Selected Articles: Prosecute the Clintons for Wrecking Haiti

November 14th, 2016 by Global Research News

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Six Ways Trump Could Help Haiti Recover from Clinton Disaster. Prosecute the Clintons? Will He do It??

By Dady Chery, November 14 2016

For Haitian-Americans, the US presidential race was a fight not only to wrest our native land from the Clintons, but also our adopted homeland. The US would have been Hillary Clinton’s next target after she and her cronies had refined in Haiti their methods to rig elections, co-opt journalists, and destroy economies. The evidence of wrongdoing was there for all to see, but throughout the yearlong campaign by the Greens, Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats, Mr. Trump was the only candidate who singled out Clinton’s indefensible pay-to-play conduct in Haiti for attack.

clintons pointingHaiti: How Bill and Hillary Clinton Wrecked an Entire Country

By Jean Saint-Vil, November 14 2016

Hillary Clinton intervened personally in the 2010-11 Haitian elections to rig them in favour of Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly. The latter went on to steal millions of dollars to enrich himself and his family over a five year presidency marked by scandalous debauchery by Haiti’s morally-repugnant 1%, while the Black majority continues to die whenever it rains on their environmentally-vulnerable third of island.

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What the Clintons Did to Haiti

By Nathan J. Robinson, November 13 2016

Their actions in the country were shameful and shouldn’t be defended… In this excerpt from Superpredator: Bill Clinton’s Use and Abuse of Black America, we examine the Clintons’ involvement in the country’s affairs during Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department.

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South Korea’s Historic “One Million People Protest” to Oust Washington’s Puppet President Park Geun-hye

By Hyun Lee, November 14 2016

As the United States ushers in a new right wing president into office, South Korea is about to give theirs the boot. One million people gathered in Seoul on November 12 to demand Park Geun-hye’s resignation. This is the largest protest South Korea has seen since the democratic uprising of June 1987.

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Voices from Syria Refute Western Propaganda: US-NATO Supported Terrorists Involved in Countless Atrocities

By Mark Taliano, November 13 2016

Recent estimates suggest that terrorists from about 100 countries are currently infesting Syria. Coupled with the legal interventions of the “Axis of resistance”, and the illegal war crimes of NATO and its allies, means that the dirty war on Syria is increasingly a world war.

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“Anti-Americanism” in the Philippines. President Duterte’s Subaltern Counter-Hegemony

By Prof. E. San Juan Jr., November 14 2016

What does “anti-Americanism” mean—to be against McDonald burgers, Beyonce, I-phones, Saturday Night Live, Lady Gaga, Bloomingdale fashions, Wall Street, or Washington-Pentagon imperial browbeating of inferior nations/peoples-of-color? Duterte is suspending joint military exercises, separating from U.S. government foreign policy by renewing friendly cooperation with China in the smoldering South China Sea, and”veering” toward Russia for economic ties—in short, promoting what will counter the debilitating, predatory U.S. legacy.

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“Anti-Americanism” in the Philippines. President Duterte’s Subaltern Counter-Hegemony

November 14th, 2016 by Prof. E. San Juan Jr.

“A howling wilderness” was what General Jacob Smith ordered his troops to make of Samar, Philippines. He was taking revenge for the ambush of fifty-four soldiers by Filipino revolutionaries in September 1901.

After the invaders killed most of the island’s inhabitants, three bells from the Balangiga Church were looted as war trophies; two are still displayed at Warren Air Force Base, Cheyenne, Wyoming. Very few Americans know this. Nor would they have any clue about the 1913 massacre of thousands of Muslim women, men and children resisting General Pershing’s (image right) systematic destruction of their homes in Mindanao where President Rodrigo Duterte today resides.

Addressing this dire amnesia afflicting the public, both in the Philippines and abroad, newly-elected president Duterte began the task of evoking/invoking the accursed past. He assumed the role of oral tribune, with prophetic expletives. Like the Filipino guerillas of Generals Lukban and Malvar who retreated to the mountains (called “boondocks” by American pursuers from the Tagalog word “bundok,” mountain), Duterte seems to be coming down with the task of reclaiming the collective dignity of the heathens— eulogized by Rudyard Kipling, at the start of the war in February 1899, as “the white men’s burden.” The first U.S. civil governor William Howard Taft patronizingly adopted this burden of saving the Filipino “little brown brother” as a benighted colonial ward, not a citizen.

White Men’s Burden

The Filipino-American War of 1899-1913 occupies only a paragraph, at most, in most US texbooks, a blip in the rise of the United States as an Asian Pacific Leviathan. Hobbes’ figure is more applicable to international rivalries than to predatory neoliberal capitalism today, or to the urban jungle of MetroManila.  At least 1.4 million Filipinos (verified by historian Luzviminda Francisco) died as a result of the scorched-earth policy of President McKinley.  His armed missionaries were notorious for Vietnam-style “hamletting.” They also practised the “water-cure,” also known as “water-boarding,” a form of torture now legitimized in a genocidal war of terror (Iraq, Afghanistan)  that recalls the ruthless suppression of Native American tribes and dehumanization of African slaves in the westward march of the “civilizing Krag” to the Pacific, to the Chinese market. Today the struggle at Standing Rock and Black-Lives-Matter are timely reminders. Stuart Creighton Miller’s 1982 book, “Benevolent Assimilation,” together with asides by Gabriel Kolko and Howard Zinn, recounted the vicissitudes of that bloody passage through Philippine boondocks and countryside.

Not everyone acquiesced to Washington’s brutal annexation of the island-colony. Mark Twain exposed the hypocrisy of  Washington’s “Benevolent Assimilation” with searing diatribes, as though inventing the “conscience” of his generation. William James, William Dean Howells, W.E.B. DuBois and other public intellectuals denounced what turned out to be the “first Vietnam” (Bernard Fall’s rubric).

It was a learning experience for the conquerors. In Policing America’s Empire, Alfred McCoy discovered that America’s “tutelage” of the Filipino elite (involving oligarchic politicians of the Commonwealth period up to Marcos and Aquino) functioned as a laboratory for crafting methods of surveillance, ideological manipulation, propaganda, and other modes of covert and overt pacification. Censorship, mass arrests of suspected dissidents, torture and assassination of “bandits” protesting landlord abuses and bureaucratic corruption  in the first three decades of colonial rule led to large-scale killing of peasants and workers in numerous Colorum and Sakdalista uprisings.

Re-Visiting the Cold War of Terror

This pattern of racialized class oppression via electoral politics and discipiinary pedagogy culminated in the Cold War apparatus devised by CIA agent Edward Lansdale and the technocrats of Magsasay to suppress the Huk rebellion in the two decades after formal granting of independence in 1946.

The Cold War Leviathan continued to operate in the savage extrajudicial killings during the Marcos dictatorship. The Marcos family were rescued by President Reagan from the wrath of millions in the February 1982 “People Power” revolt. After Marcos’ death, the Marcos family and the despot’s cadaver were allowed by then President Ramos to return.

Given the re-installment of the feudal-comprador ellite due partly to the failure of the national-democratic forces to educate, organize and mobilize the masses, the Marcos family recovered institutional power. The current reactionary Supreme Court Justices and Duterte’s link to the Marcoses are a symptom of fierce internecine conflict within the oligarchic bloc. It fosters sectarian partisanship and opportunist fantasies. The controversy over Marcos’ burial today cannot be fully assayed without factoring in, in this conjunctural crisis, the role of patronage-clientelism syndrome in the body politic and the U.S.-oriented State ideological-military apparatus of a decadent oligarchic elite.

Mournless Melancholia

U.S. Cold War Realpolitik defined Corazon Aquino’s “total war” against nationalists, progressive peasants, professionals, Igorots, Lumads—all touted by Washington/Pentagon as the price for enjoying  individualist prerogatives, esp. the right to gamble in the capitalist casino. This constitutes the rationale for U.S.-subsidized counterinsurgency schemes to shore up the decadent, if not moribund, status quo—a society plagued by profound and seemingly durable disparity of wealth and power—now impolitely challenged by Duterte.

Not a single mass-media article on Duterte’s intent to forge an independent foreign policy and solve corruption linked to narcopolitics, provides even an iota of historical background on the US record of colonial subjugation of Filipino bodies and souls. This is not strange, given the long history of Filipino “miseducation” documented by Renato Constantino. Perhaps the neglect if not dismissal of the Filipino collective experience is due to the indiscriminate celebration of America’s success in making the natives speak English, imitate the American Way of Life shown in Hollywood movies, and indulge in mimicked consumerism.

What is scandalous is the complicity of the U.S. intelligentsia (with few exceptions) in regurgitating the “civilizing effect” of colonial exploitation. Every time the Filipino essence is described as violent, foolish, shrewd or cunning, the evidence displays the actions of a  landlord-politician, bureaucrat, savvy merchant, U.S.-educated professional, or rich entrepreneur. Unequal groups dissolve into these representative types: Quezon, Roxas, Magsaysay, Fidel Ramos, etc. What seems ironic if not parodic is that after a century of massive research and formulaic analysis of the colony’s underdevelopment, we arrive at Stanley Karnow’s verdict (amplified in In Our Image) that, really, the Filipinos and their character-syndromes are to blame for their poverty and backwardness, for not being smart beneficiaries of American “good works.” “F—ck you,” Duterte might uncouthly respond.

Hobbes or Machiavelli?

An avalanche of media commentaries, disingenously purporting to be objective news reports, followed Duterte’s campaign to eradicate the endemic drug addiction rampant in the country. No need to cite statistics about the criminality of narcopolitics infecting the whole country, from poor slum-dweller to Senators and moguls; let’s get down to the basics. But the media, without any judicious assaying of hearsay, concluded that Duterte’s policy—his public pronouncement that bodies will float in Manila Bay, etc.—caused the killing of innocent civilians. His method of attack impressed the academics as Hobbesian, not Machiavellian. The journalistic imperative to sensationalize and distort by selective framing (following, of course, corporate norms and biases) governs the style and content of quotidian media operations.

Is Duterte guilty of the alleged EJK (extrajudicial killings)? No doubt, druglords and their police accomplices took advantage of the policy to silence their minions. This is the fabled “collateral damage” bewailed by the bishops and moralists. But Obama, UN and local pundits associated with the defeated parties seized on the cases of innocent victims (two or three are more than enough, demonstrated by the photo of a woman allegedly cradling the body of her husband, blown up in Time (October 10) and in The Atlantic, September issue, and social media) to teach Duterte a lesson on human rights, due process, and genteel diplomatic protocols. This irked the thin-skinned town mayor whose lack of etiquette, civility, and petty-bourgeois decorum became the target of unctuous sermons.

Stigma for All Seasons: “Anti-Americanism”

What finally gave the casuistic game away, in my view, is the piece in the November issue of The Atlantic by Jon Emont entitled “Duterte’s Anti-Americanism.” What does “anti-Americanism” mean—to be against McDonald burgers, Beyonce, I-phones, Saturday Night Live, Lady Gaga, Bloomingdale fashions, Wall Street, or Washington-Pentagon imperial browbeating of inferior nations/peoples-of-color? The article points to tell-tale symptoms: Duterte is suspending joint military exercises, separating from U.S. government foreign policy by renewing friendly cooperation with China in the smoldering South China Sea, and”veering” toward Russia for economic ties—in short, promoting what will counter the debilitating, predatory U.S. legacy.

Above all, Duterte (image right) is guilty of diverging from public opinion, meaning the Filipino love for Americans. He rejects US “security guarantees,” ignores the $3 billion remittances of Filipinos (presumably, relatives of middle and upper classes), the $13 million given by the U.S. for relief of Yolanda typhoon victims in 2013. Three negative testimonies against Duterte’s “anti-American bluster” are used: 1) Asia Foundation official Steven Rood’s comment that since most Filipinos don’t care about foreign policy, “elites have considerable latitude,” that is, they can do whatever pleases them. 2)  Richard Javad Heydarian, affiliated with De La Salle University, is quoted—this professor is now a celebrity of the anti-Duterte cult—that Duterte “can get away with it”; and, finally, Gen Fidel Ramos who contends that the military top brass “like US troops”—West-Point-trained Ramos has expanded on his tirade against Duterte with the usual cliches of unruly client-state leaders who turn against their masters, and seems ready to lead a farcical version of the 1968 People Power revolt, one of the symptoms of fierce internecine strife within the corrupt oligarchic bloc.

Like other anti-Duterte squibs, the article finally comes up with the psychological diagnosis of Duterte’s fixation on the case of the Davao 2002 bombing when a “supposed involvement of US officials” who spirited a CIA-affiliated American bomber confirmed the Davao mayor’s fondness for “stereotypes of superior meddling America.” The judgment seems anticllimatic. What calls attention will not be strange anymore: there is not a whisper of the tortuous history of US imperial exercise of power on the subalterns.

This polemic-cum-factoids culminates in a faux-folksy, rebarbative quip: “Washington can tolerate a thin-skinned ally who bites the hand that feeds him through crass invective.”  The Washington Post (Nov 2) quickly intoned its approval by harping on Ramos’ defection as a sign of the local elite’s displeasure. With Washington halting the sale of rifles to the Philippine police because of Duterte’s human-rights abuses, the Post warns that $ 9 million military aid and $32 million funds for law-enforcement will be dropped by Congress if Duterte doesn’t stop his “anti-US rhetoric.” Trick or treat? Duterte should learn that actions have consequences, pontificated this sacred office of journalistic rectitude after the Halloween mayhem.

On this recycled issue of “anti-Americanism,” the best riposte is by Michael Parenti, from his incisive book Inventing Reality: “The media dismiss conflicts that arise between the United States and popular forces in other countries as manifestations of the latter’s “anti-Americanism”….When thousands marched in the Philippines against the abominated US-supported Marcos regime, the New York Times reported, “Anti-Marcos and anti-American slogans and banners were in abundance, with the most common being “Down with the US-Marcos Dictatorship!” A week later, the Times again described Filipino protests against US support of the Marcos dictatorship as “anti-Americanism.” The Atlantic, the New York Times,and the Washington Post share an ideological-political genealogy with the Cold War paranoia currentlygripping the U.S. ruling-class Establishment.

Predictably, the New York Times (Nov. 3 issue) confirmed the consensus that the US is not worried so much about the “authoritarian” or “murderous ways of imposing law and order” (Walden Bello’s labels; InterAksyon, Oct 29) as they are discombobulated by Duterte’s rapproachment with China. The calculus of U.S. regional hegemony was changed when Filipino fishermen returned to fish around the Scarborough Shoal. Duterte’s “bombastic one-man” show, his foul mouth, his “authoritarian” pragmatism, did not lead to total dependency on China nor diplomatic isolation. This pivot to China panicked Washington, belying the Time expert Carl Thayer who pontificated that Duterte “can’t really stand up to China unless the US is backing him” (Sept 15, 2016). A blowback occurred in the boondocks; the thin-skinned “Punisher” and scourge of druglords triggered a “howling wilderness” that exploded the century-long stranglehold of global finance capitalism on the islands. No need to waste time on more psychoanalysis of Duterte’s motivation.

What the next US president would surely do to restore its ascendancy in that region is undermine Duterte’s popular base, fund a strategy of destabilization via divide-and-rule (as in Chile, Yugoslavia, Ukraine), and incite its volatile pro-American constituency to beat pots and kettles in the streets of MetroManila.

This complex geopolitical situation entangling the United States and its former colony/neocolony, cries for deeper historical contextualization and empathy for the victims lacking in the Western media demonization of Duterte and his supporters, over 70% of a hundred million Filipinos in the Philippines and in the diaspora. For further elaboration, see my recent books US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave) and Between Empire and Insurgency (University of the Philippines Press).

E. San Juan, Jr, an emeritus professor of Ethnic Studies and Comparative Literature, was a fellow of W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, Fulbright lecturer of American Studies at Leuven University, Belgium, is currently professorial lecturer, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila

 

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Haiti: How Bill and Hillary Clinton Wrecked an Entire Country

November 14th, 2016 by Jean Saint-Vil

“malè ou swete bèlmè, se manman ou li frape” – the evil you wish upon your mother-in-law strikes your mother, Haitian wisdom *

The other day, I saw a video excerpt of an October 2012 speech in which Bill Clinton was telling an audience in New-York how his wife, Hillary, possesses the extraordinary psychic ability to speak regularly with the dead, in particular, with the spirit of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.*

Today, some U.S. citizens who are still stunned by the election of Donald Trump may be seeking extra insights to help answer many troubling questions. However, I doubt the dead are in any way equipped to help them understand what is  happening in the so-called “land of the free and home of the brave“. If Harvard and Yale graduates could not see the Trump  train wreck coming, neither could the spirit of the dead help the Democratic Party and Clinton avoid this humiliating defeat they have just suffered at the hand of Donald “grab-them-by-the-pussy” Trump. Yet, a small group of New-York based Haitians had posted the writing on the wall, several months ago. The Haitians took their warning straight to Hillary Clinton’s headquarters in Manhattan. Unfortunately, few American citizens, from a population of 325 million, ever heard or saw – let alone welcomed – the prophetic message of KOMOKODA (the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti).

Had U.S. Democrats listened to KOMOKODA, they would have known long ago how election fixing (as happened in favour of Clinton and against Bernie Sanders) is a particular expertise of the Clinton clan. Ironically, in Haiti, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s electoral cheating was applied in favour of Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, a Caribbean-style Trump-like character who is infamous for his trademark “balls-grabbing” gestures. Below are some highlights on this peculiar Clinton-Trump/Martelly-Haiti story.
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Since KOMOKODA published the above track many years ago, there has been several investigative reports and Wikileaks which confirm their assertion that Hillary Clinton intervened personally in the 2010-11 Haitian elections to rig them in favour of Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly. The latter went on to steal millions of dollars to enrich himself and his family over a five year presidency marked by scandalous debauchery by Haiti’s morally-repugnant 1%, while the Black majority continues to die whenever it rains on their environmentally-vulnerable third of island.

The Clintons profess great love for Martelly and it is reciprocal as, among other gifts, Martelly offered a very lucrative, once-in-a-century Haitian gold mining deal to Tony Rodham (Hillary’s brother) and his company CVS Mining.

Martelly who, while acting as “President of Haiti”, once yelled to a woman in the audience that she ought to join him “in the back bush, so he may do her”, was heralded by Bill Clinton as “Haiti’s most articulate leader of the past 30 years”. Slick Bill, apparently, has a very peculiar sense of humour. But, Haitians do not often laugh at his sick jokes.

Today, as Americans are trying to awake from the November 8, 2016 shock, many who are bemoaning the arrival of Trump and Melania to the White House may still not realize how lucky they, in fact, are. So, once again, rather than inviting our brothers and sisters to consult “Jesus” or to summon the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt we, Haitians, do encourage all Americans to courageously seek the answers to their questions in real life.

Dear neighbours, as bad as it is, your situation is still better than what it could have been.

  1. You had the luxury of electing your own bigoted, misogynist dictator. No foreign powers imposed him on you. He is yours, all yours. To do with, as you so please.
  2. You were fortunate to have uncovered the corruption that plagues the Democratic Party which rigged the elections in favor of the Clinton clan. Therefore, if you have the will and the courage to do so, you have here a perfect opportunity to discipline the guilty, abandon the 2 party oligarchy’s sham and adopt real democracy.
  3. Trump, unlike Haiti’s Sweet Micky, is already filthy rich before taking office. And, your beloved country can easily survive several days of rainfall at a time.

So, do not despair. Let the spirit of Eleonor Roosevelt rest in peace. However, as the Esquelito  character in Nacho Libre might have said in such circumstances: “I believe in science”. Although superstition is never the answer, there are natural laws of the universe such as “the evil you wish for mother-in-law shall surely strike your own mother“. *

“malè ou swete bèlmè, se manman ou li frape” – Haitian wisdom – from the same family of laws of science as “what goes around comes around”, “karma’s gonna get ya” etc…

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M pa ka ri…pa kwè m ri…lè m ri ou wè dan m, ou pa wè anndan m”

(I cannot laugh… don’t you believe I am laughing – when I laugh, my teeth you do see, but not my soul) – song by Beethova Obas

Jafrikayiti (Jean Elissaint Saint-Vil) was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and currently lives in Canada. He hosts weekly radio programs in Ottawa and has been featured as political analyst on Canadian and international radio and television. He is the author of “LAFIMEN: Listwa Pèp Ayisyen Depi Nan Ginen”, CD1 (2003), CD2&3 (2006), CD4 (2010) – audio recordings narrating Haitian History in Kreyòl and “Viv Bondye ! Aba Relijyon!” (2000) – book in Kreyòl (Praise God Down with Religion) which deals with the history of Christianity and its influence on the lives of people of African Descent.

On his blog godisnotwhite.com, Jafrikayiti publishes regularly, in English, French and his native Kreyòl.

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Green Light to Monsanto: U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Suspends Testing Foods for Glyphosate Residues

November 14th, 2016 by Carey Gillam

Government testing for residues of glyphosate has been put on hold, slowing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) first-ever endeavor to get a handle on just how much of the controversial chemical is making its way into U.S. foods.

The FDA, the nation’s chief food safety regulator, launched what it calls a “special assignment” earlier this year to analyze certain foods for residues of the weed killer after the agency was criticized by the U.S. Government Accountability Office for failing to include glyphosate in annual testing programs that look for many less-used pesticides. Glyphosate is the most widely usedherbicide in the world and is the key ingredient in Monsanto’s flagship Roundup.

Getting solid data on glyphosate’s presence in the American food supply is more important than ever as the EPA finalizes a risk assessment for glyphosate and tries to determine
if any limits should be put on the future use of the herbicide.

Glyphosate is under particular scrutiny after the World Health Organization’s cancer experts declared last year that the chemical is a probable human carcinogen. Several private groups and nonprofits have been doing their own testing and have been finding glyphosate residues in varying levels in a range of foods, raising consumer concerns about the pesticide’s presence the American diet.

The FDA’s residue testing for glyphosate was combined with a broader herbicides analysis program the agency set in motion in February of this year. But the glyphosate testing has been particularly challenging for the FDA. The agency was finally forced to put the glyphosate residue testing part of the work plan on hold amid confusion, disagreement and difficulties with establishing a standard methodology to use across the agency’s multiple U.S. laboratories, according to FDA sources. Equipment issues have also been a problem, with some labs citing a need for more sensitive instruments, sources at the FDA said.

FDA spokeswoman Megan McSeveney confirmed the testing suspension and said the agency is not sure when it will resume.

“As testing for glyphosate will expand to several locations, we are currently working to ensure that the methods are validated for use in these labs. As soon as the validation is completed, testing for glyphosate will resume,” she said. “We cannot speculate on timing at this point.”

Alongside the testing for glyphosate, the FDA laboratories have also been analyzing foods for 2,4-D residues and other “acid herbicides,” according to documents obtained from the FDA. The FDA’s Office of Compliance explained that the need to start such testing was partly related to the cancer concerns about glyphosate and expectations for a sharp rise in the use of 2,4-D.

The FDA work detail calls for the examination of roughly 1,340 food samples, 82 percent domestic and 18 percent imported. The foods are to be collected from warehouse and retail stores only and are to include a variety of cereal grains, vegetables and non-flavored, whole milk and eggs. Documents obtained from the agency through the Freedom of Information Act show the agency has been testing corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, sugar beets, rice and even samples of yellow popcorn and “organic white popcorn.”

McSeveney said glyphosate residues were only being analyzed for soy, corn, milk, eggs and popcorn, while the other foods are being tested for residues of other herbicides.

Earlier this year, one of the agency’s senior chemists analyzed glyphosate residues in honey and oatmeal and reported his results to the agency. Some honey samples contained residue levels well over the limit allowed in the European Union. The U.S. has no legal tolerance for glyphosate in honey, though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said recently it may set one because of the FDA findings. However, according to McSeveney, the results for honey and oatmeal are not considered to be a part of the official assignment.

With the testing on hold, it is not clear when the agency might have final results on the glyphosate residue analysis. McSeveney said preliminary results showed no violations of legal tolerance levels allowed for glyphosate in the foods tested. She did not provide details on what, if any, levels of residue were found. Tolerance levels are set by the EPA for a variety of pesticides expected to be found in foods. When residue levels are detected above the tolerance levels, enforcement action can be taken against the food producer.

Monsanto said earlier this year that no data has ever indicated residue levels of more than a fraction of allowable levels and it is confident FDA testing will reaffirm the safety of its herbicide.

Though FDA annually tests domestic and imported foods for residues of other pesticides, it never tested for glyphosate before. It has not routinely tested for 2,4-D either, a fact also criticized by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Unlike glyphosate, however, there has been some monitoring of 2,4-D residues in selected food items in the past. That monitoring showed only very low levels of 2,4-D—less than 5 parts per billion in ready-to-eat foods, according to the FDA.

The FDA testing for 2,4-D residues comes as the use of 2,4-D with food crops is expected to start increasing due to the commercialization of new formulated herbicide products that combine glyphosate with 2.4-D. These new herbicide products are designed to be used on new herbicide-tolerant crops. Safety questions have been raised about the combination. But the EPA just gave a green light Nov. 1 to a Dow AgroSciences’ herbicide combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D. The new products are intended to counter widespread weed resistance to glyphosate.

The agrichemical industry asserts that residues of glyphosate, 2,4-D and the array of other chemicals used in modern-day agriculture do not pose a danger to human health, but the lack of testing to determine actual residue levels of some of the most-used chemicals, has been troubling to many consumer groups.

Getting solid data on glyphosate’s presence in the American food supply is more important than ever as the EPA finalizes a risk assessment for glyphosate and tries to determine if any limits should be put on the future use of the herbicide. The FDA work covers only a few foods, but is a long-needed, good first step. Consumers can only hope the testing resumes soon.

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ELEIÇÕES NOS EUA. Quem Venceu e Quem Perdeu na Melhor Democracia que o Dinheiro Pode Comprar

November 14th, 2016 by Edu Montesanti

“Se eu tiver que concorrer [à Presidência dos EUA], concorreria pelo Partido Republicano. Eles são o grupo
de votantes mais burro do País. Acreditam em qualquer coisa da Fox News. Eu poderia mentir, e eles engoliriam.
Aposto que meus números [de votação] seriam fantásticos”, Donald J. Trump, outubro de 2015
Pouco depois da metade das apurações dos votos, quando já se desenhava a arrasadora vitória do candidato republicano à Casa Branca, Donald J. Trump, os grandes meios de comunicação norte-americanos, panfletários da candidata Hillary Clinton, claramente perdiam o entusiasmo: podia-se ler em meios como CNN e The New York Times, Mercados globais afundaram, moedas  se hostilizam e o ouro sobe, e Mercados em turbulência por causa da forte exibição do Republicano, respectivamente.

O mesmo mercado financeiro que aumentou nos últimos meses “doações” aos meios de comunicação e à própria “campanha” de Clinton estão alarmados. Os mesmos meios que ressoavam “pesquisas eleitorais” apontando a ex-secretária de Estado do atual presidente Barack Obama como vencedora com folga durante toda a “campanha presidencial”, diziam-se surpresos por vitórias já consolidadas, e previsões de mais vitórias do candidato republicano especialmente nos chamados battleground states, ou estados de batalha campal (aqueles que são historicamente decisivos pelo tamanho do Colégio Eleitoral).

E para fechar com chave de ouro essa pobre “festa da democracia”, pastelão versão estadunidense, Hillary Clinton recusou-se a seguir a tradição, e fazer discurso pós-apuração independente do resultado; saiu pela porta dos fundos diante de uma mídia predominante que se dizia abertamente “chocada” com a vitória do republicano.

Se já não bastassem a profunda ausência de propostas concretas e a baixaria pessoal que marcou (na realidade, acentuou-se) nesta nesta “campanha”, as “pesquisas” acabaram também se mostrando rendidas ás leis do mercado na República de Bananas, que se autodenomina “berço da democracia global”. Acrescente-se também: se não bastassem as evidências históricas de que o próprio sistema eleitoral, nas últimas décadas computadorizado, é tão vendável quanto a melhor democracia que o dinheiro pode comprar em pleno Império dos aloprados.

“Trump surpreendeu o mundo!”, tem sido as manchetes. Pois quem questiona a “democracia” e o “avanço”, humano e tecnológico do moribundo Tio Sam, precárias lendas cada vez mais difíceis de serem sustentadas, evidenciadas em mais este grotesco “equivoco” das “pesquisas eleitorais”?

Quem Venceu e Quem Perdeu, Dentro e Fora do Império dos Aloprados

A gravidade da crise política norte-americana, que se atreve a enviar observadores a eleições ao redor do mundo, vai muito além do sexo oral de Monica Lewinsky ao esposo da presidenciável democrata derrotada neste dia 8 de novembro em plena Casa Branca (em hora de serviço), ou das afirmações de Trump que, a contragosto das mulheres (ainda que ilustres desconhecidas), as cumprimenta com um “toque” em suas partes mais íntimas.

A maioria dos próprios norte-americanos se diz avessa a ambos os candidatos, votando em um ou outro muito mais por apatia ao adversário. Quem é o menos nocivo no Império em decadência? Pois é.

Trump traz a seu favor disposição ao dialogo com a historicamente temida Rússia, ao invés de confronto como pretendia a rival e contrariando o terror psicológico provocado pela mídia de imbecilização das massas globais na tentativa de demonizar o presidente russo Vladimir Putin, através das velhas manipulações de sempre que ainda insistem em embaralhar a consciência dos mais desavisados.

Ao menos retoricamente, Trump também promete diminuir gastos militares do Império mais belicista e genocida da história, que retira dos investimentos sociais tais como moradia, saúde e educação para espalhar bases militares e despejar armas aos seus fantoches mundo afora, além de revisão da utilização norte-americana da OTAN a fim de intervir e guerrear internacionalmente. Tudo isso – ao menos retoricamente e o futuro aguarda confirmar ou desmentir o imprevisível magnata – em contraposição à “democrata” dos Estados Unidos da América, quem liderou a invasão à Líbia, apoiou aumento dos confrontos na Síria e, na década de 2000 como senadora, votou a favor da invasão ao Iraque, que, criminosa, sanguinária e apoderadora dos recursos naturais e das empresas locais, contrariou decisão da ONU e de todas as evidências de que Saddam Hussein não possuía bombas de destruição em massa, e que nada o ligava à Al-Qaeda como afirmavam os esquizofrênicos xerifes do planeta, tomadores de decisão de Washington.

Por outro lado, certamente venceram o racismo e do preconceito indiscriminado – evidenciado no combate à imigração (cuja histeria garante construção de grande muro separando os EUA do México, aos muçulmanos na promessa de proibir entrada dos religiosos ao País e ainda aumentar a vigilância e mesmo expulsar os que já habitam entre fronteiras norte-americanas) e ao próprio sexo feminino -, venceu a violência interna através do próprio racismo contra negros, latinos e ativistas por direitos humanos cujo apoio ao uso da repressão amentará a dose de Estado policialesco que impera no Império dos “mais ingênuos” (para dizer o mínimo).

Tal conteúdo de péssimo gosto, que retrata o ódio e a histeria levados à últimas consequência na América “livre e próspera”, também contraria o de Clinton – sobre esta, tampouco se sabe o quanto foi sincera dado o contexto de suas “ideias” e as próprias mudanças oportunistas em seus discursos, uma infinidade de contradições, certamente, a fim de ganhar maior eleitorado.

Trump também aposta na diminuição do Estado: promete desfazer o Obamacare (programas de saúde acessíveis às classes menos favorecidas); Estado que a adversária, contrariando seu próprio discurso histórico e os interesses de seus principais doadores milionários de campanha como Wall Street, colocava na agenda fortalecer. O que é “curioso”, para não dizer mesmo mais uma entre as calamitosas contradições desta “campanha”, é o fato que Trump promete atingir os mesquinhos e corruptos interesses das grandes corporações, por exemplo taxando grandes fortunas.

No caso do fortalecimento da indústria bélica que leva a “política” exterior (para se utilizar dos eufemismos midiáticos para crimes internacionais) coercitivo-expansionista norte-americana, há fortes motivos para desconfiar do novo ocupante da Casa Branca: tudo isso também contraria o contexto de seu discurso e de sua personalidade.

Uma coisa parece certa: longe de ser psicopata decidido, frio e calculista como a adversária, abertamente belicista, o tão fanfarrão quanto ambíguo, completamente imprevisível Trump parece ser o homem perfeito para pavimentar o caminho rumo ao declínio ainda maior da hegemonia global dos Estados Unidos – má notícia à classes dominantes locais e as elites-fantoches internacionais, comedoras de migalhas de Tio Sam.

O menos catastrófico venceu, ao menos pela imprevisibilidade de sua agenda em comparação à bem conhecida da opositora. Neste ponto, por ira venceu especialmente considerando as sociedades globais que têm sofrido histórico boicote às democracias locais como o próprio Brasil. E menos catastrófico para os próprios norte-americanos, se considerados aqueles que acreditam que o mundo não precisa da imposição da força em nome da defesa de interesses dos Estados Unidos, como dizia a própria Hillary Clinton: “Sem nós, o mundo não pode fazer nada!”.

Por isso tudo, o mais catastrófico para a tentativa de salvação da hegemonia global dos Estados Unidos pode também ter vencido neste dia 8 de novembro.  Wall Street e seus patéticos porta-vozes da grande mídia de desinformação sabem bem disso. Mas qualquer dos dois seria, em geral, grande golpe à democracia local que precisaria, desesperadamente, desfazer-se do Estado policialesco, da intolerância e do ódio.

Eis o grande momento para a afirmação do mundo multipolar, lamentavelmente sobre a acentuação da desgraça democrática e na falência moral e intelectual norte-americana, subprodutos de um sistema excludente por natureza que se julga capaz de tudo comprar e corromper.

Edu Montesanti
Publicado originalmente em Pravda
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Primeras reacciones en América Latina a elección de Donald Trump a la presidencia de Estados Unidos

November 14th, 2016 by Prof Nicolas Boeglin

Foto extraída de nota de prensa de DW 

Después del mensaje de felicitación del Primer Ministro de Canadá, en el hemisferio americano, Colombia fue el primer Estado en circular formalmente un comunicado oficial de felicitaciones al Presidente electo de Estados Unidos. Su Presidente Santos fue el primero, a muy tempranas horas de la madrugada en Bogotá, en enviarle un mensaje en twitter al nuevo Presidente electo (ver notade prensa).

Desde la perspectiva internacional, no existe ninguna obligación de expresarse sobre los resultados de un ejercicio electoral por parte de los Estados. Se trata de un asunto interno a un Estado que, en apariencia, no tiene mayor relevancia. No obstante, algunos asuntos internos dan pié para algún tipo de reacciones: los eventos suscitados en Brasil (que culminaron el pasado 12 de mayo con la suspensión de la Presidenta Dilma Rousseff y con el anuncio de las primeras medidas por parte del nuevo gabinete brasileño) dieron lugar a un interesante ejercicio que tuvimos la oportunidad de analizar (ver nota publicada en el sitio de Global Research).

En materia electoral propiamente dicho, los aparatos diplomáticos han desarrollado una práctica sostenida en la materia, que permite comparar las diversas formas de manifestarse oficialmente sobre una determinada elección. Las felicitaciones enviadas por parte de un Estado a un candidato electo (que aún no ha asumido oficialmente sus funciones como Jefe de Estado) pueden externar la intención de mejorar sustancialmente las relaciones bilaterales o enviar una señal de agrado por el resultado político de las elecciones. Este gesto puede delegarse a un alto funcionario como a un vicepresidente, a un ministro de relaciones exteriores o a un vocero o a un portavoz oficial si se considera innecesario que lo haga el mismo Jefe de Estado. La ausencia de manifestación también puede enviar algún tipo de señal. En algunos casos, puede manifestar cierta negligencia, o bien algún tipo de desinterés en relación al futuro de las relaciones bilaterales entre ambos Estados. Puede también dejar entrever alguna cautela, e incluso algún tipo de reserva con relación al giro político que significa el resultado electoral obtenido en las urnas. El hecho que Panamáenviara su mensaje formal de felicitaciones al nuevo Presidente electo en Costa Rica en abril del 2014 con varios días de atraso con relación a todos los demás Estados que hicieron llegar sus felicitaciones después del 6 de abril, constituye un interesante caso en la región.

