. Las regiones orientales pro-democracia de Donbas y la península de Crimea organizaron la resistencia al régimen golpista. Crimea votó unánimemente la unión con Rusia. Los centros industriales del este de Ucrania (Donbas) formaron milicias populares para resistir a las fuerzas armadas y los paramilitares neonazis de la junta respaldada por EE.UU. Después de unos años de caos y habiendo llegado a una situación de punto muerto, se inició un “proceso de negociación” que no impidió que el régimen de Kiev continuara atacando al Donbas. El “intento de paz” se convirtió en la base del “Acuerdo de Minsk”, negociado por Francia, Rusia y Alemania, mediante el cual la junta de Kiev pretendía el desarme del movimiento de resistencia, la reocupación del Donbas y de Crimea y la eventual destrucción de la autonomía cultural, política, económica y militar del este de Ucrania, de mayoría étnica rusa. En consecuencia, el “Acuerdo de Minsk” ha sido poco más que un plan fracasado para lograr la rendición. Mientras tanto, el saqueo masivo de la economía de la nación perpetrado por la junta de Kiev ha convertido Ucrania en un Estado fallido en el que 2,5 millones de habitantes se han trasladado a Rusia y muchos otros miles han emigrado a Occidente a cavar patatas en Polonia o se han incorporado a los burdeles de Londres y Tel Aviv. La juventud desempleada restante ha quedado con la sola opción de vender sus servicios a las tropas de choque de los paramilitares fascistas de Kiev.

Colombia: ¿Acuerdo de paz o cementerio?

Si examinamos sus encarnaciones pasadas y la experiencia presente, resulta prematuro celebrar el “acuerdo de paz” de las FARC colombianas y el presidente Santos.

En las últimas cuatro décadas, los regímenes oligárquicos colombianos, apoyados por el ejército, los escuadrones de la muerte y Washington han convocado innumerables “comisiones de paz”, inaugurado negociaciones con las FARC y procedido a romperlas para relanzar guerras a gran escala, utilizando los “acuerdos de paz” como un pretexto para diezmar y desmoralizar a los activistas políticos.

En 1984, el que era presidente Belisario Betancourt firmó un acuerdo de paz con las FARC conocido como el “Acuerdo Uribe” por el cual miles de activistas y simpatizantes de las FARC se desmovilizaron, fundaron un partido legal, la Unión Patriótica (UP), y entraron en el juego electoral. En las elecciones de 1986, candidatos de la UP fueron elegidos senadores, congresistas, alcaldes y concejales y su candidato presidencial consiguió más del 20% del voto nacional. En los siguientes cuatro años, de 1986 a 1989, más de 5.000 dirigentes, cargos electos y candidatos presidenciales de la UP fueron asesinados en una campaña nacional de terror. Decenas de miles de campesinos, trabajadores del petróleo y jornaleros de las plantaciones fueron asesinados, torturados y empujados al exilio. Los escuadrones paramilitares de la muerte y los ejércitos privados de los terratenientes, aliados con las Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia, asesinaron a miles de líderes sindicales, periodistas, trabajadores y familiares. La “estrategia paramilitar” del ejército contra no combatientes y civiles de las aldeas había sido desarrollada en los sesenta por el general del ejército estadounidense William Yarborough, comandante del centro especial de la guerra del ejército estadounidense y creador de las fuerzas especiales conocidas como “boinas verdes”.

A los cinco años de su creación, la Unión Patriótica había desaparecido: sus miembros supervivientes se habían exiliado o pasado a la clandestinidad.

En 1990, el recién elegido presidente César Gaviria proclamó el inicio de nuevas negociaciones de paz con las FARC. A los pocos meses de su anuncio, el presidente ordenó el bombardeo de la “Casa Verde”, donde se alojaban dirigentes de las FARC y un equipo negociador. Afortunadamente, pudieron escapar antes del ataque traicionero.

El presidente Andrés Pastrana (1998-2001) demandó nuevas negociaciones de paz con las FARC que se llevarían a cabo “en una zona desmilitarizada”. Las conversaciones se iniciaron en la región selvática de El Caguan en noviembre de 1998. El presidente Pastrana había negociado con las FARC y activistas sociales numerosas promesas, concesiones y reformas pero, al mismo tiempo, había firmado un acuerdo multimillonario de ayuda militar por diez años con el presidente Clinton, conocido como “Plan Colombia”. Esta práctica de “dobles relaciones” culminó con el inicio por parte de las Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia de una “política de tierra quemada” contra las “zonas desmilitarizadas” bajo el recién elegido presidente Álvaro Uribe, relacionado con los escuadrones de la muerte. A lo largo de los siguientes ocho años, el presidente Uribe empujó al exilio interno a cerca de cuatro millones de campesinos colombianos. Gracias a la financiación de cientos de miles de millones por parte de Washington, Uribe pudo duplicar el volumen de las fuerzas armadas hasta superar los 350.000 hombres, a la vez que incorporaba a miembros de los escuadrones de la muerte al ejército. Asimismo, supervisó la formación de nuevos grupos paramilitares. Hacia 2010, el número de guerrilleros de las FARC había descendido de 18.000 combatientes a menos de 10.000, se habían producido cientos de bajas civiles y millones de personas perdieron su hogar.

En 2010, el antiguo ministro de defensa de Uribe, Juan Manuel Santos, fue elegido presidente. En 2012, Santos inició otro “proceso de paz” con las FARC, que fue firmado finalmente a finales de 2016. Según este nuevo acuerdo negociado en Cuba, cientos de oficiales implicados en torturas, asesinatos y desplazamientos forzosos de campesinos recibirían inmunidad mientras que las guerrillas de las FARC tendrían que enfrentarse a juicio. El gobierno prometió la reforma agraria y el derecho al retorno a los campesinos desplazados y sus familias. No obstante, cuando los campesinos regresaban para reclamar sus tierras, eran expulsados o incluso asesinados.

Los dirigentes de las FARC aceptaron la desmovilización y el desarme unilateral que tendría que realizarse en junio de 2017. El ejército y sus aliados paramilitares conservarían sus armas y obtendrían el control total sobre las zonas previamente liberadas por las FARC.

El presidente Santos aseguró que el “acuerdo de paz” incluiría una serie de decretos presidenciales para privatizar los recursos minerales y petroleros del país y convertir las pequeñas granjas familiares en plantaciones para la agroexportación. A los campesinos-rebeldes desmovilizados se les ofreció parcelas de tierra yerma y marginal, sin recibir apoyo del gobierno ni fondos para carreteras, aperos, semillas, fertilizantes, ni siquiera para construir las escuelas o viviendas necesarias para la transición. Aunque algunos de los líderes de las FARC obtuvieron escaños en el Congreso y la libertad para presentarse a las elecciones sin ser hostigados, las bases jóvenes de la guerrilla y los campesinos quedaban sin muchas alternativas, a no ser la de unirse a los paramilitares o las bandas de narcotráfico.

En resumen, este repaso histórico demuestra que sucesivos presidentes y regímenes colombianos han violado sistemáticamente todos los acuerdos de paz, asesinado a los rebeldes firmantes y mantenido el control de la economía y la mano de obra por parte de las élites. Antes de la actual elección, Santos presidió la década más letal siendo ministro de defensa con Uribe.

Por su intermediación para lograr la paz de los cementerios para decenas de miles de campesinos y activistas colombianos, el presidente Santos fue galardonado con el Premio Nobel de la Paz.

En la Habana, los líderes y negociadores de las FARC recibieron los elogios del presidente cubano Raúl Castro, el presidente Obama, el presidente Maduro de Venezuela y la gran mayoría de “progresistas“ y derechistas de Norteamérica, Sudamérica y Europa.

La sangrienta historia de Colombia, con sus asesinatos generalizados de activistas por los derechos humanos y líderes campesinos, ha continuado incluso cuando se estaban firmando los documentos que señalaban el Acuerdo de Paz. Durante el primer mes de 2017, los escuadrones de la muerte, vinculados a la oligarquía y el ejército, asesinaron a cinco activistas por los derechos humanos. En 2015, cuando las FARC negociaban varias clausulas del acuerdo, más de 120 campesinos y activistas fueron asesinados por los grupos paramilitares que continuaban actuando libremente en zonas controladas por el ejército de Santos. La maquinaria propagandística de los medios de comunicación de masas continúa repitiendo la mentira de que “más de 200.000 personas perdieron la vida a manos de la guerrilla y el ejército”, cuando la inmensa mayoría de los asesinatos fueron cometidos por el gobierno y sus aliados, los escuadrones de la muerte; una calumnia que los líderes guerrilleros no han sabido desmontar. El prominente investigador jesuita Javier Giraldo ha documentado minuciosamente el hecho de que más de tres cuartas partes de dichas muertes fueron obra del ejército y los paramilitares.

Se nos pide que creamos que los regímenes presidenciales que han asesinado y continúan asesinando a más de 150.000 trabajadores, campesinos, líderes indígenas y profesionales colombianos se han convertido de un día para otro en socios amantes de la justicia para conseguir la paz. En los tres primeros meses de este año, activistas defensores del acuerdo de paz con las FARC siguen siendo el objetivo y siguen siendo asesinados por los paramilitares supuestamente desmovilizados.

Los líderes de los movimientos sociales denuncian un aumento de la violencia por parte de las fuerzas del ejército y sus aliados. Incluso los monitores de los acuerdos de paz y la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos admiten que la violencia estatal y paramilitar está destruyendo cualquier estructura pensada por el presidente Santos para implementar las reformas. A medida que las FARC se retiran de las regiones bajo control popular, los campesinos que pretenden acogerse a la reforma agraria se convierten en objetivo de los ejércitos privados. El régimen de Santos está más interesado en proteger las apropiaciones masivas de tierras de los grandes consorcios mineros.

Mientras los asesinatos de partidarios de las FARC y activistas de derechos humanos se multiplican, mientras el presidente Santos y Washington intentan aprovecharse de una guerrilla desarmada y desmovilizada, el “histórico acuerdo de paz” se convierte en un gran engaño diseñado para expandir el poder imperial.

Conclusión: Epitafio para los acuerdos de paz

Una y otra vez, en todo el mundo, las negociaciones y los acuerdos de paz orquestados por el Imperio han tenido un solo objetivo: desarmar, desmovilizar, derrotar y desmoralizar a los luchadores de la resistencia y a sus aliados.

Los “acuerdos de paz”, tal y como los conocemos, sirven para rearmar y reagrupar a las fuerzas respaldadas por Estados Unidos tras los contratiempos tácticos de la lucha de guerrillas. Su objetivo es dividir a la oposición (la llamada “táctica del salami”) y facilitar la conquista. La retórica de paz utilizada en estas “negociaciones de paz” significa básicamente el “desarme unilateral” de los luchadores de la resistencia, la rendición del territorio y el abandono de los simpatizantes civiles. Las denominadas “zonas de guerra”, que contienen tierras fértiles y valiosas reservas minerales, se “pacifican” siendo absorbidas por el régimen “amante de la paz”. Ello contribuye a sus programas de privatización y a la promoción del saqueo por parte del “Estado desarrollista”. Los arreglos de paz negociados están supervisados por las autoridades estadounidenses, que elogian y loan a los líderes rebeldes cuando firman los acuerdos que serán implementados por regímenes vasallos del poder imperial… Este último se asegurará de que no se produzca ningún realineamiento en política exterior ni ningún cambio estructural socioeconómico.

Algunos acuerdos de paz permiten que los antiguos dirigentes guerrilleros compitan y en algunos casos ganen elecciones como representantes marginales, mientras su base de apoyo es diezmada.

En la mayor parte de los casos, durante el proceso y especialmente tras la firma del “acuerdo de paz”, las organizaciones y movimientos sociales y sus seguidores del campesinado y la clase trabajadora, así como los activistas por los derechos humanos, acaban siendo objetivo a abatir por el ejército y los escuadrones de la muerte paramilitares que operan en connivencia con las bases militares del gobierno.

Con frecuencia, los aliados internacionales de los movimientos de resistencia les han animado a negociar acuerdos de paz para demostrar a Estados Unidos que son responsables, con la esperanza de de mejorar las relaciones diplomáticas y comerciales. No hace falta decir que las “negociaciones responsables” simplemente servirán para reforzar la determinación del poder imperial para presionar futuras concesiones y estimular agresiones militares y nuevas conquistas.

Los “acuerdos de paz” justos se basan en el desarme mutuo, el reconocimiento de la autonomía territorial y la autoridad de la administración insurgente local sobre las reformas agrarias acordadas, al tiempo que mantienen los derechos sobre los recursos minerales y el control de la seguridad militar-pública.

Los acuerdos de paz deberían ser el primer paso de una agenda política implementada bajo el control del ejército rebelde independiente y monitores civiles.

El desastroso resultado del desarme unilateral es producto de la no implementación de una política exterior y cambios estructurales progresistas e independientes.

Las negociaciones de paz presentes y pasadas, basadas en el reconocimiento de la soberanía de un Estado independiente vinculado a los movimientos de masas, siempre han terminado con Estados Unidos rompiendo los acuerdos. Los genuinos “acuerdos de paz” son contrarios a la meta imperial de conquistar mediante la mesa negociadora lo que no pudieron ganar mediante la guerra.

James Petras

James Petras: Sociólogo estadounidense conocido por sus estudios sobre el imperialismo, la lucha de clases y los conflictos latinoamericanos.

Artículo original en inglés:

Peace Accords or Political Surrender? Latin America, the Middle East and Ukraine, publicado el 18 de marzo de 2017.

Traducido por Paco Muñoz de Bustillo para Rebelión.

En un contacto especial con la 36 (Radio Centenario), el sociólogo estadounidense, profesor James Petras, analizó la coyuntura internacional, a raíz de los sucesos ocurridos en Londres. La oportunidad sirvió también para consultarle sobre la situación en Siria y en Medio Oriente en general, como así también la realidad de Argentina, donde se suceden las masivas movilizaciones contra el gobierno. 

Diego Martínez: Estamos recibiendo a James Petras desde Estados Unidos, nuevamente esta semana porque hay varios temas para abordar. Buen día Petras, ¿cómo está? 

James Petras: Estamos bien, congelados, pero bien.

Hernán Salina: hay conmoción a nivel internacional por lo que ha sucedido en Londres, en las cercanías del Parlamento.

JP: Me parece que Inglaterra entra ahora en el conflicto en su propio territorio. Toda la historia de Inglaterra pasa por invadir, masacrar y ocupar los países musulmanes en el Medio Oriente y en Asia, África e incluso partes de Europa.

El hecho es que las reacciones tomaron últimamente formas violentas, la resistencia de los países musulmanes y las fuerzas opositoras han tomado las armas y comienzan a aplicar represalias fuera de sus países.  Ahora, el caso particular que conocemos, ocurre el mismo día en que los europeos, particularmente los ingleses, comenzaron a bombardear en Siria y otros países como Irak  y Libia. Y podemos decir que estos actos han tenido impactos sobre algunos sectores de la población, de la segunda generación de los islámicos que se sientes  impotentes con los partidos existentes como el partido Conservador, liberal, Laboral, porque todos apoyan las guerras contra los partidos musulmanes. Entonces ellos sienten la falta de poder, se sienten aislados, se sienten indignados y empiezan a actuar por su cuenta tomando medidas violentas. Y eso no es parte de una red internacional, porque la acción fue con un camión, un cuchillo, y obviamente los grupos de Medio Oriente no son los organizadores de estos actos, pese que ellos proclaman que era un soldado de su organización, es decir, la declaración de ISIS diciendo que era un soldado de ellos es ficticia.

Creo que debemos condenar el terrorismo islámico en Europa pero también debemos condenar a los angloamericanos por el terrorismo diario y contundente contra los países islámicos.

DM: ¿Se pueden esperar respuestas del Reino Unido a partir de esto?

JP: A si, van a aumentar la represión, van a fomentar el Estado policial, van a aplicar medidas más anti inmigrantes, van a culpabilizar a toda la comunidad islámica, van a considerarlos como enemigos o sospechosos eternamente. Incluso podríamos ver la implementación de otras medidas como las que ha tomado Donald Trump (en Estados Unidos) restringiendo su circulación, los viajes, etc. No hay que esperar más que un autoritarismo creciente en los países angloamericanos.

DM: ¿Se complica la situación en Siria con los bombardeos que llevan adelante Estados Unidos y ahora Israel?

JP: Si, particularmente con Rusia, porque Rusia está en Siria defendiendo al gobierno de Bashar Al Assad contra los terroristas y ahora Israel está abiertamente abrazando a los terroristas tratando de destruir el gobierno existente, las mayorías que lo apoyan y buscan debilitar la presencia de Rusia. Es un juego muy peligroso, porque en el momento que Israel comience a tirar bombas sobre tropas y aviones rusos, Rusia tiene la capacidad de atacar Israel y destruir el país como factor político en Medio Oriente.

Las medidas de Israel son peligrosas para los gobernantes sirios, pero también  es una forma de provocar a Rusia y podría resultar en un boomerang, destruyendo  a Israel.

HS: Hemos hablado del papel de Turquía en esta situación y aparece un actor del que se habla menos que es el pueblo kurdo. ¿Qué papel juegan en todo esto?

JP: Los kurdos están divididos entre progresistas y reaccionarios; los que colaboran con el imperialismo, como (el presidente del Kurdistán iraquí, Masud) Barzani por ejemplo, los que están independientes e incluso los socialistas. Esta división existe en los conservadores en Irak, colaborando con Washington y los progresistas que están en el sur de Turquía y en Siria; y los que están en Siria reciben apoyo de los EEUU contra ISIS pero al mismo tiempo están luchando contra Turquía. Además, Turquía tiene el apoyo de Rusia en algunas cosas, pero ahora Rusia busca reunirse con los kurdos progresistas también.

Es una situación muy compleja.

En todo caso los kurdos están ganando, avanzando contra los islámicos en el norte, pero también enfrentan la posibilidad de una agresión amplia y profunda de parte del gobierno turco. En tanto, el gobierno del presidente (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan mezclado en una gran conflicto, por una purga de miles de turcos opositores, algunos metidos en el golpe pero otros opositores declaran que ellos se está preparando para imponer una dictadura bonapartista encabezada por Erdogan. Entonces, Erdogan tiene muchas luchas, tiene una lucha contra los kurdos, tiene lucha interna, tiene conflictos entre demócratas y autoritarios. No hay ninguna unidad sobre qué hacer en Turquía y al mismo tiempo tiene muchos conflictos con Europa, trata de dictar las políticas europeas… También quiere ganar las elecciones pero ha perdido muchos inversionistas turcos ,europeos y estadounidenses lo que va a debilitar el funcionamiento del país.

Turquía, a pesar de dar muchos gritos y declaraciones, está muy debilitado respecto a lo que tenía hace tiempo atrás.

DM: Para finalizar le pedimos una reflexión sobre lo que está sucediendo en Argentina, con masivas movilizaciones de maestros y trabajadores en general.

JP: Paso a paso, Argentina está en camino hacia una gran confrontación. No sé si llamarla hacia una guerra civil, pero poco a poco (el presidente Mauricio) Macri  está bajando los  estándares de vida, bajan los salarios, crecen los desocupados, las tarifas públicas –gas, luz, etc.- suben constantemente; podría ser una forma de provocar bancarrotas a pequeños y medianos sectores, o sea cada vez más servil a los grandes especuladores. Y todo esto está creando un escenario de grandes conflictos, ahora son marchas, mañana son huelgas generales y podríamos terminar con un levantamiento popular.

Ahora, Macri no es De la Rúa, no es Menem, es un  fanático militarista y muy represor. Si murieron 40 personas en 2001, pensamos en cientos sino miles de muertos en una posible confrontación. Pero tarde o temprano Argentina se encamina a eso, paso a paso. No debemos pensar que es un levantamiento para hoy o mañana, pero está pendiente y la trayectoria es clara: La tendencia del gobierno es cada vez más reaccionario y represivo y cada vez avanzan las luchas.

Como decíamos en otra oportunidad, los burócratas del CGT no tienen control de las grandes masas.Incluso en las empresas en que tienen control, pero el control puede escapárseles de la mano, la gente puede empezar a participar en marchas, cortes de rutas etc. Es inevitable una gran confrontación y no sabemos concretamente como van a terminar.

DM: Muy bien Petras, muchas gracias. Hasta el lunes. 

JP: Gracias, hasta el lunes.

James Petras

James Petras: Sociólogo estadounidense conocido por sus estudios sobre el imperialismo, la lucha de clases y los conflictos latinoamericanos.

Thomas Guénolé (París, 1982) es un spin doctor, un consejero político. No tardó ni cinco minutos en aceptar esta entrevista en una cafetería al lado de la facultad de Sciences Po de París, donde ejerce como profesor. Esta disponibilidad es fruto de su presencia habitual en los diarios o en los platós de la televisión francesa en horarios de máxima audiencia. En un paisaje mediático en el que resultan habituales las tesis de intelectuales reaccionarios como Éric Zemmour o Alain Finkielkraut, Guénolé ha sabido transmitir una visión progresista sobre la globalización y las minorías, dos cuestiones recurrentes en el debate político francés. Aborda estos temas en sus dos últimas obras: La mondialisation malheureuse (2016) e Islamopsychose (2017).

Para Guénolé, son estos dos ejes políticos –la mundialización y las minorías– los que explican la fragmentación actual del paisaje político en Francia. Cuando faltan menos de dos meses para las elecciones presidenciales, hasta cinco candidatos tienen opciones para alcanzar la segunda vuelta: Marine Le Pen (extrema derecha), François Fillon (derecha republicana), Emmanuel Macron (centrista), Benoît Hamon (socialista) y Jean-Luc Mélenchon (izquierda republicana y ecologista). Esta fragmentación resulta inédita en un país de tradición bipartidista y refleja una incipiente crisis de régimen. Un sistema que se ve alterado, según Guénolé, “por la voluntad muy fuerte entre los perdedores de la globalización por sacudir el tablero político”.

A menos de dos meses para las presidenciales, cinco candidatos tienen opciones para clasificarse para la segunda vuelta. Un hecho inédito en Francia. ¿Cómo explica esta fragmentación del sistema político?

El duelo habitual entre la izquierda y la derecha ha sido alterado. Está sucediendo una cosa poco habitual. Tanto el candidato de la derecha como el de la izquierda llegan desestabilizados. Hay un candidato socialista del partido que está en el gobierno que está muy debilitado, porque François Hollande deja un balance muy difícil de defender. Además, hay una fractura ideológica muy profunda entre los votantes socialistas favorables a la globalización y los votantes socialistas que son altermundialistas. Luego está el candidato de la derecha tradicional, François Fillon. Este construyó su candidatura en torno al valor del trabajo, el rechazo al asistencialismo, el sacrificio y la honestidad. De repente, nos enteramos de que pagó lo que quiso (en torno a 1 millón de euros) a su mujer con el dinero del Estado. Es una ruptura de imagen total. Incluso entre los votantes de la derecha.

Más allá de la debilidad de los partidos tradicionales. ¿Cuáles son las principales diferencias ideológicas entre estos cinco candidatos?

Hay dos cuestiones que estructuran actualmente el paisaje político francés. La globalización y las minorías. Es decir, los pobres de la banlieue (barrios periféricos), los inmigrantes de origen magrebí. Pero también las minorías LGBT. Hay estas dos cuestiones estructurales y cuatro ofertas políticas posibles. La oferta abierta con las minorías y proteccionista respecto a la mundialización es la oferta altermundialista, de Mélenchon. Benoît Hamon intenta quitarle este espacio. También está la oferta abierta con las minorías y pro-mundialización, Macron. Luego, tienes la opción favorable a la mundialización, pero hostil con las minorías: Fillon. Finalmente, está la oferta hostil con las minorías y proteccionista: Le Pen. Esto es la cuatripolarización del paisaje político francés.

¿Por qué la globalización favorece esta fragmentación del sistema político francés?

El sociólogo británico Guy Standing ha desarrollado la noción de precariado como clase social. El precariado es una clase social que se encuentra en la incertidumbre permanente, no tiene acceso a un empleo estable ni a una situación profesional estable. El precariado en Francia representa la mitad de la población. Esto se refleja en una división entre los vencedores y los perdedores de la globalización. Estos últimos dejan de votar o bien votan a Le Pen o dudan entre Mélenchon y Hamon. Hay una voluntad muy fuerte entre los perdedores de la globalización de sacudir el tablero político.

Además de los efectos de la globalización, las distintas posiciones respecto a la UE dividen a los partidos.

La mayoría de los franceses están hartos de la Unión Europea bajo su forma actual. La única cosa que permite que no haya una voluntad masiva de un Frexit [salida del país de la UE] es que la mayoría de los franceses están en contra de la UE, pero quieren seguir formando parte de la construcción europea. El 54% de los franceses votaron en referéndum en contra de todos los tratados europeos. Porque la Constitución europea de 2005 incluía todos los tratados: Maastricht, Ámsterdam, Lisboa… Y los franceses dijeron no.

Durante los últimos años se ha repetido de forma recurrente la teoría de la derechización, la idea de que la sociedad francesa se ha vuelto más conservadora a causa de la parálisis económica y los atentados yihadistas. ¿Es esto cierto?

No creo que haya habido una derechización de la sociedad francesa. Lo que ha sucedido es una radicalización de los franceses en cada uno de los espacios políticos. Los franceses de extrema derecha son cada vez más xenófobos. Los franceses de derechas son cada vez más conservadores respecto a los temas sociales y favorables a la desregulación económica. Los franceses centristas son cada vez más radicales en su entusiasmo respecto a Macron. Los electores del Partido Socialista están cada vez más divididos entre los que son pro-mundialización y los altermundialistas. No hay una derechización, pero sí una radicalización de cada bloque de electores, cada uno en su pasillo.

¿Esto significa que la mayoría de los electores no estarán satisfechos con el próximo presidente?

El futuro presidente francés tendrá a tres cuartas partes del electorado en contra. A causa de la cuatripolarización del paisaje político francés, tres cuartas partes de los votantes estarán descontentos del presidente y su política. Para evitarlo, deberíamos escoger a los diputados a través de un sistema electoral proporcional. Esto forzaría a que hubiera una coalición realmente representativa.

Uno de los candidatos que más se está beneficiando de la fragmentación del sistema político es Emmanuel Macron, que se presenta sin el apoyo de ningún partido convencional. ¿Cómo explica el éxito de su candidatura?

La debilidad de los candidatos de la derecha y la izquierda abre el camino a Macron, que es en realidad un candidato de centro derecha. Algunos votantes de izquierdas que quieren votarlo no quieren verlo como un candidato de centro derecha. Pero Macron no es de izquierdas, ni de centro izquierda. Defiende la misma posición central que defendía François Bayrou en 2007 [el líder del actual Movimiento Demócrata resultó entonces el tercer candidato más votado, con un 18% de los votos]. Cuando el candidato del Partido Socialista se debilita, Macron da un volantazo hacia la izquierda. Cuando se debilita el candidato conservador, Macron da un volantazo hacia la derecha. Pero como ocupa un espacio central, su electorado es el más inestable.

¿Cuáles son las debilidades principales de la candidatura de Macron?

La principal debilidad de Macron es su inconsistencia. No transmite ni una visión clara, ni unos valores claros, ni unas propuestas claras. Construye simplemente una marca, como construiríamos la marca de un producto de consumo de masas. Practica el marketing electoral puro y duro. Dirige un eslogan a una categoría de electores, segmento por segmento, de la misma forma que una empresa se focaliza en partes del mercado. Su punto débil es que se trata de una candidatura oportunista e inconsistente.

En el caso de una hipotética segunda vuelta entre Le Pen y Macron, ¿volverá a repetirse el famoso frente republicano (la alianza entre la izquierda y la derecha republicana) para evitar que el FN gane? ¿O los votantes conservadores se sentirán atraídos por el discurso xenófobo de Le Pen?

Independientemente de quién sea el adversario de Le Pen, estoy convencido de que el frente republicano será suficientemente potente para impedir que la extrema derecha gane. Las elecciones regionales de 2015 lo volvieron a demostrar. En una segunda vuelta en la que se confronten el FN y otro partido, el FN será ampliamente vencido.

Según usted, hay dos candidatos que se disputan la misma oferta política altermundialista: Mélenchon y Hamon. Pero el acuerdo entre ellos dos resulta improbable. ¿Por qué?

Hay una competición por el liderazgo de la izquierda. Una alianza para las elecciones legislativas de junio aún resulta posible, pero no lo es una candidatura única para las presidenciales. Benoît Hamon dice: debemos tener un candidato único para las elecciones presidenciales, pero esto significa que el candidato único tengo que ser yo. Mélenchon ha dicho más o menos lo mismo. Ni Hamon ni Mélenchon renunciarán a sus respectivas candidaturas. La cuestión principal es cuál de los dos conseguirá fagocitar el electorado del otro. Y si lo hace, lo absorberá con suficiente fuerza para alcanzar la segunda vuelta de las presidenciales.

Además de la disputa por el liderazgo de la izquierda, Mélenchon y Hamon tampoco coinciden respecto a su posición sobre la UE. ¿Cómo dificulta la unidad de la izquierda esta posición divergente sobre las instituciones europeas?