El silencio ante resultados electorales puede también expresar una muy seria reserva ante un ejercicio electoral sumamente dudoso, tal como ocurrió en el caso de Perú con ocasión de las elecciones para el tercer mandato intentado por Alberto Fujimori en el año 2000: al acto de investidura del 28 de julio del 2000 sólo participaron dos delegaciones (Nota 1).

Este tipo de expresiones forman parte de lo que se denomina en la práctica diplomática la “cortesía internacional“. Un Estado acepta ser cortés con otro manifestándolo o no manifestándose: el silencio es a veces (como en las relaciones entre personas) una forma muy cortés de expresar algún mensaje entre los Estados. Hace unos años, el jefe de la diplomacia de Costa Rica innovó en la materia, al indicar en declaraciones públicas que “no opinaría” y que “no estamos obligados a emitir ningún comentario sobre asuntos internos de los nicaragüenses” (sic.) con relación al resultado de las elecciones en Nicaragua a finales del 2011 (ver nota de prensa).

En el caso de las elecciones en Estados Unidos del 2000, algunos Estados un tanto urgidos en saludar al nuevo Presidente electo norteamericano enviaron felicitaciones a Georges W. Bush que debieron ser luego objeto de delicadas retractaciones ante la duda sobre el resultado final de las elecciones, y la decisión de proceder a un recuento de votos en Florida (Nota 2). En esta nota de prensa se lee que: “World leaders who rushed to congratulate George W. Bush for his apparent victory in the U.S. presidential election were forced on Wednesday to issue swift retractions or retreat into diplomatic silence“.

Las modalidades para externar felicitaciones a un Presidente electo son muy variadas, y en las siguiente líneas se intentará reseñar las felicitaciones recibidas por el Presidente electo Donald Trump por parte de Estados de América Latina únicamente.

MODALIDADES MODERNAS

Algunos jefes de Estado, como el de México, han optado por una vía menos formal enviando desde su cuenta en twitter el siguiente mensaje. “Felicito a EUA por su proceso electoral y le reitero a @realDonaldTrump la disposición de trabajar juntos en favor de la relación bilateral” (ver nota de prensa). De una manera muy similar el presidente de Bolivia recurrió a su cuenta en twitter (ver nota de prensa), así como el Presidente de Argentina (ver nota de prensa). Por su parte, la canciller de Argentina optó por enviar un mensaje desde su cuenta en twitter, en el que hace ver que hubiera deseado que fuese una mujer la ganadora de los comicios celebrados en Estados Unidos (ver nota de prensa). Ninguno de estos tres Estados ha considerado necesario enviar algún comunicado oficial adicional. En cambio, el tempranero mensaje del Presidente de Colombia de las cuatro de la madrugada fue respaldado por un comunicado más formal, circulado por la diplomacia colombiana horas después.

MODALIDADES USUALES

Mucho más tradicional en materia diplomática, en la que la forma tiene más relevancia que en otros ámbitos, la técnica de la declaración oficial o comunicado de prensa permite mayor precisión y darle mayor alcance y realce a ciertos aspectos, recurriendo al arte del verbo (como en todo texto oficial de un Estado hecho público). Los equipos a cargo de redactar este tipo de textos son particularmente cuidadosos con el uso de adjetivos, puntuación, formulación de cada frase, sintaxis y otros detalles, al tratarse de un texto que da a conocer la posición oficial de un Estado. Esta regla, como toda regla, conoce de excepciones: puede ocurrir que lo que se lea sea un texto mal redactado y con serios errores, como uno recientemente elaborado por las autoridades diplomáticas de Costa Rica, titulado “Declaración Oficial sobre decisión de no escuchar mensaje de Michel Temer en Naciones Unidas” (Nota 3).

Algunos Estados de América Latina han manifestado sus felicitaciones al Presidente electo norteamericano mediante comunicados oficiales, cuyo contenido es variable y denota alguna intención o reserva del mismo Estado, o bien algún tipo de preocupación.

En un comunicado emitido por el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Colombia con fecha del 9 de noviembre, se lee que:

“El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, en nombre del Gobierno de Colombia, felicita al pueblo y al Gobierno de Estados Unidos de América por el espíritu democrático demostrado en la exitosa jornada electoral en la cual se eligió al nuevo Presidente de los Estados Unidos.

El Gobierno de Colombia felicita al candidato Republicano Donald Trump por su victoria en las elecciones y le desea éxito en las funciones que asumirá como nuevo Presidente de los Estados Unidos de América. Así mismo, expresa su voluntad de continuar fortaleciendo los lazos de amistad y de cooperación que han tenido los dos países.

La relación estratégica entre Colombia y Estados Unidos cuenta con el respaldo bipartidista y se ha caracterizado por una exitosa cooperación, un profundo diálogo político, así como una agenda diversificada de impacto positivo para ambos países”.

En declaraciones a la prensa, el Presidente Santos de Colombia había hecho saber que el candidato Trump no era de su preferencia (ver nota de El Tiempo y nota de HispanTV).

De igual forma, la cancillería de Panamá ha circulado el siguiente comunicado de prensa:

“Miércoles, 9 de Noviembre de 2016

El Gobierno y Pueblo de la República de Panamá felicita al Pueblo de los Estados Unidos de América por su vocación democrática, demostrada una vez más en la celebración de las elecciones presidenciales, y saluda al Presidente electo Donald Trump y al Partido Republicano por la victoria.

A la vez, reitera la disposición por continuar fortaleciendo las históricas relaciones de amistad y cooperación, que como socios estratégicos han desarrollado la República de Panamá y los Estados Unidos de América, especialmente en temas de interés mutuo como el fortalecimiento de nuestras relaciones económicas, la seguridad y la paz”.

Por parte de Guatemala, su comunicado oficial incluye una referencia a la preocupación que tiene por la situación de los migrantes radicados en Estados Unidos:

“El Gobierno de la República de Guatemala, a través del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, felicita al Pueblo y Gobierno de los Estados Unidos de América por la celebración de las elecciones presidenciales realizadas el día de ayer y por demostrar una vez más su compromiso con los valores democráticos.

Asimismo, Guatemala felicita al Presidente electo, señor Donald J.Trump, por su victoria en los comicios presidenciales y le desea una exitosa gestión.

Guatemala hace votos porque las acciones que realice su administración, permitan reconocer el valioso aporte que hacen los Migrantes en los Estados Unidos y que sus políticas favorecerán y velarán por el respeto, bienestar y protección de la población migrante radicada en ese país.

El Gobierno de Guatemala manifiesta su deseo de trabajar de manera estrecha con su administración, en todas aquellas prioridades comunes de ambos países y de la región, así como reitera al Gobierno de los Estados Unidos el compromiso por continuar fortaleciendo la relación bilateral, que coadyuve al fortalecimiento e incremento del intercambio comercial, las inversiones y la cooperación para el desarrollo”.

Posterior a Colombia, a Panamá y a Guatemala, Costa Rica circuló el siguiente comunicado:

“Costa Rica saluda al pueblo y Gobierno de los Estados Unidos de América por elección de Presidente Donald TrumpPUBLICADO EL 09/11/2016 09:26 AM

El Gobierno de la República de Costa Rica expresa su saludo al Honorable Pueblo y al Ilustrado Gobierno de los Estados Unidos de América por las elecciones presidenciales celebradas este 8 de noviembre de 2016, que han dado como resultado la elección del señor Donald Trump como Presidente.

Costa Rica expresa su reconocimiento al pueblo de los Estados Unidos de América que ha dado muestras de su probada vocación democrática y a las instituciones electorales por crear y garantizar las condiciones que permitieron llevar a cabo estos comicios.

“El pueblo de los Estados Unidos ha electo al señor Donald Trump como su Presidente. Felicito al señor Donald Trump y le deseo éxitos en su gestión”, aseguró el Presidente de la República, Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera. El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto felicita al Presidente Electo Donald Trump por su elección y expresa su convencimiento de que los Estados Unidos de América y Costa Rica –que establecieron relaciones en 1851- continuarán profundizando sus tradicionales relaciones de amistad y cooperación, así como una agenda común de valores y propósitos compartidos en el plano bilateral, regional y mundial”.

En declaraciones a la prensa, el Presidente de Costa Rica había externado su preocupación con relación al candidato hoy Presidente electo (ver nota de Prensa Libre). Como detalle específico en la región, notemos que las elecciones realizadas en Nicaragua el pasado 6 de noviembre no han dado lugar a ningún comunicado oficial por parte de Costa Rica.

En el caso de Ecuador, el comunicado oficial de su Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores es extremadamente corto: “El Gobierno del Ecuador felicita al pueblo estadounidense por la realización de las elecciones presidenciales, legislativas y de gobernadores, del 8 de noviembre de 2016.

El Gobierno del Ecuador espera mantener relaciones basadas en el respeto mutuo con la administración del presidente electo, Donald Trump”.

En el caso de El Salvador, su diplomacia indicó, al igual que la de Guatemala, su preocupación por los migrantes salvadoreños, llamando incluso “a la calma” a esta numerosa comunidad en Estados Unidos:

“El Gobierno de El Salvador felicita al pueblo estadounidense por proceso electoral

El Gobierno de El Salvador, a través del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, felicita al pueblo estadounidense por su participación en la jornada democrática que se desarrolló durante el día de ayer en esa nación.

Asimismo, saluda al nuevo Presidente electo de los Estados Unidos de América, Donald Trump, por haber alcanzado el triunfo en dicho proceso electoral.

El Gobierno salvadoreño hace votos por el fortalecimiento de las relaciones entre ambas naciones.

Al mismo tiempo, aprovecha la ocasión para hacer un llamado a la calma a nuestra comunidad en Estados Unidos y a sus familias en El Salvador y reitera a todos los compatriotas su compromiso firme para trabajar junto a ellos en garantizar que sean respetados sus derechos”.

A diferencia de Costa Rica, el Salvador emitió un comunicado con relación a las elecciones en Nicaragua, que se lee como sigue y puede ser comparado al texto anterior:

“Lunes, 07 Noviembre 2016 08:28 Gobierno de El Salvador felicita a pueblo nicaragüense por proceso electoral

El Gobierno de El Salvador, a través del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, saluda al pueblo nicaragüense por su participación en la jornada electoral que se llevó a cabo el domingo pasado, que según datos oficiales alcanzó el 65 por ciento.

Asimismo, expresa su felicitación al Presidente Daniel Ortega, quien, de acuerdo a los mismos reportes oficiales, encabeza los resultados con un 71 por ciento de los votos emitidos.

El gobierno conducido por el Presidente Ortega ha alcanzado hasta la fecha significativos avances y logros tanto sociales como económicos, en su búsqueda por el desarrollo y bienestar a favor de su pueblo. Como país miembro del Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA), El Salvador manifiesta su compromiso de seguir impulsando el fortalecimiento de la unidad regional y continuar trabajando en iniciativas conjuntas con Nicaragua y los demás Estados en beneficio de su pueblo”.

Notemos que México también externó sus felicitaciones a Nicaragua, en los siguientes términos, mediante comunicado de su Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores:” Comunicado No. 505.- México extiende asimismo su felicitación al Presidente Ortega por su triunfo y reitera su interés en seguir estrechando los lazos de amistad y cooperación que históricamente han caracterizado la relación entre ambos países.

El Gobierno de México felicita al pueblo nicaragüense por la realización, el domingo 6 de noviembre, de una jornada electoral pacífica y ordenada en la que fue reelecto como Presidente de la República Daniel Ortega.

México extiende asimismo su felicitación al Presidente Ortega por su triunfo y reitera su interés en seguir estrechando los lazos de amistad y cooperación que históricamente han caracterizado la relación entre ambos países.

México y Nicaragua establecieron relaciones diplomáticas en 1839 y mantienen una relación dinámica y constructiva. El país es el tercer socio comercial de México en Centroamérica”

Volviendo a las elecciones en Estados Undios, se lee en medios de prensa que Cuba envío el siguiente comunicado (ver nota de prensa de Jornada): “El presidente de los Consejos de Estado y de Ministros de la República de Cuba, Raúl Castro Ruz, envió un mensaje de felicitación al Sr. Donald J. Trump por su elección como Presidente de los Estados Unidos de América“. No se ha logrado acceder a la página oficial del sitio del MINREX de Cuba para revisar si el comunicado se limita o no a esta simple frase, y se agradecería a nuestros lectores remitirnos el texto completo de ser factible (al correo electrónico siguiente: [email protected])

Por su parte, Brasil, desde el Itamaraty, ha circulado la siguiente carta enviada por su Presidente al Presidente electo en Estados Unidos Donald Trump. Al no ser un Presidente electo una autoridad, la diplomacia brasileña se ha cuidado de no remitir una carta usando las formalidades reservadas únicamente a un Jefe de Estado en ejercicio. Se limita a reproducir una carta enviada al Presidente electo.

“Nota 443

Carta al Presidente electo norteamericano

09 de noviembre del 2016 – 11:56

Su Excelencia Señor Donald J. Trump Presidente electo de los Estados Unidos de América

Señor Presidente electo,

Le felicito por su elección como Presidente de los Estados Unidos.

Brasil y Estados Unidos son dos grandes democracias que comparten valores y mantienen, históricamente, fuertes relaciones en los más distintos ámbitos. Estoy seguro de que vamos a trabajar juntos para estrechar aún más los lazos de amistad y cooperación que unen a nuestros pueblos.

Le deseo pleno éxito en el Gobierno de los Estados Unidos.

Michel Temer Presidente de la República Federativa de Brasil”.

La misma técnica consistiendo en remitir, desde un Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, a una carta personal del Presidente al Presidente electo Donald Trump fue usada por Perú (ver texto de la carta). Su cancillería se limitó a emitir el siguiente texto: “N° 557 – 09/11/2016  Nota Informativa 557 – 16 En la fecha, el Presidente de la República, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, envió una Carta de felicitación al Presidente electo de los Estados Unidos de América, Donald J. Trump, quien será el inquilino número 45 de la Casa Blanca. Acceda a la misiva en: http://bit.ly/2eUJaih Lima, 9 de noviembre de 2016″

Paraguay emitió mediante el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores un texto en el que se puede leer que:

“Comunicado del Gobierno Nacional sobre la Elección Presidencial en los Estados Unidos de América 

El Gobierno de la República del Paraguay ha seguido con particular interés el proceso electoral de los Estados Unidos de América, que culminó con la jornada cívica y democrática celebrada el 8 de noviembre pasado, en que resultó electo el candidato del Partido Republicano, Señor Donald Trump.

El Gobierno paraguayo, presidido por el Presidente Horacio Cartes, felicita al Presidente electo, Señor Donald Trump, y a la vez expresa sus mejores deseos de éxito en el ejercicio de la Presidencia de esa Nación hermana.

El Gobierno de la República del Paraguay aspira a mantener y consolidar aún más el excelente nivel de las históricas relaciones de amistad y cooperación existentes, en el ámbito bilateral como multilateral, basadas en principios y valores comunes y compartidos como la democracia, el respeto y la promoción de los derechos humanos, la libertad, la solidaridad y la cooperación internacional”.

Uruguay también, mediante sur Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores emitió el siguiente texto: “COMUNICADO DE PRENSA Nº 114/16

El Gobierno de la República Oriental del Uruguay saluda a los Estados Unidos de América y a su Presidente electo, señor Donald Trump, por su victoria en las elecciones nacionales que tuvieron lugar el pasado 8 de noviembre.

Uruguay ha seguido con particular interés el proceso electoral, y felicita al pueblo estadounidense por su compromiso y apego a los principios y valores democráticos, los cuales son compartidos por ambos Estados.

El Gobierno de la República Oriental del Uruguay aprovecha esta oportunidad para expresar su intención de continuar consolidando la relación de amistad con los Estados Unidos de América tanto en el ámbito bilateral como multilateral, lazos que históricamente han sido de gran beneficio para las dos Naciones”.

Finalmente, Venezuela circuló el siguiente comunicado de prensadesde su cancillería: “Venezuela saluda a EE.UU por realización de elecciones y felicita al Presidente electo Donald Trump

La República Bolivariana de Venezuela saluda a los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica por la realización de sus elecciones presidenciales el día 8 de noviembre de 2016.

El Gobierno bolivariano de Venezuela felicita al Presidente electo Donald Trump, y hace votos para que se pueda avanzar en un futuro donde impere el respeto a los principios y propósitos de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, que consagra la igualdad soberana de los Estados y la autodeterminación de los pueblos, entre otros, mediante relaciones políticas y diplomáticas bilaterales respetuosas.

La República Bolivariana de Venezuela anhela que en esta nueva etapa, que comienza para esta nación norteamericana, se puedan establecer nuevos paradigmas con nuestra Región basados en el reconocimiento a las identidades culturales, sociales e históricas de nuestros países, y en el respeto a la no intervención en los asuntos internos, al derecho al desarrollo y a la paz.

De igual forma, esperamos que los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica sepa afrontar los grandes desafíos económicos, sociales y políticos que tiene la humanidad, y en los cuales su actuación es importante para la paz y la estabilidad mundial”

Al momento de redactar esta breve nota, no se registran otros comunicados oficiales de Estados de América Latina, posiblemente más distantes, reservados y cautos sobre el resultado de esta elección, en la que el tema de los migrantes y de la comunidad hispana en Estados Unidos fue objeto de inusuales y provocativas valoraciones por parte del candidato Donald Trump. No obstante, no se descarta que otros Estados de la región envien comunicados de felicitaciones en los próximos días.

LIBRE COMERCIO EN EL HEMISFERIO AMERICANO

En su campaña, Donald Trump cuestionó los tratados de libre comercio a los que es parte Estados Unidos. El Primer Ministro de Canadá ha declarado estar dispuesto a renegociar el NAFTA que une a Canadá y México con Estados Unidos (ver nota de prensa). En Costa Rica, al estar presidiendo los destinos del país un opositor al Tratado de Libre Commercio (TLC) con Estados Unidos (más conociddo como CAFTA-DR), adoptado mediante referendum el 7 de octubre del 2007 por un estrecho márgen de 48.844 votos (de un total de 2.654.627 votantes), el tema está cobrando particular interés.

Varios sectores han avanzado la idea de una posible renegociación de dicho instrumento comercial a penas se instale el nuevo ocupante en la Casa Blanca designado en Estados Unidos. Notemos que el actual Embajador de Costa Rica en Estados Unidos, Román Macaya, también propuso en su momento revisar este acuerdo comercial. En la Asamblea Legislativa, el diputado Otton Solis, fundador del Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) actualmente en el gobierno, es partidario de renegociar el TLC desde varios años y ha declarado en este día que el momento parece haber llegado para hacerlo (ver nota de La Nación). En el 2010, cuando fue candidato a la presidencia, había indicado que esta renegociación sería una de sus primeras acciones en caso de ser electo Presidente (ver nota de prensa). Como bien se sabe, los tratados comerciales no son normas pétreas y, si así lo disponen las partes, pueden ser modificados o revisados. En caso de que un Estado parte no este satisfecho con las disposiciones de un tratado y no obtenga de las otras partes su acuerdo para enmendarlo, puede también optar por denunciarlo, recurriendo a una figura (la denuncia) plenamente admitida por el derecho de los tratados consagrado en la Convención de Viena de 1969: remitimos a ese respecto a un estudio sobre la eventual denuncia de República Dominicana al CAFTA-DR, editada por la misma USAID (y que podría ser útilmente completado por uno de un jurista dominicano del sector propiamente académico, quién posiblemente llegaría a otro tipo de conclusiones).

Notemos que desde marzo del 2011, varios cables confidenciales de Wikileaks hechos públicos en Costa Rica, documentan de manera incuestionable la red de información que, desde la Embajada de Estados Unidos en Costa Rica y desde COMEX (Ministerio de Comercio Exterior), logró garantizar la adopción de este tratado comercial en el 2007, en medio de fuertes tensiones y movilizaciones sociales (ver nota de prensa sobre información filtrada desde la misma Sala Constitucional y otra nota sobre estrategias tendientes a deslegitimar a los opositores al TLC). Pese a ser documentos públicos desde marzo del 2011 en Costa Rica, no se ha oído de sanciones o de la apertura de procedimientos administrativos contra funcionarios de la administración 2006-2010. En este artículo del analista Jorge Vargas Cullel, se lee que, además de la red de información privilegiada antes mencionada, los sectores favorables al TLC contaron con otra decisiva herramienta: “El SÍ contó con una evidente ventaja en materia de financiamiento político, lo que le permitió un gasto en publicidad en los medios de comunicación ocho veces superior en relación al gasto del NO: US$ 1,75 millones a US$ 0,21 millones”

Cabe precisar que el tema de la renegociación del CAFTA-DR dio lugar, en octubre del 2016, a una carta de República Dominicanacirculada a los demás Estados partes al CAFTA-DR solicitándoles renegociar este instrumento comercial (ver nota de La Extra). No se tiene información a la fecha de redactar esta nota sobre la respuesta dada por las autoridades de Costa Rica a esta solicitud dominicana del pasado mes de octubre, y agradecemos desde ya que nuestros lectores nos proporcionen información al respecto. La renegociación de tratados de libre comercio (TLC) o tratados bilaterales de inversiones (TBI) es un tema sobre el que COMEX se ha mostrado muy dicreto en los últimos años. Un reciente análisis (ver nota del Semanario Universidad) sobre la cantidad de dinero que Costa Rica deberá sufragar en el 2017 para enfrentar las demandas y arbitrajes internacionales que arrastra debido a las cláusulas contenidas en estos instrumentos puede explicar – al menos en parte – esta cautela extrema de las autoridades de COMEX.

RESERVA Y CAUTELA EUROPEA ANTE RESULTADOS EN ESTADOS UNIDOS

En Europa, las reacciones han sido muy variadas, desde el entusiasmo de la actual Primer Ministra en Reino Unido y el de su homólogo en Hungría a la extrema reserva de las máximas autoridades en Alemania, las cuales esperan rectificaciones y aclaraciones sobre lo oído durante la campaña electoral por parte de Donald Trump (ver nota del Huffingthon Post). El Presidente de Francia ha indicado ver que la elección de Donald Trump abre un período de “incertidumbre” (ver nota de Le Monde), mientras que la diplomacia alemana ha convocado a una reunión extraordinaria de los 28 Ministros de Relaciones Exteriores de la Unión Europea (UE) para analizar las consecuencias del resultado de las elecciones en Estados Unidos (ver nota de DW). Durante la campaña electoral, Donald Trump había manifestado su oposición frontal al Tratado de Libre Comercio entre la UE y Estados Unidos. Cabe recordar que Donald Trump se encontraba en el Reino Unido durante la votación sobre el “Brexit y que felicitó a los que votaron a favor de la salida del Reino Unido de la UE (ver nota de la BBC del 24 d ejunio del 2016). Se lee en un comunicado del Foreign Office justificando la ausencia del actual jefe de la diplomacia británica a la reunión extraordinaria convocada por Alemania que: “The Foreign Secretary will not attend the meeting convened for Sunday. There is a regular Foreign Affairs Council meeting on Monday where a range of issues can be discussed in the normal way. “We do not see the need for an additional meeting on Sunday because the US election timetable is long established. An act of democracy has taken place, there is a transition period and we will work with the current and future administrations to ensure the best outcomes for Britain” (ver nota de prensa)

En aras de completar la reacción en Europa, es de notar que la Unión Europea como tal envió una carta de felicitaciones suscrita por los Presidentes del Consejo Europeo y de la Comisión de la UE (ver texto completo), la cual concluye indicando que: “We should consolidate the bridges we have been building across the Atlantic. Europeans trust that America, whose democratic ideals have always been a beacon of hope around the globe, will continue to invest in its partnerships with friends and allies, to help make our citizens and the people of the world more secure and more prosperous. We would take this opportunity to invite you to visit Europe for an EU – US Summit at your earliest convenience. This conversation would allow for us to chart the course of our relations for the next four years“.

A MODO DE CONCLUSIÓN

Como indicado, no existe ninguna obligación que derive específicamente del derecho internacional público de manifestarse después de cada ejercicio electoral por parte de los Estados. Son criterios de oportunidad política los que usualmente priman en este tipo de decisiones. La embarazosa situación acaecida en relación a las felicitaciones “prematuras” enviadas por algunos Estados urgidos de manifestarse al Presidente electo Georges W. Bush en el 2000 denota además una carrera contra el tiempo de algunos para figurar entre los primeros en enviar sus mensajes. Leemos que en el caso alemán sus autoridades declararon públicamente: “What can we do?” /…/ “It is complicated. One wants to be among the first sending congratulations and warm wishes” (ver declaraciones del representante alemán reproducidas en nota de prensa).

Independientemente del esmero de algunos Estados por ser los primeros en enviar sus mensajes, cuando el resultado es inesperado, las reacciones difieren sensiblemente. La sorpresa causada por la designación de Donald Trump como nuevo Presidente de Estados Unidos puede explicar en parte la cautela de algunos Estados, la reserva de muchos otros, en particular en América Latina. Al no haber sido mayormente abordado el tema de las relaciones entre América Latina y Estados Unidos durante esta última campaña electoral norteamericana (como muchos otros temas), la incógnita sobre el rumbo que desea emprender Donald Trump en la relación con América Latina se irá aclarando con sus primeros gestos y declaraciones como Presidente en ejercicio.

Nicolas Boeglin

Nota 1: Se lee al respecto que “L´élection de M. Fujimori au Pérou, pour un troisième mandat, a soulevé de très nombreuses critiques de la part de la communauté internationale et très peu d´Etats se sont rendus a la cérémonie d´investiture (la Bolivie et l´Equateur)”. Véase TOURARD H., La qualité de Chef d´Etat, in SFDI (Société Française pour le Droit International), Le Chef d´Etat et le droit international, Colloque de Clermont-Ferrand, Paris, Pedone, 2002, pp.117-137, p.120. 

Nota 2: Un ejercicio totalmente inédito tuvo lugar en el año 2000 con muchos de los telegramas de felicitaciones de varios Estados al Presidente electo de los Estados Unidos Georges W. Bush que debieron ser objeto de incómodas “retractaciones” ante la repentina duda sobre el resultado final de las urnas (en particular un grupo de Estados de Asia autores de “felicitaciones prematuras”). En el caso del Reino de los Países Bajos se lee que su diplomacia externó en aquellla oportunidad la necesidad de retractarse en los siguientes términos: “Given the fact that at this moment uncertainty exists about the outcome of the American presidential elections, the earlier statement … has been retracted” (ver nota de prensa de The Guardian). 

Nota 3: Remitimos a nuestros lectores al comunicado de prensa emitido por el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Costa Rica para intentar explicar la actuación de su Presidente en Naciones Unidas, el pasado 20 de setiembre del 2016 a las 10 de la mañana. El texto de dicho comunicado titulado “Declaración Oficial” (sin que se tenga claridad sobre las razones para distinguirlo de un comunicado de prensa) es reproducido al final de esta nota. Pese a comparecer el titular de esta cartera ministerial ante la Asamblea Legislativa para intentar explicar semejante actuación presidencial (al parecer inédita en los anales de Naciones Unidas desde 1945, al nunca haber integrado un Jefe de Estado una comitiva retirándose de la sala de audiencias), no se ha logrado conocer con precisión la identidad exacta del (los) autor(es) de este texto.

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Video: Turkish Armed Forces Intervene in Aleppo Province. Syrian SAA Forces Push Towards Surrender of Militants in Eastern Aleppo

November 14th, 2016 by South Front

On Sunday, the Turksish Armed Forces and pro-Ankara militants reached the outskirts of al-Bab, controlled by ISIS after capturing the areas of Swesian, Hazwan, Qadiran, Al-Dana and ‘Awla.

The Ankara-led forces are now deployed in about 2 km from al-Bab and readying to storm it.

Turkey’s battle tanks and artillery are shelling the town. Air strikes by the US-led coalition’s air power are also reported.

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Al-Bab is a key logistical hub, located in the province of Aleppo. If the Ankara-led forces set a full control of it, they will be able to prevent the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from linking up the Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria.

The recently appeared photo shows two fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) with the Chinese-made FN-6 man portable air defence system (MANPAD) in northern Aleppo. FSA units, operating under the banner of the Operation Euphrates Shield, receive supplies and are embeded with the Turkish army and Special Forces.They have been hardly able to obtain this modern surface-to-air missile without order from Ankara. If supplies of MANPADs to the FSA in northern Syria are confirmed, it will be an important signal that Turkey is considering the plan of military confrontation with the Syrian military after the seizure of al-Bab from ISIS.

Militants launched a toxic gas attack near the international airport in the city of Aleppo on Sunday, using projectiles with poisonous gas during the artillery shelling of the Syrian army’s positions. At least 28 Syrian servicemen were reported injured.

The Syrian army’s Tiger Forces, the Desert Hawks Brigade, Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and other pro-government groups are preparing to relaunch offensive operations in multiple fronts inside and outside Aleppo city. The operations will be supported by the Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces from the air and by Russian and Iranian military advisers on the ground. On Sunday, the army and its allies, using loud speakers, gave militants remaining in eastern Aleppo 24 hours to surrender.

The preparations followed the collapse of Jabhat al-Nusra & Co defenses in western Aleppo that lead to liberation of the areas of al-Assad and Minyan. The government forces also liberated the villages of Kafr Haddad and Khirbat Al-Zuwari in the southern Aleppo countryside.

“Moderate oppositioneers” from Jabhat al-Nusra face hard times as president-elect Donald Trump is preparing to enter the office. On November 12, a pro-militant media outlet, Step News, released a video of the US Air Force’s A-10C and F-15E warplanes, flying over southern Idlib. At least 1 air strike was reported.

Crews of Tu-160 and Tu-95 long-range strategic bombers are on combat alert in the Engels Air Force Base in the Russian region of Saratov, the Russian state-run TASS news agency reported Sunday, citing a military diplomatic source. According to the report Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic bombers were prepared for combat missions and loaded with cruise missiles. The Russian strategic bombers, Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22M have been involved in the Russian military operation in Syria since its start in 2015.

At the same time, the Russian Navy’s task force for Syria is also reading for combat missions in the country. The commander of Russia’s flagship Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier Sergei Artamonov confirmed on Saturday a flotilla of Russian warships is now in the eastern Mediterranean off the Syrian coast. He said that the battle group reached the designated zone and aircraft are already taking off from the ship’s deck to view the conflict zone. The battle group is ready to launch combat missions in any time.

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Corporate Media Rubbish: The Real Deplorables, The Power of Daily Propaganda

November 14th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

In his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,” Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980) said “(t)he medium is the message” because it shapes and controls “the scale and form of human association and action.”

Media affect societies, influencing how messages are perceived and understood, especially at a time mass communication, reaching virtually everyone in one form or other.

Major media influence how people think and act. Not during this US electoral season enough to assure Hillary’s ascension to power – the establishment favorite.

Throughout the campaign, the media delivered one-sided political reporting commonplace in banana republics and other despotic states, their dominant leadership alone covered supportively, token opposition virtually ignored – the way America treats alternative political candidates like Jill Stein.

The media’s message this year went unheeded. The power of daily propaganda failed. Trump’s message outdid them. One man, aided by his campaign team, got enough support to become America’s 45th president.

Regardless of how he governs, media scoundrels took a major body blow. Will viewers, readers and listeners tune out, choosing mainly alternative sources for news, information and analysis as I often urge?

At most in incrementally increasing numbers, but the trend is clear. Paul Craig Roberts says he gets more readership than some well-known media sources. Readers appreciate his straight talk on major issues – polar opposite double-talk featured in broadsheets like the NYT, Washington Post, National Public Radio, PBS, and television news, mocking the real thing.

Millions of Americans are sick and fed up with media rubbish – combining state-sponsored press release reporting with advocacy for candidates they prefer, denouncing or ignoring others, repudiating what real journalism is supposed to be all about.

Perhaps the best news from this year’s political season is the power of their message is dimming, maybe one day disappearing enough to render them irrelevant.

Note: I and other independent writers like me are immune to their poison because we have antidote – truth-telling!

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. 

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

 

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Company Behind Dakota Access Pipeline Rounds Up Wild Buffaloes, Keeps Them Without Food Or Water

November 14th, 2016 by Whitney Webb

Though the recent protests in the US would have you think that the biggest crisis facing the United States is Donald Trump’s surprise win, Native Americans have gathered in historic numbers to defend native territory from the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline, if completed, will span 1,170 miles at a cost of approximately $3.7 billion. The company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, has pushed on with the project, despite covering up its dangers and circumventing the law.

Now, as the pipeline enters its final phase of construction in North Dakota, where most of the resistance to the pipeline is located, Energy Transfer Partners and its hired contractors have escalated tensions with protestors to protect the project as it enters its final phase. The State of North Dakota has also taken to protecting the pipeline.

State police have been using rubber bullets, attack dogs, and tear gas on the protestors while North Dakota’s state attorneys have been working to intimidate journalists for covering and filming the protests. In one notable example, a filmmaker now faces up to 45 years in prison for only filming the protestors.

buffaloroundup

Credit – Indigenous Rising Media

Now, it appears that the native wildlife are also targets. Yesterday, Indigenous Rising Media released a video showing a large group of wild buffaloes being herded into an enclosure surrounded by 8 foot deep trenches and razor wire.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO

Current reports from the area claim that the buffaloes are being held without food or water for days. It has also been reported that the construction company building the pipeline has threatened to kill the buffaloes as they could “interfere” with the pipeline’s completion. The Animal Legal Defense Fund is currently investigating the situation and the legality of the treatment of these buffaloes. Herds of wild buffalo near the construction site captivated protestors when they appeared in a seeming show of support for the protestors during a confrontation between protestors and police. Buffaloes are sacred to the Sioux, serving as a symbol of the divine as buffaloes once provided abundant food and materials for the tribe. Due to this well-known spiritual significance of buffaloes, it is possible that their entrapment in these barbaric enclosures is intended to be used a psychological warfare against the Sioux and those that stand by them.

With the pipeline nearing completion and Energy Transfer Partners getting more and more desperate, it appears they will do anything no matter how immoral or abhorrent it may be.

However, it is astounding that thousands upon thousands of people who claim to be concerned about issues such as climate change have descended upon US cities with great zeal to protest Donald Trump’s election. Instead of decrying that the puppet on the right beat the puppet on the left, these supposedly “concerned citizens” should be fighting against the real and inexcusable acts of injustice taking place in North Dakota – against animals and humans alike.

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Os manifestantes Anti-Trump são instrumentos da Oligarquia. Objetivo: Deslegitimar Donald, instalar a “Senhora Presidente”

November 14th, 2016 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Imagem: A edição falhada da Newsweek, impressa antes dos resultados eleitorais

 “As reformas provocam sempre raiva naqueles que beneficiam com a velha ordem.”, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in The Crisis of the Old Order.

Quem são os manifestantes anti-Trump que mancham o nome dos progressistas, fingindo ser progressistas e recusando-se a aceitar o resultado das eleições presidenciais? Parecem e estão agindo pior do que, o “lixo branco”, que eles pretendem contestar.

Acho que sei quem são. São bandidos de aluguer e são pagos pela Oligarquia para deslegitimar a Presidência de Trump, da mesma forma que Washington e o German Marshall Fund pagaram a estudantes em Kiev para protestar contra o governo democraticamente eleito da Ucrânia a fim de preparar o caminho para um golpe de estado.

A organização, change.org, que afirma ser um grupo progressista, mas que não passa de uma fachada ao serviço da Oligarquia, juntamente com outros grupos progressistas, está a destruir a reputação de todos os progressistas ao pôr a circular uma petição que exige que os Grandes Eleitores, alterem o resultado das eleições, entregando os seus votos no Colégio eleitoral a Hillary. Lembram-se quão nervosos ficaram estes progressistas quando Trump disse que poderia vir a não aceitar o resultado das eleições, se houvesse provas de ter havido fraude na votação? Agora os progressistas estão a fazer aquilo que abominavam em Trump e que ele disse vir a poder fazer em determinadas condições.

Os presstitutos ocidentais utilizaram as manifestações em Kiev para deslegitimar um governo democraticamente eleito e para promover um golpe de estado. O pagamento aos manifestantes era suficientemente atrativo para que não-ucranianos viessem de países vizinhos para protestarem e receberem o seu dinheiro. Na altura eu publiquei os montantes pagos diariamente aos manifestantes. Os relatos foram feitos por pessoas da Europa Ocidental e Oriental, que não eram ucranianas, mas que foram pagas para protestar como se fossem ucranianos.