Benoît Hamon quiere promover otra política europea que sea más de izquierdas, pero sin confrontarse con las instituciones europeas. Dice que quiere superar los límites del déficit, pero que no se confrontará con Bruselas, porque quiere conservar la construcción europea. Sin embargo, Mélenchon dice que esto no es posible, que es una tomadura de pelo. Recuerda que se trata del mismo discurso del Bourget que hizo François Hollande en enero de 2012. Un discurso en el que Hollande prometió reformar Europa y finalmente no pudo renegociar nada.

La propuesta estrella de la candidatura de Hamon es la renta básica universal (RBU). ¿Resulta posible construir una mayoría electoral en torno a una propuesta tan innovadora como polémica, como la RBU?

Sí que lo es. Ya hay un 40% de los franceses favorable a esta medida. La explicación es el aumento del precariado. Este fenómeno ha provocado que un cierto número de intelectuales apueste por esta medida, ya que, si no se apuesta por este tipo de medidas, las sociedades de los países ricos explotarán una detrás de otra. Esto significa la llegada al poder de dirigentes como Donald Trump. Una parte de las élites económicas que se benefician de la mondialisation malheureuse (la globalización desafortunada), como Facebook, apoya la renta básica universal. Cree que o bien hacen una concesión masiva al precariado o el sistema será derribado.

Además, la renta básica representa un cambio de paradigma. El modelo de todos los partidos, también los de izquierdas, era desarrollar las políticas que aportan crecimiento económico. Las diferencias se debían a la manera en la que se repartía la riqueza, pero no sobre la necesidad de impulsar el crecimiento. Lo que aporta Hamon de inesperado es que no quiere promover el crecimiento, ya que este no resulta sostenible desde un punto de vista ecológico. Los niveles de riqueza resultan estables y hay que hacer que las sociedades sean menos desiguales. La herramienta para ello es la renta básica universal. Es un cambio de perspectiva sin precedentes en Francia.

Pero Mélenchon también defiende este discurso ecologista.

Mélenchon rechaza seguir por el sendero del crecimiento y quiere una economía verde. Pero con la diferencia de que reivindica una planificación ecologista. Que el Estado recupere el control de la economía para planificar el abandono del despilfarro y el consumismo. Hay dos candidatos de izquierdas y los dos son ecologistas. Es algo completamente nuevo en Francia.

Numerosos analistas políticos aseguran que el electorado de Mélenchon resulta estable y limitado. ¿El líder de la izquierda radical tiene alguna oportunidad para clasificarse para la segunda vuelta?

Sí que tiene opciones de llegar a la segunda vuelta de las presidenciales. Porque tiene una dinámica en las redes sociales y en los mítines que es realmente masiva. O bien se trata de un grupo de incondicionales muy movilizado que le permitirá obtener un 10% o un 15% de los votos. O bien se está produciendo una dinámica en torno a él, una ola que le puede permitir sobrepasar el 20% de los votos. Hubo estudios en 2012 que mostraron que un votante de cada diez dudó hasta el último momento entre Hollande y Mélenchon.

Mark Taliano is a former teacher, an activist and writer who visited Syria in 2016. Taliano interviewed Syrians who have lived under US bombs for years. 

The war in Syria is a NATO war. NATO has struck Syria not just with deadly unrelenting bombing, but has maintained total media control, deceiving millions of people around the world about NATO’s bloody unprecedented multinational invasion of Syria. Taliano says, “The war in Syria is brought to you by a sophisticated network of interlocking governing agencies that disseminate propaganda to both domestic and foreign audiences.”

To order Mark Taliano’s Book click here, directly from Global Research

He interviews a woman from the US who lives in Syria. She saw the Turkish-US armed Takfiri terrorists destroy her home and the entire village of Kesseb. They raped elderly women, dug up graveyard bones and fed them to hungry dogs. In Syria, Hillary Clinton is despised because she facilitated the transfer of arms from US puppet forces in Libya to the Turkish Army who then attacked Syria. And it was Clinton who campaigned to have the NATO lies about Syria spread through Western media, calling terrorist Al Qaeda and other takfiri murderers “moderates,” as they destroyed Syrian villages, cities, and killed and maimed tens of thousands of Syrian people. She and US/NATO propagandists vilified Syria’s legitimate and sovereign government.

Taliano interviews many people, a man grateful to the Russians for coming to Syria’s aid. Another Syrian showed how calling the events in Syria a “civil war” is a lie:

“The terrorists are sent by your government. They are al-Qaeda Jabhat al-Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al-Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country.”

Click image to order Taliano’s book 

One of the strongest voices for Syria is Mark Taliano. He says, “Syria refuses to submit. That is why the West is taught to hate it and the rest of the world learns to love and respect it.” His friends’ testimony and video evidence demonstrate the horrors: kidnapped individuals being put in cages and used as human shields in town squares.” And still Syria does not surrender.

“The Syrian War was planned … by the US since 2005. The Syrian soldiers and police were not even allowed to carry weapons until the “peaceful protesters” had slaughtered several hundreds of police and soldiers.”

Taliano shows how US attack on the water system of Iraq in the 1990s was the template for the same illegal campaign in Syria. He duplicates one Defense Intelligence Agency document, “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,” in 1991, which states,

“THE ENTIRE IRAQI WATER TREATMENT SYSTEM WILL NOT COLLAPSE PRECIPITOUSLY, … FULL DEGRADATION OF THE WATER TREATMENT SYSTEM PROBABLY WILL TAKE AT LEAST ANOTHER 6 MONTHS.”

Just as Iraq refused to bow to the will of the US, Taliano writes,

“Syria insists on choosing its own path and refuses to be a vassal of US-led forces of predatory capitalism that siphons the world’s resources for the benefit of a transnational oligarch class. Violating international law, NATO countries have been involved in this blitzkrieg “regime change” invasion of sovereign countries.”

Mark Taliano gives journalists, Syrians, and Facebook contributors credit for unmasking the truth. He cites Stephan Gowans who notes that the economies of all the countries the US/NATO has invaded have had a largely publicly-owned economies. He cites Vanessa Beeley, Michel Chussodovsky, Eva Bartlett, Dr Shaabban, Ghali Hassan, Katherine Shackdam, Tim Anderson, and other courageous journalists reporting the NATO genocide.

Nafeez Ahmed noted,

“Total deaths from Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan since the 1990s…likely constitute around 4 million (2 million in Iraq from 1991-2003, … and could be as high as 6–8 million people when accounting for higher avoidable death estimates in Afghanistan.) …. US and UK “’refuse to keep track of the civilian death toll of military operations – they are deemed an “irrelevant inconvenience.”

In addition to mass murder and destruction of food, health care facilities, schools and homes, in addition to the trail of destroyed archaeological treasures from Ancient Syria, Taliano notes:

“Criminal mainstream messaging has created a state of mass political imbecilization,” stupefying the masses with lies.” They codified the deception. The US House of Representatives passed HR5181 ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation,’ “which calls for countering any “disinformation” – the truth – that escapes from Syria. The US funds “Civil Society” groups to do official disinformation work. The “National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA, Mossad, etc., as well as oligarch-funded foundations, are all embedded with the terrorists … are the sources … for corporate/mainstream media “news” stories.”

Dr. Joseph Saadeh of Maaloula said to Mark Taliano:

“The Wahhabi terrorists destroyed Syria by destroying everything in Syria like factories, like anything working to build the culture. And they’re supported by America and the European governments.”

Voices from Syria is a small book with a big message. It would be perfect to use in a group of concerned activists meeting to discuss and disseminate the truth about US or NATO foreign policy in Syria. . It could be used in a classroom or in a library reading club.

Mark Taliano is from Canada, one of the reliable military vassals in the NATO cabal. He severely criticizes his own government’s crimes, and the crimes of the ruling class who have urged their imperial forces to overthrow the legally elected government of Bashar-Al Assad. US and UK and Canada openly provide military and economic support for AlQaeda, Al Nusra, and the terrorists. The oil-rich rich monarchies of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi -finance and arm the puppet armies and death squads attempting to destroy Syria’s sovereignty.

Mark Taliano is a passionate voice for peace, dispelling lies, urging solidarity with the people of Syria.

“Whereas the West supports the extremist Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia, the teachings of Islam contradict this ideology, and they certainly contradict the crimes of the mercenary terrorists infesting Syria.”

El 26 de marzo, Hong Kong elegirá un nuevo gobernador. No se hará mediante una elección abierta sino a través del voto secreto de una comisión electoral de 1.200 miembros, en su mayoría bajo la influencia de Beijing. A priori, esto debe garantizar que el elegido no se desmarque de los objetivos del gobierno central en la región. En dicho comité, la oposición demócrata cuenta con unos 325 asientos más o menos afines. El jefe ejecutivo saliente, Leung Chun-ying, renunció a postularse para un segundo mandato tras una legislatura marcada por la irrupción del contestatario Movimiento de los Paraguas.

En 2015, el Consejo Legislativo rechazó la reforma electoral propuesta por Beijing que permitiría abrir paso a la elección mediante sufragio universal pero con un numerus clausus de candidatos, máximo de tres, que deberían contar con el visto bueno previo del gobierno central.

Tres son ahora también los postulantes en liza: Carie Lam, la favorita de Beijing; Woo Kwok-hing, un magistrado con fama de rigor y apego al Estado de derecho, y John Tsang, la figura más popular de los tres y el menos simpático a Beijing por sus insinuaciones de carácter localista. Lam presentó 580 avales frente a los 180 y 165, respectivamente, de los otros dos candidatos. Los dos últimos están apoyados por los demócratas y Tsang sería el mejor visto por los independentistas. John Tsang fue secretario particular de Chris Patten, el último gobernador británico del enclave, y en su programa aspira a relanzar las reformas.

Quizá el apoyo de Beijing a cualquier candidato podría ser contraproducente de llevarse a cabo una elección popular pero con el Comité Electoral las cosas funcionan de otro modo. Aun así, China no ha expresado sus preferencias de modo rotundo aunque no falta quien ha asegurado (el ex gobernador Tung Chee-hwa) que de ganar John Tsang, Beijing no otorgaría su beneplácito. Es improbable.

Todos los candidatos promueven alternativas para garantizar la estabilidad política y socioeconómica de Hong Kong. Los tres comparten una singular querencia por la autonomía del territorio, afectada en los últimos años por los desencuentros con la capital continental. La hostilidad igualmente compartida con respecto a las injerencias políticas está matizada por la observación del marco general de “un país dos sistemas” que define el devenir de esta región administrativa especial que el 1 de julio celebrará sus primeras dos décadas de autonomía desde la retrocesión. China aspirar a llegar a esa fecha con la casa en orden.

Carrie Lam tiene una gran experiencia administrativa y de gobierno. Abierta a las cuestiones sociales, especialmente en materia de vivienda, es un valor seguro para Beijing. Según declaró, su mayor ambición es poner coto a los sentimientos de desafección de los hongkoneses, especialmente de los más jóvenes, respecto a China, lo cual la llevará a incidir en aspectos como el control del flujo turístico del continente o la búsqueda de salidas al fracaso de la reforma de 2015, además de las cuestiones de seguridad a la vista de las intromisiones crecientes de Beijing por causa, sobre todo, de las luchas palaciegas que tienen lugar a miles de kilómetros, en la capital, pero que tienen aquí una considerable proyección desestabilizadora. Son todos ellos temas correosos, más aún en un año tan importante como el actual pues en otoño el PCCh celebrará su XIX Congreso en el que debe renovar su dirigencia.

El gobierno central debiera aprovechar la hora del balance para limar asperezas y sugerir nuevas propuestas que contribuyan a desatascar el atolladero político en que se encuentra la región administrativa.

Xulio Ríos

Xulio Ríos: Director del Observatorio de la Política China.

Relevant to the evolving Fake News saga, this incisive article was first published in 2014. The objective is to smear Truth in Media

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
What’s confusing you
Is the nature of my game

– The Rolling Stones

The reason that Internet trolls are effective is that people still don’t understand their game.

There are 15 commonly-used trolling tactics to disrupt, misdirect and control internet discussions.

As one interesting example, trolls start flame wars because – according to two professors – swearing and name-calling shut down our ability to think and focus.

And trolls will often spew divisive attacks so that people argue against each other, instead of bad actions and policies of the powers-that-be.   For example, trolls will:

Start a religious war whenever possible using stereotypes like “all Jews are selfish”, “all Christians are crazy” or “all Muslims are terrorists”.

Yesterday, the alternative news site Common Dreams caught a troll using scores of different user names to spew anti-Semitic bile. (Common Dreams discovered that the same troll was behind the multiple user names by tracking their IP addresses. And the troll confessed to Common Dreams.)

The troll is a “a Jewish Harvard graduate in his thirties who was irritated by the website’s discussion of issues involving Israel”.

He posted anti-Semitic diatribes – such as Hitler should have finished the job and killed all Jews – using one alias.  Then – a couple of minutes later – he’d post an attack on the first poster using a different alias, claiming that criticism of Israel is the same thing as anti-Semitism.  (Note: Holocaust survivors and Israeli ministers say it’s not.)

Why would a Jew post vile anti-Semitic comments?  Because normal people are offended by – and don’t want to be associated with – pure, naked anti-Semitism, and so they will avoid such discussions.  If the discussion was originally criticizing a specific aspect of Israeli policy, the discussion will break down, and the actual point regarding policy will be lost.

Similarly, anti-Semitic posts weaken websites by making them seem less reputable. Indeed, Common Dreams says that the troll’s anti-Semitic comments drove away many of that site’s largest donors … dealing a severe blow to its continued viability. That’s exactly what trolls spewing anti-Semitic bile are trying to do: shut down logical discussion and discredit and weaken sites which allow rational criticism of policy.

It is well-known that foreign  governments and large companies troll online. See this, this this, and this. For example, the Israeli government is paying students to post pro-Israeli comments online.

And American students are also attempting to influence internet discussion.

While the Common Dreams troll claims that he’s not sponsored by the state of Israel, government  agencies have manipulated  Internet discussion for years. This includes the use of multiple “socket puppet” aliases.  The potential for mischief is stunning.

Unless we learn their game…

Por casi todo el mundo se publican informes acerca de un nuevo cambio en las relaciones comerciales internacionales en Asia-Pacífico.

IMAGEN: La canciller de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez.

La canciller de Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, comparecerá este lunes ante el Consejo Permanente de Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) y, según analistas, ese ejercicio debe convertirse en una defensa de la dignidad latinoamericana.

La reunión tendrá como escenario el salón Simón Bolívar en la sede del organismo en Washington, algo que debe recordar a los miembros de ese foro la alerta del Libertador el 15 de agosto de 1829 con sus históricas palabras: ‘Los Estados Unidos parecen estar llamados por la Providencia a plagar de miseria a los países de América en nombre de la libertad’.

Ahora hay países que se apartan se esa realidad y se unen a los planes estadounidenses contra Venezuela en una aparente defensa de su pueblo, algo que reiteradamente denuncian las autoridades de Caracas.

El Consejo Permanente se reunirá también el martes a petición de Canadá, Argentina, Barbados, Bahamas, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Estados Unidos, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, México, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Santa Lucía y Uruguay, sin dudas, en busca de una condena al Gobierno Bolivariano ordenada desde la Casa Blanca.

Pero, mientras tanto, el pueblo venezolano se movilizará el martes en defensa de la soberanía y la independencia, ante las constantes arremetidas por parte de ejes de poder imperial, según indicó Héctor Rodríguez, dirigente nacional del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela.

Recientemente, el secretario general de la OEA, Luis Almagro, emitió un informe sobre la situación en esta nación que, según el ministro de Educación, Elías Jaua, está lleno ‘de insolencias, como insolente es la personalidad de Almagro; lleno de incoherencias, como incoherente es su moral; abundante en falsedades, como falsa es su actitud de demócrata’.

Según Jaua, Almagro, está justificando que la ‘solución’ a los problemas de los venezolanos y venezolanas venga desde el exterior.

Este documento del jefe de la OEA es un autoreconocimiento de su ineptitud de poder cumplir la tarea que le dieron sus empleadores de Washington de lograr los votos necesarios para aplicar la llamada ‘Carta Democrática’, puntualizó el ministro al referirse a los planes de utilizar ese papel contra el proceso bolivariano.

Al respecto, el académico y analistas Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, señaló que el problema ya no es la OEA, sino Almagro y su servilismo.

En un extenso artículo, Rodríguez describe el triste papel desempeñado por la organización desde que fue fundada en Colombia el 30 de abril de 1948, a la medida de los intereses de la Casa Blanca para ‘tener gobiernos serviles que lo sostuvieran y secretarios generales abyectos que se prestaran a poner la cara cuando a Estados Unidos se le ocurría un nuevo atropello’.

En otras palabras, precisa, el secretario general está actuando de manera ilegal cuando trata de aplicar la llamada Carta Democrática a esta nación, por lo que si la OEA fuera una organización seria, lo debería destituir.

En referencia al informe y las ‘decisiones’ del ex canciller uruguayo señala que es evidente ‘no existe ni en la Carta, ni en las reglas de funcionamiento de la OEA, la potestad de un secretario general de llamar a realizar elecciones en un país’, como trata de imponer a los venezolanos.

Almagro, señala el académico, es un militante durante la mayor parte de su vida del Partido Nacional de Uruguay que se define ideológicamente como nacionalista y panamericanista, un seguidor de este paradigma que expone lealtad hacia Estados Unidos y la oposición a la integración latinoamericana y caribeña.

Las reuniones en Washington esta semana deben mostrar si se mantiene que la OEA es aun el ‘Ministerio de Colonia’, que idearon su fundadores apegados a las palabras que pronunciara el 2 de diciembre de 1823, el estadounidense James Monroe, cuando dijo ‘América para los americanos’.

Por lo pronto, Venezuela debe alzarse como defensora de la dignidad latinoamericana ante las maquinaciones de Almagro, quien se vale del Ministerio de Colonias para congraciarse con el norte revuelto y brutal como lo describió el apóstol cubano José Martí, según reseña el historiador venezolano Antonio Manrique.

Luis Beaton

Apenas conocerse el asesinato del exdiputado Denis Voronenkov en pleno centro de Kiev, el presidente ucraniano, Piotro Poroshenko, de inmediato responsabilizó a Rusia con el hecho, en un paso que tiene disimiles interpretaciones.

Lejos de alejar a Kiev del problema, Poroshenko con su apresurada acusación levantó fuertes sospechas en Rusia de quien podría estar, realmente, detrás de ese escandaloso asesinato, sobre todo cuando el matón resultó ser un ciudadano ucraniano.

Anton Guerashenko, consejero del ministro del Interior, publicó en su cuenta de twitter el nombre de Pavel Parshov, un ucraniano de 28 años, nacido en Sevastopol, a quien de inmediato situó como agente de los servicios secretos rusos.

Pero la propia fiscalía general ucraniana se negó a confirmar que fuera Parshov el nombre real del asesino.

Luego se conoció que Parshov era un joven procesado por lavado de dinero y otras violaciones que reclamó en la red social Vkontakt a qué se debía tanto interés de la prensa hacía su persona.

Así, está por confirmarse en realidad quién, ataviado con un traje gris deportivo, chaqueta negra, capucha y tenis rojos, disparó seis veces con una pistola TT contra Voronenkov, a la entrada del hotel de cinco estrellas Premier Palace, en el centro de Kiev.

El asesino llevaba una identificación de veterano de la operación de castigo de Ucrania contra la población sublevada en Donetsk y Lugansk y eso, en opinión del diputado radical Igor Popov, aleja la posibilidad de confirmar la ‘huella rusa’ en ese hecho criminal.

Poroshenko recibió una fuerte respuesta a la acusación que lanzó cuando ni siquiera había fallecido el asesino, producto de heridas en la cabeza y el pecho, causadas por disparos hechos por el guardaespaldas del diputado.

Ante la acusación del millonario chocolatero de que Moscú cometía un acto de terrorismo de estado con el asesinato de Voronenkov, el presidente de la Duma (cámara baja rusa), Viacheslav Volodin, estimó que Ucrania va camino a convertirse en un estado terrorista.

Voloshin estimó que ello está dado porque en el vecino país dejaron de funcionar las leyes y muchos asuntos se resuelven con violencia.

LA TRAGEDIA DE VORONENKOV

Afirma el diario Kommersant que casi en el momento del atentado, Voronenkov se comunicaba por messenger con el director del diario online Censor.net.ua, Yuri Butusov, para recomendarle otra de las entrevistas que de la noche a la mañana lo convirtieron en un extraño antirruso, sobre todo, tras sus ataques a Kiev desde la Duma.

Voronenkov fracasó en su intento de reelegirse en septiembre pasado como candidato por el Partido Comunista de la Federación de Rusia y estaba investigado por casos de malversación y abuso de poder.

Un mes después, viajó con su esposa, la exdiputada por Rusia Unida Maria Maksokova, antigua esposa del líder criminal Vladimir Tiurin, quien la habría ayudado a convertirse en legisladora.

El 6 de diciembre Voronenkov, con familiares en Jarkov, recibió la ciudadanía ucraniana. Ello provocó la indignación de nacionalistas, deseosos de conocer sobre qué bases se otorgaba esa condición a una persona conocida por sus ataques en el pasado contra Ucrania.

Para esa fecha, fue el fiscal general Yuri Lutsenko, quien llevó al estrellato a Voronenkov, al revelar que figuraba como testigo en el extendido proceso por supuesta traición contra Viktor Yanukovich, expulsado del poder por un golpe de Estado en febrero de 2014.

El exdiputado y, al parecer, su compatriota con igual condición Igor Ponomariov debían asistir como testigos en el citado proceso para demostrar, además, una presunta implicación de Moscú en una agresión contra Ucrania, algo que el Kremlin niega rotundamente.

La vocera de la Cancillería rusa, Maria Zajarova, declaró que el así llamado Estado-asesino, en alusión a Ucrania, dejó clara la imposibilidad de la realización de una pesquisa parcial del citado asesinato al acusar sin pruebas y de inmediato a Rusia.

Kiev eliminó desde hace algún tiempo la posibilidad de presunción de inocencia para Rusia y la acusa, además, de estar detrás del bloqueo organizado por los ultranacionalistas a Donetsk y Lugansk o de intervenir directamente en la guerra en el sureste ucraniano.

Sin embargo, Poroshenko pareció crear problemas para su propia imagen de político que controla Ucrania al acusar de inmediato a Rusia. Ahora, serán los propios radicales y neofascistas quienes le exigirán medidas drásticas contra Moscú. Y entonces, ¿Qué podrá hacer?

Antonio Rondón García

The cyber-security company Crowdstrike claimed that “Russia” hacked the Democratic National Committee. It also claimed that “Russia” hacked artillery units of the Ukrainian army. The second claim has now be found to be completely baseless. That same is probably the case with its claims related to the DNC.

Sometime around May 2016, the Democratic National Committee lost control over its email archives. It claimed that its servers had been “hacked” by someone related to Russian interests. DNC emails were published by Wikileaks and provided that the DNC had worked during the primaries against its statutes and in favor of one presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. The DNC chair was forced to resign over the case.

The DNC had called in Crowdstrike, a company led by a one Dimitry Alperovich, a Senior Fellow of the NATO aligned “think tank” Atlantic Council. After a short investigation Crowdstrike claimed to found intruding software on the DNC servers that, it says, has been exclusively used by Russian intelligence services. From there followed claims that “Russia hacked the U.S. elections”.

When the DNC went public with the Crowdstrike claims the FBI never requested access to the servers to determine if a crime had been committed and to detect the culprit. Access to the servers had been informally denied by the DNC. The FBI simply followed (pdf), without any own forensic investigation of its own, the conclusions Crowdstrike had made.

Imagine that some white guy claims that his house has been broken in and a large amount of money has been stolen. He hires a private investigators who says a window was broken and therefore the crime must have been committed by those “niggers” down the road. But others ask if the man hides the money himself, or if the man’s son might have taken it. But the police does not investigate if a crime has actually happened. It does no forensics at the crime scene. It does not even check if a window has indeed been broken. It simply follows the conclusion of the private investigator and accuses the “niggers”. This is what happened in the DNC case.

Month later and in a different case the same Crowdstrike investigators claimed (pdf) that the artillery units of the Ukrainian army had had “excessive combat losses” of up to 80% in their fight with Ukrainian separatists. Crowdstrike asserted that Russian intelligence hacked an application used by the Ukrainians to aim their guns. The hack, it was claimed, enabled well targeted counter-fire that then destroyed the Ukrainian guns.

The author of the application denied that any such hacking had taken place. His software was provided only directly from him to Ukrainian army units. Independent cyber-security researchers also doubted the claims.

Crowdstrike had based its numbers for “excessive losses” of Ukrainian artillery units on statistics collected by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). The IISS now says that its statistic do not provide what Crowdstrike claimed. There were no “excessive losses” of Ukrainian artillery.

VOA first contacted IISS in February to verify the alleged artillery losses. Officials there initially were unaware of the CrowdStrike assertions. After investigating, they determined that CrowdStrike misinterpreted their data and hadn’t reached out beforehand for comment or clarification.

In a statement to VOA, the institute flatly rejected the assertion of artillery combat losses.

It seems that the whole “Ukrainian artillery hack” claims by Crowdstrike was simply made up. There was no “hack” and the claimed damage from the “hack” did not occur at all. Crowdstrike evidently found a “crime” and “Russian hacking” where none had happened.

In the case of the DNC hacking Crowdstrike also alleged a “crime” and “Russian hacking”. No hard evidence was ever provided for that claim, no competent police force ever investigated the crime scene and serious security researchers found that the Crowdstrike claims were likely taken from hot air.

The DNC was likely not hacked at all. Some insider with access to its servers may have taken the emails to publish them. On July 10 2016 the DNC IT administrator Sean Rich was found fatally shot on the streets of Washington DC. To this day no culprit has been found. The crime is unsolved. Five Congressional staffers and IT administrators from Pakistan, some of whom also worked for the DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, are under criminal investigation for unauthorized access to Congressional computers. They had the password  of Wasserman-Schultz and may have had access to the DNC servers.

Crowdstrike’s claims of “Russian hacking” have evidently been false with regards to the Ukrainian artillery. Crowdstrike’s claims of “Russian hacking” in the case of the DNC have never been supported or confirmed by independent evidence. There are reasons to believe that the loss of control of the DNC’s email archives were a case of unauthorized internal access and not a “hack” at all.

A company related to a NATO aligned “think-tank”, which is financed by weapon producers and other special interests, raises allegations against Russia that are quite possibly unfounded. These allegations are then used by NATO to build up a public boogeyman picture of “the Russian enemy”. In consequence the budgets for NATO militaries and the profits of weapon producers increase.

It is a simple racket, but with potentially very bad consequences for all of us.

Nobody yet can tell whether Donald Trump is an agent of change with a specific policy in mind, or merely a catalyst heralding an as yet undetermined turning point. His first month in the White House saw him melting into the Republican mélange of corporate lobbyists. Having promised to create jobs, his “America First” policy looks more like “Wall Street First.”

His cabinet of billionaires promoting corporate tax cuts, deregulation and dismantling Dodd-Frank bank reform repeats the Junk Economics promise that giving more tax breaks to the richest One Percent may lead them to use their windfall to invest in creating more jobs. What they usually do, of course, is simply buy more property and assets already in place.

One of the first reactions to Trump’s election victory was for stocks of the most crooked financial institutions to soar, hoping for a deregulatory scythe taken to the public sector. Navient, the Department of Education’s knee-breaker on student loan collections accused by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) of massive fraud and overcharging, rose from $13 to $18 now that it seemed likely that the incoming Republicans would disable the CFPB and shine a green light for financial fraud.

Foreclosure king Stephen Mnuchin of IndyMac/OneWest (and formerly of Goldman Sachs for 17 years; later a George Soros partner) is now Treasury Secretary – and Trump is pledged to abolish the CFPB, on the specious logic that letting fraudsters manage pension savings and other investments will give consumers and savers “broader choice,” e.g., for the financial equivalent of junk food. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos hopes to privatize public education into for-profit (and de-unionized) charter schools, breaking the teachers’ unions. This may position Trump to become the Transformational President that neoliberals have been waiting for.

Photo by www.GlynLowe.com | CC BY 2.0

Nobody yet can tell whether Donald Trump is an agent of change with a specific policy in mind, or merely a catalyst heralding an as yet undetermined turning point. His first month in the White House saw him melting into the Republican mélange of corporate lobbyists. Having promised to create jobs, his “America First” policy looks more like “Wall Street First.” His cabinet of billionaires promoting corporate tax cuts, deregulation and dismantling Dodd-Frank bank reform repeats the Junk Economics promise that giving more tax breaks to the richest One Percent may lead them to use their windfall to invest in creating more jobs. What they usually do, of course, is simply buy more property and assets already in place.

One of the first reactions to Trump’s election victory was for stocks of the most crooked financial institutions to soar, hoping for a deregulatory scythe taken to the public sector. Navient, the Department of Education’s knee-breaker on student loan collections accused by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) of massive fraud and overcharging, rose from $13 to $18 now that it seemed likely that the incoming Republicans would disable the CFPB and shine a green light for financial fraud.

Foreclosure king Stephen Mnuchin of IndyMac/OneWest (and formerly of Goldman Sachs for 17 years; later a George Soros partner) is now Treasury Secretary – and Trump is pledged to abolish the CFPB, on the specious logic that letting fraudsters manage pension savings and other investments will give consumers and savers “broader choice,” e.g., for the financial equivalent of junk food. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos hopes to privatize public education into for-profit (and de-unionized) charter schools, breaking the teachers’ unions. This may position Trump to become the Transformational President that neoliberals have been waiting for.