O mesmo se está a passar agora com os protestos anti-Trump. A CNN informa que “para muitos americanos em todo o país, a vitória de Donald Trump é um resultado que eles simplesmente se recusam a aceitar. Dezenas de milhares saíram às ruas em pelo menos 25 cidades dos EUA durante a noite.” Este é o relato exato que a oligarquia queria que os presstitutos fizessem e eles fizeram-no.

Eu acho que ninguém acredita que manifestações simultâneas em 25 cidades tenham sido um acontecimento espontâneo. Como é que 25 manifestações independentes podem ter ocorrido com as mesmas palavras de ordem e os mesmos cartazes, na mesma noite, após as eleições?

Qual é o objetivo dos protestos, e a que interesses servem? Como os romanos perguntavam, “Quem beneficia?”

Apenas há uma resposta: A Oligarquia, ela e apenas ela, beneficia.

Trump é uma ameaça para a Oligarquia, porque ele quer acabar com a entrega de empregos americanos aos estrangeiros. Essa redução de empregos, santificada pela corja dos economistas neoliberais como “livre comércio”, é uma das principais razões para o agravamento das desigualdades na distribuição do rendimento dos EUA no século XXI. Dinheiro que anteriormente era pago à classe média sob a forma de ordenados e salários, aos trabalhadores da indústria americana e aos licenciados das universidades tem sido reencaminhado para os bolsos dos Um Por Cento.

Quando as empresas norte-americanas deslocalizam a produção de bens e serviços, que são vendidos aos americanos, para os países asiáticos, como a China e a Índia, reduz-se a massa salarial, nos EUA. O dinheiro que anteriormente fazia parte dos rendimentos da classe média, passa a ser canalizado para bónus dos executivos e para dividendos e ganhos de capital, pagos aos acionistas. O elevador de mobilidade social ascendente que fez da América a terra das oportunidades foi desmantelado com o único propósito de transformar em multibilionários uma mão-cheia de pessoas.

Trump é uma ameaça para a Oligarquia, porque ele pretende construir relações pacíficas com a Rússia. Para substituir a rentável Ameaça Soviética, a Oligarquia e os seus agentes neoconservadores trabalharam horas extras para recriar a “Ameaça Russa”, através da demonização da Rússia.

Habituados a muitas décadas de lucros colossais devido à rentabilidade da Guerra Fria, o complexo militar/securitário ficou zangado quando o Presidente Reagan pôs fim à Guerra Fria. E antes que tivessem tido tempo para despejar mais lixivia sobre os contribuintes americanos conseguindo voltar à Guerra Fria de novo, a União Soviética entrou em colapso como resultado de um golpe de direita contra o presidente soviético Mikhail Gorbachev.

Então, o complexo militar/securitário e seus agentes neoconservadores, inventaram a “guerra contra o terror” para manter o dinheiro a fluir para o Um Por Cento. Mas, apesar dos media presstitutos trabalharem arduamente para criar o medo da “ameaça muçulmana”, mesmo os americanos mais desinteressados da política sabiam que os muçulmanos não tinham milhares de mísseis intercontinentais (ICBMs) carregados de armas termonucleares poderosas capazes de destruir a totalidade dos Estados Unidos em poucos minutos.

Nem os muçulmanos têm o Exército Vermelho capaz de invadir e conquistar a Europa em meia dúzia de dias. De fato, os muçulmanos não precisam de um exército. Os refugiados das guerras de Washington com a cobertura dos europeus estão a invadir a Europa.

Era necessário um pretexto para o orçamento anual de um bilião de dólares com a defesa e a segurança. Então a oligarquia criou “o novo Hitler” na Rússia. Hillary foi, desde o princípio, o agente da Oligarquia para aquecer a nova Guerra Fria.

Hillary é a ferramenta, tornada milionária pela Oligarquia, cujo trabalho como Presidente seria proteger e aumentar o orçamento de biliões de dólares do complexo militar/securitário. Com Hillary na Casa Branca, o saque dos contribuintes americanos em prol da riqueza do Um Por Cento poderia ir para a frente sem quaisquer limites. Ora se Trump resolver acabar com “a ameaça russa”, a Oligarquia levará uma facada nos seus descomunais rendimentos.

O trabalho de Hillary como presidente seria também privatizar a Segurança Social, a fim de que seus benfeitores de Wall Street pudessem também saquear os americanos, do mesmo modo que os americanos têm sido roubados pelas companhias de seguros através do Obamacare.

Aqueles americanos que não prestam atenção pensam, erradamente, que o FBI absolveu Hillary de violar os protocolos da Segurança Nacional com as suas práticas de email. O FBI disse que Hillary violou a Segurança Nacional, mas que tal era resultado de negligência ou ignorância. Ela não foi acusada, porque o FBI concluiu que ela não tinha intenção de violar os protocolos de Segurança Nacional. As investigações à Fundação Clinton, essas, continuam.

Dito de outro modo, a fim de proteger Hillary o FBI caiu na regra do antigo direito comum que diz que “não pode haver crime sem intenção.” (Ver PCR e Lawrence Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions.)

Poder-se-ia pensar que os manifestantes, se fossem legítimos, celebrariam a vitória de Trump. Ele, ao contrário de Hillary, prometeu reduzir as tensões com a poderosa Rússia, e esperemos também com a China. Ao contrário de Hillary, Trump diz que está preocupado com a falta de empregos para as pessoas que se manifestam contra ele nas ruas de 25 cidades americanas.

Ou seja, os protestos contra o povo Americano por ter escolhido Trump como seu presidente não têm sentido. Os protestos só estão a ocorrer por uma razão apenas. A oligarquia pretende deslegitimar a Presidência de Trump.

Uma vez que o Presidente Trump seja deslegitimado, será mais fácil para a Oligarquia assassiná-lo. A não ser que a Oligarquia possa nomear e controlar o governo de Trump, Trump arrisca-se de facto a ser assassinado.

As manifestações contra Trump também são suspeitas por outro motivo. Ao contrário de Hillary, Obama e Bush, Donald Trump não abateu nem deslocou milhões de pessoas dos povos de sete países, enviando milhões de refugiados das guerras da Oligarquia para invadir a Europa.

Trump ganhou sua fortuna, seja lá de que forma for, mas não com a venda de influências no governo dos EUA a agentes estrangeiros como Bill e Hillary fizeram.

Então afinal, contra que é os manifestantes protestam?

Não há nenhuma resposta, a não ser que eles estão contratados para protestar. Tal como ocorreu na praça Maidan em Kiev em que os manifestantes foram contratados para protestar por ONGs financiadas pelos EUA e pela Alemanha.

Os protestos em Kiev foram também sem sentido, porque as eleições presidenciais tinham sido apenas alguns meses antes. Se os ucranianos realmente acreditavam que o presidente deles estava a conspirar com a Rússia para impedir que a Ucrânia se tornasse num estado-fantoche ocidental, mas ainda assim desejassem tornar-se num estado-fantoche, independentemente dos custos, a oportunidade de eliminar o governo nas eleições teria sido aproveitada. A única razão para os protestos foi orquestrar um golpe de estado. Os Estados Unidos conseguiram colocar um seu agente no controle do novo governo ucraniano, como se depreende da conversa entre Victoria Nuland e o embaixador dos EUA em Kiev que está disponível na Internet.

Os protestos de Maidan foram sem sentido exceto para tornarem possível um golpe de estado. Os protestos foram, sem dúvida, orquestrados por Washington através da Secretária de Estado adjunta, Victoria Nuland, uma neoconservadora trazida para o Departamento de Estado por Hillary Clinton, com a finalidade de criar um conflito com a Rússia.

Trump está a ser contestado com o objetivo de o tornar vulnerável, no caso de se vir a provar que é uma ameaça para a Oligarquia, como se pode pensar que possa ser.

Trump ganhou a Presidência, mas a Oligarquia ainda está no poder, o que torna quaisquer reformas reais difíceis de alcançar. Reformas simbólicas podem ser o resultado da disputa entre o Presidente Trump e os oligarcas.

Karl Marx aprendeu com a experiência histórica e Lenine aprendeu com Karl Marx, que a mudança não pode ocorrer se a classe dirigente arredada do poder, permanecer intacta depois de uma revolução contra ela. Temos prova disso mesmo por toda a América do Sul. Todas as revoluções conduzidas pelos povos autóctones deixaram sem ser molestadas as classes dominantes, e todas essas revoluções foram derrubadas através dos conluios entre as classes dominantes e Washington.

Washington tem conspirado com as elites tradicionais para remover os presidentes eleitos das Honduras em várias ocasiões. Recentemente, Washington ajudou as elites a afastar as presidentes da Argentina e do Brasil. Os presidentes da Venezuela, Equador e Bolívia estão na calha e são poucas probabilidades de sobreviverem. Washington está determinada em pôr as mãos em Julian Assange. Para o conseguir Washington pretende derrubar o governo equatoriano que, desafiando Washington, deu asilo político a Julian Assange.

Hugo Chávez teve oportunidade de exilar os grupos da elite venezuelana quando participaram num golpe da CIA contra ele. Correu mal o golpe porque antes que a CIA pudesse matar Chávez, o povo e os militares forçaram sua libertação. Em vez de punir os criminosos que o teriam matado, Chávez decidiu soltá-los.

O desenlace é o erro clássico dos revolucionários. Porque confiar na boa vontade da classe dirigente deposta, é meio caminho andado para a derrota da revolução.

A América Latina revelou-se incapaz de aprender esta lição: as revoluções não podem ser amigáveis.

Trump é um negociador. A Oligarquia pode permitir-lhe o halo do sucesso em troca de nenhuma mudança real.

Trump não é perfeito. Ele pode falhar por culpa própria. Mas devemos enfatizar os dois traços mais importantes do seu programa: reduzir as tensões entre as grandes potências nucleares e parar com as políticas de Washington que permitem que a globalização destrua as perspetivas económicas dos americanos.

Se ocorrer um agravamento das tensões entre as potências nucleares, não ficaremos cá para nos preocuparmos com outros problemas. A combinação da economia escavacada pela globalização com a imigração é um pesadelo econômico. E Trump entende isso pelo que tal é motivo para ser apoiado.

Paul Craig Roberts

Nota: Alguns acreditam que Trump é um ardil fabricado pela Oligarquia. No entanto, como Hillary, comprada-e-paga, sempre foi a representante da Oligarquia, esse artifício bem elaborado, mas demasiado rebuscado, seria desnecessário. Seria sempre preferível para a Oligarquia ganhar com o seu próprio programa em vez de promover um presidente com um programa oposto e depois trocá-lo. Outro traidor iria aumentar a ira do povo. Se Hillary tivesse ganho, a oligarquia teria o mandato dos eleitores para executar o seu próprio programa. (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

Artigo original em inglês :

madam-president-newsweek

The Anti-Trump Protesters Are Tools of the Oligarchy. Their Objective: Delegitimize Donald, Install “Madam President”, 11 de November de 2016

Tradução : Júlio Manuel Dias Gomes (Docente na Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal, atualmente reformado.)

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DieselGate: EU Commission Attempts to Delay Policing of Diesel Emissions. “VW Was Caught Cheating”

November 14th, 2016 by Corporate Europe Observatory

In September last year, car manufacturer Volkswagen was caught cheating on emission tests in the US – the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal was unleashed and quickly went on to also hit Europe. Like in the US, VW diesel cars manufactured in the EU were found to contain cheat devices which under lab conditions would throttle the emission of harmful nitrogen oxides, pollutants which in 2015 caused an estimated 75,000 premature deaths in Europe alone.

As the investigation into the Dieselgate affair deepens both in VW’s home country Germany as well as at EU-level, the European Commission’s role in the scandal comes into focus. Corporate Europe Observatory recently obtained leaked documents (I, II, III, IV) which reveal the illegal attempt of the Commission’s enterprise department (DG Enterprise) to delay enforcement of EU emissions standards for diesel cars in a bid to help industry save money.

Today, Karl Falkenberg and Daniel Calleja Crespo – two of the highest-ranking former Commission officials from DG Enterprise and DG Environment – will be heard at the European Parliament’s dieselgate inquiry committee. The leaked 2012 correspondence between both departments already highlights a collaborator spirit that links certain parts of the Commission with the car industry, something which both Falkenberg and Calleja Crespo have been disputing heavily.The leaked internal correspondence reveals a severe clash between the two departments – DG Enterprise on the one hand, which led on the development of tougher emissions tests and then tried to skimp when implementing these, and DG Environment on the other hand, which pressed for the timely implementation of the new measures.Aware of the higher accuracy of these Real Driving Emissions (RDE) tests it had helped to devise and concerned about subsequent profit losses for car manufacturers, DG Enterprise wanted to keep diesel cars on the roads – and on sale – that would clearly have been shown to exceed legal emission levels by the new tests.i Antonio Tajani, who is now a prominent MEP and EU Parliament presidential hopeful, was the one heading DG Enterprise at this time, when the department argued that “the probability of rejecting vehicles by the RDE test procedure […] has to be kept low“ii.

A five-year lead-in period for the tougher new tests was thus suggested in order to spare manufacturers the costs of technological adaptation necessitated by more accurate emission readings.iii Ignoring the 2007 EU regulation that obliges auto manufacturers to cut toxic nitrogen oxide emissions, DG Enterprise even claimed that “as a consequence [of the economic crisis] it may not be political[ly] opportune to implement RDE measures […] during the next couple of years“.iv Once informed of the plans by DG Enterprise, DG Environment strongly objected to the strategy, emphasising the legal obligation of enforcing EU emissions standards, and warning that the proposed delay would violate EU pollution regulation.v To DG Environment staff, a five-year timeline was indefensible vi, and the pretext of the financial crisis “[could not] be adduced in the continued failure [to] properly implement the […] legislation“.vii

Even member states themselves rejected the DG Environment proposal, given “the importance […] of air quality […] problems caused across the EU by the real-world emissions of diesel“ viii While they agreed to consider a delayed enforcement of diesel standards, they, too, rejected the suggestion of keeping dirty diesel cars on sale even if they failed the new tests.ix 

Although there is no direct link between this 2012 attempt of DG Enterprise to delay the enforcement in member states and last year’s EU decision on when and how to introduce the new RDE tests, its intention is very much reflected here: they will only be used as of autumn 2017, with test results of diesel emissions being allowed to exceed the legal limit for nitrogen oxides by up to 210% until 2020 and by up to 50% ever after.

Understandably, Tajani as European Commissioner in charge of car industry regulation at the time, had to appear before the ‘EMIS’ dieselgate inquiry committee of the EU Parliament regarding his role in the scandal and the Commission’s apparent lack of political will to push for a timely enforcement in emission standards . Tajani insisted that his call for a regulatory moratorium in 2012 had no ”indirect impact on the DG […] that could have led […] to a slowing down of the legislative activity.“x

The leaked correspondence clearly rebuts this claim and exposes how reluctant a key department of the European Commission has been to tackle the problem of diesel cars exceeding EU emission standards – to the detriment of public health and the environment.

Notes:

iEnterprise and Industry Directorate General: Real Driving Emissions of Light Duty Vehicles: Meeting with Member States of 3 May 2012. ENTR.F1/KS D(2012). European Commission, Brussels, 18 April 2012.

iiEnterprise and Industry Directorate General: Real Driving Emissions of Light Duty Vehicles: Meeting with Member States of 3 May 2012. ENTR.F1/KS D(2012). European Commission, Brussels, 18 April 2012.

iiiEnterprise and Industry Directorate General: Note for the Attention of K. Falkenberg, Director-General, DG Environment. ENTR/D/5/KS/iv -(2012)8426883. European Commission, Brussels, 25 June 2012.

ivEnterprise and Industry Directorate General: Real Driving Emissions of Light Duty Vehicles: Meeting with Member States of 3 May 2012. ENTR.F1/KS D(2012). European Commission, Brussels, 18 April 2012.

vDirectorate-General Environment: Note for the Attention of Mr Daniel Calleja Crespo, Director General, Enterprise and Industry. ENV/C3/SB/pb ARES(2012). European Commission, Brussels, 27 April 2012.

viDirectorate-General Environment: Note for the Attention of Mr Daniel Calleja Crespo, Director General, Enterprise and Industry. ENV/C3/SB/pb ARES(2012). European Commission, Brussels, 27 April 2012.

viiDirectorate-General Environment: Note for the Attention of Mr Daniel Calleja Crespo, Director General, Enterprise and Industry. ENV/C3/SB/pb ARES(2012). European Commission, Brussels, 27 April 2012.

viiiDG Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General: RDE-LDV workshop of Member States of 3 May 2012: executive summary. ENTR.F1/KA D(2012). Brussels, 01 June 2012.

ixDG Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General: RDE-LDV workshop of Member States of 3 May 2012: executive summary. ENTR.F1/KA D(2012). Brussels, 01 June 2012.

xTable with questions to Mr. Antonio Tajani – EMIS hearing of 5/9/2016, Question 12, p. 12. Accessible under http://www.emeeting.europarl.europa.eu/committees/agenda/201609/EMIS/EMIS(2016)0905_1/sitt-3169787

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Fighting the (Real) Deplorables. Corporate Financiers, Big Agriculture, Big Pharma… What are the Solutions?

November 14th, 2016 by LocalOrg

 Across America, protests have broken out. They are small, poorly organized, and poorly led. They lack any realistic goal, so clearly, lack any actual plan to achieve any sort of goal. And unfortunately, they have become violent, embodying the very sort of hate, intimidation, and victimization the protesters claim they are fighting against.

The truth is, as the protests currently exist, no matter how long they persist or how big they get, they will accomplish nothing positive, and instead, invite a wide variety of very serious negatives.

All Americans, and those overseas looking in, must logically admit that neither Hillary Clinton nor now President-elect, Donald Trump, truly represented the American people.

Neither were drawn from the people, neither have a record of service to the people, and both have been deeply entrenched in a corrupt system dominated absolutely by corporate-financier special interests. In many ways, both Clinton and Trump in fact constitute those special interests.

This reality means that it is not  “Clinton” or “Trump” that either side was voting for or against, but different aspects of the same corrupt system they find abhorrent and in desperate need of changing. It was not “Clinton” or “Trump” that people were voting for, but their opponents they were voting against. It was not the arguments each candidate made that convinced them, it was the arguments of candidates and commentary by the corporate-media that repelled them.


It is a singularly corrupt system, using smoke and mirrors to convince at least a part of society to support at least a part of its continued existence, under either “right” or “left” cover.

Hillary Clinton once infamously declared:

…you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables…

But the truth is, it is not Trump supporters, and not Clinton supporters – none of the American people who are “deplorables.”

It is the system that is deplorable. It is the corporate-financier special interests who are deplorable for monopolizing and dominating every aspect of the American people’s lives for profit and power. It is the politicians who are deplorable for selling themselves to these interests while posing as public servants and representatives. It is the corporate media who helps both special interests and their pet politicians pander to the public, mislead them, confuse them, and most deplorable of all, divide them against one another.


Fighting the Deplorables 

Here is where most commentary trails off into a rhetorical rant, peddling political ideals that are just as meaningless as a solution as the rhetoric that has created the problem at hand. Instead, it is far more constructive to explain to you that while a small handful of elite have taken a majority stake in both America and the world for their own benefit and at the cost of everyone else, there are very specific actions you can take right now to take your own stake, and use that to introduce an element of balance to both national and international power.

At the heart of Washington there lies an engine of corporate-financier special interests. They are not simply men and women with immense amounts of money and power. They are men and women who control essential things required for civilization’s continued existence, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, transportation, defense, technology, education, commerce, and monetary systems.

To take your own stake in the game, you must do so by creating alternatives to these vast monopolies.

Toe-to-Toe With the Deplorables 

Big-agriculture, big-retail, big-oil, big-retail, big-pharmaceutical corporations, and big-banks (and many more). Any corporation or institution that enjoys a commanding monopoly over the essential functions of modern human civilization falls into the category of “deplorables.” They hold the levers of modern civilization within their hands, and they are the ones that have directed us along the course we currently find ourselves on. They, not one half of the population they have convinced to think differently than the other before pitting both halves against one another, are the problem.

Replacing them is the solution.

1. Big-Agriculture: Food is an obvious essential every living being on Earth requires to sustain themselves. The control over a people’s food supply has been instrumental for defining the “haves” and the “have nots” throughout human history. It is the most essential element to safeguard in order to achieve supremacy over another, and it is the most essential element to undermine when dismantling the source of another’s power.

Big-agriculture, including corporations like Bayer, Dow, BASF, DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, John Deere, Tyson, and many others, not to mention the big-retailers they are partnered with to move their products and services, not only monopolize the American food supply, but threaten food security globally. They have not only deeply infiltrated governments, but have exerted unwarranted and insidious influence across the media directly, and indirectly through “independent third parties” that perform lobbying services without disclosing their status as lobbyists.

Solutions: Fighting big-agriculture is easy, and it’s already a fight that is well on its way toward victory.  Networks of organic farmers, farmers’ markets, urban agriculture networks, together with the alternative media and organic advocates, have already begun changing the tide, raising public awareness about:

  • The benefits of healthy, clean, organic food;
  • The empowerment that comes with community agriculture;
  • The economic benefits of more equally distributed agricultural entrepreneurship and;
  • The sociopolitical impact of taking a stake in our collective food security.
And getting started is easy. There are entire networks that not only produce locally grown food for their communities, but have created infrastructure to teach absolute beginners how to get involved in agriculture, both rural and urban. Permaculture Voices hosts a variety of speakers sharing the work of their networks and is a good place to find one that suits you most.

One particularly impressive urban farmer is Curtis Stone of Canada. He is living proof that local agriculture is not only a theoretical solution to shifting the balance of power in the people’s favor, it is a practical solution tangibly making a change.

Something as simple as tearing up your lawn and planting a garden can be the pathway toward creating a sustainable and profitable business. At the same time, you are redirecting money locally your community would otherwise be channeling into big-ag by providing them with a superior alternative. It can be done, regardless of rules, regulations, and social pressures placed in your way, you simply need to be creative and determined enough to find the solutions – and likely, someone in the existing and ever-growing organic food movement has already faced and overcome such challenges. Seek them out and learn from them. There is no excuse.

If you have energy to walk around in the streets all night destroying your neighborhood, you have energy to get together the next day and plant a community garden or start your own independent, socially responsible and prosperous farming operation. Be the change you want to see in the world.

If you don’t aspire to be a farmer, there are other things you can do:

  • Support local farmers and farmers’ markets;
  • Grow a fraction of your own food in a home garden, even 1% is better than 0%,
  • Be more conscious when you buy, not only to shift the sociopolitical and economic paradigm, but for your health and;
  • Start a blog to advocate local, national, and international networks you see making a difference – the more voices out there, the harder it is for corporate-funded propaganda to drown them out.

Creating a larger and more powerful organic movement, distributed among communities, but collectively representing the same basic principles of healthy, affordable, local food, creates another point of leverage against existing monopolies – the weight of policy demands backed by a physical network of producers, farmers, alternative media networks, and loyal customers who don’t just buy their food to eat, but buy it because they know it is better, and comes from their very own community.

It is a powerful point of leverage that is already putting demonstrable strain upon big-ag, forcing them to expose themselves, their methods, and true ambitions on public display, resort to ever increasingly desperate tactics, and expend vast amounts of resources to maintain what is becoming an unsustainable monopoly.

Big-ag is happy to ignore protesters waving signs. They cannot ignore growing segments of the population eating food produced outside their monopoly. They can either reform, or live in a world increasingly moving on into the future without them.

2. Big-Oil: Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, coal companies, and the corrupt despots of the Persian Gulf who have built evil empires upon their fields of crude, blacken our skies and our lungs with their toxic fuels. Our power plants and cars have burned these toxic fuels for decades. While alternatives exist, and indeed, some nations – like Iceland – have moved beyond petrochemicals and coal, big-oil and energy monopolies have used their power and influence to perpetuate their monopolies and the centralization of energy production at the detriment of human civilization.

Whether or not you believe such fuels are contributing to climate change is irrelevant. You need only stand on a city street corner for 5 minutes during rush hour to feel your health being destroyed, or look at the wars and compromising political partnerships and rivalries our governments have become entangled in to realize an alternative is necessary.

Solutions: Localizing energy production is not as easy as growing your own food – which is in itself probably not as easy as some might think. But it is also not impossible. Energy cooperatives exist all over the world already, ranging from wind and solar power to biogas production.

In Farmers Weekly’s article, “Farm Power: Community energy is the future,” explains:

Involving local communities in renewable energy schemes can help farmers get projects off the ground and deliver benefits well beyond the farm gate. 

Community energy schemes are still in their infancy in the UK compared with elsewhere in Europe, but momentum is clearly building. 

More than 5,000 community groups have undertaken energy initiatives in the last five years and the publication of the UK’s first Community Energy Strategy (CES) last year promised a “step change” for the sector and a significant expansion over the next three years.

The article goes on to detail just how such cooperatives work.

Additionally, there are companies like US-based Solar City that produces and installs solar panels on household rooftops, Tesla that produces electric cars and battery banks called Powerwalls for storing energy at home. These high profile companies have inspired many others across the country and around the world to begin moving solar power deeper into mainstream power production.

While in some cases, solar power is still a huge investment compared to living on the grid, prices are dropping toward a future where that isn’t the case. Many already find solar power to be a better solution than drawing from centralized power grids, and in places where grids don’t reach, solar already dominates power production.

Solar power and other community or individually owned and operated power grids decentralizes another of human civilization’s essential building blocks. The people themselves possessing complete control over this particular block, further lends them leverage against monopolies that for decades have used their control over energy to impose their will upon the fate of entire nations.

There is a learning curve to overcome when getting into alternative energy but there are many people already out there doing it both for profit and to make a difference. Just as there are people among the organic movement willing to share their knowledge with those willing to seek them out and learn, so too are there people in the alternative energy community. Seek them out, and learn.

3. Big-Retail: Our food, our manufactured goods, our technology, and much more often comes from big retailers. In the US it is WalMart and Target. In Europe and Asia it includes BigC, Tesco, Carrefour, and other retailing monopolies. When these mega-stores open up, people trade in local socioeconomic independence for cheap junk consolidated for convenience in a single location.

But what seems like a blessing at first, becomes a curse over time. Pretty soon, towns dominated by these big-retailers find themselves completely at the mercy of them and a handful of “chain” restaurants and specialty stores. Local development is nonexistent, because the summation of wealth is often created by working for these stores, and paid to them – much like exploitative and abusive “company stores” during the Industrial Revolution.

Solutions: However, manufacturing can be brought back to our communities through advances in manufacturing technology and innovative institutions often called “makerspaces” or “hackerspaces.”

Computer controlled manufacturing such as 3D printing, laser cutters and computer-controlled routers have become small and cheap enough for individuals to use in their homes, but more often than not, they are found in makerspaces where even absolute beginners can get help in designing and manufacturing their ideas. The technology is not well suited for mass production, but it doesn’t need to. It can deliver short-runs of items, or create other manufacturing systems that can be used for larger scales of production (molds, vacuum forming, etc).

China, famous for being the “factory of the world,” already has seen the advancement of manufacturing technology chip away at its domination over mass production. Companies that once used Chinese factories to produce items can now afford their own machines which not only cuts out shipping costs, but gives them greater control over quality and customization.

Makerspaces are popping up all over the world. In North America and Europe they are virtually everywhere. Search online for the one nearest you. The people there are friendly and eager to expand their already growing community and are hungry for challenges related to the practical application of the tools, talent, and machinery they have in their spaces.

For both ordinary people and aspiring entrepreneurs, makerspaces often serve as the starting line for entire companies and new innovations. Waiting for mega-corporations like Apple, IBM, Google, and others to lead us along is no longer necessary. When you want something, instead of paying into the local “company store,” why not learn a new skill, make it, and perhaps even start a small business making more for your friends, family, neighbors – and with crowd sourcing like Kickstarter, to the rest of the world?

We have gone into great detail specifically on decentralizing big-retail, including profiling some of the progress that was already made as early as 2012. Since then, so much more progress has been made, and the community is simply waiting for the rest of society to end their dependence on consumerism, and try their hand at being producers, designers, makers, and doers.

And while there is an upper limit to what you can get at a big-retail store today, there is no upper limit to what can be made locally leveraging modern computer controlled manufacturing. Opensource car designs are being built in America in “microfactories” by a company called Local Motors and represents a proof-of-concept in decentralizing something as formidable and centralized as the auto industry.

4. Big-Pharmaceuticals: Like big-ag, big-pharma is undoubtedly a deplorable. Corporations like GlaxoKlineSmith (GSK), Bayer, Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and many, many more, have been not only accused, but convicted in courts of law around the globe for some of the largest cases of healthcare fraud and abuse in human history. Yet they are still charged by governments around the world with the research, development, production, and distribution of medications human beings rely on to live.

What’s worse is that much of the “research and development” big-pharma is engaged in, is late-stage preparations to bring drugs to market – drugs that have been developed through public funding for years, sometimes even decades. These special interests have infiltrated regulatory and government bodies so deeply, they are able to acquire, then criminally exploit the results of publicly funded research for immense profits.

Worse still, many of the products produced and distributed by big-pharma are either ineffective, or outright dangerous, many times being subscribed for symptoms and uses they were not even approved for.

Solutions; While harder than both food production and energy independence, decentralizing human healthcare is still not impossible.

Community labs (a list of labs around the world) built around the concept of do-it-yourself biology (DIYbio) are also spreading around the world. Makerspaces – with their special mixture of talent and technology – are able to quickly produce prototypes and opensource versions of expensive proprietary hospital and lab equipment otherwise inaccessible to community healthcare infrastructure. If enough people interested in healthcare and biology assemble at a particular makerspace, a lab is usually established.

In the US, there already is a program where makerspaces are actually being established within hospitals, allowing nurses, technicians, and doctors to prototype and manufacture solutions to problems they encounter during their work. This concept is beginning to spread around the world to other hospitals where makerspace mainstays like 3D printing are being used for everything from creating physical models of patients’ organs to assist in the planning stages for difficult surgeries, to creating customized hooks, fasteners, and attachments for existing equipment that are expensive or impossible to replace otherwise.

Makerspaces are also increasingly collaborating with university labs, hospitals, and other healthcare providers and institutions. This tangible progress in human healthcare helps open up the technology used to administer and advance it, lowering the overall costs in providing it to patients – a much more sustainable solution than subsidies alone.

The collective knowledge communities acquire during these collaborations helps decentralize healthcare.

In terms of pharmaceuticals, there are even groups working on opensource bioreactors (basically just glass containers with computer controlled temperature, stirring, and mixing functions) and computer software to make brewing pharmaceuticals as cheap and as easy as a cooking recipe. While this exists more on the cutting edge of healthcare decentralization, it proves that it is possible, and the more people that get involved, the quicker it will go from cutting edge to commonplace.

If you have an interest in medicine, biology, or human health, simply use your Internet search engine of choice and find a group active near you.

5. Big-Banks: Currency is the lifeblood of commerce. Regardless of your economic system of choice, money is necessary to make it function. Control over currency and funding grants institutions and special interests immense power over commerce, and thus virtually every aspect of human civilization. Decentralizing this power introduces balance and reduces the scale of abuse one can exercise through any given monetary system.

Alternatives are difficult to establish, but not impossible. And while current alternatives are not perfect, if one’s interest is in monetary policy and monetary systems, then there is a growing community they can join to improve these alternatives.

Solutions: Cryptocurrencies and crowd funding are two such innovations that are giving people alternatives to current monetary systems as well as the raising of funds for projects. Bitcoin is just one of several cryptocurrencies and there are a growing number of crowdfunding platforms including Kickstarterand Patreon.

Cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding help oil this system of alternatives growing from increasingly high-tech, decentralized solutions to the corrupt monopolies at the source of our sociopolitical and economic troubles.

It should be noted that many alternative media sites, not only political, but covering all subjects, from science and technology, to entertainment and education – increasingly rely on sites like Patreon to channel funding from their viewers and expand their work in a sustainable and responsive way to what their audiences want. This stands in stark contrast to the sponsored media currently dominating Western audiences’ attention, presenting them messages and perspectives that suit the corporate-financier interests funding them, not the people consuming their content.

Displace the Deplorables 

These are just 5 areas and but a handful of solutions among many where people are already working hard, all over the world, to build the sort of world they want to live in – a world in contrast to the injustice of centralized power and profits we currently live in. The immense problems we face today were not created by one person overnight, nor will they be solved by one person overnight. It will take many people, focusing in many different areas, patiently over time to collectively move the vector sum of human efforts toward something more equitable, just, and beneficial to us all.

Of these 5 areas, you need not cover them all. If you committed yourself to just one of them, and worked incrementally over the next year to achieve even the scarcest of results, you will be further ahead than if you did nothing at all. Efforts, no matter how small, add up over time. When many people are working in parallel, these small incremental steps add up even more.

The only sure way to fail and effect no change at all is to resign yourself to the system currently at hand. Doing nothing, or worse yet, going out into the streets to create chaos, adds up over time as either nothing, or the destruction of what little you already have.

Just as when we were children seeking greater independence, we were unable to obtain it by simply shouting, stomping our feet, and throwing a tantrum. We were required to grow up, acquire skills, apply them effectively, and create a life of our own, in our own way, to suit us rather than have a life imposed upon us by those we depended on. Likewise, as a society, we need to grow up, take an actual stake in this world of ours for ourselves.

By controlling our food, water, energy, local manufacturing, monetary policy, and even our own healthcare, we invest in and derive from these efforts to our own, direct benefit.

We must become the change we want to see in the world, not stomp our feet until someone delivers it to us. It is not “a way” to solve our problems. It is the only way problems can ever be solved. Do not join the protests, do not react to them. There is far too much work to be done to be distracted by them. Offer those who ask you about the protests to join you in a real revolution, one in which we set off to build the world we seek to live in with our own two hands rather than “demand” with our mouths.

LocalOrg seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.

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You’ll Only Understand Trump and Brexit If You Understand the Failure of Globalization

November 14th, 2016 by Washington's Blog

Trump

Trump made rejection of globalization a centerpiece of his campaign. In his July 21st acceptance speech as the Republican nominee, he said:

Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.

The Boston Globe bannered this headline on Thursday:  “Trump won. Globalization lost. Now what?”

On election night, CNN’s Jake Tapper explained that many Americans voted for Trump because they are sick of the income inequality, globalization, and politics-as-usual that the status quo have given us. He pointed out that only a handful of people have gotten rich off of globalization, and a lot of people have been left behind.

Counterpunch wrote Friday:

The real meaning of this upset is that Wall Street’s globalization project has been rejected by the citizens of its homeland.

***

Trump voters had several reasons to vote for Trump other than “racism”.  Most of all, they want their jobs back, jobs that have vanished thanks to the neoliberal policy of transferring manufacturing jobs to places with low wages.

Brexit

Similarly, Brexit was largely a vote against globalization.

For example, the Guardian ran an article in June explaining, “Brexit is a rejection of globalisation”:

 Britain’s rejection of the EU. This was more than a protest against the career opportunities that never knock and the affordable homes that never get built. It was a protest against the economic model that has been in place for the past three decades.

***

Europe has failed to fulfil the historic role allocated to it. Jobs, living standards and welfare states were all better protected in the heyday of nation states in the 1950s and 1960s than they have been in the age of globalisation. Unemployment across the eurozone is more than 10%. Italy’s economy is barely any bigger now than it was when the euro was created. Greece’s economy has shrunk by almost a third.

***

Inevitably, there has been a backlash, manifested in the rise of populist parties on the left and right. An increasing number of voters believe there is not much on offer from the current system. They think globalisation has benefited a small privileged elite, but not them. They think it is unfair that they should pay the price for bankers’ failings. They hanker after a return to the security that the nation state provided, even if that means curbs on the core freedoms that underpin globalisation, including the free movement of people.

***

Torsten Bell, the director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, analysed the voting patterns in the referendum and found that those parts of Britain with the strongest support for Brexit were those that had been poor for a long time. The result was affected by “deeply entrenched national geographical inequality”, he said.