But not the neocons. His election rhetoric promised to reverse traditional U.S. interventionist policy abroad. Making an anti-war left run around the Democrats, he promised to stop backing ISIS/Al Nusra (President Obama’s “moderate” terrorists supplied with the arms and money that Hillary looted from Libya), and to reverse the Obama-Clinton administration’s New Cold War with Russia. But the neocon coterie at the CIA and State Department are undercutting his proposed rapprochement with Russia by forcing out General Flynn for starters. It seems doubtful that Trump will clean them out.

Trump has called NATO obsolete, but insists that its members up their spending to the stipulated 2% of GDP — producing a windfall worth tens of billions of dollars for U.S. arms exporters. That is to be the price Europe must pay if it wants to endorse Germany’s and the Baltics’ confrontation with Russia.

Trump is sufficiently intuitive to proclaim the euro a disaster, and he recommends that Greece leave it. He supports the rising nationalist parties in Britain, France, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands, all of which urge withdrawal from the eurozone – and reconciliation with Russia instead of sanctions. In place of the ill-fated TPP and TTIP, Trump advocates country-by-country trade deals favoring the United States. Toward this end, his designated ambassador to the European Union, Ted Malloch, urges the EU’s breakup. The EU is refusing to accept him as ambassador.

Will Trump’s victory break up the Democratic Party?

At the time this volume is going to press, there is no way of knowing how successful these international reversals will be. What is more clear is what Trump’s political impact will have at home. His victory – or more accurately, Hillary’s resounding loss and the way she lost – has encouraged enormous pressure for a realignment of both parties. Regardless of what President Trump may achieve vis-à-vis Europe, his actions as celebrity chaos agent may break up U.S. politics across the political spectrum.

The Democratic Party has lost its ability to pose as the party of labor and the middle class. Firmly controlled by Wall Street and California billionaires, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) strategy of identity politics encourages any identity except that of wage earners. The candidates backed by the Donor Class have  been Blue Dogs pledged to promote Wall Street and neocons urging a New Cold War with Russia.

They preferred to lose with Hillary than to win behind Bernie Sanders. So Trump’s electoral victory is their legacy as well as Obama’s. Instead of Trump’s victory dispelling that strategy, the Democrats are doubling down. It is as if identity politics is all they have.

Trying to ride on Barack Obama’s coattails didn’t work. Promising “hope and change,” he won by posing as a transformational president, leading the Democrats to control of the White House, Senate and Congress in 2008. Swept into office by a national reaction against the George Bush’s Oil War in Iraq and the junk-mortgage crisis that left the economy debt-ridden, they had free rein to pass whatever new laws they chose – even a Public Option in health care if they had wanted, or make Wall Street banks absorb the losses from their bad and often fraudulent loans.

But it turned out that Obama’s role was to prevent the changes that voters hoped to see, and indeed that the economy needed to recover: financial reform, debt writedowns to bring junk mortgages in line with fair market prices, and throwing crooked bankers in jail. Obama rescued the banks, not the economy, and turned over the Justice Department and regulatory agencies to his Wall Street campaign contributors. He did not even pull back from war in the Near East, but extended it to Libya and Syria, blundering into the Ukrainian coup as well.

Having dashed the hopes of his followers, Obama then praised his chosen successor Hillary Clinton as his “Third Term.” Enjoying this kiss of death, Hillary promised to keep up Obama’s policies.

The straw that pushed voters over the edge was when she asked voters, “Aren’t you better off today than you were eight years ago?” Who were they going to believe: their eyes, or Hillary? National income statistics showed that only the top 5 percent of the population were better off. All the growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during Obama’s tenure went to them – the Donor Class that had gained control of the Democratic Party leadership. Real incomes have fallen for the remaining 95 percent, whose household budgets have been further eroded by soaring charges for health insurance. (The Democratic leadership in Congress fought tooth and nail to block Dennis Kucinich from introducing his Single Payer proposal.)

No wonder most of the geographic United States voted for change – except for where the top 5 percent, is concentrated: in New York (Wall Street) and California (Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex). Making fun of the Obama Administration’s slogan of  “hope and change,” Trump characterized Hillary’s policy of continuing the economy’s shrinkage for the 95% as “no hope and no change.”

Identity Politics as anti-labor politics

A new term was introduced to the English language: Identity Politics. Its aim is for voters to think of themselves as separatist minorities – women, LGBTQ, Blacks and Hispanics. The Democrats thought they could beat Trump by organizing Women for Wall Street (and a New Cold War), LGBTQ for Wall Street (and a New Cold War), and Blacks and Hispanics for Wall Street (and a New Cold War). Each identity cohort was headed by a billionaire or hedge fund donor.

The identity that is conspicuously excluded is the working class. Identity politics strips away thinking of one’s interest in terms of having to work for a living. It excludes voter protests against having their monthly paycheck stripped to pay more for health insurance, housing and mortgage charges or education, or better working conditions or consumer protection – not to speak of protecting debtors.

Identity politics used to be about three major categories: workers and unionization, anti-war protests and civil rights marches against racist Jim Crow laws. These were the three objectives of the many nationwide demonstrations. That ended when these movements got co-opted into the Democratic Party. Their reappearance in Bernie Sanders’ campaign in fact threatens to tear the Democratic coalition apart. As soon as the primaries were over (duly stacked against Sanders), his followers were made to feel unwelcome. Hillary sought Republican support by denouncing Sanders as being as radical as Putin’s Republican leadership.

In contrast to Sanders’ attempt to convince diverse groups that they had a common denominator in needing jobs with decent pay – and, to achieve that, in opposing Wall Street’s replacing the government as central planner – the Democrats depict every identity constituency as being victimized by every other, setting themselves at each other’s heels. Clinton strategist John Podesta, for instance, encouraged Blacks to accuse Sanders supporters of distracting attention from racism. Pushing a common economic interest between whites, Blacks, Hispanics and LGBTQ always has been the neoliberals’ nightmare. No wonder they tried so hard to stop Bernie Sanders, and are maneuvering to keep his supporters from gaining influence in their party.

When Trump was inaugurated on Friday, January 20, there was no pro-jobs or anti-war demonstration. That presumably would have attracted pro-Trump supporters in an ecumenical show of force. Instead, the Women’s March on Saturday led even the pro-Democrat New York Times to write a front-page article reporting that white women were complaining that they did not feel welcome in the demonstration. The message to anti-war advocates, students and Bernie supporters was that their economic cause was a distraction.

The march was typically Democratic in that its ideology did not threaten the Donor Class. As Yves Smith wrote on Naked Capitalism:

“the track record of non-issue-oriented marches, no matter how large scale, is poor, and the status of this march as officially sanctioned (blanket media coverage when other marches of hundreds of thousands of people have been minimized, police not tricked out in their usual riot gear) also indicates that the officialdom does not see it as a threat to the status quo.”[1]

Hillary’s loss was not blamed on her neoliberal support for TPP or her pro-war neocon stance, but on the revelations of the e-mails by her operative Podesta discussing his dirty tricks against Bernie Sanders (claimed to be given to Wikileaks by Russian hackers, not a domestic DNC leaker as Wikileaks claimed) and the FBI investigation of her e-mail abuses at the State Department. Backing her supporters’ attempt to brazen it out, the Democratic Party has doubled down on its identity politics, despite the fact that an estimated 52 percent of white women voted for Trump. After all, women do work for wages. And that also is what Blacks and Hispanics want – in addition to banking that serves their needs, not those of Wall Street, and health care that serves their needs, not those of the health-insurance and pharmaceuticals monopolies.

Bernie did not choose to run on a third-party ticket. Evidently he feared being accused of throwing the election to Trump. The question is now whether he can remake the Democratic Party as a democratic socialist party, or create a new party if the Donor Class retains its neoliberal control. It seems that he will not make a break until he concludes that a Socialist Party can leave the Democrats as far back in the dust as the Republicans left the Whigs after 1854. He may have underestimated his chance in 2016.

Trump’s effect on U.S. political party realignment

During Trump’s rise to the 2016 Republican nomination it seemed that he was more likely to break up the Republican Party. Its leading candidates and gurus warned that his populist victory in the primaries would tear the party apart. The polls in May and June showed him defeating Hillary Clinton easily (but losing to Bernie Sanders). But Republican leaders worried that he would not support what they believed in: namely, whatever corporate lobbyists put in their hands to enact and privatize.

The May/June polls showed Trump and Clinton were the country’s two most unpopular presidential candidates. But whereas the Democrats maneuvered Bernie out of the way, the Republican Clown Car was unable to do the same to Trump. In the end they chose to win behind him, expecting to control him. As for the DNC, its Wall Street donors preferred to lose with Hillary than to win with Bernie. They wanted to keep control of their party and continue the bargain they had made with the Republicans: The latter would move further and further to the right, leaving room for Democratic neoliberals and neocons to follow them closely, yet still pose as the “lesser evil.” That “centrism” is the essence of the Clintons’ “triangulation” strategy. It actually has been going on for a half-century.

“As Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere quipped in the 1960s, when he was accused by the US of running a one-party state, ‘The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them’.”[2]

By 2017, voters had caught on to this two-step game. But Hillary’s team paid pollsters over $1 billion to tell her (“Mirror, mirror on the wall …”) that she was the most popular of all. It was hubris to imagine that she could convince the 95 Percent of the people who were worse off under Obama to love her as much as her East-West Coast donors did. It was politically unrealistic – and a reflection of her cynicism – to imagine that raising enough money to buy television ads would convince working-class Republicans to vote for her, succumbing to a Stockholm Syndrome by thinking of themselves as part of the 5 Percent who had benefited from Obama’s pro-Wall Street policies.

Hillary’s election strategy was to make a right-wing run around Trump. While characterizing the working class as white racist “deplorables,” allegedly intolerant of LBGTQ or assertive women, she resurrected the ghost of Joe McCarthy and accused Trump of being “Putin’s poodle” for proposing peace with Russia. Among the most liberal Democrats, Paul Krugman still leads a biweekly charge at The New York Times that President Trump is following Moscow’s orders. Saturday Night Live, Bill Maher and MSNBC produce weekly skits that Trump and General Flynn are Russian puppets. A large proportion of Democrats have bought into the fairy tale that Trump didn’t really win the election, but that Russian hackers manipulated the voting machines. No wonder George Orwell’s 1984 soared to the top of America’s best-seller lists in February 2017 as Donald Trump was taking his oath of office.

This propaganda paid off on February 13, when neocon public relations succeeded in forcing the resignation of General Flynn, whom Trump had appointed to clean out the neocons at the NSA and CIA. His foreign policy initiative based on rapprochement with Russia and hopes to create a common front against ISIS/Al Nusra seemed to be collapsing.

Tabula Rasa Celebrity Politics

U.S. presidential elections no longer are much about policy. Like Obama before him, Trump campaigned as a rasa tabla, a vehicle for everyone to project their hopes and fancies. What has all but disappeared is the past century’s idea of politics as a struggle between labor and capital, democracy vs. oligarchy.

Who would have expected even half a century ago that American politics would become so post-modern that the idea of class conflict has all but disappeared. Classical economic discourse has been drowned out by their junk economics.

There is a covert economic program, to be sure, and it is bipartisan. It is to make elections about just which celebrities will introduce neoliberal economic policies with the most convincing patter talk. That is the essence of rasa tabla politics.

Can the Democrats lose again in 2020?

Trump’s November victory showed that voters found him to be the Lesser Evil, but all that voters really could express was “throw out the bums” and get a new set of lobbyists for the FIRE sector and corporate monopolists. Both candidates represented Goldman Sachs and Wall Street. No wonder voter turnout has continued to plunge.

Although the Democrats’ Lesser Evil argument lost to the Republicans in 2016, the neoliberals in control of the DNC found the absence of a progressive economic program to less threatening to their interests than the critique of Wall Street and neocon interventionism coming from the Sanders camp. So the Democrat will continue to pose as the Lesser Evil party not really in terms of policy, but simply ad hominum. They will merely repeat Hillary’s campaign stance: They are not Trump. Their parades and street demonstrations since his inauguration have not come out for any economic policy.

On Friday, February 10, the party’s Democratic Policy group held a retreat for its members in Baltimore. Third Way “centrists” (Republicans running as Democrats) dominated, with Hillary operatives in charge. The conclusion was that no party policy was needed at all.

“President Trump is a better recruitment tool for us than a central campaign issue,’ said Washington Rep. Denny Heck, who is leading recruitment for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).”[3]

But what does their party leadership have to offer women, Blacks and Hispanics in the way of employment, more affordable health care, housing or education and better pay? Where are the New Deal pro-labor, pro-regulatory roots of bygone days? The party leadership is unwilling to admit that Trump’s message about protecting jobs and opposing the TPP played a role in his election. Hillary was suspected of supporting it as “the gold standard” of trade deals, and Obama had made the Trans-Pacific Partnership the centerpiece of his presidency – the free-trade TPP and TTIP that would have taken economic regulatory policy out of the hands of government and given it to corporations.

Instead of accepting even Sanders’ centrist-left stance, the Democrats’ strategy was to tar Trump as pro-Russian, insist that his aides had committed impeachable offenses, and mount one parade after another. “Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio told reporters she was wary of focusing solely on an “economic message” aimed at voters whom Trump won over in 2016, because, in her view, Trump did not win on an economic message.

“What Donald Trump did was address them at a very different level — an emotional level, a racial level, a fear level,” she said. “If all we talk about is the economic message, we’re not going to win.”[4]

This stance led Sanders supporters to walk out of a meeting organized by the “centrist” Third Way think tank on Wednesday, February 8.

By now this is an old story. Fifty years ago, socialists such as Michael Harrington asked why union members and progressives still imagined that they had to work through the Democratic Party. It has taken the rest of the country half a century to see that Democrats are not the party of the working class, unions, middle class, farmers or debtors. They are the party of Wall Street privatizers, bank deregulators, neocons and the military-industrial complex. Obama showed his hand – and that of his party – in his passionate attempt to ram through the corporatist TPP treaty that would have enabled corporations to sue governments for any costs imposed by public consumer protection, environmental protection or other protection of the population against financialized corporate monopolies.

Against this backdrop, Trump’s promises and indeed his worldview seem quixotic. The picture of America’s future he has painted seems unattainable within the foreseeable future. It is too late to bring manufacturing back to the United States, because corporations already have shifted their supply nodes abroad, and too much U.S. infrastructure has been dismantled.

There can’t be a high-speed railroad, because it would take more than four years to get the right-of-way and create a route without crossing gates or sharp curves. In any case, the role of railroads and other transportation has been to increase real estate prices along the routes. But in this case, real estate would be torn down – and having a high-speed rail does not increase land values.