There has been much lazy thinking in the past quarter of a century about globalisation. As Bell notes, it is time to rethink the assumption that a “flexible globalised economy can generate prosperity that is widely shared”.

But What Do the Experts Say?

Mainstream economists, organizations and politicians – including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (and see this), McKinsey & Company and Obama – now admit that globalization creates inequality.  People worldwide are furious at runaway inequality … and it’s affecting elections globally.

The Bank of International Settlements – the “Central Banks’ Central Bank” – says that financial globalization itself makes booms and busts far more frequent and destabilizing than they otherwise would be.

The Economist pointed out in July:

Most economists have been blindsided by the backlash [against globalization]. A few saw it coming. It is worth studying their reasoning ….

David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson have documented how the costs of America’s growing trade with China has fallen disproportionately on certain cities. And so on.

Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York believes such costs perpetuate a cycle of globalisation. He argues that periods of global integration and technological progress generate rising inequality ….

Supporters of economic integration underestimated the risks both that big slices of society would feel left behind ….

The New York Times reported in March:

Were the experts wrong about the benefits of trade for the American economy?

***

Voters’ anger and frustration, driven in part by relentless globalization and technological change [has made Trump and Sanders popular, and] is already having a big impact on America’s future, shaking a once-solid consensus that freer trade is, necessarily, a good thing.

“The economic populism of the presidential campaign has forced the recognition that expanded trade is a double-edged sword,” wrote Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

What seems most striking is that the angry working class — dismissed so often as myopic, unable to understand the economic trade-offs presented by trade — appears to have understood what the experts are only belatedly finding to be true: The benefits from trade to the American economy may not always justify its costs.

In a recent study, three economists — David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn at the University of Zurich and Gordon Hanson at the University of California, San Diego — raised a profound challenge to all of us brought up to believe that economies quickly recover from trade shocks. In theory, a developed industrial country like the United States adjusts to import competition by moving workers into more advanced industries that can successfully compete in global markets.

They examined the experience of American workers after China erupted onto world markets some two decades ago. The presumed adjustment, they concluded, never happened. Or at least hasn’t happened yet. Wages remain low and unemployment high in the most affected local job markets. Nationally, there is no sign of offsetting job gains elsewhere in the economy. What’s more, they found that sagging wages in local labor markets exposed to Chinese competition reduced earnings by $213 per adult per year.

In another study they wrote with Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price from M.I.T., they estimated that rising Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs.

“These results should cause us to rethink the short- and medium-run gains from trade,” they argued. “Having failed to anticipate how significant the dislocations from trade might be, it is incumbent on the literature to more convincingly estimate the gains from trade, such that the case for free trade is not based on the sway of theory alone, but on a foundation of evidence that illuminates who gains, who loses, by how much, and under what conditions.”

***

The case for globalization based on the fact that it helps expand the economic pie by 3 percent becomes much weaker when it also changes the distribution of the slices by 50 percent, Mr. Autor argued.

Steve Keen – economics professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London – wrote Friday:

Plenty of people will try to convince you that globalization and free trade could benefit everyone, if only the gains were more fairly shared. The only problem with the party, they’ll say, is that the neighbours weren’t invited. We’ll share the benefits more equally now, we promise. Let’s keep the party going. Globalization and Free Trade are good.

This belief is shared by almost all politicians in both parties, and it’s an article of faith for the economics profession.

***

It’s a fallacy based on a fantasy, and it has been ever since David Ricardo dreamed up the idea of “Comparative Advantage and the Gains from Trade” two centuries ago.

***

[Globalization’s] little shell and pea trick is therefore like most conventional economic theory: it’s neat, plausible, and wrong. It’s the product of armchair thinking by people who never put foot in the factories that their economic theories turned into rust buckets.

So the gains from trade for everyone and for every country that could supposedly be shared more fairly simply aren’t there in the first place. Specialization is a con job—but one that the Washington elite fell for (to its benefit, of course). Rather than making a country better off, specialization makes it worse off, with scrapped machinery that’s no longer useful for anything, and with less ways to invent new industries from which growth actually comes.-

Excellent real-world research by Harvard University’s “Atlas of Economic Complexity” has found diversity, not specialization, is the “magic ingredient” that actually generates growth. Successful countries have a diversified set of industries, and they grow more rapidly than more specialized economies because they can invent new industries by melding existing ones.

***

Of course, specialization, and the trade it necessitates, generates plenty of financial services and insurance fees, and plenty of international junkets to negotiate trade deals. The wealthy elite that hangs out in the Washington party benefits, but the country as a whole loses, especially its working class.

And Clinton can’t claim ignorance, as a member of Team Clinton admitted in a leaked email that globalization lowers the wages of American workers:

You have (characteristically) gone right to the heart of the most difficult problem. In response to your specific question, over that last 15 years, the capacity of labor to demand a greater share of profits from productivity gains have been overwhelmed by several factors: 1) globalized wage competition as incomes have slowly equilibrated around the world ….

Coming Home Again?

The mainstream line is that globalization can’t be reversed. But the Guardian notes:

There are those who argue that globalisation is now like the weather, something we can moan about but not alter. This is a false comparison. The global market economy was created by a set of political decisions in the past and it can be shaped by political decisions taken in the future.

Ironically, the Washington Post noted last year that the giant multinational corporations themselves are losing interest in globalization … and many are starting to bring the factories back home:

Yet despite all this activity and enthusiasm, hardly any of the promised returns from globalization have materialized, and what was until recently a taboo topic inside multinationals — to wit, should we reconsider, even rein in, our global growth strategy? — has become an urgent, if still hushed, discussion.

***

Given the failures of globalization, virtually every major company is struggling to find the most productive international business model.

***

Reshoring — or relocating manufacturing operations back to Western factories from emerging nations — is one option. As labor costs escalate in places such as China, Thailand, Brazil and South Africa, companies are finding that making products in, say, the United States that are destined for North American markets is much more cost-efficient. The gains are even more significant when productivity of emerging countries is taken into account.

***

Moreover, new disruptive manufacturing technologies — such as 3-D printing, which allows on-site production of components and parts at assembly plants — make the idea of locating factories where the assembled products will be sold more practicable.

***

GE, Whirlpool, Stanley Black & Decker, Peerless and many others have reopened shuttered factories or built new ones in the United States.

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Canadian Academic Extradited to France on Fake Terrorism Charges. Prevent Hassan Diab’s Wrongful Conviction!

November 14th, 2016 by Hassan Diab Support Committee

1. French Investigative Judge Finds “Consistent Evidence” Supporting Hassan Diab’s Innocence

In a highly positive development for Dr. Hassan Diab, a French investigative judge (juge d’instruction) found “consistent evidence” supporting Hassan’s innocence. Hassan has been in pre-trial detention in France since he was extradited from Canada two years ago today for investigation into a 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue.

“At this stage of the inquiry, there exists consistent evidence tending to establish that Hassan Diab was in Beirut late September, early October 1980… this calls into question information implicating him in the attack since this relies on his presence in France during this period”, wrote the French investigative judge in an order released on October 27, 2016.

The judge immediately ordered the release of Dr. Diab on bail. He issued a second order on the same day stating that there are no grounds for further detention of Hassan.

But, in a deeply disappointing move, the prosecutor blocked Hassan’s release, and the Court of Appeal overruled the investigative judge’s orders and renewed Hassan’s detention. Hassan’s lawyers filed an appeal to France’s Court of Cassation.

William Bourdon, Hassan’s lawyer in France, noted that

“Hassan Diab’s situation is unprecedented. New consistent evidence of his innocence was collected but the Court of Appeal refused, for the 4th time, to release him, even though the investigative judge decided so. After 36 years and since no one else was indicted, the Court of Appeal is clinging on to Hassan Diab. He is detained because of the judges’ fear to be accused of laxity in the context of today’s fight against terrorism in France. Such a situation would be inconceivable in an ordinary-law procedure.”

Earlier this year, in May 2016, Hassan was ordered released on bail by the investigative judge and the judge of freedom and detention. He spent ten days out on bail in Paris before his release order was overturned by the same panel of Court of Appeal judges which has repeatedly denied him bail.

Don Bayne, Hassan’s lawyer in Canada, commented on the significant development stating that

“Dr. Diab’s case is a tragic example of the serious flaws in Canada’s extradition laws and practices. The courts in Canada at every level failed the basic test of fundamental justice that the evidence on which the foreign state relies to deprive a Canadian of his or her liberty be ‘reliable’. The evidence in Dr. Diab’s case was shown to be so unreliable (flawed handwriting comparisons said to be worthless by the world’s leading handwriting experts, plus secret intelligence which is not evidence at all) that this innocent Canadian never should have been extradited. Yet he was, and despite even more evidence of Dr. Diab’s innocence, he remains locked up in a French prison on a path to a manifestly wrongful conviction.”

Hassan was extradited from Canada based on extremely contested and weak evidence. Justice Maranger, the Canadian extradition judge, stated that “the prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial seem unlikely”, but said his interpretation of Canada’s extradition law left him no choice but to commit Hassan to extradition.

Michael Vonn, Policy Director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, one of the interveners during the appeal of Hassan’s extradition at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, remarked on two years of pretrial detention for Hassan, saying “The Government of Canada must act to raise Mr. Diab’s case with the French authorities. We have the gravest concern that this case represents a profound miscarriage of justice and the time to act is long overdue.”

Sukanya Pillay, Executive Director and General Counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, another intervener on Hassan’s side at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, expressed concern that, “Mr. Diab has spent two years already in a French prison, was extradited on the basis of what appeared to be manifestly unreliable evidence, and has accordingly experienced a deprivation of fair process and an injustice to him and his family.”

2. Join the Bring Hassan Home Campaign

Today marks 731 days away from home for Dr. Hassan Diab.

Two years ago, on November 14, 2014, Hassan was extradited from Canada to France based on a handwriting analysis report that the Canadian extradition judge described as “convoluted, very confusing, with conclusions that are suspect”. Hassan continues to languish in a prison thousands of kilometres away from his family and community in Canada. Hassan has repeatedly denied all involvement in the bombing and strongly condemned the attack.

We are deeply concerned that Hassan may be wrongfully convicted under France’s anti-terrorism laws, based on deeply flawed handwriting analysis and the use of secret, unsourced intelligence. Hassan must receive a fair process, so he has a real chance to fight for justice and return to his home in Canada. We must make sure that the real perpetrators of the rue Copernic crime are brought to justice. Making an innocent man pay for a crime he did not commit will only further the tragedy.

Please join the Bring Hassan Home Campaign, by signing the statement at:

http://www.justiceforhassandiab.org/bring-hassan-home

Despite the hardship, Hassan remains hopeful that he will be exonerated and will return to his home in Canada. Hassan is very grateful for your continued support. Your support gives Hassan a real chance for justice and hope to return home!

3. Write to Canadian Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Justice

Please write to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Stéphane Dion, and the Minister of Justice, Ms. Jody Wilson-Raybould, and urge them to raise Hassan’s case with their counterparts in France, and make sure that Hassan is promptly released and returned to his home in Canada.

At the very least, the deeply flawed handwriting analysis and unsourced intelligence, which were withdrawn from the Canadian extradition proceedings, should not be used against Hassan in France. Using these discredited elements against Hassan undermines his right to a fair legal process and is a recipe for wrongful conviction.

A sample letter to the Ministers is available::
.pdf version
.doc version

Email addresses:
Mr. Stephane Dion, Minister of Foreign Affairs:  [email protected]
Ms. Jody Wilson-Reybould, Minister of Justice:  [email protected].ca

Please share your communication with [email protected]. Thank you.

Hassan Diab Support Committee
Web: http://www.justiceforhassandiab.org
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/friendsofhassandiab
Twitter: http://twitter.com/friendsofhdiab
Blog: http://friendsofhassandiab.blogspot.com

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Restoring Dialogue with the Kremlin? Donald Trump and Potential US-Russia Break Points

November 14th, 2016 by Michael Averko

The state of challenged Russia-West (especially US-Russia) relations is something questioned by Western realists and some alternative others. Donald Trump made it to the US presidency, despite saying some things that run counter to the biases against Russia, evident in the American political establishment.

Among these elites, Trump faces noticeable Democratic and Republican opposition towards his realist stated views on Russia. He has exhibited a will to do things his way. A US president has the power to keep a lid on aggressive tendencies. Two examples come to mind. During the Cuban missile crisis, John F. Kennedy opposed some of those under him, who favored a more confrontational approach. Barack Obama nixed some of the aggressive positions sought by individuals in his administration.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will continue to second guess the negative establishment views on Russia, or change course as he has done on some other issues. Trump’s inner circle of political elites includes some individuals who’ve expressed negatively inaccurate comments about Russia. On the flip side, during his presidential campaign, he (in at least one instance) favorably spoke of involving folks with fresh foreign policy ideas, who the establishment has shunned. US public opinion might assist in influencing him to maintain a more upbeat impression of Russia. With good reasoning, Americans at large feel they’ve more pressing issues away from the subject of that country.

It’s also true that many Americans have a negative view of Russia, on account of their not spending the time to study the fault lines, regarding the US mass media coverage which has influenced them. Trump seems to understand that dynamic – thus enabling him to successfully counterpunch. There’s a part of him that can relate to the concerns of others. This aspect has been downplayed because of some of his provocatively stated views on other issues. (Human nature can include periodic contradictions.)

As it became clear that Hillary Clinton was on the verge of losing the election, the Democratic connected MSNBC host Chris Matthews negatively spoke of her going along with the neocon foreign policy line – a matter relating to where Trump has offered a valid alternative. The adventurist neocon foreign policy desire isn’t easily applied in today’s geopolitical reality of some powers (notably China and Russia) having considerable clout in their respective near abroad. The faulty neolib humanitarian intervention approach (supported by neocons) is much too hypocritically flawed to be taken seriously, when assessed with some realm of objectivity.

In adversarial relationships, the ice can be broken with situations that don’t typically get much of the headline coverage – along the lines of taking baby steps that (if successful) lead to giant steps.

Since the Soviet breakup, the disputed former Soviet territories of Nagorno-Karabakh and Pridnestrovie (also known as Transnistria and closely related spellings) have been in a frozen status, short of achieving a mutually agreed settlement. In addition, following the 2008 war in the Caucasus (as well as beforehand), the disputed former Georgian SSR territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, remain far from being fully settled.

There’s a definite practical basis for a Russia-West agreement in resolving these disputes and their respective peripheral issues.

In the former Moldavian SSR, the disputed territory of Pridnestrovie is (in majority terms) geared towards a pro-Russian direction. Fortunately, this multiethnic enclave (roughly even with ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Moldovans), is relatively free of very bad ethnic relations. In the rest of the former Moldavian SSR, there’s clear division on what’s the best geopolitical route. Of late, the pro-Russian grouping in Moldova has the upper hand, but (perhaps) not enough dominance to easily pursue their preference.

Moldova is regarded as poor and challenged, with a presence of post-Soviet corruption – inclusive of some of those professing a pro-West course. It’s frankly a waste of time to be harping on a Russia-West confrontation over the former Moldavian SSR. Of all the disputed former Soviet territories, Pridnestrovie looks to be the easiest to resolve.

My January 10, 2012 Eurasia Review article «Pridnestrovie’s Present and Future», presents the basis for the option of a however termed confederation/federation of the former Moldavian SSR. A fully settled former Moldavian SSR can then serve to possibly pave the way to settle the more difficult territorial disputes.

The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, involving Armenia and Azerbaijan has (over the years) experienced noticeable violence. At the same time, these two former Soviet republics have reasons to be on good terms with Russia and the West. There’s a pragmatic thinking out of the box way to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Refer to my April 15, 2016 Strategic Culture Foundation article «Settling Nagorno-Karabakh and Reviewing the Peripheral Talking Points» and its slightly expanded Eurasia Reviewversion.

Georgia shows signs of seeking an improved relationship with Russia, while desiring closer ties with the West. In this spirit, is the possibility of a prolonged agree to disagree status quo, as well as some kind of an eventual settlement, concerning the statuses of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Not to be overlooked are the differences of opinion concerning Kosovo and Crimea, with northern Cyprus as a reference. Practically speaking, Kosovo has been (like it or not) separated from Serbia. The same holds true of Crimea relative to Ukraine. It has been decades since Turkey enforced the «Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus». The neocon/neolib support for Kosovo’s independence and lack of protest over Turkey’s position in northern Cyprus underscores the gross hypocrisy in staunchly opposing Crimea’s reunification with Russia. (A substantively prolonged debate on this matter will substantiate that observation.)

It’s possible for Russia and the West to improve their relations, while not necessarily reaching complete agreement on all or any of the aforementioned disputed territories.

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Actually, “Nobody” Won the 2016 Presidential Election — and the “I Voted for Nobody” Group Was a Landslide

November 14th, 2016 by Nick Bernabe

“Nobody for President, that’s my campaign slogan,” Nick Cannon asserted in “Too Broke to Vote,” his viral criticism of the American electoral process from March of this year. Now, it turns out nobody for president won the 2016 election in a landslide.

According to new voter turnout statistics from the 2016 election, 47 percent of Americans voted for nobody, far outweighing the votes cast for Trump (25.5 percent) and Hillary (25.6 percent) by eligible voters.

And the “I voted for nobody” group is actually much larger than the 47 percent reported because that number only includes eligible voters. How many millions of Americans under the legal voting age — not to mention the countless millions who have lost their voting rights — voted for nobody, as well? Factoring in those individuals, around 193 million people did not vote for Trump or Clinton. That’s nearly two-thirds of the population of the United States.

Nobody also seemingly won the presidential primaries, with only 9 percent of Americans casting their votes for either Trump or Clinton.

So when does nobody take office? Nobody won the majority of votes in the primaries or the general election, and the two main candidates who were running didn’t “win” the popular vote — they simply slightly outcompeted each other considering neither garnered over 50 percent of the eligible voters’ ballots.

That’s where the real debate begins.

As I wrote back in August when the primary voter turnout rates came in, one could argue that Trump (and Obama) do not have a legitimate mandate to rule over the people of the United States. Trump did not win the majority of Americans’ votes — not even close.

When all Americans are included, Trump only garnered the votes of about 19 percent of us. This means the United States will be ruled over by a small minority of voters who elected someone to continually impose their political positions on the other 81 percent of us.

Of course, as is the case with Democrats looking to assign blame for Hillary’s loss, pundits and political pontificators argue the people who didn’t vote have no right to complain about the outcome. After all, a non-vote or a vote for a third-party candidate was, in actuality, a vote for Trump. But that logic is flawed. The majority of Americans don’t vote anymore because the political system no longer represents them. We’ve been disenfranchised by decades of corrupt, unrepresentative politicians.

 

The United States, according to a highly-cited academic study, is effectively an oligarchy “elected” by a minority of voters ruled by a smaller minority of disliked politicians who represent an even smaller minority of billionaires and special interests. You know it, I know it, hell, even former U.S. President Jimmy Carter knows it. The majority of Americans voted for nobody not because they don’t care or because they are apathetic — they voted no confidence in a political system that forgot about them a long time ago.

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From “Political Revolution” to Collaboration: Sanders and Warren Pledge to Work with Trump

November 14th, 2016 by Joseph Kishore

Two political processes are taking place simultaneously in the United States.

First, President-elect Trump is rapidly assembling a staff that will direct a government of the extreme right, expressed most significantly in the announcement that Breitbart News head Stephen Bannon will serve as his chief strategist. This places a man with well-known connections to racialist and fascistic organizations in a position of vast power in a future Trump administration.

This action is all the more sinister given that Trump, in an interview aired on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, not only stated his intention to proceed with the deportation of three million undocumented immigrants, but also announced that he would stack the courts with open opponents of abortion rights and may seek the prosecution of his opponent in the election, Hillary Clinton.

Second, ignoring these developments, the Democratic Party and the media blithely act as if nothing unusual is taking place. They are seeking to normalize a government the likes of which has never been seen in American history. Following Tuesday’s election, President Obama told Trump he would do “everything we can to help you succeed.” Hillary Clinton made a similar pledge, saying she hoped Trump would be a “successful president for all Americans.”

This exercise in political surrender to the extreme right has found its most deplorable and disgusting expression in the response of Bernie Sanders in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Sunday and a subsequent television interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Sanders has gone from proclaiming that he is leading a “political revolution” against the “billionaire class,” to capitulating ignominiously to Clinton, to pledging to work with Donald Trump.

In the Times piece, Sanders declares: “President-elect Trump is right. The American people want change. But what kind of change will he be offering them? Will he have the courage to stand up to the most powerful people in this country who are responsible for the economic pain that so many working families feel, or will he turn the anger of the majority against minorities, immigrants, the poor and the helpless?”

On “Face the Nation,” Sanders said that to the extent Trump seeks “to create a better life for working people, we will work with him issue by issue.” Speaking directly to Trump, he said, “You talked about being the champion of the working families—all right, now produce. Your rhetoric was great, now do something.”

Sanders’ entire position is absurd. There is no question as to what Trump represents and the type of government he will lead. He is committed to slashing corporate taxes, eliminating regulations, cutting social programs, intensifying the assault on the working class, vastly expanding the military and destroying what remains of democratic rights. To raise questions as to whether Trump will implement polices to “create a better life for working people” is to sow illusions while giving Trump time to prepare his reactionary government.

Sanders’ prostration before Trump exposes both his boundless opportunism and the real purpose of his campaign in the Democratic Party primaries. If Sanders were at all serious, he would be warning the working class about the extreme dangers it confronts and making clear that he would neither accept nor collaborate with the incoming administration. He would be pointing to the fact that Trump lost the popular vote as proof that he has no mandate to implement any of the policies he is preparing.

Beyond political prostration, Sanders’ proposed alliance with Trump is connected to a common economic agenda. During his primary campaign, Sanders urged the Democratic Party to adopt the nationalist and protectionist policies of Trump. He blamed the collapse of workers’ living standards on globalization and trade deals, divorced from any critique of the capitalist system. This was aimed at directing the anger of workers in the United States at workers in China, Mexico and other countries, rather than against the giant corporations that exploit workers in every country.

These themes were echoed by the other leader of the “left” faction of the Democratic Party, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. In a statement released on Wednesday, Warren proclaimed that Trump has “promised to rebuild our economy for working people, and I offer to put aside our differences and work with him on that task.”

In a speech Friday to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting in Washington, Warren detailed possible points of agreement with the new Republican administration, particularly in opposing trade agreements and promoting economic nationalism. Her comments followed statements by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams that the unions saw a “great opportunity,” in the words of Williams, to “find some common ground” with Trump.

As this political repositioning is taking place, a third process is underway. In the streets, tens of thousands of demonstrators across the country are making clear that they have no doubt about what Trump represents. However, their anger and outrage find no expression within the political establishment, with top Democrats either remaining silent on the protests, acting to distance themselves, or expressing opposition.

The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street no less than the Republicans. It is far more concerned with the consequences of stirring up opposition than it is with any tactical differences it has with the Republicans and Trump.

One of the basic problems in the demonstrations is that many of those participating still express illusions in the role of the Democratic Party. In fact, the Democratic Party—from Obama and Clinton to Sanders and Warren—bears political responsibility for the election of Trump, and it is now making clear that it is willing to work with him in implementing a policy of war abroad and reaction at home.

In the coming months, popular anger will grow, as workers, including those who voted for Trump, come to realize what they confront. Opposition to Trump cannot be organized through or in alliance with the Democratic Party, but only in a ruthless and uncompromising break with it and all of its political agents, and with the capitalist system they defend.

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Six Ways Trump Could Help Haiti Recover from Clinton Disaster. Prosecute the Clintons? Will He do It??

November 14th, 2016 by Dady Chery

Donald Trump won the United States presidency against Hillary Clinton because he was the only candidate who seriously competed against her. One of President-Elect Trump’s major prizes in the election was the swing state of Florida, which flickered between red and blue throughout much of the night of November 8-9, 2016, eventually to remain a steady red after Trump won it by 120,000 votes.

Many of South Florida’s 150,000 Haitian-American voters came out for Trump, though they had traditionally voted for Democrats, because they knew intimately about the wreck the Clintons had made of Haiti. Plenty of other Americans had also become disgusted by the Clintons’ treatment of Haiti. Many of them lived in Florida, and Wikileaks and other independent journalists had confirmed their worst suspicions.

For Haitian-Americans, the US presidential race was a fight not only to wrest our native land from the Clintons, but also our adopted homeland. The US would have been Hillary Clinton’s next target after she and her cronies had refined in Haiti their methods to rig elections, co-opt journalists, and destroy economies. The evidence of wrongdoing was there for all to see, but throughout the yearlong campaign by the Greens, Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats, Mr. Trump was the only candidate who singled out Clinton’s indefensible pay-to-play conduct in Haiti for attack. Thus he shot the fatal arrow through her Achilles’ heel and won the White House.

Haiti will need the US’ assistance to recover from more than 20 years of disasters wrought by the Clintons. A new Trump administration may expect to get the return vote of Haitian-Americans and Haitianophiles in 2020 if it helps Haiti in the following six ways.

1. Bring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton to justice. More than $9 billion of aid funds for Haiti from international donors, collected through the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) for reconstruction from the January 2010 earthquake, have gone missing. We hope that, as promised, a special prosecutor will be appointed to look into the allegations of financial improprieties by the Clinton family. We further hope that this special prosecutor’s office will investigate their alleged crimes in Haiti as well as the US, and charge them with conspiracy and racketeering, as appropriate. If they are found guilty, the funds should be recovered and their properties attached as a means to remunerate the Haitian government.

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2. Assist Haiti diplomatically in its efforts to recover damages from the United Nations for the cholera epidemic. The UN has contaminated Haiti twice with cholera, the first time in 2010 with a cholera strain from Nepal, and the second time after 2012 with cholera from Bangladesh. Currently the UN is only pretending to fight the cholera epidemics that it introduced into Haiti. It is doing so by inoculating hundreds of thousands Haitians with an oral cholera vaccine that is completely ineffective and potentially harmful. Even with an efficacious vaccine, such a campaign would be morally vacuous because its purpose is to allow people to drink water that is contaminated with sewage. The UN must pay damages to individual Haitians for infecting about 700,000 people with cholera and killing about 10,000 others because of its negligence. Furthermore, as reparation, the UN must provide the means to rebuild the country’s waste-treatment and potable-water infrastructures.

3. End without delay the UN military occupation of Haiti. In February 2004, the US government deposed Haiti’s President. Three months later, Bill Clinton, together with Lula da Silva’s now-disgraced administration in Brazil, organized to install an illegal military occupation of Haiti by the so-called UN peacekeepers (MINUSTAH). These troops have been involved in rapes, murders, massacres, and the introduction of epidemics of disease. The great majority of Haitians object to their presence.

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4. Fire and replace all State Department and USAID personnel for Haiti from the Clinton or Obama administrations. Such individuals have been part of a corruption machine. They have participated, not only in cases of financial fraud that caused more than $13 billion of international aid to disappear but also in the election fraud that allowed them to install a corrupt dictator, Michel Martelly, as president so they could pillage the country.

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5. Adopt a policy of non-interference in Haitian elections. On November 20, 2016 Haiti will repeat its first-round presidential elections and some legislative elections. This follows the invalidation of elections in October 2015 after a discovery of massive fraud  that probably involved the election workers and international monitors. We ask that the US bring some pressure to bear on France, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Chile to refrain from attempting to influence the new elections.

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6. Stop US agricultural subsidies for rice farmers. As recently as in the 1980s, Haiti was a thriving agricultural country, but in 2014-15 alone, Haiti’s import of agricultural products increased by 30 percent, and its trade deficit for agricultural goods exceeded $900 million. This process began in 1994 with a systematic Clinton dumping of subsidized Arkansas rice in Haiti. The ever-creative US mainstream press, however, has blamed the end result, not on Bill and Hillary Clinton but on Hurricane Matthew. To rebuild its economy, Haiti will need to eliminate unfair competition from subsidized US agricultural goods.

Haiti has endured, in addition to natural disasters, a vicious warfare by the Clintons for many years, even as they have claimed to be the country’s staunchest partners and greatest friends.

More than charity, Haiti needs truth, fairness and justice. If the US will grant those things, Haitians and Haitian-Americans will do the rest.

Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free. Photograph one US Air Force archive; photograph five and seven by Zoriah; photographs eight and ten from the UN Photo archive; and photograph nine from USAID archive.

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Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield is Shielding What? Deconstructing Syria, Turkey’s illegal Invasion

November 14th, 2016 by Tony Cartalucci

Turkey, in a bid to legitimize its uninvited, illegal incursion into northern Syria, has created several media platforms specifically reporting on what it calls “Operation Euphrates Shield.”

Operation Euphrates Shield, according to official Turkish government statements, aims at “securing” a buffer zone in northern Syria spanning from the Euphrates river in the east and extending all the way to Azaz in the west. This is also coincidentally the exact same buffer zone US policy think tanks have called for since at least 2012 – specifically seeking Turkey to implement it.

The Brookings Institution – a corporate-funded policy think-tank whose policymakers have helped craft upper-level strategy for the Iraqi, Afghan, Libyan, and now Syrian conflicts as well as plans laid for future confrontations with Iran and beyond – has been explicit regarding the true nature of these “buffer zones.” In a 2015 paper titled, “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war,” it states:

…the idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via special forces.

The paper goes on by explaining (emphasis added) :

The end-game for these zones would not have to be determined in advance. The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones and a modest (eventual) national government. The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force, if this arrangement could ever be formalized by accord.But in the short term, the ambitions would be lower—to make these zones defensible and governable, to help provide relief for populations within them, and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.

Despite claims that Turkey’s actions are necessary to “stop” the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) and help end the deadly conflict raging in Syria, it is clear that instead, Turkey is carving out territory specifically to shelter militants fighting the Syrian government in an attempt to perpetuate, even expand the violence for as long and as extensively as possible.

Joint operations between Washington and Ankara in Manbji, a well-known waypoint for Islamic State fighters, weapons and equipment coming from Turkey bound for Raqqa,would effectively open “a second front” in the ongoing fight to drive the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from Syria’s borders, [Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu] said.

It was Turkey’s own foreign minister who was quoted by the Washington Times in an article written just before Turkey embarked on its invasion titled,  “Turkey offers joint ops with U.S. forces in Syria, wants Kurds cut out,” admitting that ISIS was being supplied and reinforced specifically from within Turkish territory. The article stated (emphasis added):

It is thus abundantly clear that ISIS sprung into being and has since sustained itself through extensive state sponsorship – sponsorship that has flowed freely over Syria’s borders with Turkey and Jordan. Any genuine attempt to cripple the source of ISIS’ fighting capacity would require securing the Turkish and Jordanian borders with Syria, not invading Syria itself.

As ISIS Disappears, Militants Magically Multiply 

Operation Euphrates Shield can be followed on popular social media platforms, including Twitter. Turkish officials regularly post self-incriminating updates regarding their activities within Syrian territory.

On October 21, the operation’s official Twitter account claimed:

Turkish Army-backed FSA has tripled number of its soldiers thanks to its achievements against terrorist organizations.

However, this claim is highly problematic. The process of crossing a battlefield successfully alone does not “increase” the number of soldiers fighting in one’s army unless militants an army is engaged against are recruited into the advancing force.

“Liberated” civilians would not be able to simply “join” Turkish-backed militant groups. A responsible military commander knows that incorporating untrained civilians into a military force without at least 1-3 months of basic training creates more disadvantages and dangers than any benefits gained from “tripling” the size of one’s force.

Additionally, men of fighting age found on the battlefield in areas Turkish-backed troops are advancing through must be vetted to ensure they have no ties to terrorist organizations including ISIS – yet Turkey’s government has not given any details on how these “new fighters” are being either vetted or trained.

In other words, it simply seems as if Turkey is attempting to explain why – within the buffer zone it is creating – numbers of militants are swelling without admitting that the entire purpose of the buffer zone in the first place is and always was to provide a sanctuary for Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other extremist forces inside Syria just as Turkey has provided them sanctuary in Turkey for the last 5 years.

Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield is indeed a shield wielded by Turkey and its US partners. But it is a shield lifted up not in defense of the Syrian people or the Turkish state itself, but instead brought to face those forces decisively defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS deeper within Syria and poised to push remaining militants out of Syria, permanently.

With the establishment of a Turkish occupied buffer zone – as imagined by US policy makers who crafted this operation for Turkey long ago – it will now be exceedingly difficult to eradicate remaining militants at the edge of Syrian territory after they are defeated and driven out of the nation’s interior.

Indeed Turkey is shielding a region west of the Euphrates, not from terrorists, but to protect them.

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

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False Promises of the European Dream: Moldova and Bulgaria Elect Pro-Russian Presidents

November 14th, 2016 by Sergey Gladysh

As the European Union continues to spiral towards an all-out disaster due to significant economic problems, the migrant crisis, cultural decay, and an overall loss of purpose, countries like Moldova and Bulgaria, which were once blinded by the false promises of the European dream, are beginning to shift course back towards the only nation in Europe today that is experiencing a remarkable renaissance – yes, Russia.

In the second round of presidential elections, both of which took place on Sunday, November 13 – the pro-Russian candidates Igor Dodon of Moldova and Rumen Radev of Bulgaria have come out victorious over their pro-European rivals.

Reuters reports:

A pro-Russian candidate for president of Moldova has won the race, preliminary results showed on Sunday, following a campaign in which he vowed to slam the brakes on seven years of closer integration with the European Union.

With 98 percent of votes counted, online results showed Socialist candidate Igor Dodon had won 54 percent, and his pro-European challenger, Maia Sandu, had just under 45 percent. Dodon’s win is in part a reflection of a loss of trust in pro-European leaders in the ex-Soviet state of 3.5 million.

In another potential blow to the European Union brand, Bulgaria – which also held a presidential vote on Sunday – elected a pro-Russian candidate by a large margin, according to exit polls.

Since joining the European Union in 2007, Bulgaria has been plagued by the same corruption, political turbulence, and stalled economy that it had hoped to escape. Bulgarian politicians and citizens once viewed membership in the EU as the end of a long march to modernity.

“This is a day of historical justice, because Bulgarians have always been Europeans in spirit and identity,” the Bulgarian president told a crowd gathered on the day of their E.U. ascension.

Instead of prosperity, however, European Union membership has led to a steady flow of young people out of Bulgaria. Many take low-paying service jobs in other countries. College-educated Bulgarians flee for advanced sectors in countries like Germany and Sweden. The European Union’s own economic outlook for Bulgaria has been dismal, with out-migration playing a role in declining tax revenues.

As for Moldova, its Association Agreement with the EU signed back in 2014 has done more damage than good for the national economy. Moldovan export goods, which include foodstuffs, textiles, and machinery, have not been given fair access to the EU markets. Meanwhile, European products have flooded the country, pushing domestic businesses towards bankruptcy.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, agriculture and industry in Moldova has been under steady decline, making up only 37% of GDP in 2015. In comparison, this figure was at 76% back in 1989. Countries of the former USSR, including Russia and Belarus, both of which are part of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) formed in 2015, are still among Moldova’s top export partners today.

Experts believe that by forging closer ties with the EAEU and its five member states – Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia – both Moldova and Bulgaria could see a significant boost to their economies. Why? Simply because all of these nations share a common (Soviet) industrial architecture that once formed a single production and supply chain with uniform rules and regulations.

A reconstruction of this chain with a modern outlook and innovative approach has the potential to significantly increase production and output in each of these counties, providing their economies with the necessary liquidity and investments to not only develop internally, but also successfully compete on the international markets.

Ultimately, neither Moldova nor Bulgaria have anything to lose from parting ways with the EU and trying something different. Today, Bulgaria is number nine on the list of top ten poorest countries in Europe. Moldova is first, followed by its neighbor – Ukraine.

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Trump Names Extreme-Right Steve Bannon as Top Adviser, Confirms Plans to Deport 2-3 Million Immigrants

November 14th, 2016 by Tom Eley

The extreme right-wing character of the incoming US administration came into sharper focus on Sunday when, interviewed on the news program “60 Minutes,” President-elect Donald Trump declared that he intends to imprison and deport 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants.

This followed the announcement earlier in the day of his first two administrative appointees—Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff, and, as top White House advisor, the fascist Steve Bannon, previously Trump’s campaign CEO and executive chairman of Breitbart News.