The stock market has soared to new heights, anticipating lower taxes on corporate profits and a deregulation of consumer, labor and environmental protection. Trump may end up as America’s Boris Yeltsin, protecting U.S. oligarchs (not that Hillary would have been different, merely cloaked in a more colorful identity rainbow). The U.S. economy is in for Shock Therapy. Voters should look to Greece to get a taste of the future in this scenario.

Without a coherent response to neoliberalism, Trump’s billionaire cabinet may do to the United States what neoliberals in the Clinton administration did to Russia after 1991: tear out all the checks and balances, and turn public wealth over to insiders and oligarchs. So Trump’s his best chance to be transformative is simply to be America’s Yeltsin for his party’s oligarchic backers, putting the class war back in business.

What a truly transformative president would do/would have done

No administration can create a sound U.S. recovery without dealing with the problem that caused the 2008 crisis in the first place: over-indebtedness. The only one way to restore growth, raise living standards and make the economy competitive again is a debt writedown. But that is not yet on the political horizon. Obama’s doublecross of his voters in 2009 prevented the needed policy from occurring. Having missed this chance in the last financial crisis, a progressive policy must await yet another crisis. But so far, no political party is preparing a program to juxtapose to Republican-Democratic austerity and scale-back of Social Security, Medicare and social spending programs in general.

Also no longer on the horizon is a more progressive income tax, or a public option for health care – or for banking, or consumer protection against financial fraud, or for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, or for a revived protection of labor’s right to unionize, or environmental regulations.

It seems that only a new party can achieve these aims. At the time these essays are going to press, Sanders has committed himself to working within the Democratic Party. But that stance is based on his assumption that somehow he can recruit enough activists to take over the party from Its Donor Class.

I suspect he will fail. In any case, it is easier to begin afresh than to try to re-design a party (or any institution) dominated by resistance to change, and whose idea of economic growth is a pastiche of tax cuts and deregulation. Both U.S. parties are committed to this neoliberal program – and seek to blame foreign enemies for the fact that its effect is to continue squeezing living standards and bloating the financial sector.

If this slow but inexorable crash does lead to a political crisis, it looks like the Republicans may succeed in convening a new Constitutional Convention (many states already have approved this) to lock the United States into a corporatist neoliberal world. Its slogan will be that of Margaret Thatcher: TINA – There Is No Alternative.

And who is to disagree? As Trotsky said, fascism is the result of the failure of the left to provide an alternative.

Notes.

[1] Yves Smith, “Women Skeptical of the Women’s March,” Naked Capitalism, February 10, 2017.

[2] Radhika Desai, “Decoding Trump,” Counterpunch, February 10, 2017.

[3] “Pelosi denies Democrats are divided on strategy for 2018,” Yahoo News, February 10, 2018. https://www.yahoo.com/news/pelosi-denies-democrats-are-divided-on-strategy-for-2018-194337876.html

[4] Ibid.

Michael Hudson is the author of Killing the Host (published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by Islet). His new book is J is For Junk Economics.  He can be reached at [email protected].

The allegation – now accepted as incontrovertible fact by the “mainstream” media – that the Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National Committee (and John Podesta’s emails) in an effort to help Donald Trump get elected recently suffered a blow from which it may not recover.

Crowdstrike is the cybersecurity company hired by the DNC to determine who hacked their accounts: it took them a single day to determine the identity of the culprits – it was, they said, two groups of hackers which they named “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” affiliated respectively with the GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, and the FSB, the Russian security service.

How did they know this?

These alleged “hacker groups” are not associated with any known individuals in any way connected to Russian intelligence: instead, they are identified by the tools they use, the times they do their dirty work, the nature of the targets, and other characteristics based on the history of past intrusions.

Yet as Jeffrey Carr and other cyberwarfare experts have pointed out, this methodology is fatally flawed.

“It’s important to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity company has nothing to do with the scientific method,” writes Carr:

“Claims of attribution aren’t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong. Neither are claims of attribution admissible in any criminal case, so those who make the claim don’t have to abide by any rules of evidence (i.e., hearsay, relevance, admissibility).”

Likening attribution claims of hacking incidents by cybersecurity companies to intelligence assessments, Carr notes that, unlike government agencies such the CIA, these companies are never held to account for their misses:

“When it comes to cybersecurity estimates of attribution, no one holds the company that makes the claim accountable because there’s no way to prove whether the assignment of attribution is true or false unless (1) there is a criminal conviction, (2) the hacker is caught in the act, or (3) a government employee leaked the evidence.”

This lack of accountability may be changing, however, because Crowdstrike’s case for attributing the hacking of the DNC to the Russians is falling apart at the seams like a cheap sweater.

To begin with, Crowdstrike initially gauged its certainty as to the identity of the hackers with “medium confidence.” However, a later development, announced in late December and touted by the Washington Post, boosted this to “high confidence.” The reason for this newfound near-certainty was their discovery that “Fancy Bear” had also infected an application used by the Ukrainian military to target separatist artillery in the Ukrainian civil war. As the Post reported:

“While CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate the intrusions and whose findings are described in a new report, had always suspected that one of the two hacker groups that struck the DNC was the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, it had only medium confidence.

“Now, said CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, ‘we have high confidence’ it was a unit of the GRU. CrowdStrike had dubbed that unit ‘Fancy Bear.’”

Crowdstrike published an analysis that claimed a malware program supposedly unique to Fancy Bear, X-Agent, had infected a Ukrainian targeting application and, using GPS to geo-locate Ukrainian positions, had turned the application against the Ukrainians, resulting in huge losses:

“Between July and August 2014, Russian-backed forces launched some of the most-decisive attacks against Ukrainian forces, resulting in significant loss of life, weaponry and territory.

“Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in the two years of conflict and over 80% of D-30 howitzers, the highest percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal.”

Alperovitch told the PBS News Hour that

“Ukraine’s artillery men were targeted by the same hackers, that we call Fancy Bear, that targeted DNC, but this time they were targeting cell phones to try to understand their location so that the Russian artillery forces can actually target them in the open battle. It was the same variant of the same malicious code that we had seen at the DNC.”

He told NBC News that this proved the DNC hacker “wasn’t a 400-pound guy in his bed,” as Trump had opined during the first presidential debate – it was the Russians.

The only problem with this analysis is that is isn’t true. It turns out that Crowdstrike’s estimate of Ukrainian losses was based on a blog post by a pro-Russian blogger eager to tout Ukrainian losses: the Ukrainians denied it. Furthermore, the hacking attribution was based on the hackers’ use of a malware program called X-Agent, supposedly unique to Fancy Bear. Since the target was the Ukrainian military, Crowdstrike extrapolated from this that the hackers were working for the Russians.

All somewhat plausible, except for two things: To begin with, as Jeffrey Carr pointed out in December, and now others are beginning to realize, X-Agent isn’t unique to Fancy Bear. Citing the findings of ESET, another cybersecurity company, he wrote:

“Unlike Crowdstrike, ESET doesn’t assign APT28/Fancy Bear/Sednit to a Russian Intelligence Service or anyone else for a very simple reason. Once malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who deployed it or the developer who created it. It can be reverse-engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and again by anyone. In other words  –  malware deployed is malware enjoyed!

“In fact, the source code for X-Agent, which was used in the DNC, Bundestag, and TV5Monde attacks, was obtained by ESET as part of their investigation!

“During our investigations, we were able to retrieve the complete Xagent source code for the Linux operating system….”

“If ESET could do it, so can others. It is both foolish and baseless to claim, as Crowdstrike does, that X-Agent is used solely by the Russian government when the source code is there for anyone to find and use at will.”

Secondly, the estimate Crowdstrike used to verify the Ukrainian losses was supposedly based on data from the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). But now IISS is disavowing and debunking their claims:

“[T]he International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told [Voice of America] that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened….

“’The CrowdStrike report uses our data, but the inferences and analysis drawn from that data belong solely to the report’s authors,” the IISS said. “The inference they make that reductions in Ukrainian D-30 artillery holdings between 2013 and 2016 were primarily the result of combat losses is not a conclusion that we have ever suggested ourselves, nor one we believe to be accurate.’

“One of the IISS researchers who produced the data said that while the think tank had dramatically lowered its estimates of Ukrainian artillery assets and howitzers in 2013, it did so as part of a ‘reassessment” and reallocation of units to airborne forces.’

“’No, we have never attributed this reduction to combat losses,” the IISS researcher said, explaining that most of the reallocation occurred prior to the two-year period that CrowdStrike cites in its report.

“’The vast majority of the reduction actually occurs … before Crimea/Donbass,’ he added, referring to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

The definitive “evidence” cited by Alperovitch is now effectively debunked: indeed, it was debunked by Carr late last year, but that was ignored in the media’s rush to “prove” the Russians hacked the DNC in order to further Trump’s presidential ambitions. The exposure by the Voice of America of Crowdstrike’s falsification of Ukrainian battlefield losses – the supposedly solid “proof” of attributing the hack to the GRU – is the final nail in Crowdstrike’s coffin. They didn’t bother to verify their analysis of IISS’s data with IISS – they simply took as gospel the allegations of a pro-Russian blogger. They didn’t contact the Ukrainian military, either: instead, their confirmation bias dictated that they shaped the “facts” to fit their predetermined conclusion.

Now why do you suppose that is? Why were they married so early – after a single day – to the conclusion that it was the Russians who were behind the hacking of the DNC?

Crowdstrike founder Alperovitch is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, and head honcho of its “Cyber Statecraft Initiative” – of which his role in promoting the “Putin did it” scenario is a Exhibit A. James Carden, writing in The Nation, makes the trenchant point that

“The connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is relevant given that the Atlantic Council – which is funded in part by the US State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk – has been among the loudest voices calling for a new Cold War with Russia.”

Adam Johnson, writing on the FAIR blog, adds to our knowledge by noting that the Council’s budget is also supplemented by “a consortium of Western corporations (Qualcomm, Coca-Cola, The Blackstone Group), including weapons manufacturers (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman) and oil companies (ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP).”

Johnson also notes that CrowdStrike currently has a $150,000 / year, no-bid contract with the FBI for “systems analysis.”

Nice work if you can get it.

This last little tidbit gives us some insight into what is perhaps the most curious aspect of the Russian-hackers-campaign-for-Trump story: the FBI’s complete dependence on Crowdstrike’s analysis. Amazingly, the FBI did no independent forensic work on the DNC servers before Crowdstrike got its hot little hands on them: indeed, the DNC denied the FBI access to the servers, and, as far as anyone knows, the FBI never examined them. BuzzFeed quotes an anonymous “intelligence official” as saying “Crowdstrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything they have concluded is not accurate.”

There is now.

Alperovitch is scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, and one wonders if our clueless – and technically challenged – Republican members of Congress will question him about the debunking of Crowdstrike’s rush to judgment. I tend to doubt it, since the Russia-did-it meme is now the Accepted Narrative and no dissent is permitted – to challenge it would make them “Putin apologists”! (Although maybe Trey Gowdy, the only GOPer on that panel who seems to have any brains, may surprise me.)

As I’ve been saying for months, there is no evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC: none, zilch, nada. Yet this false narrative is the entire basis of a campaign launched by the Democrats, hailed by the Trump-hating media, and fully endorsed by the FBI and the CIA, the purpose of which is to “prove” that Trump is “Putin’s puppet,” as Hillary Clinton put it. Now the investigative powers of the federal government are being deployed to confirm that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Kremlin in an act the evidence for which is collapsing.

This whole affair is a vicious fraud. If there is any justice in this world – and there may not be – the perpetrators should be charged, tried, and jailed.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

Fake MSM media is now the norm. All mainstream media protects the lies about the Global War On Terrorism.

Instead of recounting the long-proven truth that the terrorists in the Middle East and beyond, but especially in Syria, are imperial appendages/Western proxies, used and manipulated to destroy one country after another, the mainstream protects the narrow interests of a cabal of international war criminals and their hollow stooge political representatives.

Politicians represent a corrupt and criminal Establishment, including the narrow interests of the Military Industrial Complex. They have long since stopped representing “the people”, although “the people” are largely unaware of this since they are bombarded with 24/7 lies that protect and the governing criminals and the oligarch classes globally. The New World Order is a fascist, totalitarian, supranational, and delusional project of “full spectrum dominance” that creates globalized chaos, mass murder, and impoverishment. It is this toxic endeavour that is being hidden from view.

And now the last bastions of truth and peace are being attacked. Professor Chossudovsky writes that the Harvard Index, a list of online publications which are tagged as “fake” and “false”,  

goes far beyond the Catholic Church’s Index which selectively banned books after careful reading, review and evaluation within the Church’s hierarchy. This frivolous decision by Harvard constitutes a violation of the most fundamental principles of university education which are debate, discussion, critique and analysis.

The Harvard Index acts as a Lynchpin. It establishes a “new normal”, a guideline to colleges and universities across the land, regarding what we can or cannot read, what we can or cannot write. 

Is it a conspiracy? Yes it is.  Harvard’s Index broadly undermines the foundation of University education. It instates academic mediocrity.

Universities are thought to be the last bastions of independent thought, where ideas and topics are tested and discussed by experts in research and critical thinking. But now universities are being hobbled by dark state agencies that require a deluded public to advance their criminal projects.

Dark state agencies advance narrow transnational corporate interests, not national interests, beneath the lies, the Public Relations courtesans, the CIA fabrications, and Pentagon overlords. The propaganda budget for the Pentagon alone is reported to be more than half a billion dollars annually.

Those who seek peace, truth, the rule of international law, as well as democratic political and economic systems, are the unstated enemies of our largely covert governing polities.

Whereas the current form of “globalization” engenders global death and destruction, the unheralded but rational and sane (rather than insane and criminal), version is swept under the carpet in this upside down world where left is right and white is black.

In Sovereign Corporations That Occupy The Commons, I write that

The “Fourth World”, as defined by Anthony J. Hall in The American Empire And The Fourth World, is a sustainable model of globalization that respects cultural, economic, and environmental pluralism, as it embraces globalized democracy, and the rights of self –determination. It represents trajectories towards Life and the rule of law, but needs to be allied with an effective apparatus of enforcement.

It is this form of globalization that is targeted precisely because it contradicts the current form of dystopian “globalization”. But this “forbidden truth”, the foundation for international law, is buried beneath the lies and manipulations of imperial agencies.

And the purveyors of these forbidden truths are targeted. Smear campaigns are launched, and careers are torpedoed.

To counter the conspiracies against truth and justice, open debates about “forbidden topics” need to be amplified, not suppressed. Taboos need to be shattered. Hasty conclusions need to be rejected. And the modern-day Inquisition needs to be dismantled.

Failing this, the “consensus of ignorance” will prevail, and humanity will continue on its downward spiral of death and destruction, as it rejects trajectories of Life and Prosperity.

US and European interests continue to portray the government and nation of North Korea as a perpetual security threat to both Asia and the world. Allegations regarding the nation’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs are continuously used as justification for not only a continuous US military presence on the Korean Peninsula, but as justification for a wider continued presence across all of Asia-Pacific.

In reality, what is portrayed as an irrational and provocative posture by the North Korean government, is in fact driven by a very overt, and genuinely provocative posture by the United States and its allies within the South Korean government.

During this year’s Foal Eagle joint US-South Korean military exercises, US-European and South Korean media sources intentionally made mention of  preparations for a “decapitation” strike on North Korea. Such an operation would be intended to quickly eliminate North Korean military and civilian leadership to utterly paralyze the state and any possible response to what would most certainly be the subsequent invasion, occupation and subjugation of North Korea.

The Business Insider in an article titled, “SEAL Team 6 is reportedly training for a decapitation strike against North Korea’s Kim regime,” would report:

The annual Foal Eagle military drills between the US and South Korea will include some heavy hitters this year — the Navy SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden, Army Special Forces, and F-35s — South Korea’s Joon Gang Daily reports. 

South Korean news outlets report that the SEALs, who will join the exercise for the first time, will simulate a “decapitation attack,” or a strike to remove North Korea’s leadership.

To introduce an element of plausible deniability to South Korean reports, the article would continue by stating:

Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gary Ross later told Business Insider that the US military “does not train for decapitation missions” of any kind. 

Yet this is a categorically false statement. Throughout the entirety of the Cold War, US policymakers, military planners and operational preparations focused almost solely on devising methods of “decapitating” the Soviet Union’s political and military leadership.

In more recent years, policy papers and the wars inspired by them have lead to documented instances of attempted “decapitation” operations, including the 2011 US-NATO assault on Libya in which the government of Muammar Qaddafi was targeted by airstrikes aimed at crippling the Libyan state and assassinating both members of the Qaddafi family as well as members of the then ruling government.

Similar operations were aimed at Iraq earlier during the 2003 invasion and occupation by US-led forces.

Regarding North Korea more specifically, entire policy papers have been produced by prominent US policy think tanks including the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) devising plans to decimate North Korea’s military and civilian leadership, invade and occupy the nation and confound North Korea’s capacity to resist what would inevitably be its integration with its southern neighbor.

A 2009 report titled, “Preparing for Sudden Change in North Korea,” lays out policy recommendations regarding regime change in North Korea. It states in its description:

The authors consider the challenges that these scenarios would pose–ranging from securing Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal to providing humanitarian assistance–and analyze the interests of the United States and others. They then provide recommendations for U.S. policy. In particular, they urge Washington to bolster its contingency planning and capabilities in cooperation with South Korea, Japan, and others, and to build a dialogue with China that could address each side’s concerns.

Preparations for these documented plans which include provisions for invasion, occupation and the eventual integration of North Korea with South Korea have been ongoing for years with the most recent Foal Eagle exercises being merely their latest, and most blatant manifestation.

The aforementioned Business Insider article would also report:

Yet a decapitation force would fit with a March 1 Wall Street Journal report that the White House is considering military action against the Kim regime. 

The SEALs boarded the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and should arrive in South Korea on Wednesday, Joon Gang Daily reports. 

South Korea has also made efforts toward a decapitation force, and international calls for action have increased in intensity after North Korea’s latest missile test, which simulated a saturation attack to defeat US and allied missile defenses.

While US-European and South Korean media platforms continue claiming such preparations are being made in reaction to North Korean military programs, careful analysis of North Korea and South Korea’s respective economic and military power reveal immense disparity and North Korea’s military capabilities as solely defensive with any first strike against its neighbors almost certainly leading to retaliation and the nation’s destruction.

North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and its expanding ballistic missile capabilities serve then only to raise the costs of any first strike carried out against it by US and South Korean forces. Claims that preparations by US and South Korean forces to carry out these first strikes are in response to North Korean provocations mirror similar political deceit that surrounded and clouded debate and analysis regarding US aggression in North Africa and the Middle East over the past two decades.

Ultimately, regardless of what political leaders in Washington or Seoul claim, the historical track record of the United States and its allies speaks for itself. Its annual military exercises and its adversarial approach to negotiations and relations with North Korea serve only to further drive tensions on both the peninsula and across the wider Asia-Pacific region.

For the United States, the perpetuation of instability helps justify its otherwise unjustifiable presence in a region literally an ocean away from its own borders. And while Washington cites “North Korean” weapons as a pretext for its continued presence in South Korea, its decades-spanning policy of encircling and attempting to contain neighboring China serves as its actual purpose for remaining involved in Korea’s affairs.

Provocative policies coupled with equally provocative military preparations including these most recent exercises openly aimed at North Korea’s leadership, guarantee continued instability and thus continued justification for a US presence in the region.

Washington’s careful cultivation of tensions on the peninsula serve as just one of many intentionally engineered and perpetuated conflicts across the region. Knowing well that nations targeted by US subversion and provocations will make preparations to defend against them, and possessing the media platforms to portray these preparations as “provocations” in and of themselves, the US has persuaded entire swaths of both its own population and those in regions inflicted by instability it itself drives, that Washington alone possesses the ability to contain such instability with its continued, extraterritorial presence.

In reality, the true solution for establishing peace and prosperity in these inflicted regions is for the US to simply withdraw.

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

US and European interests continue to portray the government and nation of North Korea as a perpetual security threat to both Asia and the world. Allegations regarding the nation’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs are continuously used as justification for not only a continuous US military presence on the Korean Peninsula, but as justification for a wider continued presence across all of Asia-Pacific.

In reality, what is portrayed as an irrational and provocative posture by the North Korean government, is in fact driven by a very overt, and genuinely provocative posture by the United States and its allies within the South Korean government.

During this year’s Foal Eagle joint US-South Korean military exercises, US-European and South Korean media sources intentionally made mention of  preparations for a “decapitation” strike on North Korea. Such an operation would be intended to quickly eliminate North Korean military and civilian leadership to utterly paralyze the state and any possible response to what would most certainly be the subsequent invasion, occupation and subjugation of North Korea.

The Business Insider in an article titled, “SEAL Team 6 is reportedly training for a decapitation strike against North Korea’s Kim regime,” would report:

The annual Foal Eagle military drills between the US and South Korea will include some heavy hitters this year — the Navy SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden, Army Special Forces, and F-35s — South Korea’s Joon Gang Daily reports. 

South Korean news outlets report that the SEALs, who will join the exercise for the first time, will simulate a “decapitation attack,” or a strike to remove North Korea’s leadership.

To introduce an element of plausible deniability to South Korean reports, the article would continue by stating:

Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gary Ross later told Business Insider that the US military “does not train for decapitation missions” of any kind. 

Yet this is a categorically false statement. Throughout the entirety of the Cold War, US policymakers, military planners and operational preparations focused almost solely on devising methods of “decapitating” the Soviet Union’s political and military leadership.

In more recent years, policy papers and the wars inspired by them have lead to documented instances of attempted “decapitation” operations, including the 2011 US-NATO assault on Libya in which the government of Muammar Qaddafi was targeted by airstrikes aimed at crippling the Libyan state and assassinating both members of the Qaddafi family as well as members of the then ruling government.

Similar operations were aimed at Iraq earlier during the 2003 invasion and occupation by US-led forces.

Regarding North Korea more specifically, entire policy papers have been produced by prominent US policy think tanks including the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) devising plans to decimate North Korea’s military and civilian leadership, invade and occupy the nation and confound North Korea’s capacity to resist what would inevitably be its integration with its southern neighbor.

A 2009 report titled, “Preparing for Sudden Change in North Korea,” lays out policy recommendations regarding regime change in North Korea. It states in its description:

The authors consider the challenges that these scenarios would pose–ranging from securing Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal to providing humanitarian assistance–and analyze the interests of the United States and others. They then provide recommendations for U.S. policy. In particular, they urge Washington to bolster its contingency planning and capabilities in cooperation with South Korea, Japan, and others, and to build a dialogue with China that could address each side’s concerns.

Preparations for these documented plans which include provisions for invasion, occupation and the eventual integration of North Korea with South Korea have been ongoing for years with the most recent Foal Eagle exercises being merely their latest, and most blatant manifestation.

The aforementioned Business Insider article would also report:

Yet a decapitation force would fit with a March 1 Wall Street Journal report that the White House is considering military action against the Kim regime. 

The SEALs boarded the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and should arrive in South Korea on Wednesday, Joon Gang Daily reports. 

South Korea has also made efforts toward a decapitation force, and international calls for action have increased in intensity after North Korea’s latest missile test, which simulated a saturation attack to defeat US and allied missile defenses.

While US-European and South Korean media platforms continue claiming such preparations are being made in reaction to North Korean military programs, careful analysis of North Korea and South Korea’s respective economic and military power reveal immense disparity and North Korea’s military capabilities as solely defensive with any first strike against its neighbors almost certainly leading to retaliation and the nation’s destruction.

North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and its expanding ballistic missile capabilities serve then only to raise the costs of any first strike carried out against it by US and South Korean forces. Claims that preparations by US and South Korean forces to carry out these first strikes are in response to North Korean provocations mirror similar political deceit that surrounded and clouded debate and analysis regarding US aggression in North Africa and the Middle East over the past two decades.

Ultimately, regardless of what political leaders in Washington or Seoul claim, the historical track record of the United States and its allies speaks for itself. Its annual military exercises and its adversarial approach to negotiations and relations with North Korea serve only to further drive tensions on both the peninsula and across the wider Asia-Pacific region.

For the United States, the perpetuation of instability helps justify its otherwise unjustifiable presence in a region literally an ocean away from its own borders. And while Washington cites “North Korean” weapons as a pretext for its continued presence in South Korea, its decades-spanning policy of encircling and attempting to contain neighboring China serves as its actual purpose for remaining involved in Korea’s affairs.

Provocative policies coupled with equally provocative military preparations including these most recent exercises openly aimed at North Korea’s leadership, guarantee continued instability and thus continued justification for a US presence in the region.

Washington’s careful cultivation of tensions on the peninsula serve as just one of many intentionally engineered and perpetuated conflicts across the region. Knowing well that nations targeted by US subversion and provocations will make preparations to defend against them, and possessing the media platforms to portray these preparations as “provocations” in and of themselves, the US has persuaded entire swaths of both its own population and those in regions inflicted by instability it itself drives, that Washington alone possesses the ability to contain such instability with its continued, extraterritorial presence.

In reality, the true solution for establishing peace and prosperity in these inflicted regions is for the US to simply withdraw.

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

The recent expansion of US military forces in Syria follows a predictable, singular agenda targeting this nation for decades – and more specifically – during the most recent and ongoing conflict which began in 2011 amid the US-engineered “Arab Spring.”

The UK Independent in its article, “US marines sent to Syria to help assault on Isis’ Raqqa stronghold,” would report that:

Hundreds of US marines have arrived in Syria armed with heavy artillery in preparation for an assault on Isis’ de-facto capital of Raqqa.

However, the presence of US troops in Syria is entirely unsolicited by the Syrian government and constitutes a clear violation of Syria’s national sovereignty under international law.

CNN in its article, “Assad: US military forces in Syria are ‘invaders’,” would report that:

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad scoffed and questioned US actions in Syria, calling American troops deploying to the country “invaders” because he hadn’t given permission for them to enter the country and saying there’s been no “concrete action” from the Trump administration toward ISIS.

The fact that US policy remains absolutely unchanged despite a new president taking office is no surprise.

Further Evidence of Continuity of Agenda 

With Israel occupying Syria’s Golan Heights and Turkish troops occupying a northern “buffer zone” stretching from Azaz in the west to Jarabulus on the Euphrates River in the east, US troops continuing to carve out a permanent presence in Syria’s eastern most regions threatens to fulfill a decades old conspiracy to divide and destroy the Syrian state.

Recently declassified documents from the US Central Intelligence Agency reveal that as early as 1983, the US was engaged in virtually identical covert and overt operations aimed at destabilizing and overthrowing the Syria government.

A 1983 document signed by former CIA officer Graham Fuller titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria” (PDF), states (their emphasis):

Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey. 

The report also states:

If Israel were to increase tensions against Syria simultaneously with an Iraqi initiative, the pressures on Assad would escalate rapidly. A Turkish move would psychologically press him further. 

That a virtually indistinguishable agenda has transcended decades and multiple presidencies allows observers of Syria’s current conflict to sidestep tempting political diversions and focus solely on the strategic overlay of the actual conflict.

Despite claims across the Western media that Turkey and the United States are at odds – and specifically at odds regarding their respective illegal occupations and operations within Syrian territory – their decades long collaboration in the attempted division and destruction of the Syrian state indicates that in all likelihood, this collaboration continues, albeit behind a veil of feigned conflicting interests.

Likewise, attempts to portray Israel as a rogue nation amid this ongoing conflict affords US policymakers flexibility through plausible deniability. Airstrikes targeting Syrian forces impossible for the US or even Turkey to justify, are tolerated by the “international community” when carried out by Israel.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other lesser members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are similarly used to launder various aspects of US foreign policy targeting Syria through, including the arming, training, and funding of various terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) itself.

Should the US-NATO-Israeli-GCC axis be more overtly apparent, such flexibility would be significantly negated.

The True Endgame for US Troops in Syria

US ambitions versus the Syrian state have been significantly rolled back by both Syrian advances on the battlefield and the direct military support it is receiving from allies including Russia and Iran. Turkish forces attempting to advance deeper into Syrian territory under the guise of fighting “terrorists” and Kurdish fighters Ankara claims threaten Turkish national security are now chaffing against Syrian Arab Army forces changing places with Kurdish forces along the perimeter of Turkey’s “buffer zone.”

Likewise, US forces are facing similar obstacles in their attempts to incrementally seize Syrian territory. Additionally, their proxy forces consist of militant organizations disinterested in long-term cooperation with the United States or in carving out autonomous regions within Syria’s borders that will inevitably face sociopolitical and economic hurdles the US will have no interest in assisting them in crossing – meaning that eventually, any long-term deal will likely be struck with Damascus, not Washington.

But like Israel’s seizure and ongoing occupation of the Golan Heights, Turkish and American incursions and territorial seizures constitutes a similar, incremental dismemberment of the Syrian state. Facing the likely prospect that most of Syria’s territory will return to Damascus’ control sooner than later, the US and its collaborators in Ankara are attempting to take and hold as much territory as possible before this happens in a bid to weaken Syria ahead of future, yet to unfold rounds of targeted destabilization.

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

Israeli warplanes reportedly delivered airstrikes against Syrian army targets in the Qasioun Mount region near Damascus early on March 22nd. Israeli jets allegedly carried out four rounds of airstrikes. There were no reports about casualties or damage suffered by Syrian government forces.