Trump’s appointments and his provocations against immigrants make clear that, despite the fact that he will have lost the popular vote by upwards of 2 million when all the ballots are counted, he intends to press forward with the most right-wing presidential agenda in American history.

The groveling of Democratic Party leaders, from President Barack Obama to failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as the capitulatory outpourings from yesterday’s anti-Trump editorialists such as the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman, have only strengthened Trump’s conviction that he has nothing to fear from such quarters and encouraged him to proceed with his authoritarian agenda.

The liberal media has been full of speculation that having secured the presidency, Trump will dispense with his most extreme right-wing positions. But in his “60 Minutes” interview, he offered no indication that he would backtrack from his campaign’s extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric, which included calls for mass deportations, the banning of Muslim immigrants and the construction of a wall separating the US and Mexico along the two nations’ nearly 2,000-mile border.

“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people—probably two million, it could be even three million—we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” Trump said. “But we’re getting them out of our country. They’re here illegally.”

Trump is evidently referring to Department of Homeland Security data that suggest there are approximately 1.9 million immigrants in the US who have been convicted of a crime and are therefore, technically speaking, eligible for deportation. However, the majority of these “criminals” are legal and documented immigrants, and many of the crimes for which they have been convicted are minor offenses. Currently, immigration authorities may use discretion to disregard petty crimes, especially in cases where deportation would separate foreign-born parents from US-born children.

Trump’s plan to rapidly deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants could be realized only through the suspension of due process and the implementation of a massive police operation and creation of what would be, in all but name, a concentration camp system. That this is the implication of Trump’s plan was indirectly acknowledged by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that the Republican Party is “not planning on erecting a deportation force… I think we should put people’s minds at ease.”

On the contrary, the threat must be taken very seriously. The infrastructure for such a massive police state operation has been developing for eight years under the Obama administration, which deported a record number of immigrants—2.4 million—in its first six years, far surpassing the record of the George W. Bush administration. It is estimated that over the course of its full eight years, the Obama administration will have deported 3.2 million men, women and children.

Trump’s plan is a grave threat to immigrant workers and the entire working class. There are some 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, a substantial share of the upwards of 40 million total immigrants. Over two-thirds of all adult undocumented immigrants have been in the US for at least 10 years.

If one adds to the figure of 40 million immigrants the US-born children of immigrants, who by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment are US citizens, one reaches a figure of over 80 million, or one fourth of the total US population.

Trump also told “60 Minutes” that he intends to carry through with his promise to build a wall along the length of the US-Mexican border, which he said could include sections of fencing and existing natural barriers. This reactionary proposal would make the pathways for immigrants to the US more dangerous than they already are, resulting in more deaths in the desert, and, increasingly, in the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Interviewer Lesley Stahl did not ask Trump about his proposals to ban Muslim immigrants or threats made on the campaign trail to launch trade war with China and incinerate the Middle East. The interview was largely a promotional event for the president-elect, including a lengthy discussion with Trump’s wife and children.

The media largely ignored Trump’s appointment of a fascist to the position of top presidential advisor. There were, however, scattered statements of protest. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement: “President-elect Trump’s choice of Steve Bannon as his top aide signals that white supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump’s White House.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center blasted the choice of Bannon, calling him “the main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill.” The organization cited Breitbart headlines, including a call to fly the Confederate flag weeks after fatal shootings at a black Charleston, South Carolina church, and another declaring that political correctness “protects Muslim rape culture.” The Anti-Defamation League also denounced the appointment of Bannon.

Bannon’s Breitbart News openly solidarizes itself with Europe’s neo-fascist parties, including the National Front in France, the Alternative for Germany, and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Britain. Reader comments on Breitbart News articles are frequently laced with racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. A recent Twitter analysis found that 31 percent of those using the white supremacist hashtag #whitegenocide follow Breitbart, as do 62 percent of users of the anti-Muslim hashtag #counterjihad.

Bannon is a leading figure of the so-called “alt-right” movement, which includes in its ranks neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations. In a July interview with Mother Jones, Bannon boasted that Breitbart News is “the platform of the alt-right,” which he called the American version of France’s neo-fascist National Front.

Breitbart regularly publishes material by the anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller. Last spring, it published a lengthy defense of the “white nationalist” movement called “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.”

In announcing the two appointments, the Trump transition team took the unusual step of describing Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and Hollywood producer, and Priebus as “equal partners,” effectively elevating the position of Bannon in the Trump White House.

Priebus’s position, White House chief of staff, is a formally recognized title that has existed for decades. Bannon’s title, described in the statement as “chief strategist and senior counselor to the president,” is not, though recent precedent underscores that it will be a politically powerful position. Karl Rove and David Axelrod had similar titles in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, respectively.

The appointment of Priebus, who is presented as a “mainstream” Republican, is meant to provide cover for the integration of Bannon into the White House. Bannon was credited with turning Trump’s election campaign in a fascistic direction after he was appointed to replace Paul Manafort as head of the campaign.

Another figure widely rumored as a likely Trump appointee is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been a prominent backer of the real estate mogul for months. Asked Sunday by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” program to address the protests that have swept the US in response to Trump’s victory, Giuliani responded with the language of dictatorship, equating demonstrations with “riots” and rejecting the right to peacefully assemble in places not mandated by the police.

“Now where it goes into violence, I have a zero tolerance for riots,” said Giuliani, who is being touted for the post of attorney general in the Trump administration. “I, you know, took over a city that had two riots in four years, and I had none. And they knew they couldn’t riot on me. And when I saw the people on the street in New York City, I said to myself, you’re breaking Giuliani’s rules. You don’t take my streets. You can have my sidewalks.”

Yet another likely cabinet appointee in the Trump administration, former congressman Newt Gingrich, told CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday morning that Trump would be “very, very aggressive” in his first year in office. Trump should “swing for the fences,” Gingrich said. In separate interviews, Gingrich and Giuliani both insisted that Trump had a “mandate” in spite of his defeat in the popular vote.

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Scandalous Poll: 84% of Ukrainians Want Vladimir Putin as Their President

November 14th, 2016 by Fort Russ

The Ukrainian publication Nedelya.UA conducted a poll among its readers asking the following question: “Which politician would you entrust with the governance of your country?”

The survey involved the participation of 41,600 readers and showed the following figures:

84% (34,900) of Ukrainian respondents want to see Vladimir Putin as president of Ukraine.

In second place with 5% (2,000) was Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Third place with 2% (820) was claimed by Xi  Jinping and fourth, also with 2% (708) was leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The current president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, took 5th place with only 1% (538 votes).

Further down the list were German Chancellor Angela Merkel (1%, 430 votes), the chairman of the French National Front Marine Le Pen (1%, 426 votes), Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev (1%, 318), and US President Barack Obama (1%, 244 votes).

Notably enough, former Georgian president and until recently head of the Odessa region, Mikhail Saakashvili, was not included on the list.

According to doctor of economic sciences and director of the Institute for Problems of Globalization, Mikhail Delyakin, the results are not representative. The expert remarked: “Without a doubt, the figures are unrepresentative: not only Ukrainians could take part in the voting, and the audience of the site speaks Russian – there is no Ukrainian version. At the same time, it is hardly likely, for example, that the Russian readers of this Ukrainian site are supporters of Putin. They are most likely fans of Bandera.”

“On the other hand, the main part of Ukraine (including Banderites) speaks Russian, not Ukrainian. This was exposed by Guinness, which conducted an innocent poll on the quality of vegetables and allowed respondents to choose between surveys in Ukrainian or Russian. 77% chose Russian. Since then, this share has declined, but it is still clearly more than half even taking into account the departure of Crimea, the DPR and LPR, and the fact that most educated and cultured, i.e., Russian-speaking Ukrainians have fled to every corner, and mainly Russia, from this ‘victorious democracy’ and the European Nazi course,” Delyagin pointed out.

“Nevertheless, it might be that overall these figures reflect the real mood of those Ukrainians who have been brutalized by the complete nobody thieves and killers imposed upon them by the West as their leaders. For the same motives, the most respected political leader in Russia is Stalin. Respect for Putin even sometimes appears among Russophobes who think: ‘With such a leader, we would have long ago defeated those Moskals,” Delyagin continued.

The economist concluded with the following commentary:

“Of course, this does not mean that the destructive liberal socio-economic policies pursued in Russia by appointees like Medvedev and Navulinnaya are correct. However, against the general backdrop of the nobody leaders of the modern West and its satellites, Putin is really a symbol of reason and hope for a better future for all of humanity, not the rapidly dwindling ‘Golden Billion.’”

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Election Outcomes, War or Peace? Clinton Promotes War, While US Public Opinion Speaks to Anti-Militarist Populism

November 14th, 2016 by Prof. James Petras

Castigating the US electorate as accomplices and facilitators of wars, or, at best, dismissing the voters as ignorant sheep-people (‘sheeple’) herded by political elites, describes a partial reality. Public opinion polls, even the polls overwhelmingly slanted toward the center-right, consistently describe a citizenry opposed to militarism and wars, past and present.

Both the Right and Left have failed to grasp the contradiction that defines US political life: Namely, the profound gap between the American public and the Washington elite on questions of war and peace within an electoral process that consistently leads to more militarism.

This is an analysis of the most recent US public opinion polls with regard to outcome of the recent elections.  The essay concludes with a discussion of the deep-seated contradictions and proposes several ways in which these contradictions can be resolved.

Method

A major survey of public opinion, sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute and the Center for the National Interest, conducted by the Survey Sampling International, interviewed a sample of one thousand respondents.

 

The Results:  War or Peace

More than half of the American public oppose any increase is the US military role overseas while only 25% back military expansion.

The public has expressed its disillusionment over Obama’s foreign policy, especially his new military commitments in the Middle East, which have been heavily promoted by the state of Israel and its US domestic Zionist lobby.

The US public shows a deep historical memory with regard to the past military debacles launched by Presidents Bush and Obama.  Over half of the public (51%) believe that the US has become less safe over the past 15 years (2001-2015), while one eighth (13%) feel they are more secure.

In the present period, over half of the public opposes the deployment of ground troops to Syria and Yemen and only 10% favor continued US support for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

With regard to specific US wars, over half believe that Bush’s invasion of Iraq made the US homeland less secure, while only 25% believe it didn’t increase or decrease domestic security.  Similar responses were expressed with regard to Afghanistan: 42% believe the Afghan War increased insecurity and about a third (34%) felt it did not affect US security.

In terms of future perspectives, three quarters (75%) of the American public want the next President to focus less on the US military operations abroad or are uncertain about its role.  Only 37% are in favor of increased spending for the military.

The mass media and the powerful financial backers of the Democratic Presidential candidate have focused on demonizing Russia and China as ‘the greatest threats in our time’.  In contrast, almost two thirds (63.4%) of Americans believe the greatest threat comes from terrorism both foreign and domestic.  Only 18% view Russia and China as major threats to their security.

In regard to the Pentagon, 56% want to reduce or freeze current military spending while only 37% want to increase it.

Wars and Peace:  The Political Elites

Contrary to the views of a majority of the public, the last four US Presidents, since the 1990’s, have increased the military budget, sending hundreds of thousands of US troops to launch wars in three Middle Eastern countries, while promoting bloody civil wars in three North African and two European countries.  Despite public opinion majorities, who believe that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have increased threats to the US security, Obama kept ground troops, air and sea forces and drone operations in those countries. Despite only 10% public approval for his military policies, the Obama regime has sent arms, advisors and Special Forces to support the Saudi dictatorship’s invasion of tiny Yemen.

Obama and the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pushed a policy of encircling Russia and demonizing its President Putin as the greatest threat to the US in contrast to US opinion, which considers the threat of Islamist terrorism as five times more serious.

While the political elite and the leading Presidential candidates promise to expand the number of US troops abroad and increase military spending, over three quarters of the American public oppose or are uncertain about expanding US militarism.

While candidate Clinton campaigned for the deployment of the US Air Force jets and missiles to police a ‘no fly zone’ in Syria, even shooting down Syrian and Russian government planes, the majority of US public opposed it by 51%.

In terms of constitutional law, fully four-fifths (80%) of the US public believes the President must secure Congressional approval for additional military action abroad.  Nevertheless, Presidents from both parties, Bush and Obama launched wars without Congressional approval, creating a precedent which the next president is likely to exploit.

Analysis and Perspectives

On all major foreign policy issues related to waging war abroad, the political elite is far more bellicose than the US public; they are far more likely to ignite wars that ultimately threaten domestic security; they are more likely to violate the Constitutional provisions on the declaration of war; and they are committed to increasing military spending even at the risk of defunding vital domestic social programs.

The political elites are more likely to intervene in wars in the Middle East, without domestic support and even in spite of majoritarian popular opposition to war.  No doubt the executives of the oligarchical military-industrial complex, the pro-Israel power configuration and the mass media moguls are far more influential than the pro-democracy public.

The future portends a continuation of militarism by the political elites, and increase in domestic security threats and even less public representation.

Some Hypothesis on the Contradiction between Popular Opinion and Electoral Outcomes

There is clearly a substantial gap between the majority of Americans and the political elite regarding the role of the military in overseas wars, the undermining of constitutional prerogatives, the demonization of Russia, the deployment of US troops to Syria and deeper US entanglement in Middle East wars for the benefit of Israel.

Yet it is also a fact that the US electorate continue to vote for the two major political parties which have consistently supported wars, formed military alliances with warring Middle East states, especially Saudi Arabia and Israel and aggressively sanctioned Russia as the main threat to US security.

Several hypotheses regarding this contradiction should be considered:

1.      Close to 50% of the eligible voters abstain from voting in Presidential and Congressional elections.  This most likely includes many among the majority of Americans who oppose the expansion of the US military role overseas.  In fact, the war party ‘winner’ typically claims victory with less than 25% of the electorate – and threats this as a mandate to launch more wars.

2.      The fact that the mass media vehemently supports one or the other of the two war parties probably influences a minority of the electorate who decide to actually participate in the elections.  However, critics have exaggerated the mass media’s influence and fail to explain why the majority of the American public disagree with the mass media and oppose the militarist propaganda.

3.      Many Americans, while opposed to militarism, vote for the ‘lesser evil’ between the two war parties.  They may believe that there are greater and lesser ‘degrees’ of war mongering and choose the less strident.

4.      Americans, who consistently oppose militarism, may decide to vote for militarist politicians for reasons besides those of overseas wars.  For example, majoritarian Americans may support a militarist politician who has secured funding for local infrastructure programs, or protected farm and dairy subsidies, or who promises jobs programs, lowers public debt or opposes corrupt incumbents.

5.      Americans, opposed to militarism, may be deceived by the pronouncements of a demagogic presidential candidate from one of the war parties, whose promise of peace will give way to escalating wars.

6.      Likewise, the emphasis on ‘identity politics’ can deceive anti-war voters into supporting a proven militarist because of issues related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences or loyalties to overseas states.

7.      The war parties work together to block mass media access for anti-militarist parties, especially preventing their participation in national electoral debates viewed by tens of millions of voters.  War parties collude to set impossible restrictions against anti-militarist party participation in national level elections, banning citizens with non-violent police records or former convicts who have served their sentences from voting.  They reject poor citizens who lack photo identification, limit access to transport to voting sites, limit the number of polling places in poor or minority neighborhoods and deny time-off for workers to vote.  Unlike other countries, US elections are held on a work day and many workers are unable to vote.

In other words the electoral process is ‘rigged’ and imposes ‘forced voting’ and abstention:  Collusion between the two war parties limits voter choice to abstention or casting a ballot for the ‘lesser evil’ among the militarists.

Only if elections were open and democratic, where anti-militarist parties were allowed equal rights to register, participate and debate in the mass media, and where campaign financing were made equal would the contradictions between the wishes of the anti-militarist majorities and votes cast for pro-war elites be resolved.

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7.5 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes South Island Of New Zealand

November 14th, 2016 by Scoop

A massive quake, magnitude 7.5 struck 2 minutes after midnight South East of Hamner Springs in the South Island. The quake has caused significant damage from Christchuch to Wellington. 

Tsunami warnings were issued for the entire east coast of NZ – including Wellington – & the Chatham Islands. Tsunami activity was observed in Wellington’s Lyall Bay, and in Lytellton Habour. Evacuations were ordered in Christchurch, Wellington and Hawke’s Bay. In the morning the PM revealed that at least two people had been killed near Kaikoura.  

Epicenter in North Canterbury – Two Confirmed Deaths – Kaikoura Completely Cut Off – Ferries Stranded – Tsunami Warnings – Widespread Damage From Wellington To Christchurch

Aerial pictures of hard hit Kaikoura taken this morning show massive damage to the coastal highway and buildings in the area. Kaikoura is now cut off in all directions. Speaking to Radio NZ, Wellington City Council’s Richard McLean said there was significant damage in Wellington including windows falling out of buildings, cracks in the port and liquefaction in the port area.

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South Korea’s Historic “One Million People Protest” to Oust Washington’s Puppet President Park Geun-hye

November 14th, 2016 by Hyun Lee

Global Research Editor’s Note

Compare this event in Korea to the ongoing “few thousand” anti-Trump protesters in the USA. Whereas the latter has made the tabloids and CNN coverage ad nauseam, the million people protest movement against America’s puppet regime in Seoul is not news worthy, it has barely been covered by US network TV. 

Read the incisive and carefully documented article of Hyun Lee.

Look at the images below: compare them to the anti-Trump protests.

This is a historic event. The message of the Korean people is loud and clear.   M. Ch. GR Editor

*       *       *

As the United States ushers in a new right wing president into office, South Korea is about to give theirs the boot. One million people gathered in Seoul on November 12 to demand Park Geun-hye’s resignation. This is the largest protest South Korea has seen since the democratic uprising of June 1987.

Train and bus tickets to Seoul were sold out in major cities across the country as people headed to the capital for the historic demonstration. Youth in school uniforms were a noticeably large contingent. Rainbow flags flew next to trade union banners, and mothers with children were among the crowd. 150,000 workers made up the largest contingent at the demonstration- 35,000 public sector and transport workers, 20,000 government employees, 15,000 metal workers, 15,000 service workers, 10,000 teachers, and 5000 health and medical workers.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon refused to supply water from the city’s fire hydrants to the police, which had threatened to use of water cannons to block protesters from reaching the Blue House.  Referring to the death of farmer Baek Nam-gi, hit by a high-pressure water cannon at a mass demonstration in November 2015, Mayor Park said in a radio interview, “No more.” He added, “Water from fire hydrants is intended for putting out fires, not peaceful protests.”

It should be made clear to the foreign media that the outpouring of anger on the street is not just about the recent scandal involving the shaman cult leader who used her connection with the president to embezzle money. It has more to do with pent-up anger from four years of neo-authoritarian rule. It is about denouncing Park Geun-hye’s labor market reform, which will expand the pool of precarious workers and undermine the power of labor unions. It is about her dissolution of an opposition political party and jailing of labor leaders and opposition lawmakers. It is about her refusal to allow a serious investigation into the Sewol Tragedy and the cause of the death of three hundred people, mostly high school students, who drowned in the ferry that capsized in 2014. It is about her backdoor deal with Japan last year to silence the Korean victims of sexual slavery by the Japanese army during WWII. And the list goes on.

Organizers of last Saturday’s demonstration are calling for simultaneous actions in cities across the country on November 19 to continue to press for Park’s resignation. If she still refuses to step down, they are calling for a re-convergence in Seoul on November 26. Meanwhile, the country’s two largest trade union confederations – the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions – have vowed a general strike if Park Geun-hye refuses to resign.

 Korea Times screenshot

screen shots al Jazeera

In the past few weeks, Park’s approval rating has crashed to an embarrassing single digit, and sixty percent of the South Korean population says she should step down. There are growing calls inside the conservative Saenuri Party for Park Geun-hye to leave the party and its leadership to resign. So far Park has refused to step down, but her resignation, it seems, is a matter of time.

People Power, Not Another U.S.-Backed Authoritarian

Park Geun-hye is a key U.S. ally in what the United States considers a critical region for its geopolitical and economic interests. The US-ROK alliance has been in place since 1953, and the United States maintains 28,000 troops in South Korea. The global economic system is highly dependent on trade with Asia-Pacific, and the East China Sea is a significant sea lane through which much of global trade passes every day. Its alliances with South Korea and Japan are critical for the United States to maintain its foothold in the region to counter China, as well as Russia and North Korea.

So how are U.S. officials looking at the current situation in South Korea? White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest’s recent comment seems to suggest they are already looking ahead at the possibility of Park’s resignation and feel confident that she will be replaced by someone to their liking. “One of the hallmarks of a strong alliance is that it remains durable, even when different people and different personalities are leading the countries,” he said about South Korea during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One.

If leaked classified cables from William Stanton, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in South Korea, are any indication, we can be sure that U.S. officials are watching the situation unfolding in South Korea with keen interest. Describing the political situation in South Korea immediately prior to the presidential election there in 2007, Stanton wrote-

Lee [Myung-bak]’s staffers are trying their best to characterize Park as not quite the unblemished princess she claims to be. … Perhaps even more damaging to her image as the maiden who sacrificed herself in the service of the nation upon the assassination of her mother, Park has been linked to the late Choi Tae-min, a charismatic pastor. Rumors are rife that the late pastor had complete control over Park’s body and soul during her formative years and that his children accumulated enormous wealth as a result.

Stanton detailed every allegation of corruption, rumors of personality defects and dirt hurled at each other by political opponents in the run-up to the election, then concluded,

“For us, the good news is that this is shaping up to be an election in which the United States is far from the vortex, quite unlike the 2002 election which had us in the middle of the whirlpool following the death of two schoolgirls accidentally struck by a USFK vehicle. …  So whoever wins in December, we are likely to see continuity in U.S.-Korean relations.”

For U.S. officials whose main concern is preserving the US-ROK alliance and securing U.S. interests in the region, the current situation unfolding in South Korea is not as simple as the 2007 election and is likely to have their heads spinning. Park is effectively isolated and her resignation seems a matter of time, but if she steps down too soon, it doesn’t buy them enough time to ensure that she will be replaced by someone to their liking. If she steps down too late, on the other hand, crescive anger on the streets may become too hot to handle.

Plus, soon they’ll have a recalcitrant in the White House. Many South Korean officials have wrung their hands over Trump’s comments that he is open to negotiating directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and that South Korea should either pay more for U.S. protection or mind their own defense. Although Trump tried to allay their fears this week by reaffirming U.S. commitment to defending South Korea, just what his policy will be on Korea, or any other issue for that matter, is anyone’s guess.

With so many uncertainties, we can be sure that those with a vested interest in preserving the US-ROK alliance are busy plotting and maneuvering behind the scene to safeguard U.S. interests in the region. Once-stalled talks between Seoul and Tokyo on a military intel pact are suddenly on an accelerated track. Amidst the chaos of cult worship allegations and police raids on presidential aides, the South Korean Defense Ministry quietly held two rounds of working-level talks with its Japanese counterpart to discuss the General Security of Military Intelligence Agreement- a deal left unsigned in 2012 due to overwhelming opposition from South Koreans but aggressively pushed by the United States, which considers military cooperation between the two historic adversaries vital to its interests in the region.

The Commander of U.S. Forces in Korea also announced last week that it will deploy a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile battery in South Korea within eight to ten months – in complete disregard of mounting opposition from South Koreans, including small farmers in Seongju and Gimcheon who have been holding nightly candlelight actions since July to block the weapon system from being deployed in their towns.

Anti-American sentiment peaked in South Korea after the assassination of Park’s dictator father Park Chung-hee when his replacement Chun Doo-hwan, with a tacit green light from the United States, crushed the democratic aspirations of the South Korean people by massacring hundreds in the southern city of Gwangju.

Let us hope history does not repeat itself. Let us make sure Park the daughter will not be replaced by yet another U.S.-backed authoritarian, who will turn history backwards and trample on the rights of working people. As we mourn the loss of progress in the United States, let us stand with the people of South Korea, who themselves have endured four years of oppressive rule and are now on the verge of breaking through to a new era through people power.

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Voices from Syria Refute Western Propaganda: US-NATO Supported Terrorists Involved in Countless Atrocities

November 13th, 2016 by Mark Taliano

Jad Nasr lives in Syria.  He’s 29, and he has a Master’s in English literature.  He sometimes uses his considerable talents by serving as translator for high Syrian dignitaries, such as the Grand Mufti.

He also has the scar from a bullet wound in his chest, and he receives death threats.  He explains that terrorists shot him because they didn’t want to hear the truth.  Presumably, the terrorists prefer their own version of the “truth”, as dictated by Wahhabi – supporting al Jazeera and Safa TV… as well as all mainstream media messaging promulgated by the West.

Jad’s story is not pleasant, and it highlights what Syrians have to endure on a daily basis.  He says that his brother was kidnapped last year, and that the terrorists tortured him and destroyed his knees.  Now he can’t walk.   He also told me that his cousin, who was serving in the Syrian Arab Army, lost his leg when Wahhabi suicide bombers attacked his military vehicle. Another cousin was kidnapped in 2012, and remains in captivity.

The terrorists have a talent for kidnapping. Nasr explained that in one operation, they used false flag tactics to capture tanks, and ultimately to capture thousands of Syrian soldiers at Douma, Syria.

The terrorists also like to showcase their defensive tactics.  One of their favorites is to use captives as human shields. Nasr’s testimony and video evidence demonstrate kidnapped individuals being put in cages, and used as human shields in town squares.  Needless to say, when the terrorists occupy towns or parts of towns and cities, they are necessarily using human captives as shields, and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) takes tremendous risks by fighting house to house, as they do.

Whereas the U.S, for example, carpet bombed Falluja in Iraq, the SAA, doesn’t have that “luxury” since it avoids killing Syrian civilians at all costs.

The terrorists control occupied territories with unspeakable barbarism.  A witness to the massacre at Adra described the scene in these words:

The rebels began to attack the government centers, and attacked the police station—where all the policemen were killed after only a brief clash because of the large numbers of the attackers. They (the attackers) then headed to the checkpoint located on the edge of the city before moving to the clinic, where they slaughtered one from the medical staff and put his head in the popular market. They then dragged his body in front of townspeople who gathered to see what was happening. Bakery workers who resisted their machinery being taken away were roasted in their own oven. Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic Front fighters went from house to house with a list of names and none of those taken away then has been seen since.’

When the Syrian army would try to enter Adra the Jihadists would throw women and children from the 20,000 people it captured off the top floors in front of the army.”

Nasr also discussed the lies propagated by imperialists, and believed by multitudes.  He says that for the first three weeks of the so-called “revolution”, police and security personnel were ordered to not carry guns.  It was during this time that 15 of Nasr’s friends were killed by so-called “peaceful protestors”.

This report is corroborated by peace activist Janice Kortright who writes:

The media lies about Syria…have been absolute…and I think media heads should face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the one-sided false narrative they’ve been spreading since the Syrian War began. Even earlier…throughout the entire “Arab Spring” orchestrated by the west using “jihadists” (paid mercenaries, criminals and brain-washed radicals) to create a “New Middle East” dedicated to western dominance and control over natural resources.

This soldier, whom we interviewed in Damascus, is a personal hero and friend. A friend to whom I’ve entrusted my life and would again any time anywhere.

He was one of the soldiers in Daraa in March 2011 (where and when the violence in Syria began). This is his account and matchs several others’ first hand accounts of events there.

The life of a Syrian soldier is so hard. A terrorist paid by the US or Saudi or Qatar makes about $300 or $400 a month. A Syrian soldier receives 1/10th of that. They fight an enemy that is often inhuman. I know of one soldier who was cut to pieces while his terrorist captors had his father on the phone listening to the torturous death of his son.

FALSE: The Syrian war began when President Assad brutally put down peaceful protests.

TRUE: The Syrian War was planned in earnest 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.

Kortright interviewed a Syrian soldier who described the soldiers’ (unarmed) and fatal encounters with the initial, externally-orchestrated uprisings, in these words:

 Soldier:  I don’t know, we didn’t see them face to face.  My best friend was shot, so I felt anger and sadness.  I felt anger because we were ambushed in this way and all we had was batons, we couldn’t defend ourselves.  We had to run, they were shooting us like birds.  And the demonstrators blocked all the entrances leading to us, so no ambulances was able to reach us whatsoever, at that point.  I carried my best friend and what matters for us now is to protect him and protect ourselves until we get to safety.  While we were running, we were seeing our friends the civil police, how they were being killed in front of us, or shot at.

Similarly, investigative reporter Rick Sterling debunks the propaganda that “Assad kills his own people” in his description of the initial, violent protests:

“In reality, there was a violent faction from the start. In the first protests in Deraa, seven police were killed. Two weeks later there was a massacre of 60 security forces in Deraa.”

These same “peaceful protestors” were the spearhead of the Western-orchestrated “regime change” operations, wherein the Muslim Brotherhood and foreign operatives played central roles. The “Arab Spring” was a foreign intelligence operation from the beginning.

Recent estimates suggest that terrorists from about 100 countries are currently infesting Syria. This, coupled with the legal interventions of the “Axis of resistance”, and the illegal war crimes of NATO and its allies, means that the dirty war on Syria is increasingly a world war.

Those of us who still believe the war lies are enabling imperialists who are pushing us towards the unthinkable.

The following text is an updated and expanded version of:

Voices from Syria: “The US-Supported Terrorists Control Occupied Territories with Unspeakable Barbarism”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/voices-from-syria-the-us-supported-terrorists-control-occupied-territories-with-unspeakable-barbarism/5547347

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Will Donald Trump Deliver Positive Change or Business as Usual? Will He Continue Imperial Wars? His Jobs Creation Promise Rings Hollow.

November 13th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

If past in America is prologue, hold the cheers for change. Expect business as usual to continue, perhaps disguised by Trump’s unorthodox way of communicating – for how long before supporters catch on, switching allegiance if they feel betrayed.

Behind the scenes, he’s already facing enormous pressure to maintain continuity, some wiggle room granted him the way it is for all US leaders.

In case he forgets, perhaps a manipulated Wall Street crash and/or 9/11-type false flag will steer him back on the track deep state power brokers demand.

America is run for its privileged few alone, most others exploited, suffering hugely under neoliberal harshness, their tax dollars increasingly going for militarism, warmaking and corporate handouts. Expecting Trump to come to their rescue is like waiting for Godot.

His jobs creation promise rings hollow. Business largely creates them, not government. FDR’s programs to put unemployed Americans back to work didn’t end the Great Depression. It took WW II to achieve full employment.

It’s doubtful Trump has global war in mind as a jobs creation program. His views on Russia and Syria are encouraging – promising normalized relations with Putin, wanting Washington and Moscow allied against ISIS.

He now gets the same daily intelligence briefing given Obama. He knows America created and supports virtually all terrorist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere. So-called moderate rebels in Syria don’t exist.

Will he change longstanding US policy, combat Pentagon/CIA supported foot soldiers, defy Wall Street and other powerful interests – risking a JFK ending to his presidency, a short tenure before his demise?

Or will he maintain continuity like all pre-and-post Kennedy presidents? They’re mostly establishment front figures, not independent leaders pursuing their own agendas, regardless of what longstanding entrenched interests want.

Trump held no previous government positions, the first US leader to come from its private sector with no public experience.

If generals like Washington, Jackson and Eisenhower transitioned easily from military to government leadership, why not Trump as effectively after heading a private business enterprise – working closely with public officials successfully.

He won’t enter office for weeks. Judge him after he begins governing and once he announces who’ll fill cabinet and other top administration posts.

Expect him to reward loyalists, eschewing opponents. Names mentioned for key positions so far aren’t encouraging – including for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Senator Jeff Sessions, former Goldman Sachs investment banker Steven Mnuchin, and General Mike Flynn, among others.

Even neocon former GW Bush UN envoy John Bolton is apparently being considered for Secretary of State – a controversial recess appointment, resigning less than 18 months later because he’d unlikely win Senate confirmation.

If Trump continues imperial wars instead of ending them, is less conciliatory with Russia than promised, and appoints dirty business as usual figures to top administration posts, he’ll likely end up as reviled by supporters as opponents.

Hopefully he’ll surprise and deliver more than critics like myself expect. I’ll support any positive changes he makes for the betterment of all Americans and world peace.

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. 

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

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Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence Wants War against Syria and Russia?

November 13th, 2016 by South Front

Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence calls Putin a “small and bullying” leader and states that the US “should be prepared to use military force.”

While new US President Donald Trump opposes the war in Iraq, has no objection to a collapse of the North Atlantic Alliance and expresses his respect for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the main candidate for vice president of the new US administration, Mike Pence, attacks Putin as a “small and bullying” leader and states that the US “should be prepared to use military force.”

Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence (Photo: AP)

“The small and bullying leader of Russia is not dictating terms to the United States,” Pence said during the debate on October 4. “We have got to be able to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership.”

“The provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength,” he added. “The United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime.”

“We are going to rebuild our military. This whole Putin thing, look, America is stronger than Russia. Our economy is 16 times larger than the Russian economy. Our political system is superior to the crony corrupt capitalis system in Russia it every way,” Pence said, answering the question about a reason of Republicans’ confidence in the fact that Putin will respect a Trump-Pence administration, while he has no respect for Hillary Clinton and no respect for Obama. “When Donald Trump and I observed, as I said, in Syria and Iran and Ukraine that the small and bullying leader of Russia has been stronger on the world stage than this administration, that is stating painful facts,” he added.

So, it looks like the future US vice president, Pence has an opinion ‘a bit opposite’ to Trump statements. How will the new US administration solve this issue and how will campaign rhetoric of Trump match his actions – this is a big question.

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NATO Sponsored Terrorist Mercenaries in Northern Aleppo Equipped with Turkish M60 Tanks

November 13th, 2016 by Fars News Agency

The Turkish army in al-Shahba region of Northern Aleppo has equipped the terrorists with heavy weapons, including M60 tanks.

According to Kurdish-affiliated Hawar news, several footage and images have been released by the terrorist groups in different websites which show that they are using the Turkish army’s armored vehicles in Tal Jorji village in al-Bab region.

The images show that the terrorists are using M60 tanks.

Turkey has deployed a large number of its tanks and armored vehicles in Northern Syria after the start of the Euphrates Shield operation by Ankara.

The Turkish forces, backed by US-led coalition aircraft, started the Euphrates Shield military operation in August, claiming that they intend to purge terrorists from Syria’s Northern territories and create security zones for accommodation of refugees.

Media activists said earlier this month that the Turkey-backed militants operating in Northern Syria within the framework of the Euphrates Shield operation retreated from 13 strategic villages near al-Bab in Aleppo to open way for the ISIL’s operations.

According to the Lebanese al-Safir newspaper, the ISIL occupied Bor’an, al-Wash, Tanouza, Salsana, Job al-Asi, Dawir al-Hawa, Houmad, Salasina, al-Barouza and a number of other villages in a surprise attack on Tuesday following a rapid withdrawal of the Euphrates Shield operation forces.

A large number of media activists reported that no real clashes happened between the ISIL and the Turkey-backed militants, and the Euphrates Shield operation forces fled the scene en masse.

Hawar news agency accused Turkey of ordering his forces to retreat from the villages in the South of Akhtarin region near al-Bab.

The agency said the move by Turkey was part of a joint operational plan with the ISIL against the Kurdish troops in the regions under their control.

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To the Anti-Trump Protesters

November 13th, 2016 by Anthony Freda

To the protestors: My friends and I missed you when we were protesting the bombing of hospitals and illegal wars.

We missed you at Occupy Peace and the other anti-war rallies we attended and helped organize over the last 8 years.

I have not seen you working to expose the destruction of our civil liberties or the illegal spying on citizens that Obama promised to stop.

I doubt very much that you have donated to or volunteered to work for anti-war and pro-liberty groups who are fighting to stop senseless wars before they start and restore our basic freedoms. (Like I have)

It’s been lonely out there.

I guess you have just been very busy in the last 8 years.

 

 

Anthony Freda
www.AnthonyFreda.com

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

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Janet Reno: Bill Clinton’s Attorney General

November 13th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“Outspoken, outrageous and absolutely indifferent to others’ opinions, Janet Reno was truly one of a kind.” Paul Anderson

She was the first woman to hold the job of US Attorney General, and on getting that position, held it for the duration of the Clinton administration, the longest tenure than any in the previous 150 years. Unfortunately for her, Janet Reno will be remembered for much that was wrong with that same administration.

It began with her being President Bill Clinton’s third choice, a very typical state of affairs.  Both corporate lawyer Zoë Baird and federal judge Kimba Wood had been found wanting using undocumented immigrants as nannies.

Reno’s two terms in office provided a foretaste of what would happen with the US National Security State in the twenty-first century.  The World Trade Centre received attention in 1993 in a terrorist attack, supplying law enforcement officials with an ominous warning.  In 1995, with the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, the divisions in Clinton’s America, with its violence, its post-Cold War illnesses, came to the fore.

What Reno will most be remembered for will be less her anti-trust suit against Microsoft, or using the federal law to safeguard clinics providing abortion services, and protecting women seeking those services.  More in point, the dark, bloody episode of the assault on the Branch Dravidian complex in Waco, Texas in 1993 will remain a marked stain in institutional hysteria, cruelty and massacre.

The spectacle did much to bring in collision, with lethal consequences, the world of centralised law enforcement, and another America, one wishing to be left quirkily if bizarrely alone.  The assault on the compound gave the sect of Vernon Howell, better known as David Koresh, a sense that Satan had made a cruel decision and had arrived to stake a claim.

The siege initially began on February 28, 1993 with agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.  On April 19, the FBI got involved.  There were a dozen tanks, accompanying 900 military and law-enforcement officials.  Eighty-nine people, including Koresh and several federal agents, had perished by the end of this gruesome affair.  A third of the fatalities were children.

In the course of the Waco siege, and subsequent raid, Renopresided over a shoddy enterprise that saw the use of CS gas, psychological warfare, mendacity on the part of the FBI on the presence of fragmentation grenades at the scene, and the trigger happy antics of the BATF.

The line Reno took was that children had been endangered in the Waco compound, though to be fair, it was a point insisted upon by the FBI.  They had been sexually abused.  The women of the compound were shared with Koresh in accordance with a reading of Biblical scripture.  In short, the Koresh experiment had to be eliminated.  It was with little surprise that subsequent, government backed investigations found the BATF and FBI faultless.

In 1999, it surfaced that the FBI had made good its part in starting the conflagration that ultimately took so many lives at Waco.  Her response was to send marshals to FBI headquarters to seize a tape featuring the communications that took place on the day of the assault.

Reno found herself with hot water again over the 2000 custody battle of Elián González.  Having been the sole survivor of an effort on the part of his mother and 10 others to cross to Floridafrom Cuba, the six-year old became a bone of contention for Cuban exiles in the state. Never should González be yielded and returned to Castro’s Cuba, where he could be united with his father.

It was not to be, and in signature fashion, an incident that might have been handled with kid-glove minimal fuss became scandalously forceful.  Agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, in bursting into the Miami home of the child’s relatives, were captured in terrifying spectacle. Again, the federal government appeared as supreme, meddlesome bullyboy.

A persistent nightmare during Reno’s time in office was the rather lax, and even sociopathic approach Clinton had towards the law, a point she struggled to negotiate with. Claiming a trust in her legal instinct, she tended to refer matters of suggested impropriety on the President’s part to special counsel, though even there, she dithered.

Clinton’s supporters thought her too hasty in wading into investigating Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.  In permitting an independent inquiry into the Arkansas failed land deal that came to be called the Whitewater investigation to expand, its tentacles moving into the notorious Lewinsky affair, Reno made few friends in the inner circle.

Nor was she always consistent on that score.  At stages she provided insulation to Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, shielding them from the eye of an independent counsel in investigating suggestions of fund-raising irregularities that had potentially been broken in 1996.  House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah were vocal in questioning her independence; FBI director Louis J. Freeh had also favoured a special counsel.

Having now passed into history, Reno’s period in office is a reminder about Clinton’s torn America, with its at times deadly contradictions, seedy establishment behaviour and riddling corruption.  He oversaw a country at war with itself, where groups were demonised as fringe worthy devotees of a lunatic world and Washington grandees could misbehave.  Now it is time for those nutty devotees to have a say in the White House.

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

 

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US Raqqa “Counter-terrorism” Operation Is Aimed at Denying Syria Peace

November 13th, 2016 by Salman Rafi Sheikh

Making a very interesting, yet a serious, move, the US has announced operation “Euphrates Anger”, to be conducted by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of different US-backed militias, to re-take the city of Raqqa, the current capital of the Islamic State in Syria. While the announcement has come just three weeks after the beginning of the operation to liberate the city of Mosul, IS’ capital in Iraq, and seems a ‘logical’ development, there is much more to Raqqa operation than simply meets the eye. On the surface, this operation is purely anti-IS and is aimed at symbolically defeating the group by capturing its ‘capital’. In reality, however, this operation is aimed at strengthening the US-backed forces in Syria and thereby disturb the Syrian army’s battle for Aleppo.

This is evident from the contradiction that has been inserted in this operation from the very beginning. Consider this: according toBrett McGurk, US President Barack Obama’s counter-Islamic State envoy, the main idea behind the re-taking of Raqqa by the SDF is:

When it comes to Raqqa we want a force that ultimately liberates Raqqa that is primarily from the local area, Arabs from the area, and so we have trained many of these fighters and that force will continue to grow as we get to the subsequent phases of the campaign.

A pertinent question that arises here is this: If the US was really serious about engaging a local force to liberate the city of Raqqa, which other force could have been better and more “local”, having a legitimate local base, than Syria’s own army, which is currently battling IS and other groups in the city of Aleppo?

Of course, the US and its allies would not want to have Syrian army as its ally, nor wold they want it to appear as the liberator. Their objective of keeping Syria immersed in conflict, and the ultimate objective of destroying Syrian army and dismantling Assad as its president, can be met only when the Syrian army remains engaged in battles either against the Islamic State or against the US-backed SDF.

Therefore, placement of SDF as the leading fighting force in Raqqa is a very calculated move to deny the Syrian or Russian militaries the chance to actually liberate the city from the clutches of sponsored-terrorism.

Transportation of IS to Raqqa preceded the operation

While the stage was already being set for an operation to ‘liberate’ Raqqa from IS, this is strange enough to note that this operation has come at a time when IS fighters were easily shifting from Mosul to Raqqa and when the West was already aware of it. A Kurdish intelligence officer told Fox News earlier in the week that IS fighters are “running away massively” in the direction of Raqqa.

The report said, “According to multiple insiders familiar with the Mosul-to-Raqqa route and ISIS tactics, the group takes abandoned roads and moves through friendly, Sunni-populated villages that provide not only cover, but potential safe haven.”

Interestingly enough, the West was aware of this movement of IS fighters. French president Francois Hollande said last month there was evidence that Islamic State fighters were fleeing to Raqqa, and that everything must be done to stop them regrouping there. While this ‘transportation’ of IS does raise question, first and foremost, about the efficiency and effectiveness of the battle for Mosul, it also signifies that the real target of the US and its allies remains Syria and, by default, Russia.

Instead of blocking the route from Mosul to Raqqa, IS fighters were deliberately allowed to shift to Raqqa in order to create the necessary excuse to allow the US to revamp its extremely weak position in Syria, where the Syrian army, being backed by Russia, has achieved considerable success against IS and other West supported terror groups.

Raqqa is important for the US to stay alive in Syria

The US clearly estimates that the Syrian military and its Russian allies are sooner than later going to liberate Raqqa. Given this, the US does not want to suffer another public relations setback, the kind of which it had earlier suffered at the time of liberation of Palmyra and the kind of which they are suffering now when Aleppo is heading towards an eventual fall at the hands of Syrian and Russian forces.

The US, therefore, wants to have its own “victory” in Raqqa before the Syrians and the Russians can have theirs. As one analyst has put it aptly, “If the SDF is able to “take” Raqqa, the US will then be able to shout from the rooftops that America has liberated Raqqa and defeated ISIS in its own capital.”

However, this situation is setting a dangerous stage, likely to cause more harm than good to the people of Syria. For them the situation would qualitatively remain the same if they are subdued by IS or by the US-backed so-called “local forces” i.e. the SDF. Militarily and ideologically trained on the same lines as IS, there is little in it to doubt that SDF would not impose its own ‘jihadist fanaticism’ on the people of Raqqa, creating an essential context for the Syrian army to move towards Raqqa to liberate its territory and its people from these terror forces.

A prolonged crisis looming large?

With Syrian forces, backed by the Russian Air Force and Russian Special Forces heading east to Raqqa, and with SDF, backed by the US-led coalition forces rushing to capture Raqqa, an explosive situation is developing, capable of leaving widespread regional and international ramifications.

In other words, there is a distinct potential that, in the race for Raqqa, the Syrian/Russian alliance might find itself face to face with the possibility of direct military conflict with the US/SDF alliance. Clearly Moscow is sensing such a situation and has accordingly, making a sound strategic move to maintain balance, deployed its aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov off the cost of Syria.

Even if a big battle does not take place, which is by all means unlikely to happen, the US is certainly preparing to complicate the Syrian crisis.

While the US has been trying its best to stall the defeat of “rebels” in Aleppo by doing persistent propaganda against Moscow for committing “war crimes”, control of Raqqa would further allow the US to keep a direct covert influence on Aleppo, and co-ordinate SDF with those “rebels” now trapped in Aleppo.

The choice of Raqqa is, in this context, a strategic move on the part of US as its main interest clearly lies in delaying as far as possible the capture of Aleppo and Raqqa by Syrian government forces. However, were this to happen, it would be only a matter of time before Syria will eventually be cleared off all jihadists, moderate and not-so-moderate, groups and force the US out of the region.

Therefore, operation “Euphrates Anger” is neither about defeating terrorism in the region nor about denying IS, what French authorities say, a territorial base that it uses to launch attacks in Europe and elsewhere. For all practical purposes and given the nature of US objectives, if the SDF succeeds in imposing control over the city and the province, the US will be successful in cementing control over the area and pass it to the hands of its proxy terrorists once again and keep the ‘war’ alive and deny peace.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Tumultuous US Electoral Season and Aftermath. Trump v. Hillary was likely Rigged. Powerful Deep State Figures run America

November 13th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

Politics in America was never for the fainthearted – why Harry Truman once said if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

This political season was unlike any earlier ones, for sure in my memory since the 1940s. Who could have imagined the outcome, the stuff Hollywood script-writers dream of?

A media excoriated billionaire tycoon businessman, entertainer, political outsider defeated an establishment candidate – groomed and selected to succeed Obama.

Things didn’t turn out as originally planned. In a separate article, I suggested scandals surrounding Hillary made her damaged goods, too contentious to serve – especially with key House Republican committee chairmen promising endless investigations into her wrongdoing, maintaining relentless pressure on her.

Trump is a political anomaly – an establishment figure coming across to supporters as populist, enough to elevate him to the nation’s highest office. Was it by fair or foul means?

Election rigging in America is longstanding at the federal, state and local levels. Trump v. Hillary was likely rigged – for the outlier expected to lose, according to investigative journalist Greg Palast.

He cited various tactics used, including “ ‘Caging,’ ‘purging,’ blocking legitimate registrations, and wrongly shunting millions to ‘provisional’ ballots that will never be counted,” along with potential millions of people “voting many, many times.”

Further investigation of Tuesday’s results remains, he said. Millions of “provisional” and “spoiled” ballots were rejected from about 30 million mailed in.

But according to Palast, “evidence already in our hands makes me sadly confident in saying Jim Crow [symbolizing denial of the African American vote], not the voters, elected Mr. Trump.”

Not Jim Crow, Greg, power brokers turning on the woman they initially supported, jettisoning her, believing investigations into her scandals likely damaging her more than already meant she had to go – rigging the process for Trump to assure it.

Powerful deep state figures run America, choosing its top elected and appointed officials. Voters have no say, disenfranchised without their knowledge.

In 2000 and 2004, Palast documented how Bush stole both elections, defeating legitimate winners Al Gore and John Kerry – aside from the Supreme Court’s illegal intervention in 2000, putting the losing candidate in the White House.

Exit polls are very accurate. They showed Hillary won key battleground states reported as going for Trump. According to Palast, he won “by tossing Black provisional ballots into the dumpster, ID laws that turn away students,” and other shenanigans.

Power brokers decided the outcome. Like always, voting was meaningless theater, not democracy in action, absent in America from inception.

Hillary is politically dead. The die was cast, irreversible as long America’s deep state wants Trump as US president. According to investigative journalist Greg Madsen, she’s not going away quietly.

Nor are her key corporate elite supporters. They launched a “Purple Revolution” to prevent changes in “globalist policies,” said Madsen.

They’ll “seek to make the Trump administration a short one through engineered street protests and political disruption.”

“America’s globalists and interventionists are already pushing the meme that because so many establishment and entrenched national security and military «experts» opposed Trump’s candidacy, (he’s) «required» to call on them to join his administration because there are not enough such «experts» among (his) inner circle of advisers.”

Madsen compares post-election protests to Euromaidan ones in Kiev – from late 2013 to Washington’s February 2014 coup, a Nazi-infested putschist regime replacing a democratically elected government.Scoundrel media supported dark forces oppose any change in dirty business as usual, including maintaining anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Iran policies.

They want regime change in all sovereign independent states, endless wars of aggression continued, Wall Street and other powerful interests served exclusively, social justice eliminated entirely – incremental slow death, along with police state America hardened more than already.

How Trump handles enormous pressure he’ll face for uninterrupted continuity remains to be seen. If past is prologue, be wary.

Perhaps all we can expect from Trump is dodging a nuclear war on Russia bullet and perhaps China and Iran. Saving humanity from that potential holocaust is why I preferred Trump over neocon war goddess Hillary.

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

 

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Donald Trump Predicted to Appoint Mastermind of Bush Torture Program as CIA Chief

November 13th, 2016 by RT

Jose Rodriguez, one of the masterminds behind the infamous George W. Bush torture and retention program, may be selected by the new administration to run the CIA, according to an influential law firm where Trump’s major ally serves as a senior adviser.

The prediction that Jose Rodriguez, a career intelligence officer and former head of CIA National Clandestine Service (NCS), may lead the CIA comes in a post-election memo published by Dentons, a multinational law and lobbying firm. The company is involved in delivering legal advice to the Trump campaign, according to the Intercept.

Dentons’ memo provides a detailed analysis of the 2016 election, as well as looking at the policy priorities of President-elect Trump and his potential cabinet options, including those of the intelligence community. While some posts list a variety of candidates, the CIA director’s job has only one projected nominee – Jose Rodriguez.

Rodriguez joined the CIA in 1976 and quickly progressed through the ranks, serving as a field operative and station chief in a number of Latin American countries. In 2002, he was promoted to head of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center, the CIA division which spearheaded the fight against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

About 136 individuals were detained without trial and subjected to torture in CIA black sites worldwide. According to a 2014 Senate inquiry, interrogation tactics included sleep deprivation during prolonged standing, rectal feeding, freezing to death, the use of insects as a means of torture, and, last but not least, waterboarding.

Rodriguez, who in 2004 was appointed chief of the NCS to oversee all human intelligence gathering by US agencies, defended the CIA practices, telling the New Yorker in a 2012 interview that they “fell well short of what is torture.” 

He argued that the methods previously employed by Nazi and the Japanese secret services during WWII “had the legal backing, but we had no moral qualms about doing this.” Torture and harsh treatment helped prevent “another 9/11” and gather “valuable intelligence,” the top CIA officer insisted in the interview.

In 2005, after the “enhanced interrogation,” a euphemism for torture, was revealed by the media, Rodriguez played a key role in discarding evidence, destroying 92 tapes showing the waterboarding of suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is reported to have been waterboarded 183 times.

‘Everything…was a lie’: Former CIA analyst, John Kiriakou on the agency deleting torture report

According to a declassified CIA email cited by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Rodriguez said “the heat from destroying is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into [the] public domain… they would make us look terrible.” 

Rodriguez’ career profile apparently sits well with some of Trump’s statements on tackling terrorism suspects.

“What do you think about waterboarding?” Trump asked the crowd during the June Ohio rally. Supporters cheered as he gave the answer: “I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.”

Last November, Trump touted the benefits of harsh interrogation practices, telling a separate campaign rally that waterboarding “works,” adding “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us.”

Dentons itself, a multinational law and lobbying firm with over 120 offices worldwide, employs Donald Trump’s ally Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, as a senior adviser who is mentioned in the post-election memo as a potential Secretary of State.

It is unclear if the 73-year-old politician, however, who previously resigned as Speaker because of ethics violations and a string of controversies, would accept a nomination.

Other candidates to enter the Trump cabinet include some hawkish figures who served in the Bush administration, like Ambassador John Bolton, who never renounced his bellicose support for the 2003 Iraq invasion. Critics argue that his bluntness has ruined many significant negotiations on biological weapons destruction and nuclear disarmament.

Talking to Democracy Now, Glenn Greenwald, a co-founder of the Intercept, has called Bolton “one of the most sociopathic warmongers on the planet, in charge of anything,” also describing other members of Trump’s transitional cabinet as “genuinely terrifying prospects.”

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NATO Panics as Putin Urges Trump to Force Alliance Withdrawal from Russian Border

November 13th, 2016 by Zero Hedge

While many in the media have speculated that the Kremlin had a hand in Wikileaks’ procurement of hacked Podesta emails – something Julian Assange denied last week – and US intelligence services officially accused Russian government-supported hackers of interfering with the US election (providing zero proof for the allegation), the truth is that Vladimir Putin is delighted with the outcome from the US elections: not so much for Hillary’s loss as that the sharp, neo-con wing in the Pentagon has been muted for the next four years.

And, in the first test of Trump’s willingness to rebuild bridges with Russia, Putin’s spokesman suggested that President-elect Donald Trump should begin rebuilding the U.S.-Kremlin relationship by urging NATO to withdraw forces from the Russian border.  Dmitry Peskov told the Associated Press that such a move  “would lead to a kind of detente in Europe.” Trump repeatedly praised Putin during his campaign and suggested the U.S. abandon its commitment to the NATO alliance.

The request comes at a time of disturbing, relentless escalations in military tensions between NATO and Russia: this week we reported that NATO has placed as much as 300,000 troops on “high alert” in preparation for confrontation with Russia.

Peskov said in the interview that the NATO presence does not make Russia feel “safe.”  “Of course, we have to take measures to counter,” he said.

Additionally, setting the stage for Trump’s official position on Crimea, in a separate interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Peskov insisted that Crimea which became part of Russia after the CIA-sponsored Ukraine presidential coup in 2014, will remain such.   “No one in Russia — never — will be ready to start any kind of discussion about Crimea,” he said, refusing to call it “annexation.”

When asked how Trump could approach the Crimea issue, quoted by The Hill, Peskov said it would take time. “We understand that it will take time for our partners in Europe, for our partners here in the United States to understand that. We are patient enough to wait until this understanding occurs here in Washington, in the States, in Europe,” he said.

* * *

But while the Crimea issue is largely moot, with the West resigned to its concession to Moscow, fears that Trump will indeed follow Russia’s advice and pressure the alliance into standing down, or worse, withdraw US support, has resulted in outright panic, and according to German Spiegel, NATO strategists are planning for a scenario in which Trump orders US troops out of Europe.

Spiegel adds that strategists from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s staff have drafted a secret report which includes a worst-case scenario in which Trump orders US troops to withdraw from Europe and fulfills his threat to make Washington less involved in European security.

“For the first time, the US exit from NATO has become a threat” which would mean the end of the bloc, a German NATO officer told the magazine. During his campaign, Trump repeatedly slammed NATO, calling the alliance “obsolete.” He also suggested that under his administration, the US may refuse to come to the aid of NATO allies unless they “pay their bills” and “fulfill their obligations to us.”

Of course, this is the same Spiegel which after Trump’s victory has predicted the end of the world.

“We are experiencing a moment of the highest and yet unprecedented uncertainty in the transatlantic relationship,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador in Washington and head of the prominent Munich Security Conference. By criticizing the collective defense, Trump has questioned the basic pillar of NATO as a whole, Ischinger added.

Alternatively, by putting into question a core support pillar behind NATO’s endless provocations and troop buildup at Russia’s border, Trump may prevent World War III.

NATO, however, demands its way or no other way at all, and it why Ischinger demands that the president-elect reassure his “European allies” that he remains firm on the US commitment under Article 5 of the NATO charter prior to his inauguration.

This wasn’t the only criticism launched at Trump by the military alliance: earlier this week, Stoltenberg slammed Trump’s agenda, saying: “All allies have made a solemn commitment to defend each other. This is something absolutely unconditioned.” Perhaps the commitment was only contingent on having a resident in the Oval Office who put the interests of the Military Industrial Complex ahead of those of, for example, the American people?

NATO’s panic has grown so vast that out of fear Trump would not appear in Brussels even after his inauguration, NATO has re-scheduled its summit – expected to take place in early 2017 – to next summer, Spiegel said.

The NATO report likley also reflects current moods within the EU establishment as well, as Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, has called on the member states to establish Europe’s own military. Washington “will not ensure the security of the Europeans in the long term… we have to do this ourselves,” he argued on Thursday. Because Greek troops just can’t wait to give their lives to defend German citizens and vice versa.

Meanwhile, Spiegel admits that despite NATO’s bluster, Trump has all the leverage, and if Trump is serious about reducing the number of US troops stationed in Europe, large NATO countries like Germany have little to offer, Spiegel said. Even major member states’ militaries lack units able to replace the Americans, which in turn may trigger debate on strengthening NATO’s nuclear arm, a sensitive issue in most European countries for domestic reasons.

How will Trump respond? It is unclear: while in his pre-election rhetoric, Trump pushed for an anti-interventionist agenda, and certainly made it seem that NATO would be weakned under his presidency, that remains to be seen as his transition team currently hammers out the specifics of his rather vague policies. We would not be surprised at all to find that for all the anti-establishment posturing, the “shadow government” – now in the hands of the Bush clan – which Ron Paul warned against earlier, manages to regain dominance, and far from a detente, Trump’s position emboldens NATO to pressure Putin even further. We would be delighted if our cynicism is proven wrong on this occasion.

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Trump’s Victory: Arrogance Defeated

November 13th, 2016 by Jean Bricmont

Hillary Clinton called half of Trump voters “a basket of deplorables”. In all the discussions I have had with American “liberals”, they explained to me that Trump supporters were mostly uneducated white men.

However, I am old enough to remember an era when the all the leftwing parties, socialist or communist, and even American Democrats, were based on the workers or the “working class” or the “common man”.  Nobody thought to inquire whether they had university degrees or to investigate whether or not their opinions were politically correct on issues such as racism, sexism or homophobia.

What defined the workers as progressive subjects was their economically exploited condition and not some ideological orthodoxy or moral purity.

At the end of the 1970s a great change took place within leftwing parties. They were increasingly dominated by academics and their ideology changed radically from that of the classical left.

Far from aiming to establish some form of socialism, or merely of social justice, the left turned into the champion of the fight for equal opportunity, against discrimination and prejudice, and – with the rise of globalization – the opening of markets.

The more or less mythical hero of the left was no longer the proletarian but the marginal, the migrant, the foreigner, the dissident, or the rebel – even if he happened to be a religious fanatic that no leftist intellectual would have anything to do with. One recalls how Jean-Jacques Rousseau made fun of those who pretend to love the Tartars in order to avoid loving their neighbors.

Little by little a new class alliance formed: the one percent as it is called, or more realistically the richest ten percent who benefit from globalization are allied with the middle class intelligentsia to sell us globalization in the name of “openness to others” and which flaunt the specter of racism or sexism to attract minorities and certain feminists (for although women are not a minority, certain feminist demands are similar to those of minorities).

But that alliance was extremely unnatural in socio-economic terms, because the main victims of globalization are the least qualified workers, often women or members of minorities.

The left’s pro-globalization bias led it astray step by step.  First it gave up all effort at regulating the economy, satisfying itself with claiming to share the fruits of growth fairly by ensuring “equal opportunity”.  But in the real world, inequalities grew far more than the economy.

They also imagined that international law could be abolished and that a certain “international community” – in practice the United States and its allies – would maintain world order by military means.  Again, in the real world that only created chaos, refugees and resistance to that American order.  In fact, in the long term, the American population itself came down with a strange disorder, “war fatigue”. Except for a minority of ideologues, hardly anyone in the United States wants to bear the costs of an empire

(see http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/30/the-fatal-expense-american-imperialism/teXS2xwA1UJbYd10WJBHHM/story.html  for a lucid analysis of those costs).

The protests of the victims of globalization had to be dealt with. The trick was to use the ideology of tolerance: any objection to globalization was labeled racism, xenophobia.  Intellectuals took up the “fight against racism” with enthusiasm, with an eye to preserving their own privileged social position, sheltered from the economic storms of globalization.

In the United States, it was enough to stigmatize bad thoughts; in Europe, they were taken to court.

All that had to explode sooner or later, just as the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed, and for the same reasons: a self-satisfied but fairly incompetent elite, isolated from social realities, which claims to do what is best for the people without consulting them, and which finally doesn’t even deliver the promised benefits, ends up provoking rebellion against itself.

First the Brexit, then Trump. Whatever one may think of that individual, the worse the things said about him by American “liberals”, the more they expose the enormity of their defeat.  After years of political correctness and sermons on feminism and antiracism, what can be more humiliating than the election of someone as demonized by feminists and antiracists as Trump?

For ardent supporters of the European Union, globalization and humanitarian wars, the victory of Trump has an effect comparable to that of the Polish worker strikes on the ruling Communist Party; they exposed the discontent even in the proletariat that theoretically exercised its dictatorship.  The election of Trump shows the revolt of the American population in the very citadel of free markets and imperialism.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will carry out the progressive aspects of his program; protectionism and peace with Russia. Those are the aspects that most infuriate the oligarchy, much more than his rude remarks and contradictions. Those are thus the aspects that will require the most intelligence and determination if they are to be realized.

A left which dares take a close look at its past errors should do all it can to push Trump in that direction, rather than to alienate the population still more by once again mounting its high horse of moral superiority and selling its soul to the leaders of the Democratic Party responsible for their own defeat.[1]

Jean Bricmont, 11 November 2016

The original French version of this article was published by RT at

https://francais.rt.com/opinions/28803-

Note

[1]   Sanders seems to go in that direction : « To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him » http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-trump

Jean Bricmont teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism.  He can be reached at [email protected]

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What the Clintons Did to Haiti

November 13th, 2016 by Nathan J. Robinson

Their actions in the country were shameful and shouldn’t be defended…

In this excerpt from Superpredator: Bill Clinton’s Use and Abuse of Black America, we examine the Clintons’ involvement in the country’s affairs during Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department. 

Bill and Hillary Clinton had long shared a personal interest in Haiti, dating back to the time of their honeymoon, part of which was spent in Port-au-Prince. In his autobiography, Bill says that his understanding of God and human nature were profoundly transformed when they witnessed a voodoo ceremony in which a woman bit the head off a live chicken. Hillary Clinton says the two of them “fell in love” with Haiti and they had developed a “deep connection” to the country. So when Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State in 2009, she consciously made the redevelopment of Haiti one of her top priorities. The country, she announced, would be a laboratory where the United States could “road-test new approaches to development,” taking advantage of what she termed “the power of proximity.” She intended to “make Haiti the proving ground for her vision of American power.” Hillary Clinton selected her own chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, to run the Haiti project.

Mills would be joined by Bill Clinton, who had been deputized by the U.N. as a “special envoy” to Haiti. Bill’s role was not well-defined, and Haitians were curious about what was in store. Mills wrote in an email to Hillary Clinton that Haitians saw Bill’s appointment as “a step toward putting Haiti in a protectorate or trusteeship status.” Soon, “joking that he must be coming back to lead a new colonial regime,” the Haitian media “dubbed him Le Gouverneur.”

The project was heavily focused on increasing Haiti’s appeal to foreign corporations. As Politico reported, Clinton’s experiment “had business at its center: Aid would be replaced by investment, the growth of which would in turn benefit the United States.”

One of the first acts in the new “business-centered” Haiti policy involved suppressing Haiti’s minimum wage. A 2009 Haitian law raised the minimum wage to 61 cents an hour, from 24 cents an hour previously. Haitian garment manufacturers, including contractors for Hanes and Levi Strauss, were furious, insisting that they were only willing to agree to a seven-cent increase. The manufacturers approached the U.S. State Department, who brought intense pressure to bear against Haitian President René Préval, working to “aggressively block” the 37-cent increase. The U.S. Deputy Mission Chief said a minimum-wage increase “did not take economic reality into account” and simply “appealed to the unemployed and underpaid masses.” But as Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review explained, the proposed wage increase would have been only the most trivial additional expense for the American garment manufacturers:

As of last year Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year, and presumably it would pass on at least some of its higher labor costs to consumers. Or better yet, Hanesbrands CEO Richard Noll could forego some of his rich compensation package. He could pay for the raises for those 3,200 t-shirt makers with just one-sixth of the $10 million in salary and bonus he raked in last year.

The truth of the “economic reality” was that the Haitian undergarment sector was hardly likely to become wildly less competitive as a result of the increase. The effort to suppress the minimum wage was not solely a Clinton project. It was also a “concerted effort on the part of Haitian elites, factory owners, free trade proponents, U.S. politicians, economists, and American companies.” But it was in keeping with the State Department’s priorities under Clinton, which prioritized creating a favorable business climate. It was that same familiar Clinton move “from aid to trade.” Bill Clinton’s program for Haitian development, designed by Oxford University economist Paul Collier, “had garment exports at its center.” Collier wrote that because of “propitious” factors like “poverty and [a] relatively unregulated labor market, Haiti has labor costs that are fully competitive with China.” But the Clintons’ role in Haiti would soon expand even further. In 2010, the country was struck by the worst earthquake in its history. The disaster killed 160,000 people and displaced over 1.5 million more. (The consequences of the earthquake were exacerbated by the ruined state of the Haitian food economy, plus the concentration of unemployed Haitian farmers in Port-au-Prince.) Bill Clinton was soon put in charge of the U.S.-led recovery effort. He was appointed to head the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which would oversee a wide range of rebuilding projects. At President Obama’s request, Clinton and George W. Bush created the “Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund,” and began aggressively fundraising around the world to support Haiti in the earthquake’s aftermath. (With Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State overseeing the efforts of USAID, the Clintons’ importance to the recovery could not be overstated; Bill’s appointment meant that “at every stage of Haiti’s reconstruction—fundraising, oversight and allocation—a Clinton was now involved.”

Clinton announced that Haiti would be a laboratory where the United States could road-test new approaches to development, taking advantage of “the power of proximity.”

Despite appearances, the Clinton-Bush fund was not focused on providing traditional relief. As they wrote, “[w]hile other organizations in Haiti are using their resources to deliver immediate humanitarian aid, we are using our resources to focus on long-term development.” While the fund would advertise that “100% of donations go directly to relief efforts,” Clinton and Bush adopted an expansive definition of “relief” efforts, treating luring foreign investment and jobs as a crucial part of earthquake recovery. On their website, they spoke proudly of what the New York Daily News characterizedas a program of “supporting longterm programs to develop Haiti’s business class.”

The strategy was an odd one. Port-au-Prince had been reduced to ruin, and Haitians were crowded into filthy tent cities, where many were dying of a cholera outbreak (which had itself been caused by the negligence of the United Nations). Whatever value building new garment factories may have had as a longterm economic plan, Haitians were faced with somewhat more pressing concerns like the basic provision of shelter and medicine, as well as the clearing of the thousands of tons of rubble that filled their streets.

The Clinton-led recovery was a disaster. A year after the earthquake, a stinging report from Oxfam singled out Clinton’s IHRC as creating a “quagmire of indecision and delay” that had made little progress toward successful earthquake recovery. Oxfam found that:

…less than half of the reconstruction aid promised by international donors has been disbursed. And while some of that money has been put toward temporary housing, almost none of the funds have been used for rubble removal.

Instead, the Clinton Foundation, IHRC, and State Department created what a Wall Street Journal writer called “a mishmash of low quality, poorly thought-out development experiments and half-finished projects.” A Haitian IHRC members lamented that the commission had produced “a disparate bunch of approved projects. . . [that] do not address as a whole either the emergency situation or the recovery, let alone the development, of Haiti.” A 2013 investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that most money for the recovery was not being dispersed, and that the projects that were being worked on were plagued by delays and cost overruns. Many Clinton projects were extravagant public relations affairs that quickly fizzled. For example, The Washington Post reported that:

…[a] 2011 housing expo that cost more than $2 million, including $500,000 from the Clinton Foundation, was supposed to be a model for thousands of new units but instead has resulted in little more than a few dozen abandoned model homes occupied by squatters.

Other Clinton ventures were seen as “disconnected from the realities of most people in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” Politico reported that many Clinton projects “have primarily benefited wealthy foreigners and the island’s ruling elite, who needed little help to begin with.” For example, “the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund invested more than $2 million in the Royal Oasis Hotel, where a sleek suite with hardwood floors costs more than $200 a night and the shops sell $150 designer purses and $120 men’s dress shirts.”

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Predictably, the Royal Oasis didn’t do an especially roaring trade; The Washington Post reported that “[o]ne recent afternoon, the hotel appeared largely empty, and with tourism hardly booming five years after the quake, locals fear it may be failing.” In a country with a 30-cent minimum wage, investing recovery dollars in a luxury hotel was not just offensive, but economically daft. Sometimes the recovery projects were accused not only of being pointless, but of being downright harmful. For instance, Bill Clinton had proudly announced that the Clinton Foundation  would be funding the “construction of emergency storm shelters in Léogâne.” But an investigation of the shelters that the Foundation had actually built found that they were “shoddy and dangerous” and full of toxic mold. The Nation discovered, among other things, that the temperature in the shelters reached over 100 degrees, causing children to experience headaches and eye irritations (which may have been compounded by the mold), and that the trailers showed high levels of carcinogenic formaldehyde, linked to asthma and other lung diseases. The Clinton Foundation had subcontracted the building of the shelters to Clayton Homes, a firm that had already been sued in the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) for “having provided formaldehyde-laced trailers to Hurricane Katrina victims.” (Clayton Homes was owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and Buffett had been a longstanding major donor to the Clinton Foundation.) The Nation’s investigation reported on children whose classes were being held in Clinton Foundation trailers. Their semester had just been cut short, and the students sent home, because the temperature in the classrooms had grown unbearable. The misery of the students in the Clinton trailers was described:

Judith Seide, a student in Lubert’s sixth-grade class [explained that] she and her classmates regularly suffer from painful headaches in their new Clinton Foundation classroom. Every day, she said, her “head hurts and I feel it spinning and have to stop moving, otherwise I’d fall.” Her vision goes dark, as is the case with her classmate Judel, who sometimes can’t open his eyes because, said Seide, “he’s allergic to the heat.” Their teacher regularly relocates the class outside into the shade of the trailer because the swelter inside is insufferable. Sitting in the sixth-grade classroom, student Mondialie Cineas, who dreams of becoming a nurse, said that three times a week the teacher gives her and her classmates painkillers so that they can make it through the school day. “At noon, the class gets so hot, kids get headaches,” the 12-year-old said, wiping beads of sweat from her brow. She is worried because “the kids feel sick, can’t work, can’t advance to succeed.”

The most notorious post-earthquake development project, however, was the Caracol industrial park. The park was pitched as a major job creator, part of the goal of helping Haiti “build back better” than it was before. The State Department touted the prospect of 100,000 new jobs for Haitians, with Hillary Clinton promising 65,000 jobs within five years. The industrial park followed the Clintons’ preexisting development model for Haiti: public/private partnerships with a heavy emphasis on the garment industry. Even though there were still hundreds of thousands of evacuees living in tents, the project was based on “the more expansive view that, in a desperately poor country where traditional foreign aid has chronically failed, fostering economic development is as important as replacing what fell down.” Much of the planning was focused on trying to lure a South Korean clothing manufacturer to set up shop there, by plying them with U.S. taxpayer funding. The Caracol project was“the centerpiece” of the U.S.’s recovery effort. A gala celebrating its opening featured the Clintons and Sean Penn, and it was treated as the emblem of the new, “better” Haiti, that would demonstrate the country’s commitment to being “open for business.” In order to build the park, hundreds of poor farmers were evicted from their land, so that millions of dollars could be spent transforming it.