Initially reports about the incident appeared in pro-militant social media accounts and then were widely spread by the Israeli media. If confirmed, the recent raids were the fourth round of airstrikes attributed to Israel in Syria in less than a week.

The reports about the fresh Israeli airstrikes in Syria came just a few hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue hitting targets in Syria. Netanyahu made this claim during a visit to China, adding that he had informed Putin of Israel’s intentions.

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Israel’s Ambassador to Moscow to protest an Israeli military strike near the Syrian city of Palmyra last Friday. This was after Israeli jets breached Syrian air space and attacked a military target near Palmyra on the night of March 17th. According to Israel’s Channel 2, the Israeli strike hit close to Russian troops. In turn, the Syrian military fired several anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli warplanes and claimed that one of them was destroyed and another one hit. The Israel Defense Forces denied these claims and said that one missile fired from the ground was intercepted by the Arrow 2 anti-ballistic missile.

Following the incident, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, threatened to destroy Syrian air defense systems.

“The next time the Syrians use their air defense systems against our planes we will destroy them without the slightest hesitation,” Lieberman said on Israeli public radio.

At the same time, Israel continued to push the narrative that Russia and other powers must move to limit Iran’s military strength in Syria. The director-general of Israel’s Intelligence Ministry, Chagai Tzuriel, repeated this in an interview to Reuters on March 21st.

The growing Israeli propaganda and diplomatic and military efforts over the conflict in Syria came amid the intensification of military operations of the so-called moderate opposition against government forces in northern Hama and eastern Damascus. Jaish al-Islam and other groups invited to the Astana format supported the military actions of Hayat Tahir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda). This showed that the negotiations in Astana brokered by Ankara, Moscow, and Tehran resulted in no progress in separating “moderate rebels” from their “radical counterparts.”

Most likely, this situation is a result of the fact covered by SF in its last two videos about the geopolitical standoff in the post-ISIS Middle East – Turkey provides a general support to the Israeli efforts aimed at undermining the Assad government and limiting the Iranian influence. Turkey and Israel also share the ground in supporting so-called moderate rebels operating in western Syria.

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

Mosul, Iraq – Hasan thought he had seen everything after fighting Islamic State in Fallujah in Tikrit. Then he came to Mosul, and a boy no older then 10 tried to kill him.

“It was utterly shocking,” says the 40-year-old soldier, dragging nervously on a cigarette as he remembers the child among a group of young IS suicide bombers.

“I found myself in front of children full of hatred. They all had explosive belts and they were all ready to die. It isn’t anything like killing an adult. But we had to do it.”

“It’s a cruelty that has no end. For us it is a violent pain, we know we have to fight against children who have been indoctrinated in the name of a sick religion.”

This is the reality of war in northern Iraq, where IS is throwing everything – and everyone – at Iraqi forces as they slowly take back Mosul and the surrounding areas in a bitter war that has destroyed the very social fabric of the city.

Children have been spared nothing: poverty, malnutrition and cruelty under IS control; then forced onto the frontlines to be used as spotters, fighters, human shields and suicide bombers as the battles began to rage.

These are tactics that have destroyed family life in the city and its surrounding villages, where IS scooped up youngsters to teach them the ways of their “Caliph”.

In Hamam al-Alil, south of Mosul, Amir tells Middle East Eye of his own son, Mushak, who swore allegiance aged 11 soon after IS arrived in 2014.

“My children had never gone to school,” he said, his face a contortion of fatigue and pain.

“When Daesh arrived my son was a boy full of anger, he could not read or write. They taught him the hatred of the infidels. They taught him to kill.”

“In two-and-a-half years he became a soldier of the Islamic police. He wasn’t even 14. I tried to stop him swearing allegiance to the Caliph, and he told me: ‘Shut up or I’ll cut your head’.”

“One day he came home with a gun and threatened me – an armed child who comes into the house saying I cannot criticise Daesh – and broke his mother’s arm as she begged him to stop.”

All villages had recruiters, said Amir, adding that more than half of the children of Hamam al-Alil have been recruited, many of them never been seen again.

Amir has lost his son:

“I’m not scared he is dead. I do not care. Mushak is the shame of our family.

“Now here everybody hate us, we are desperate, we can not even go to the shop, we live locked in the house, for fear of being lynched in the street. We lost everything, a son, home, dignity, everything.”

An IS video of children from its ‘young lions’ division (screengrab)

IS has published dozens of videos of its “young lions” division, children dressed in combat uniform and training for war. In the worst, they have been filmed carrying out executions.

In Mosul, the group are believed to have set up at least one camp for children.

Even those who escape recruitment do not escape the war.

During an Iraqi advance through al-Shouhadaa in western Mosul last week, the cost on young lives was there to see in every liberated house: dozens of civilians huddling in the dark, waiting for the end to come.

“Daesh used our children as human shields,” said one man, Mahmoud, as he embraced a soldier who had stepped into the gloom.

“They entered our house, and forced us to follow them to prevent bombing. My son now cannot speak, he can only say ‘IS is great’.

“They wanted him to be a soldier, they taught him maths to count bullets for their magazines, they taught him how to kill someone by cutting his throat. What kind of future do you think he will have?” 

Threats still remain in areas liberated by Iraqi forces.

Ali reopened his clinic in the city’s east after Islamic State was kicked two months ago. The hallways stand derelict, the windows were smashed in a car bomb attack that killed Iraqi soldiers in November, but it is at least now providing basic care.

However, the 30-year-old doctor does not feel safe, and not just from the suicide bombers on the roads and drones dropping deadly payloads from the sky. He also fears the children.

He has seen child soldiers enter his clinic and threaten doctors, guessing they were “recruits” from a local orphanage cleared by IS when it was still in control.

“Daesh certainly recruited them,” he said. “Daesh fighters forced all the children and girls to leave the building, and they kept the girls as sex slaves and forced the boys to fight. This generation is a lost generation.”

Ali failed to escape from Mosul when IS arrived in 2014, and continued working as a doctor under the rule of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He knows he is now a target – he has seen a lot. Probably too much.

“Daesh is still among us. We know who hides them.”

But the fear of a child’s indoctrinated, immature rage is nothing next to Ali’s concern for the future of the lost generation that surrounds him.

Perhaps 30,000 children have been born in Mosul in two-and-a-half years under IS rule, and none of them has been vaccinated against the terrible diseases that prey on the weak: polio, smallpox, measles to name a few.

Nor do they have official birth certificates – IS documents do not count for Iraqi officials and many civilians chose not to register their children anyway, rendering them effectively stateless.

In Bartella, a town 20km east of Mosul liberated in November, Iraqi authorities have set up a mobile office to give people the choice to request new documents.

Marwa has three children, all without documents. The youngest daughter, Sara, was born after 2014 and her birth was never registered.

“My husband and I would never have accepted that Sara had a Daesh birth certificate, but now for us it’s all very difficult,” she said.

“I come here every day since January and no one gives me any answers. Intelligence officers interrogated me a dozen times, and they verified my family had no links with Daesh, but there’s no sign of our documents.”

Parents also face a battle to reclaim their identities. Many in Mosul had their Iraqi IDs destroyed by IS, who then issued new papers. These, in turn, were destroyed when Iraqi forces closed in for fear it would connect them to the group.

Aisha Salman clutched a picture of her son as she waits to submit her application for documents.

He was killed by IS fighters after they found out his father was in the army.

“After my son’s death, a Daesh militant stole his documents,” she said.

“They stole his life and they stole his identity. Today one of those murderers is defiling the memory of my son. And I do not know how to get justice.”

US and UK covert operations in Somalia

The Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is the lead agency in the covert ‘war on terror’ in Somalia, although the CIA also has a strong regional presence.

The US has been carrying out extensive covert military operations inside Somalia since 2001, as a major six-part investigation by the US Army Times recently revealed.

Elite troops from the Pentagon’s JSOC are routinely deployed on the ground for surveillance, reconnaissance, and assault and capture operations. In June 2011, the US began carrying out drone strikes in Somalia. JSOC has its own fleet of armed Reaper drones, which are flown from various bases in the region.

The CIA also operates a secret base at Mogadishu airport, according to a detailed investigation by Jeremy Scahill at The Nation. Unarmed US surveillance drones also regularly fly from the airport, according to a well-informed Bureau source. While some of these are part of the US ‘war on terror’, many provide support for peacekeeping operations in the region.

The US’s primary target is currently al Shabaab, the militant group which controls much of the country’s south. On February 9 2012, al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri announced that al Shabaab had formally become a franchise of al Qaeda.

In recent years, both Kenya and Ethiopia have invaded parts of Somalia, the latter allegedly with the military aid of the US. JSOC forces are reported to have taken advantage of these events to carry out more intensive operations against militants, often using helicopters, airstrikes, AC-130 gunships and “boots on the ground”.

Key reports of operations in Somalia

The Bureau has collated credible reports of known covert operations and other events in Somalia relating to the ‘war on terror’. These are drawn from major international news media and agencies, political and military memoirs and papers, and academic research. All sources are transparently presented.

Given the nature of covert operations and the difficulties in reporting from Somalia, the Bureau understands that this is an incomplete record. We welcome corrections and additions.

To Read the Complete report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism click here

 

 

An American political commentator said the West is using the Riyadh regime as a tool to advance its political agenda, stressing that certain Western countries, which claim to be champions of human rights, are in actual fact the perpetrators of the ongoing genocide in Yemen.

“What is undeniable is the fact that those who ‘promote human rights’ are the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes, including the Genocide in Yemen. To deny their complicity is to deny humanity,” Soraya Sepahpour Ulrich, an independent researcher and author from Irvine, California, told the Tasnim News Agency ahead of the March 26 anniversary of the start of Saudi Arabia’s aggression against Yemen.

She added,

“Today, while Saudi Arabia is being armed and directed to massacre fellow Moslems, it remains deaf to the chant ‘death to Saudis’ coming from the four corners of the ‘international community’. In spite of killing and dying for the political agenda of the US and its allies, the Saudis continue to be despised, hated – set apart. They will not be protected. They are dispensable”..

Following is the full text of the interview.

Tasnim: The Saudi-led coalition has been launching deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement for two years. According to the UN, the Saudi military campaign has claimed the lives of more than 11,000 Yemenis and left 40,000 others wounded. Local Yemeni sources have already put the death toll from the Saudi war at over 12,000, including many women and children. As you know the international community has remained passive in the face of the ongoing Saudi crimes. What is your take on this? Why do you think this issue, the war on Yemen, has been less received by Western media?

Ulrich: I tend to think of the “international community’ as the US and its allies and differentiate between the term ‘international community’ and global community. The indifference toward the plight of the Yemenis is owed to several factors one of which is the media.

There are 6 corporations that own and dominate the media.  It is important to note that what was once known as the military-industrial complex has become the ‘military-industrial-media complex’. Media magnates and people on the boards of large media-related corporations have close links with the military industry and Washington’s foreign policy. This industry not only informs the public but frames issues.

This complex fails to inform the public of the plight of the Yemenis. Since the internet has managed to curb the monopoly of the media industry (alternate news sites and social networking), from time to time, the media industry is forced to acknowledge the horrors of Yemen, but it frames it in such a way so as to change the narrative. For example, it falsely presents the conflict as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Through repeated lies, the ‘international community’ has been indoctrinated to see Iran as an aggressive country and the Yemenis resisting the invasion of the Saudi-led war as the assailants, putting the blame on the victims.

In addition to the blame game, the international community is being distracted with news on its domestic front. The best example of this are the refugees in Europe and the pending elections there, and in the United States, it is the Donald Trump presidency that occupies the airwaves and censors all other news.

But censorship, framing, and propaganda do not mean that the governments in these countries (international community) are not aware. They are fully complicit either through their actions or inaction.

Tasnim: Certain Western countries are continuously claiming that they are champions of human rights. However, it seems that they are pursuing double standard policies on Saudi Arabia’s atrocities. On March 10, 2017, the administration of US President Donald Trump approved the resumption of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia which critics have linked to Riyadh’s killing of civilians in Yemen. What is your take on this?

Ulrich: Human rights is simply another tool in the arsenal of these nations used to justify their policies. (War on terror being another useful tool of theirs). Consider this and dwell on the irony of it: When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 (UN General Assembly), there were less than 60 UN members while dozens of countries were colonies. How could this be considered ‘rights’? Certainly, it is not universal or ideal else there would not have been a need for subsequent declarations such The American Declaration of Rights and Duties of Man (Bogota, 1948), the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (known as the European Convention for Human Rights – Strasbourg,1950), African Charter on Human Rights (Nairobi, 1981), the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (Paris, 1981) , the Arab Charter on Human Rights (1994), the European Center on Fundamental Rights (2000), and so on.

What is undeniable is the fact that those who ‘promote human rights’ are the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes, including the Genocide in Yemen. To deny their complicity is to deny humanity.

Tasnim: Since the start of its war on Yemen, the Saudi regime and its regional allies have failed to reach their objectives. Why are they continuing their heinous attacks on the Arab country despite their failures? How do you see the role of other regional Arab states in the ongoing war against the Arab country?

Ulrich: It is important to recognize that Saudi Arabia is not solely responsible nor is it the country that is independently fueling and promoting this conflict. One country often ignored is the UAE. As the world turns its anger and hatred towards the Saudis (with help from Western media which points their fingers at the Saudis for their actions in Yemen), UAE is kept above the fray. Whereas in fact, the UAE is home to Erik Prince, the founder of notorious Blackwater. It is training a UAE-led militia force and UAE’s complicity in the crimes deserve to be discussed separately. Suffice it to say that as the Saudis fall from grace, the UAE continues to climb (in America’s plots and those of her allies).

The Saudis, on the other hand, are being used by the West and sadly for them (and their victims), they continue to play the role of gladiators. As Cicero acknowledged of the Roman gladiatoria muner thattheir sponsorship was a political imperative. Even though the Roman gladiators were adulated, they were segregated and despised. The Saudis share the same fate. It is worthwhile remembering that in 2012 it was revealed that a course for US military officers had been suggesting that Mecca and Medina be obliterated without regard for civilian deaths, and it even suggested “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation … Islam reduced to cult status”.

As President Donald Trump wrote in his book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again.:  “Then look at Saudi Arabia. It is the world’s biggest funder of terrorism. Saudi Arabia funnels our petro dollars—our very own money—to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people, while the Saudis rely on us to protect them!”

Today, while Saudi Arabia is being armed and directed to massacre fellow Moslems, it remains deaf to the chant ‘death to Saudis’ coming from the four corners of the ‘international community’. In spite of killing and dying for the political agenda of the US and its allies, the Saudis continue to be despised, hated – set apart. They will not be protected.   They are dispensable.

Sepahpour Ulrich has a Master’s in Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg for Communication. She is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on US foreign policy. Her articles and writings on Iran’s nuclear program, the Middle East developments and the US foreign policy have been published by several print and online publications