But the project was a terrible disappointment. After four years, it was only operating at 10% capacity, and the jobs had failed to materialize:

Far from 100,000 jobs—or even the 60,000 promised within five years of the park’s opening— Caracol currently employs just 5,479 people full time. That comes out to roughly $55,000 in investment per job created so far; or, to put it another way, about 30 times more per job than the average [Caracol] worker makes per year. The park, built on the site of a former U.S. Marine-run slave labor camp during the 1915-1934 U.S. occupation, has the best-paved roads and manicured sidewalks in the country, but most of the land remains vacant.

Most of the seized farmland went unused, then, and even for the remaining farmers, “surges of wastewater have caused floods and spoiled crops.” Huge queues of unemployed Haitians stood daily in front of the factory, awaiting jobs that did not exist. The Washington Post described the scene:

Each morning, crowds line up outside the park’s big front gate, which is guarded by four men in crisp khaki uniforms carrying shotguns. They wait in a sliver of shade next to a cinder-block wall, many holding résumés in envelopes. Most said they have been coming every day for months, waiting for jobs that pay about $5 a day. From his envelope, Jean Mito Palvetus, 27, pulled out a diploma attesting that he had completed 200 hours of training with the U.S. Agency for International Development on an industrial sewing machine. “I have three kids and a wife, and I can’t support them,” he said, sweating in the hot morning sun. “I have a diploma, but I still can’t get a job here. I still have nothing.”

For some, the Caracol project perfectly symbolized the Clinton approach: big promises, an emphasis on sweatshops, incompetent management, and little concern for the actual impact on Haitians. “Caracol is a prime example of bad help,” as one Haiti scholar put it. “The interests of the market, the interest of foreigners are prioritized over the majority of people who are impoverished in Haiti.”

But, failure as it may have been, the Caracol factory was among the more successful of the projects, insofar as it actually came into existence. A large amount of the money raised by Bill Clinton after the earthquake, and pledged by the U.S. under Hillary Clinton, simply disappeared without a trace, its whereabouts unknown. As Politico explained:

Even Bill’s U.N. Office of the Special Envoy couldn’t track where all of [it] went—and the truth is that still today no one really knows how much money was spent “rebuilding” Haiti. Many initial pledges never materialized. A whopping $465 million of the relief money went through the Pentagon, which spent it on deployment of U.S. troops—20,000 at the high water mark, many of whom never set foot on Haitian soil. That money included fuel for ships and planes, helicopter repairs and inscrutables such as an $18,000 contract for a jungle gym… Huge contracts were doled out to the usual array of major contractors, including a $16.7 million logistics contract whose partners included Agility Public Warehousing KSC, a Kuwaiti firm that was supposed to have been blacklisted from doing business with Washington after a 2009 indictment alleging a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government during the Iraq War.

The recovery under the Clintons became notorious for its mismanagement. Clinton staffers “had no idea what Haiti was like and had no sensitivity to the Haitians.” They were reportedly rude and condescending toward Haitians, even refusing to admit Haitian government ministers to meetings about recovery plans. While the Clintons called in high-profile consulting firms like McKinsey to draw up plans, they had little interest in listening to Haitians themselves. The former Haitian prime minister spoke of a “weak” American staff who were “more interested in supporting Clinton than helping Haiti.”

One of those shocked by the failure of the recovery effort was Chelsea Clinton, who wrote a detailed email to her parents in which she said that while Haitians were trying to help themselves, every part of the international aid effort, both governmental and nongovernmental, was falling short. “The incompetence is mind numbing,” she wrote. Chelsea produced a detailed memorandum recommending drastic steps that needed to be taken in order to get the recovery on track. But the memo was kept within the Clinton family, released only later under a Freedom of Information Act disclosure of Hillary’s State Department correspondence. If it had come out at the time, as Haiti journalist Jonathan Katz writes, it “would have obliterated the public narrative of helpful outsiders saving grateful earthquake survivors that her mother’s State Department was working so hard to promote.”

The Clintons’ Haiti recovery ended with a whimper. The Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund distributed the last of its funds in 2012 and disbanded, without any attempt at further fundraising. The IHRC “quietly closed their doors” in October of 2011, even though little progress had been made. As the Boston Review’s Jake Johnston explained, though hundreds of thousands remained displaced, the IHRC wiped its hands of the housing situation:

[L]ittle remained of the grand plans to build thousands of new homes. Instead, those left homeless would be given a small, one-time rental subsidy of about $500. These subsidies, funded by a number of different aid agencies, were meant to give private companies the incentive to invest in building houses. As efforts to rebuild whole neighborhoods faltered, the rental subsidies turned Haitians into consumers, and the housing problem was handed over to the private sector.

The Clintons themselves simply stopped speaking about Haiti. After the first two years, they were “nowhere to be seen” there, despite Hillary’s having promised that her commitment to Haiti would long outlast her tenure as Secretary of State. Haiti has been given little attention during Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, even though the Haiti project was ostensibly one of great pride for both Clintons.

The widespread consensus among observers is that the Haiti recovery, which TIMEcalled the U.S.’s “compassionate invasion,” was a catastrophically mismanaged disappointment. Jonathan Katz writes that “it’s hard to find anyone these days who looks back on the U.S.-led response to the January 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake as a success.” While plenty of money was channeled into the country, it largely went to what were “little more than small pilot projects—a new set of basketball hoops and a model elementary school here, a functioning factory there.”

The widespread consensus is that the Haiti recovery was a catastrophically mismanaged disappointment.

The end result has been that little has changed for Haiti. “Haitians find themselves in a social and economic situation that is worse than before the earthquake,” reports a Belgian photojournalist who has spent 10 years in Haiti:

Everyone says that they’re living in worse conditions than before… When you look at the history of humanitarian relief, there’s never been a situation when such a small country has been the target of such a massive influx of money and assistance in such a short span of time… On paper, with that much money in a territory the size of Haiti, we should have witnessed miracles; there should have been results.

“If anything, they appear worse off,” says Foreign Policy of Haiti’s farmers. “I really cannot understand how you could raise so much money, put a former U.S. president in charge, and get this outcome,” said one Haitian official. Indeed, the money donated and invested was extraordinary. But nobody seems to know where it has gone.

Haitians direct much of the blame toward the Clintons. As a former Haitian government official who worked on the recovery said, “[t]here is a lot of resentment about Clinton here. People have not seen results. . .. They say that Clinton used Haiti.” Haitians “increasingly complain that Clinton-backed projects have often helped the country’s elite and international business investors more than they have helped poor ‘Haitians.” There is a “suspicion that their motives are more to make a profit in Haiti than to help it.” And that while “striking a populist pose, in practice they were attracted to power in Haiti.”

But perhaps we should be more forgiving of the Clintons’ conduct during the Haitian recovery. After all, instead of doing true harm, the Clintons simply failed to do much good. And perhaps it’s better to have a luxury hotel than not to have one, better to have a few jobs than none at all. Thanks to Bill Clinton, there’s a gleaming new industrial park, albeit one operating at a fraction of its capacity.

Yet it’s a mistake to measure Clinton against what would have happened if the United States had done nothing at all for Haiti. The question is what would have happened if a capable, nonfamous administrator, rather than a globetrotting narcissist, had been placed in charge. Tens of millions of dollars were donated toward the Haiti recovery by people across the world; it was an incredible outpouring of generosity. The squandering of that money on half-baked development schemes (mainly led by cronies), and the ignoring of Haitians’ own demands, mean that Clinton may have caused considerable harm through his failure. Plenty of people died in tent cities that would not have died if the world’s donations had been used effectively.

Democrats have bristled at recent attempts by Donald Trump to criticize Hillary Clinton over her record in Haiti. Jonathan Katz, whose in-depth reporting from Haiti was stingingly critical of the Clintons, has now changed his tune, insisting that we all bear the responsibility for the failed recovery effort. When Trump accused the Clintons of squandering millions building “a sweatshop” in Haiti in the form of the Caracol park, media fact-checkers quickly insisted he was spewing Pinocchios. The Washington Post said that while Clinton Foundation donors may have financially benefited from the factory-building project, they benefited “writ large” rather than “directly.” The Post cited the words of the factory’s spokesman as evidence that the factory was not a sweatshop, and pointed out that Caracol workers earned at least “minimum wage” (failing to mention that minimum wage in Haiti remains well under a dollar). PolitiFact also rated the sweatshop claim “mostly false,” even though Katz notes “long hours, tough conditions, and low pay” at the factory and PolitiFact acknowledges the “ongoing theft of legally-earned wages.”

Defending the Clintons’ Haiti record is an impossible endeavor, one Democrats should probably not bother attempting. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which has studied the recovery, noted, when it comes to the Clinton-led recovery mission, “it’s hard to say it’s been anything other than a failure.” Haitians are not delusional in their resentment of the Clintons; they have good reason to feel as if they were used for publicity, and discarded by the Clintons when they became inconvenient.

None of this means that one should vote for Donald Trump for president. His tears for Haiti are those of a highly opportunistic crocodile, and his interest in the country’s wellbeing began at the precise moment that it could be used a bludgeon with which to beat his political opponent. As we have previously noted in this publication, one does not need to be convinced that Hillary Clinton is an honorable person in order to be convinced that she is the preferable candidate. It is important, however, not to maintain any illusions, not to stifle or massage the truth in the service of short-term electoral concerns. It remains simultaneously true that a Clinton presidency is our present least-worst option and that what the Clintons did to Haiti was callous, selfish, and indefensible.

More on Clinton involvement in Haiti can be found in Superpredator: Bill Clinton’s Use and Abuse of Black America.

Nathan J. Robinson is the editor of Current Affairs.

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Commemorating the November 2015 Paris Terrorist Attacks: “9/11 French-Style”, “Le 11 septembre à la française”

November 13th, 2016 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

This article was first published a year ago on the 14th of November 2015. It  was the author’s first article written in the evening of November 13th (ET) completed following president Hollande’s midnight speech.

*      *      *

Terrorist attacks have been carried simultaneously in several locations in the Paris metropolitan area, according to early report.

According to reports (at the time of writing) 100 people were killed in the Bataclan Concert Hall, when terrorists opened fire with automatic weapons. Another 15 were killed at the Stadium of France outside Paris.

Official reports at the time of writing (21.oo ET) point to more than 140 deaths. Our thoughts are with the family members of the victims, who have lost their loved ones.  

Within minutes following the attacks, which were launched simultaneously, and prior to the release of a preliminary report by the police, France’s media went into overdrive. News commentators and intelligence analysts on France’s network TV stated with authority that the attacks emanated from Syria and Iraq.

The media coverage of these tragic events was casually linked up with the war in the Middle East, highlighting France’s commitment –alongside its allies– in waging a “humanitarian war” against the terrorists.

The Islamic State was identified as the architect of the attacks.

The attacks were described without evidence as an act of revenge and retribution against France for having bombed ISIS strongholds in Syria and Iraq as part of Obama’s counter-terrorism air campaign.

Foreknowledge? 

Paris Match on October 2nd predicted a French Style 9/11, “un 11 septembre à la française”.

The threat is real, according to Judge Trévédic in an interview with Paris Match.  “The attacks in France will be on  a scale comparable to 9/11” (see below)

None of the early news reports on November 13th, mentioned the fact that a large scale and well organized terrorist attack had been predicted. The title of the media report below is:

“Intelligence services fear a 9/11 French Style”

Yet in a bitter irony the October report stated that these forthcoming attacks were difficult to avoid:  “impossible a dejouer”, suggesting that French intelligence is inept and unable to prevent a forthcoming catastrophe.

What was the role of this media hype by Paris Match?

Media disinformation? Create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation?

 

France’s president Francois Hollande no doubt was aware of the October warnings. He had been briefed by his intelligence advisers.

Shortly before midnight local time on November 13, president François Hollande announced drastic police state measures against an alleged terrorist network operating nationwide.

It is highly unlikely, however, that Hollande took this decision spontaneously in the evening of November 13, on the spur of the moment in response to the attacks and prior to the holding of a cabinet meeting.  The decision to enact a State of Emergency had no doubt been envisaged in advance of the attack in relation to a potential terrorist attack scenario.

As we recall, the last time a State of Emergency was enacted was in May 1961 in response to the Algiers putsch (Putsch d’Alger), a failed coup d’état to overthrow President Charles de Gaulle’s government.

Hollande’s midnight speech had the appearances of having been scripted –i.e with regard to the adoption of a State of Emergency, a far-reaching political decision:

My dear compatriots

As I speak, terrorist attacks of unprecedented proportions are underway in the Paris area. There are dozens killed, there are many injured. It is a horror.

We have, on my decision, mobilised all forces possible to neutralise the terrorists and make all concerned areas safe. I have also asked for military reinforcements. They are currently in the Paris area, to ensure that no new attack can take place.

I have also called a cabinet meeting that will be held in a few minutes. [the measures are announced before consultation with the Cabinet]

Two decisions will be taken: a state of emergency will be declared, which means that some places will be closed, traffic may be banned , and there will also be searches which may be decided throughout Ile de France (greater Paris). The state of emergency will be proclaimed throughout the territory (of France). 

The second decision I have made is to close the borders. We must ensure that no one enters to commit any crimes and that those who have committed the crimes that we have unfortunately seen can also be arrested if they should leave the territory. 

This is a terrible ordeal which once again assails us. We know where it comes from, who these criminals are, who these terrorists are. 

In these difficult moments, we must – and I’m thinking of the many victims, their families and the injured – show compassion and solidarity. But we must also show unity and calm.

Faced with terror, France must be strong, it must be great and the state authorities must be firm. We will be.

We must also call on everyone to be responsible.

What the terrorists want is to scare us and fill us with dread. There is indeed reason to be afraid. There is dread, but in the face of this dread, there is a nation that knows how to defend itself, that knows how to mobilise its forces and, once again, will defeat the terrorists.

French citizens, we have not completed the operations. There are still some that are extremely difficult. It’s at this moment that the security forces are staging an assault, especially in a place in Paris.

I ask you to keep all your trust in what we can do with the security forces to protect our nation from terrorist acts.

Long live the Republic and long live France.” (emphasis added)

France is under attack. we must defend ourselves.

The political discourse is in some regards reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks and the statements of George W. Bush et al.

The media immediately started comparing the November 13 attacks in Paris to 9/11, intimating that France was at war and that the alleged Islamic State attack was from abroad, i.e. the Middle East.

Police State Measures

President Hollande had ordered by decree without debate or consultation with France’s National Assembly the enactment of a State of Emergency throughout France, coupled with the closing of France’s borders allegedly to prevent terrorists from coming in, and from terror suspects from leaving the country.

The measures also included procedures which enable the police to conduct arbitrary arrests and house searches without a warrant within the Paris metropolitan area opening up the development of a potential hate campaign directed against France’s Muslim population.

These drastic police state measures (including the repeal of habeas corpus) ordered by president Hollande were decided upon prior and in the absence of a police report. Initial reports confirmed the involvement of half a dozen terrorists. There was no evidence of a nationwide terror network.

But as we mentioned above, Hollande had no doubt been briefed by French intelligence which had, according to reports, “predicted” the possibility of a 9/11 style attack. (October 2 media reports).

France had been heralded in Paris Match, October 2, 2015 as the Number One Target of the Islamic State, “a terrorist army with unlimited potential…” The threat and diverse forms it can take suggest that our counter-terrorist abilities are no longer effective as they used to be”

President Hollande assumed that jihadists were behind the attacks, but when he made his speech, there was no evidence from police sources to support his statements.

Moreover, with regard to the Bataclan Concert Hall where there were more than one thousand people at a Rock concert, the reports confirmed that there were four kamikaze terrorists, all of them were killed. As in the case of Charlie Hebdo and the Kosher Grocery Store terrorist attacks in January 2015, the terrorists were killed rather than arrested and indicted.

Was there an attempt on the part of the police to capture them alive?

Moreover, the media was held at bay, they were not allowed to report what was happening within the Concert Hall, they were prevented from talking to the witnesses underlying this tragic event.

Meanwhile a curfew was imposed.

President Obama made a declaration early in the evening (ET) largely sustaining the “war on terrorism” narrative:

THE PRESIDENT:  Good evening, everybody.  I just want to make a few brief comments about the attacks across Paris tonight.  Once again, we’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians.  This is an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.

We stand prepared and ready to provide whatever assistance that the government and the people of France need to respond.  France is our oldest ally.  The French people have stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States time and again.  And we want to be very clear that we stand together with them in the fight against terrorism and extremism.

…

We’re going to do whatever it takes to work with the French people and with nations around the world to bring these terrorists to justice, and to go after any terrorist networks that go after our people.

We don’t yet know all the details of what has happened.  We have been in contact with French officials to communicate our deepest condolences to the families of those who have been killed, to offer our prayers and thoughts to those who have been wounded.  We have offered our full support to them.  The situation is still unfolding.

…

This is a heartbreaking situation.  And obviously those of us here in the United States know what it’s like.  We’ve gone through these kinds of episodes ourselves.  And whenever these kinds of attacks happened, we’ve always been able to count on the French people to stand with us.  They have been an extraordinary counterterrorism partner, and we intend to be there with them in that same fashion.

… (emphasis added)

Obama is committed to helping the French people, in going after the terrorists.  France is a partner of  Obama’s bombing campaign initiated in August-September 2014 which theoretically is directed against the ISIS.

Hollande is described by Obama as an “extraordinary counterterrorism partner”. In turn, Hollande referring to the Islamic State says “We know where [Syria, Iraq] it comes from, who these criminals are, who these terrorists are”.

The clash of civilizations is implicit in Obama’s statement: “this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”

Who is Behind the Terrorists? 

What the French media in its coverage of these tragic events fails to mention is that both the US and France, not to mention Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel are covertly supporting various Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist formations in Syria and Iraq including al Nusrah and the Islamic State.

France is the victim of the Islamic State, but at the same time the US and its allies including France are “State sponsors” of the Islamic state which is an Al Qaeda affiliated entity.

Lest we forget, the US has supported Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations for almost half a century since the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war.  CIA training camps were set up in Pakistan.  In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 jihadists from 43 Islamic countries were recruited by the CIA to fight in the Afghan jihad.  Since the Reagan Administration, Washington has supported the Islamic terror network.

In recent developments in the Middle East, the terrorists are recruited and trained by the Western military alliance. NATO and the Turkish High Command have been responsible for the recruitment of ISIS and Al Nusrah mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011. According to Israeli intelligence sources, this initiative consisted in:

“a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011.)

There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIS. British Special Forces, and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.

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

China unlikely to join Obama's anti-ISIS coalition: Report

The ISIS brigades were involved in the US-NATO supported insurgency in Syria directed against the government of  Bashar al Assad. Since August-September 2014, they are the object of Osama’s fake counter-terrorism campaign. The evidence, however, amply confirms that ISIS is protected by the Western military alliance.

With regard to France, a Washington Post  2011 report entitled “France sent arms to Libyan rebels,” confirms the role of the French government in support of the Al Qaeda affiliated Libya Islamic fighting Group (LIFG).

French officials announced Wednesday that they had armed rebels in Libya, marking the first time a NATO country has said it was providing direct military aid to opponents [LIFG]… 

According to Tony Cartalucci (Global Research: January 8, 2015)

While Hollande’s predecessor, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy would be the one to set foot in decimated Libya in the wake of NATO’s intervention there – which included in addition to French arms sent to terrorists, French planes providing these terrorists air cover as they carried out atrocities and genocide – Hollande would continue policies enacted under Sarkozy, both in Libya, and currently in Syria.

In early 2013, France joined its coalition partners in sending weapons to jihadist rebels in Syria including the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front which France’s Le Monde identified as “moderate”:

The UK Foreign secretary William Hague, and his French counterpart Lauren Fabius, are leading an isolated charge within the EU to lift a supposed arms embargo to self-described ‘rebels’, hitherto destroying Syria for over two years. Several underlying factors need to be addressed before these diplomatic (some would say military) manoeuvres are put into context.

Firstly, the most obvious issue with allowing the UK and France to freely arm ‘rebels’ of their choosing inside Syria is that this policy is against all international law, and will, as proven already to be the case, continue to vastly exacerbate the growing death toll and displacement in Syria. As the head of arms control at Oxfam noted: “Transferring more weapons to Syria can only exacerbate a hellish scenario for civilians. If the UK and France are to live up to their own commitments – including those set out in the new arms trade treaty – they simply must not send weapons to Syria.”

In recent developments, the ISIS and Al Nusrah have joined hands. (Philip Greaves, Under the Disguise of The “Battle against Terrorism”: The U.S., Britain and France Support “Al Qaeda in Syria”, Global Research, May 28, 2013

The evidence amply confirms that while Russia is targeting ISIS strongholds in Syria, the Western military alliance is supporting the Islamic State terrorists.

The notion that the Paris attacks was an act of retribution and revenge directed against France is questionable and contradictory inasmuch as the evidence confirms that France has been channeling weapons to jihadist rebels in Syria including Al Nusrah and ISIS.

Concluding Remarks

On November 13, France was the victim of a carefully organized terrorist attack in different locations in the Paris metropolitan area, resulting in more than 140 deaths. The Islamic State was identified as the architect of this criminal undertaking.

What is intimated in the media reports of these tragic events is that the jihadists are attacking France.

But at same time, the countries which claim to be the victims of terrorism including France are involved through their intelligence services in supporting terrorist organizations in the Middle East. It’s called America’s “Global War on Terrorism”.

This contradiction has to be meaningfully addressed at the political level. The Global War on Terrorism is a lie which provides legitimacy to police state measures.

The state of emergency gives the police a green light to arrest on mere suspicion throughout France.

A telephone hotline is opened. Citizens  are invited to call and report anything which they consider suspicious.

Civil rights have been suspended.

Arbitrary arrests are occurring in Paris without warrant.

The attacks could potentially contribute to a new wave of Islamophobia.

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Donald Trump et les Européens : vers une relation euro-atlantique plus large et équilibrée ?

November 12th, 2016 by Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann

Donald Trump est élu président des États-Unis d’Amérique !

Une nouvelle géopolitique du monde émerge ! Le retour des Nations se consolide inexorablement face aux utopies globalistes ! Une fenêtre stratégique s’ouvre !

L’élection de Trump ouvre de nouveaux horizons pour une refondation des relations euro-atlantiques en synergie avec l’émergence du monde multipolaire. L’élection de Trump est aussi une opportunité pour favoriser une unité occidentale plus élargie, en adéquation avec un monde plus fluide. Cet évènement peut aussi favoriser un nouvel équilibre des nations plus respectueux des peuples, des souverainetés et de la civilisation occidentale, à l’inverse de la poursuite d’une utopie ultra-libérale et « globaliste »  caractérisée par un euro-atlantisme exclusif défendu par Hillary Clinton, sous l’emprise de lobbies opaques. Le message principal envoyé au monde par le candidat Donald Trump est le début de l’acceptation du monde multipolaire par les États-Unis.

Il est important pour les nations européennes de saisir cette occasion, si elles ne veulent pas rester en marge du déplacement des centres de gravité géopolitiques. Il est nécessaire de prendre avantage du nouveau monde qui se profile caractérisé par des centres de pouvoir plus dispersés et plus hétéroclites, et moins dominés par une seule puissance. La mondialisation est une lutte de répartition des espaces géopolitiques et la doctrine de la balance est désormais plus adaptée aux évolutions que l’Occidentalisation du monde basée sur des principes transnationaux dont la promotion agressive renforce les conflits avec les cultures nationales. Les nations européennes ont tout à gagner des ces inflexions pour gagner en marge de manoeuvre et en souveraineté.

L’élection de Donald Trump, en raison des tropismes géopolitiques du nouveau président, représente donc une opportunité pour refonder des relations transatlantiques plus équilibrées, plus inclusives et plus resserrées, dans un espace géopolitique de «Vancouver à Vladivostok » .

Les discours de campagne du candidat ont permis de mettre en lumière ses objectifs géopolitiques, mais ils ont été malheureusement largement déformés dans les médias qui lui étaient hostiles. Contrairement à ce qui a été dit par ses adversaires sur son incompétence supposée en matière de politique étrangère, Donald Trump est aussi entouré de conseillers très compétents. L’un d’eux est Walid Phares, politologue américain d’origine libanaise, chrétien maronite et spécialiste du Moyen-Orient,  qui a combiné au cours de sa carrière, action et réflexion universitaire. Il nous a ainsi révélé que Trump était « un homme passionné par les cartes et la géopolitique » et qu’il était « sensible à la géographie du terrain comme élément du rapport de force. »[1]

Les propositions de Donald Trump, si elles sont mises en œuvre,  relèvent avant tout du «  bon sens »  géopolitique  : en particulier la priorité à la reconstruction des infrastructures nationales,  la réhabilitation  des frontières qui sont nécessaires à la maîtrise du territoire et la souveraineté,  le contrôle de l’immigration, la promotion du patriotisme et de la loyauté nationale, la lutte contre l’Islam radical et non pas la recherche de l’affaiblissement de la Russie et de la Chine, l’abandon des zones de libre-échanges qui favorisent les destructions des emplois et la désindustrialisation. Lors de son premier discours de président, Donald Trump a réaffirmé que sa priorité portait sur les infrastructures américaines mais qu’il privilégierait aussi la coopération et non la confrontation au niveau international. Ces promesses augurent de l’éventualité d’un nouveau concert des puissances au niveau mondial, favorisant la stabilité géopolitique et non plus les changements de régimes destructeurs de la sécurité et de la cohésion des peuples que l’élection d’Hillary Clinton aurait menaçé de poursuivre.

Le nouveau président Trump va en priorité défendre les intérêts des États-Unis et ceux-ci ne coïncideront évidemment pas entièrement avec les intérêts des nations européennes qui sont aussi très divers entre eux. C’est précisément le moment d’une remise à plat des visions respectives de part d’autre de l’Atlantique. La gestion des crises qui s’accumulent pour l’Union européenne ne sera pas moins facile à résoudre. Cette élection, après la crise de l’euro, la crise migratoire, la dégradation des relations avec la Russie, les menaces issues des révolutions arabes, le terrorisme islamiste sur le sol européen, le Brexit, a même le potentiel d’ inaugurer une crise euro-américaine. Cela va sans doute accélérer la crise des fondements de l’Union européenne, dont les paradigmes sont de plus en plus éloignés des réalités géopolitiques. Une grande partie des classes politiques européennes est en retard par rapport aux aspirations des peuples et une période de déni est prévisible avant l’apparition de nouvelles forces politiques en France et en Allemagne, plus en phase avec ces évolutions.

Cette élection est aussi l’occasion pour les Européens de penser par eux-mêmes, et de contribuer plus largement à la stabilisation de leur proximité géographique, comme la candidat Donald Trump l’avait par ailleurs suggéré.

Les orientations géopolitiques de Trump, si elles sont maintenues,  sont pourtant largement en phase avec les intérêts de long terme des nations européennes et de leurs peuples. C’est une occasion unique pour  identifier les intérêts communs à un espace de sécurité de  «Vancouver à Vladivostok »  et de s’éloigner du scénario d’un espace « euro-atlantiste exclusif ». Contenir les menaces communes aux nations américaines et européennes incluant la Russie que représente la menace issue de l’Islam radical deviendrait une priorité !

La France était soucieuse dans son histoire de son autonomie et possédait une forte tradition stratégique. Elle pourrait remplir le rôle de chef de file avec l’Allemagne pour forger un axe européen continental avec la Russie pour accompagner les inflexions attendues du nouveau gouvernement américain, notamment après les élections présidentielles de 2017, qui devront impérativement remettre la France en conformité avec son héritage gaulliste.

Pour le noyau continental de l’Europe, exploiter les potentialités que lui offre la géographie suggère un positionnement comme pôle de puissance et facteur d’équilibre à la charnière des espaces géopolitiques euro-atlantiques, euro-asiatiques, euro-méditerranéens et africains et euro-arctique avec une hiérarchisation des priorités par zone géographique. Les États-Unis et la Russie sont la clé de la sécurité et de la puissance mondiale pour l’UE afin d’amorcer une stratégie selon les axes maritimes et continentaux.

Cette dernière option ne peut pas être valorisée dans un enfermement stratégique, en particulier vis-à-vis de l’Eurasie. La priorité est de parachever un espace de sécurité de «Vancouver à Vladivostok »  qu’une nouvelle architecture de sécurité entre l’UE et la Russie viendrait compléter. Maintenir un équilibre entre USA et Russie, avec un rapprochement avec la Russie selon un axe continental et un rééquilibrage de l’alliance euro-atlantique serait indiqué pour que l’Union puisse agir en synergie avec la stratégie des États-Unis en fonction de ses propres priorités.

Le candidat Donald Trump a aussi exprimé sa méfiance des traités commerciaux. La négociation d’un marché transatlantique sur des principes issus de l’ultralibéralisme du siècle dernier devrait laisser place à des traités de coopération qui protègent mieux les peuples. A l’image de ce qui pourrait se produire aux États-Unis. Il est temps de reconstruire des politiques industrielles parallèlement à l’instauration d’un protectionnisme national et européen intelligent, ainsi qu’une palette de préférences nationales et européennes pour l’emploi, les investissements des banques et le commerce. L’objectif véritable des traités transatlantiques et transpacifiques est de nature géopolitique visant à faire de l’Europe et l’Asie des périphéries des États-Unis pour isoler la Chine et la Russie. Ils ne correspondent pas aux intérêts d’équilibre des nations Européennes en fonction de leur position géographique.

Dans l’hypothèse d’une nouvelle ère pour les relations entre les États-Unis et la Russie, comme l’a annoncé Donald Trump pour tenter de dépasser la crise actuelle, les gouvernements européens feraient bien de rapidement  anticiper ces évolutions. Il serait paradoxal que l’Union européenne s’arc-boute sur des sanctions inefficaces et la poursuite de l’isolement de la Russie, au moment ou les États-Unis tenteraient un rapprochement américano-russe. L’Union européenne renforcerait sa propre isolation géopolitique, coincée entre la fragmentation du continent eurasien suite à la dégradation des relations avec la Russie, la déstabilisation de son flanc Sud avec la montée de l’Islam radical, et désormais la probabilité d’une réorientation des priorités des Etats-Unis.

Les États-Unis, les États-membres de l’Union européenne, la Russie et les pays d’Asie centrale auraient intérêt à réfléchir de concert aux menaces communes issues des risques combinant migrations de masse, radicalisme religieux et ingérence potentielle des États d’où elles proviennent à l’occasion des crises multiformes de la mondialisation qui préfigurent  les conflits futurs sur leur propre territoire.

La négociation d’une nouvelle architecture de sécurité eurasienne préservant les intérêts de sécurité des nations européennes et de la  Russie, faciliterait la stabilisation de l’«hinterland continental» de l’Union européenne. C’est aussi une occasion favorable pour les nations européennes de rapprocher au niveau continental pour constituer un pôle d’équilibre et former un contrepoids utile vis-à-vis des autres puissances de taille mondiale. C’est aussi le moment  d’un rééquilibrage de l’Alliance atlantique, comme le candidat Donald Trump l’a suggéré, pour  une prise en charge plus conséquente de la contribution des Européens à leur sécurité.  Cela pourrait se faire en faisant baisser les tensions, afin de mieux souligner les intérêts de stabilité des Européens, et mettre un terme  définitif à l’extension de l’OTAN.

Dans le contexte d’une dimension civilisationnelle croissante des rivalités géopolitiques mondiales, une définition plus large de l’Occident serait aussi utile pour que l’Europe puisse se positionner plus favorablement et de manière plus équilibrée à la charnière entre les États-Unis et la Russie.

L’Europe est un pilier de l ‘Occident, lui-même composé de trois grands ensembles : l’Europe et son héritage gréco-romain, le monde Russe et son héritage Byzantin et Orthodoxe, l’Amérique du Nord et du Sud façonnées par les cultures européennes. Ces trois ensembles géopolitiques et leurs prolongements au Sud de la Méditerranée, au Proche-Orient, en Eurasie et en Asie centrale gagneraient à identifier leurs intérêts partagés dans cet espace de paix et de sécurité de « Vancouver à Vladivostok » basé sur la mise en valeur de leur héritage culturel et historique très diversifié, selon les principes de souveraineté et d’équilibre entre les nations qui le composent.

L’Union européenne, aujourd’hui exclusivement basée sur une stratégie «euro-globaliste » en complémentarité avec le projet  « unipolaire »  poursuivi par les gouvernements précédents des États-Unis, supposé se prolonger avec Hillary Clinton si elle avait été élue, est menacée de déstabilisation et d’obsolescence sans réforme radicale. L’intention affichée dans la nouvelle stratégie globale pour la politique étrangère et de sécurité de l’Union européenne (publiée en 2016) de s’orienter vers une «autonomie stratégique » est paradoxalement plus pertinente que jamais, mais sur la base d’une réforme des fondements de l’UE.

En fin de compte, à l’unisson du nouveau monde qui émerge, c’est le modèle de l’ « Europe des Nations », cher au Général de Gaulle, qui devient le seul horizon praticable de l’Europe, pour éviter sa marginalisation géopolitique dans un monde qui change et se fragmente.

Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann

[1] http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections-americaines/2016/11/07/01040-20161107ARTFIG00348-trump-va-s-asseoir-avec-poutine-mais-il-ne-se-laissera-pas-faire.php

 

Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann : Docteur en géopoltique, président d’Eurocontinent, Bruxelles- Belgique

 

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“Defiant Syria”, “Syria’s War for Humanity”, Authors Ken Stone and Mark Taliano Book Launch

November 12th, 2016 by Ken Stone

Ken Stone & Mark Taliano book launches in Hamilton- re SYRIA 

Long-time anti-war activist, Ken Stone, will launch his new e-booklet, “Defiant Syria”, at two separate public lectures in Hamilton next week. The venues will be New Vision United Church (November 15, 7 pm) and McMaster University (November 17, 12:30 pm). Both events are free.

Mr. Stone participated in the Second International Tour of Peace to Syria in mid-April, 2016, during which the group observed the Syrian parliamentary elections of April 13, visited Homs to witness the destruction and reconstruction, and were the very first tourists to be allowed on the site of the ancient Roman city of Palmyra, just liberated from ISIS by the Syrian Arab Army with Russian air support, just two weeks earlier.

Mr. Stone will be sharing the stage with Mark Taliano, a retired high school teacher from Grimsby, who recently returned from the Third International Tour of Peace to Syria in September, and whose i-book , “Syria’s War for Humanity”, is already posted on GlobalResearch.ca, where he is a frequent contributor. Mr. Taliano will show photos and videos of Maaloula, for example, an ancient Christian town, liberated from ISIS by the Syrian army, after the terrorists had laid waste to many Christian shrines and irreplaceable icons, which Taliano maintains are “part of the common cultural heritage of all humanity.”

Mssrs. Stone and Taliano will deliver powerpoint reports about Syria and afterwards will be available for a Q&A. Both their talks will focus, in part, on the propaganda war against Syria mounted in the West, and also the window of opportunity for peace in Syria afforded by a change of administration in the USA.

Mr. Stone’s e-booklet is now available on all major internet bookselling platforms, including Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes.

Below are the details of the two book launches:

launch #1: Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 7 pm. New Vision United Church, 24 Main Street West, Hamilton L8P 1H2, is located across from Hamilton City Hall and adjacent to the MacNab Street Transit Terminal. Wheelchair accessible.

launch #2: Thursday, November 17, 2016, 12:30 pm. MUSC 222 is located in the McMaster University Student Centre in the centre of campus. Also wheelchair accessible.

The double book launches next week are sponsored by the Hamilton Coalition To Stop the War of which Ken Stone is treasurer. For further info, please contact Ken at 905-383-7693 at home [email protected].

 

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Here’s Why Donald Trump Won… In America’s Midwestern “Rust Belt”

November 12th, 2016 by Andrew Korybko

Hi everybody.  As you may know, I’m an American who was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, although I made a life decision four years ago to permanently leave the US and move to the Russian Federation. If you’re interested in my specific background and what motivated me to take that step, I suggest that you check out the interview that I gave to Serbian-American journalist Stephen Karganovic about this last spring when I visited him in Belgrade.

I’m addressing you all directly in a form which I never use in my articles, and that’s the first-person. I know that so many of you guys are confused and struggling to understand why Trump won, and I totally understand what you’re feeling because it’s very difficult for any foreigner to truly comprehend what just happened in the US. The best way for me to convey this to you all is to talk on a personal level in the hopes that my delivery will get through to you. I’m not expecting anyone to agree with the points that I make, but just to understand what motivated Trump supporters to get out to the polls and shake up The Establishment.

Although I don’t live in the US anymore, I was born and raised in one of the most quintessential representations of what constitutes modern-day “average America”, and that’s Cleveland, Ohio. Despite being nearly halfway across the world, I never lost touch with where I came from and will always remember the formative experiences which shaped my worldview. I still stay in contact with my American family and several close friends so I remain up to date on what’s going on “back home”, and as they say, “you can take someone out of their homeland, but you can’t take the homeland out of the person”.

For better or for worse, I’ll always embody certain “American” characteristics forged from my upbringing in Cleveland, and given that these idiosyncrasies are now representative of the prevailing political zeitgeist in the US as evidenced by Trump’s Triumph, I want to share some of them with you all in the hopes that everyone can get a better grasp on the fundamental changes that are taking place in the US today. A man who I call “Uncle Vinny” once inspiringly advised me when I was younger that “the difference between genius and crazy is in getting others to understand you”, so with that wisdom in mind, here’s the best that I can do in trying to help all my foreign friends understand the mentality of the typical Trump supporter.

So many toxic individuals said that I and tens of millions of other people were “racists”, “fascists”, and “white supremacists” just because we’ve been publicly sharing our observations over the past year and a half that Trump’s rhetoric and platform represent the desires of many Americans, but we held our ground and doubled down because we knew that we were right and that the American People would ultimately choose Donald J. Trump to be the next President of the United States.

This is why “outsiders” such as myself and everyone else who rallied behind Trump are so valuable to the larger conversations taking place because we consistently break through the narrow-minded groupthink of The Establishment and express what’s really going on, “political correctness” be damned. No foreigner can ever fully understand what happened yesterday, not even if they lived in the US for years unless they experienced what the middle class (not the academic-governmental-business class) experienced for their entire lives.

 

Michael Moore, who’s also a native of the “Rust Belt” like myself and understands the mentality of the millions of Americans who revolted against The Establishment and historically broke through Hillary’s Midwest “firewall”, conveyed the reason why voters in this dilapidated and socio-economically “backward/forgotten” corner of the US would flock towards Trump in an address which was ironically supposed to be against the future President-elect. Trump supporters, however, decided to turn the most relevant and motivational part of Moore’s speech into a YouTube video filled with dramatic images and music, and I strongly suggest that everyone take five minutes out of their day to listen to what he had to say.

When you live a life surrounded by drugs, poverty, crime, potholes, and hopelessness, the only thing that you feel that you have going for you are the sexual, alcoholic, and musical distractions that The Establishment shoves down everyone’s throat each and every day in order to placate the masses by “making it all better” just for a little bit of (“fun”) time. Turn off the TV or go to sleep after the party, and the same problems that people sought to escape from are still there the very next morning and not a damned thing has tangibly changed for the better, except that some people have now found a socially acceptable “go-to medicine” for dealing with the repulsive reality that they feel they have to put up with each and every day for the rest of their lives.

A lot of Americans where I’m from don’t know what a “real vacation” is, in that they don’t go globetrotting around the world like the Europeans do on what they call their “holidays”. Many Midwesterners even have a hard time going from one part of the country to another just for fun because it’s a huge financial burden for the average Clevelander in our cheap and low-wage economy to gather up the funds necessary to jet set out to costly California just to take in some sunshine, for example. Another thing that most foreigners don’t realize is that people from my part of the country don’t even have the vacation/holiday days like the rest of the world does. If you’re working a low-wage service-sector job or are in a low-level office position, then you might never receive two back-to-back weeks of vacation in your life. If you get married, the best that you can dream for is a honeymoon to Niagara Falls for a week and that’s it, just because it’s conveniently nearby and not overly expensive.

We grew up our whole lives hearing from The Establishment and its media shills how “great” and “powerful” the US is, how it’s the “best country in the history of the world”, yet all that we see around us is socio-economic devastation and we can’t imagine how it could ever be any different. So many factories have closed up shop and moved to Mexico, China, and countries that the average American in my part of the US never heard of or can even pronounce, and it’s all because of the post-Cold War globalization that started under Bill Clinton and NAFTA. But at the same time, however, we see that there are indeed some people around us who seem to be living a pretty good life but haven’t had to do much to achieve it.

You foreigners might be shocked to hear this, but a lot of Clevelanders can’t believe that “refugees”, some minorities, and illegal immigrants are able to live ‘high off the hog’ as we say just because of the huge amounts of tax-payer-provided government assistance that they receive for not really doing a lot of anything other than being the “politically correct” category of people that they are. I don’t expect people outside of the US to understand this, and even many Americans who don’t live in the “Rust Belt” (and even some who do) will probably find this to be inconceivable, but so many of these types of folks who I just mentioned – and including a lot of whites, too – abuse the “benefits” system just so that they can get the most amount of free stuff as they can for the absolute least amount of work and effort.

In the “politically correct” dystopian society that the “liberal-progressives” and Cultural Marxists of the Democratic Party have strove to create for decades, the state will house, feed, and pay people just because of their race and class, and while this might have been “originally intended” to temporarily help those who fell on hard times and couldn’t properly help themselves, it has been abused by so many people and turned into a slush fund for paying off loyal leftists who willingly choose to remain indefinitely dependent on The Establishment. These people have made a conscious choice to “settle for less” than they could ever hope to achieve if they worked hard and stayed focused because “The American Dream” is out of reach for many of them in this part of the country and they figured out how easy it is to scheme the system and have other Americans subsidize the less-than-ideal lifestyles that they’ve settled for.

Remember, I’m not asking you guys to agree with any of what I’ve written, but I’m just telling you as a “voice from the inside” about why so many people in Ohio and the “Rust Belt” support Trump and are drawn to his promises to smash The Establishment that they’ve spent their whole lives seeing steal from them, neglect them, and unjustly help others who pledge their loyalty to the existing state of affairs. Don’t forget that it was people who think the way that I just described who decisively changed the course of American history on Election Day, and they take pride in being “politically incorrect” and rebelling against the system that they feel has held them down their entire lives. Be it through the abovementioned examples of unfairness and injustice, or through the incessant attempts to dismantle their identity by suppressing and trashing their religious liberties and traditions, people in the “Rust Belt” have had enough.

See, that’s the thing that foreigners don’t realize, and it’s that Americans in this part of the country feel that they’re living under the boot of a tyrannical and totalitarian ideology which censors their dissent with “racist”, “fascist”, and “white supremacist” reputation-killing accusations and works 24/7/365 to brainwash them into thinking that they – and not the system – are the problem. Imagine George Orwell’s 1984 and you’ll have an idea about how a lot people view the ideology of “political correctness”. It is so pervasive, so controlling, that those who are suffering under it were bound to eventually revolt once the time was ripe. All of these anti-“political correctness” dissidents thought that they were alone and were the “crazy outlier” amongst their brainwashed compatriots, but then Donald Trump came along and gave them all the signal that this was the historic moment that they had been waiting their entire lives for to finally rebel against this totalitarian ideology.

If there was no “political correctness”, then there would never have risen a Donald Trump to save the hard-working blue collar folks of the USA.

The majority-blue collar inhabitants of the “Rust Belt” have been voiceless for decades and were seething with rage this whole time. They couldn’t speak out against the majority-black crime that ravages their neighborhoods because otherwise they’d be tarred and feathered as “racists”. They couldn’t condemn globalization and the outsourcing of their livelihoods to Mexico, China, and other countries or else they’d be mercilessly attacked as “fascists”. God forbid these people ever spoke publicly about building a wall with Mexico to stop the tens of millions of illegal immigrants and uncountable tons of deadly narcotics that have flooded the US since NAFTA, since then they’d be called the ultimate insult and accused of being “white supremacists”. These people thought that they were largely alone with their feelings because the system did such an effective job of self-censoring them and thus separating them from the silent majority of likeminded Americans, but then Donald Trump emerged on the scene and millions of people were finally united via his rallies and social-alternative medias to finally muster up the courage to collectively resist The Establishment and its allied social-pop culture-academic-political elite’s intimidation.

When Election Day came, these dispossessed Americans didn’t back down and buy into The Establishment’s propaganda that Hillary was going to trounce Trump with an historic landslide but instead went to vote anyhow, knowing that this was the only hope left for them to ever possibly change their inescapably dismal life situations.

The most intense psychological warfare operation ever conducted against Americans was a complete failure. The Establishment’s War on the People sought to convince them that Trump didn’t stand a chance to win and that voting for him just showed how “racist”, “fascist”, and “white supremacist” you were. “Political correctness”, globalization, and the unfettered illegal immigration and unvetted “refugee” resettlement of millions of people who staunchly refuse to assimilate and integrate into American Society or even speak English is just a fact of life that these “deplorable” citizens will be forced to put up and deal with until they die (or are killed by some of the “new arrivals” who flocked into their hometowns). But The Establishment and its social-pop culture-academic-political shills were wrong and Trump supporters knew it because they had finally connected with one another and were convinced that they truly embodied the silent majority, and the frustration, hopelessness, and pain that comes every single day living in a “politically correct” system is what sent millions of Americans into a rage against the system which was so widespread that it became impossible for Hillary to steal the election.

The War on the People was waged by Americans, on Americans, and against everything that the silent majority believes that America stands for, which is why it was totally unprecedented in American history. Not even the divide-and-rule Color Revolution tactics that The Establishment dangerously and irresponsibly relied on with the help of George Soros and his “Black Lives Matter” urban extremists could succeed in intimidating the Trump Movement and compelling them to stop, which testifies to the deep conviction that Trump supporters have in their beliefs and the hope that they have that their candidate of choice will finally free them from the misery that has come to define their lives.

Dear foreign friends, forget everything that you may have ever thought about the US system, national ideology, and the American People – from here on out, you and 99% of all other non-American observers begin at Day 1 in working to understand the inner nuances of Trump Country and Trump’s America. My state of Ohio had the highest honor of being the biggest upset to Hillary Clinton by 9%, something which has shocked The Establishment. We, the people of Ohio, are the heart of Trumpland. He didn’t win by a few percentage points like in every other swing state, but by almost double digits. This should be more than enough proof that everything that I, as a born-and-raised Clevelander, am revealing to you about how and why Trump won the “Rust Belt” and broke through Hillary’s firewall. Where I’m from, people don’t just have 1 or 2 Trump signs in their yard – they have 5, 10, or 20 of them, especially if they live in the farmland right outside of the city.

I’m not expecting you to understand everything that I wrote, let alone to agree with it, but I felt obligated to do the best that I can to inform you all about why Trump won and the reasons behind the “Rust Belt” revolt against The Establishment which handed him the Presidency. For all of what you might think are their personal and ideological faults, Trump supporters feel validated by this election because it proved that the system and all of its shills were lying about Hillary’s “imminent landslide” this entire time. What had been derided for over a year and a half as the “conspiratorial thinking” of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” (one with phantasmal and invented links to the Russian secret services) was exposed as a fact – The Establishment was indeed lying this entire time and desperately waged what amounts to the most intense psychological operation against Americans ever conducted in history, and that’s the War on the People. Nobody can deny it any longer, the facts are the facts and all the “official” “thinkers”, pundits, and “experts” were wrong because they either deliberately refused to recognize the reality that was before their eyes or were complicit in siding with the system out of the self-interested expectation that they’ll somehow end up benefiting from its perpetuation.

Tough times are ahead, and the nation is more divided and polarized than ever before, though this is largely due to the lingering psychological effects of The Establishment’s War on the People than anything else. The Second American Revolution was indeed a victory of the American People over The Establishment, but it’s now under threat from the Clintonian Counter-Revolution that’s broken out in the streets of many pro-Democrat American cities. It’s the height of irony that the people who just a few days ago criticized Trump for not pledging to blindly respect the results of the vote are now the ones who don’t recognize its outcome and are poised to tear America’s inner cities apart just because they couldn’t pull off stealing the election of our lifetime.

I don’t think anybody knows how far the rioters will be directed/misled by their Hillary-Soros-neoconservative handlers to go, nor how President-elect Trump will respond to their unrest once he takes office in mid-January, but what I can in fact tell each and every one of you without an inkling of doubt in my mind is that the Trump supporters of the Midwestern “Rust Belt” who helped hand him his victory in the first place will form the vanguard Second Amendment-wielding citizens leading the Reverse-Color Revolution movement to legally safeguard the 45th President’s constitutional legitimacy if things disastrously get out of control.

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Syrian Army Entered Menagh Air Base. Repels ISIS Attack in Deir Ezzor

November 12th, 2016 by South Front

ISIS-linked media outlets have released a series of pics that show the terrorist group’s fighters preparing an attack on the Syrian army’s positions at the Khanasser highway, heading to the Syrian city of Aleppo.

The Khanasser highway is a vital supply line used by the Syrian government to supply its forces deployed in the area of Aleppo city. Jaish al-Fatah, a coalition of the so-called ‘moderate opposition groups’, have been conducting raids, targeting government supply convoys in the area since the intensification of battle for Aleppo. ISIS joined the “moderates” in this complicated task. Completely by accident, Jaish al-Fatah and ISIS militants are not going to fight each other.

Heavy clashes are ongoing between the government forces and Jaish al-Fatah militants in the al-Assad Neighborhood of Aleppo city. According to pro-government sources, about a half of the neighborhood has been liberated.

The Syrian Army entered the Menagh Air Base north of Aleppo to recover bodies of soldiers martyred there. Sources say that some 94 bodies were recovered and the process to deliver bodies to their families begun. The move was made in coordination with the Kurdish authorities in Efrin. The government forces lost the Menagh Air Base to the joint forces of ISIS and US-backed moderates from the Free Syrian Army in August 2013. In February 2016, Kurdish forces supported by Russian airstrikes captured the base from the rebels.

The Syrian army repelled an ISIS attack on the Industrial District of Deir Ezzor from the direction of the Sakr Island at the Euphrates. However, the terrorists were pushed to retreat after a series of urban fights with the government forces. Up to 20 ISIS members and 7 soldiers were reported dead as result of the clashes. In a separate development, Syrian warplanes delivered a series of airstrikes on ISIS targets in the Old Airport District, destroying a camp of ISIS forces deployed there.

The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish YPG, seized from ISIS the village of Tell Shahin south of al-Hishah in the Syrian province of Raqqa. Heavy air strikes by the US-led coalition’s air power were reported in the area.

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Widespread Outrage over Dakota Access Pipeline and Violent Police Crackdowns…

November 12th, 2016 by Isiah Holmes

Widespread outrage over both the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and violent police crackdowns rages on. That outrage is spreading even to police agencies now returning from deployment to the reservation. Two departments have already refused to return, citing personal and public objections. As if that wasn’t enough, an army of sympathizers is re-purposing social media to combat police efforts in Standing Rock.

Minnesota’s Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department is among that group. Lawmakers, according to MPR News, found police activities in Standing Rock “inappropriate”. It’s to the point where they’re considering rewriting legislation to avoid future deployments to incidents like the pipeline resistance.

Police officials, of course, declined to comment on their return from North Dakota or their feelings on what’s happening there. It’s also made the task of rebuilding trust with the community an even loftier uphill battle. “I do not support Sheriff Stanek’s decision to send his deputies to North Dakota”, says LT. Governor Tina Smith, “nor did we approve his decision to begin with. I do not have any control over the Sheriff’s actions, which I think were wrong, and I believe he should bring his deputies home if he hasn’t already.”

Smith’s comments split the state’s government, however, and she was targeted. Minnesota State Rep. Tony Cornish condemned Smith for prioritizing “the rights of protesters over the needs of law enforcement”, saying she should apologize to the cops.

Sheriffs from Wisconsin’s Dane County were more empathetic, pulling out and refusing to return. According to the Bismarck Tribune, Sheriff Dave Mahoney made the decision after a “wide cross-section of the community” decried the deployment. “All share the opinion that our deputies should not be involved in this situation”, says Mahoney. Dane County’s deputies were deployed to Standing Rock for around a week. Sources report Dane County wasn’t involved in recent arrests, a string of which scooped up an alderwoman from Madison Wisconsin.

Ald. Rebecca Kemble traveled to North Dakota as a “legal observer”, filming and participating in prayer ceremonies. When Morton County officers–if they cans till be called that–grabbed and arrested her for engaging in a riot. According to Kemble, no riot was happening. Other Wisconsin departments have been recalled, with at least one staying behind for a more couple weeks.

Many other citizens have been charged for trespassing and participating in non-existent riots, including journalists. One of the most renowned reporters who’s faced DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline)-related charges was Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Goodman’s team filmed dog attacks by DAPL contractors who lacked proper K9 licenses. The contractors have also been accused of unethical surveillance, intimidation, and sabotaging the movement by attempting to make authorities believe the protesters have finally turned violent.

Other journalists, including documentarian Deia Schlosberg, face decades in prison for filming climate activists at a separate oil project. Journalists from the independent outlet Unicorn Riot, who recently reported use of a sound cannon on water protectors, have also been arrested.

Thousands of opponents to the pipeline have flooded Standing Rock to repel construction and police brutality. More still have taken to the internet, spreading information in the form of writing, video, photography, and art. Among the renegade tactics is using Facebook to “check-in” at Standing Rock. According the Guardian, over a million people–even people I know–have joined the action.

It began with a Facebook post, disclosing that Morton County sheriffs are allegedly using Facebook check-ins to track protesters. “Checking in”–whether you’re at a friend’s, restaurant, or escalating resistance–pinpoints your location to a tee. Once you check in, a notification is sent out to, yes, your friends, but theoretically anyone who’s capable of watching. It’s yet another tool in the bag of tricks authorities have deployed against civilians, and are likely utilizing in Standing Rock.

Some detractors have dismissed the social media action as a waste of time. An editor at The Fifth Column challenged these in a Facebook post, narrating a debate on the subject he’d had. Editor Justin King pointed out that even if the check-in’s wasted two minutes of time, multiplied by hundreds of thousands, that equates to two months of wasted police work. Now imagine how ineffective the surveillance may be with millions continuously checking.

Morton County Sheriff’s, Guardian reports, called claims of police surveillance misguided “rumors”. Morton County, by their own account, isn’t “monitoring Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location for that matter.” Before you trust them, consider that Facebook access for water protectors was reported as “blocked’ during a military-style raid on a camp.

Pixabay

Pixabay

–Data Collection Nationwide–

Other police departments are similarly sketchy when pressured to speak on their surveillance technologies. Wisconsin’s Milwaukee PD hid the use of cell site simulators, or Stingrays, from courts for months. Stingrays mimic cellphone towers, thus tricking phones into providing all manner of user information and data.

Nearby, the Wauwatosa Police Department, despite having admitting to “collecting and analyzing cell phone data” in its public reports, denied ever even coming close to a Stingray. It took the department 5 weeks to respond to that open records request, which is considered unusually long. It remains unknown how Wauwatosa PD, which has been blasted for lack of transparency before, collects cell phone data.

–The Hand’s Fingers In Open Rebellion–

In addition to the general retreat of departments, two officers have already turned in their badges in support of the protesters. North Dakota water protector Redhawk, MintPress reports, disclosed the revelation. The individual also pointed out “you can see it in some of them, that they do not support the police actions.” “Some are waking up”, they continued, “we must keep reminding them that they are welcome to put down their weapons and badge and take a stand against the pipeline as well.” Hints of shame could be seen in the faces of officers who confronted protesters as they blocked them from prayer grounds. As the protesters condemned officers, some of whom looked down or off to the horizon in shame.

The modern era of internet and technology gifts us with a plethora of ways to express ourselves, and help one another. Standing Rock is quickly becoming a stand out of that fact. Citizens, journalists, and activists are all using the internet to achieve their own goals. Whether that be spreading information being blocked, tracking police movements, sending food and rations or just voicing opinions. Standing Rock’s resistance is spreading globally, with protests occurring in Europe and elsewhere. As long as construction doesn’t stop, the movement won’t rest.

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Obama Quietly Signs Executive Order to Advance Global Vaccination Agenda

November 12th, 2016 by Vin Armani

Last Friday, November 4th, Obama quietly signed an Executive Order titled Advancing the Global Health Security Agenda to Achieve a World Safe and Secure from Infectious Disease Threats.

It is the policy of the United States to advance the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), which is a multi-faceted, multi-country initiative intended to accelerate partner countries’ measurable capabilities to achieve specific targets to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats (GHSA targets), whether naturally occurring, deliberate, or accidental.

So basically, the agenda is to push vaccines and normalize quarantine procedures across nations during outbreaks.

GHSA Immunization Agenda states that participating countries must have….

A functioning national vaccine delivery system—with nationwide reach, effective distributions, access for marginalized populations, adequate cold chain, and ongoing quality control.

At least 90% coverage of the country’s 15-month-old population with at least one dose of measles-containing vaccine.

Some notable “Five Year Action Items” include:

  • Conduct routine immunization activities
  • Implement case-based surveillance
  • Achieve and document vaccination of health care workers
obama-vaccine-propaganda-wiki

Bill Gates provided the CDC with a surveillance tool that helps identify “district-level measles risk” based on immunization records. (Source is same CDC link as above).

What’s more, the HHS recently proposed giving the CDC the power to detain and quarantine people without due Process.

When an apprehension occurs, the individual is not free to leave or discontinue his/her discussion with an HHS/CDC public health or quarantine officer.

…the proposed practice to issue Federal orders before a medical examination has taken place.

CDC defines precommunicable stage to mean the stage beginning upon an individual’s earliest opportunity for exposure to an infectious agent.

CDC may enter into an agreement with an individual, upon such terms as the CDC considers to be reasonably necessary, indicating that the individual consents to any of the public health measures authorized under this part, including quarantine, isolation, conditional release, medical examination, hospitalization, vaccination, and treatment: provided that the individual’s consent shall not be considered as a prerequisite to any exercise of any authority under this part.

…individuals who violate the terms of the agreement or the terms of the Federal order for quarantine, isolation, or conditional release (even if no agreement is in place between the individual and the government), he or she may be subject to criminal penalties.

The source of all quotes above is the official proposed rule for the Control of Communicable Diseases by Health & Human Services (HHS).

Watch the full show here.

Vin Armani is the host of The Vin Armani Show on Activist Post, TV Star of Gigolos on Showtime, Author, DJ, and Agorist Entrepreneur. Follow Vin on Twitter and subscribe on YouTube.

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President-Elect Trump Softens on Obamacare, No Job Creation in Manufacturing, Got a “Beautiful Letter” from Vladimir…

November 12th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

In his first interview (with the WSJ) as president-elect, Trump softened his opposition to Obamacare, suggesting he’ll amend, not repeal it.

In a separate interview to air Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes, he stepped back from his pledge to repeal and replace the law, repeating what he told the Journal – indicating a willingness to preserve at least two provisions:

  • assuring coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, one of the law’s “strongest assets,” he said, and
  • and letting young adults remain covered by their parents’ insurance until age 26.

“I like those (provisions) very much,” Trump said. According to the Journal, “(o)ther urgent priorities (include) deregulating financial institutions to allow ‘banks to lend again,” along with border security to keep out undocumented immigrants and illicit drugs, both objectives unlikely to succeed.

Industry profits hugely from unregulated cheap labor. Wall Street banks and the CIA benefit from drugs trafficking. Expect little or nothing interfering with what’s now ongoing

Trump’s jobs creation program involves greater infrastructure spending and “improved international trade deals,” possibly imposing tariffs to incentivize industry to produce in America, not abroad in low-wage countries.

Mindful of anti-Trump street protests, he said “I want a country that loves each other. I want to stress that.” The best way is by “bring(ing) in jobs.”

He intends shifting from confrontational campaign rhetoric to a more positive tone. “It’s different now,” he said.

His campaign pledge to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary, if elected, appears discarded. “It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought, because I want to solve healthcare, jobs, border control (and) tax reform,” he explained.

He got a “beautiful” letter from Vladimir Putin, he said, adding both leaders will speak by phone shortly.

Pre-and-post-election, I stressed Trump will continue dirty business as usual – how America’s political system always works, serving special interests, not the needs, concerns and welfare of everyone equitably.

Yet Trump has his own ideas about foreign entanglements, including wanting better relations with Russia and stepping back from the Middle East mess Obama and Bush made.

He wants ISIS defeated, not Assad ousted in Syria, saying “(m)y attitude was you’re fighting Syria. Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS.”

“Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria…”

“Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are (sic).” Attacking Assad means “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria” – the most encouraging comments he made.

Hopefully his foreign policy intends prioritizing greater diplomacy, less confrontation, taking a major step back from possible devastating nuclear war on Russia – the greatest threat of a Hillary administration had she triumphed last Tuesday.

Overall, political rhetoric is best ignored. Judge Trump solely on how he governs once sworn in as president on January 20 – including who’s chosen for cabinet posts and other key ones.

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. 

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

 

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War Continues under President Donald Trump

November 12th, 2016 by Kurt Nimmo

During his campaign Donald Trump said if elected he will “bomb the shit” out of the Islamic State. He will send troops into Syria and Iraq if the Pentagon agrees.

“Unfortunately, it may require boots on the ground to fight the Islamic State,” he writes in Crippled America (2015).

“I don’t think it’s necessary to broadcast our strategy. (In fact, one of the most ridiculous policy blunders President Obama has committed was to announce our timetable for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.) If military advisers recommend it, we should commit a limited–but sufficient–number of troops to fight on the ground.”

“I would end ISIS forcefully,” he said during an interview with 60 Minutes. “We are going to convey my top generals and give them a simple instruction,” he told a crowd in North Carolina in September. “They will have 30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS. We have no choice.”

From his web page, “Foreign Policy and Defeating ISIS”:

Pursue aggressive joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS, international cooperation to cutoff their funding, expand intelligence sharing, and cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting.

Another bullet point: “Defeat the ideology of radical Islamic terrorism just as we won the Cold War.”

I assume this means severing ties with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf emirates responsible for supporting Salafist terrorism. “Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi—take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents,” he told Fox News in February.

But is he serious? Records submitted to the Federal Election Commission show companies incorporated by Trump are related to a possible hotel project in Jeddah, the second largest city in Saudi Arabia.

Trump sounds like a Democrat on Afghanistan. “We made a mistake going into Iraq. I’ve never said we made a mistake going into Afghanistan,” he said. “And at this point, you probably have to stay because that thing will collapse about two seconds after they leave.”

He believes Obama should have gone into Syria. “Had he crossed the line and really gone in with force, done something to Assad–if he had gone in with tremendous force, you wouldn’t have millions of people displaced all over the world.”

Trump is on the neocon bandwagon in regard to Iran. “We have people in Washington that don’t know what they’re doing. Now, with Iran, we’re making a deal, you would say, we want out our prisoners. We want all these things, and we don’t get anything. We’re giving them $150 billion dollars plus. I’ll tell you what, if Iran was a stock, you folks should go out and buy it right now because you’ll quadruple–this, what’s happening in Iran, is a disgrace, and it’s going to lead to destruction in large portions of the world.”

Obama didn’t give $150 billion to Iran. Iranian money and assets were frozen after the US and Israel said Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Iran has not developed a nuclear weapon, there is no evidence of this. The United States began imposing sanctions on Iran after the CIA-installed Shah was overthrown. Trump will maintain the status quo. He may even “bomb the shit” out of Iran’s oil fields.

He has called for bombing oil infrastructure in the Middle East. “I’d just bomb those suckers,” he said last year. “I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch, there would be nothing left.”

Trump also wants to steal the oil. He wanted to steal it before ISIS appeared on the scene. “You heard me, I would take the oil,” he said in 2011. “I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take the oil.”

“We go in, we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then … what happens is we get nothing. You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils,” he said in September.

He also talked about stealing Libya’s oil during the NATO invasion in 2011. “I would just go in and take the oil,” he told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News.

This is would be a violation of international law (specifically, the fourth Geneva Convention) and a war crime, but like the neocons Donald Trump does not recognize international law.

Donald Trump has courted neocons and other warmongers, including John Bolton. “You are fooling yourselves if you think Trump, who has advisers such as Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, Peter Navarro and Michael Flynn, has some libertarian inclinations,” writes Robert Wenzel.

As president, he would be a neo-con leaning tyrant. He would just go to war for other reasons… Sheldon Adelson isn’t supporting him for nothing.

Interminable war will continue under Donald Trump. The troops will not come home. He has promised to jack-up defense spending. He wants to go after Islam.

I wrote a detailed explanation in August.

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Veterans Day Remembrance: US Marine Corps Speaks Out against Profit Driven Wars

November 12th, 2016 by Jonathan WIlson

“I spent 33 years and 4 months In active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force — the Marine Corps…And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. ” – Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1935) [1]

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Recognized as Remembrance Day in Canada and the British Commonwealth, and Veterans’ Day in the US, the 11th day of the 11th month is an annual occasion to pay tribute to those who have served their countries on the battlefield.

It is taken as axiomatic that soldiers are heroes for participating in violence at the behest of the State. Even where there is a recognition that the war being fought is unjust, such as the Iraq War or the Vietnam War, community members are called on to ‘support the troops.’

There has been a decisive shift away from the notion of remembering the horrors and brutality of war to the veneration and valourization of the soldier. There is a ritualistic aspect to society’s relationship with the soldier. Even the language of ‘paying the ultimate sacrifice’ evokes a religious flavour to the dynamics of militarism.

US military veteran Stan Goff has come to view nationalism as a modern day civil religion, with the Nation as our God and holidays like Veterans Day performing a liturgical function.

Stan Goff is a Retired Special Forces Master Sergeant who served in eight conflict areas between 1970 and 1996. He has authored several books including Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti (2000), Full-Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century (2004),  Sex & War (2006), and his most recent: Borderline – Reflections on War, Sex, and Church (2015).

 

In this week’s special instalment of the Global Research News Hour, hosted by contributor Jonathan Wilson, Goff speaks at length about how Veterans/Remembrance Day has transformed from a celebration of peace to a cultural tool reinforcing the drive toward more war, imperialism, and masculine domination.

Following the interview, we hear an excerpt of a March 2015 talk by Joshua Key. Speaking from his personal experiences within America’s military system, especially in Iraq, this veteran shatters whatever myths the public may have about the goodness and righteousness of America’s military engagements in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Joshua Key originally from Guthrie, Oklahoma, fled the war in Iraq for reasons of conscience and sought sanctuary in Canada. He is the author, with Lawrence Hill, of the 2007 book, The Deserter’s Tale:The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq.


(video from a 2011 talk. Courtesy of videographer Paul S. Graham)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca 

Notes: 

1) Butler, Smedley D. (November 1935). “America’s Armed Forces. 2. “In Time of Peace”: The Army“. Common Sense ; https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/Vietnam/butler.pdf

Syria ISIS-Daesh Terrorists’ Financing Schemes Unveiled

November 12th, 2016 by Sophie Mangal

In late October, the Committee on the Internal Security of the US Congress published a report on the revenue of various terrorist organizations. Inside Syria Media Center analyzed the documents and compared this information to the facts at our disposal. Please notice that the investigation will be published in several parts.

The analysis of the report shows that organizations like the IS use 7 main sources of income. They include oil and gas, goods like grain, fertilizers, cement, salt, etc. and trading antiquities in the black market. In addition, the other funding sources are racketeering, robbing, kidnapping, aid from the Gulf countries and taxation. The new methods of capital’s management and growth also include criminal activity in Western countries, crowdfunding (2% of the budget), as well as online and charitable Islamic funds’ donations.

Oil trade

routes

Routes of oil supplies from the fields controlled by IS, Financial Times

The report contains peculiar facts and figures confirming the information about the schemes. For example, in early 2016, the IS controlled up to 50% of crude oil production in Syria and up to 10% in Iraq i.e. about 300 oil fields were under ISIS control. At the same time, the terrorists’ revenue in 2015 reached $1 billion with more than $500 million coming from oil trade. According to the US Committee, the same year jihadists produced per day up to 80-120 thousand barrels amounting from $2 to 4 million. It should be noted that 125 terrorist supervisors monitored the work of more than 1,600 oil workers. The IS smuggled oil not only to Turkey but also to customers in Europe via improvised plastic pipelines along the Syrian-Turkish border.

The leading business media using their sources in Iraq and in Washington claim that the Islamic State’s oil revenue totals $40-50 million per month. The main volume is produced on the territory of the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor.

Agriculture

The data in the document shows that terrorists control up to 400 thousand farmers in Iraq, earning from wheat and barley’s trading up to $200 million per year.

 

wheat.png

Deliveries of wheat from the areas controlled by ISIS, Reuters

After capturing the fertile territories in the delta of the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, ISIS captured a vast territory that has brought a significant proportion of Iraqi-Syrian crop. This step aggravated the food security situation in the region.

There is still no precise estimates of the amount of profit earned by the Islamic state from food trade. However a report “Islamic State Financing and US Policy Approaches” (link to the report: PDF) submitted to the US Congress in April 2015, reveals that wheat and barley’s trading at the black market could bring IS an annual income of approximately $200 million (taking into account the fact that ISIS sells its products with a 50% discount).

Some experts point out that the Islamic State is practicing the so-called ‘laundering’ of products by mixing the booty with the yield from other regions to make it difficult to determine their origin. The terrorists also earn money by grabbing farms’ machinery and leasing it to the former owners.

Antiquities trade at the black market

Antique-trade is another source of income. For instance, the IS earns up to $100 million per year for trading antiquities which then “accidentally” appear in London and New York. Actually, terrorists aren’t personally involved in the archeological excavations but issue licenses to the so-called ‘black archeologists’ imposing a tax on their activity (20% in Aleppo, 50% in Raqqa).

According to the American Association of Antiquaries, the main streams of antique smuggling reach Western countries through Lebanon and Turkey, as well as through Saudi Arabia and Qatar. (Link: Looted in Syria – and sold in London: the British antiques shops dealing in artefacts smuggled by Isis). According to various estimates, the total cost of smuggled ancient objects totals about $100 million a year.

Inside Syria Media Center will continue to investigate the other income items of international terrorist organizations. In the next part, we will talk about taxes on the territories controlled by the terrorists, as well as slave trade and donations.

To be continued.

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Michigan Election Results Update: Did Trump Really Win the State?

November 12th, 2016 by Jessica McBride

Did Donald Trump really win Michigan’s 16 electoral votes?

The president-elect’s victory in the rust-belt state was heralded as a fundamental redrawing of the political map. That’s because Michigan, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, had not gone red in a presidential election since the 1980s. Until Tuesday, that is, according to the prevailing narrative.

However, you may have noticed that many news organizations still considered Michigan up for grabs in their electoral college maps of the presidential election as of November 11. That’s three days after the election. In other words, they hadn’t officially added it to Trump’s column yet.

Thus, the answer to the question of whether Trump really won Michigan is:

He’s ahead now.

A spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office in Michigan told Heavy that office has “no reason to believe” there are “significant” numbers of votes somehow unaccounted for. However, Trump’s lead is slender: He has a 13,107 vote lead over Hillary Clinton in Michigan, according to the latest totals from the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office.

The reason many news organizations are hedging in declaring Trump the Michigan victor: The Associated Press has yet to call the race for Trump, and many news organizations follow the lead of the AP. The AP told Heavy on November 11 that it also hasn’t called New Hampshire yet, although Hillary Clinton has a slight lead there. The wire service called Arizona on November 10 for Trump, two days after the election. All other states have been called.

“The races in New Hampshire and Michigan remain too close to call, with recounts possible in both states,” Lauren Easton, media relations manager for the AP, explained to Heavy on November 11. “So long as recounts are possible, AP will not call either race.”

Detroit newspapers have declared Trump the winner, attributing his victory to western, rural areas of the state populated by working class whites concerned about trade and jobs. Hillary Clinton also did not turn out Democratic voters in Michigan at Barack Obama’s levels, and third-party candidates ran stronger than 2012.

Supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump are decked out in campaign signs before the rally in Michigan. His supporters often come dressed up for his rallies, wearing Trump accessories. (Getty)

So what’s the hold up? The Michigan votes will now go through a canvassing system. The New York Times has a county-by-county listing of election results. As of November 11, the Times was giving Trump a 92 percent chance of winning Michigan; the results currently list Trump as receiving 47.6% of the vote and Clinton 47.3%.

Fred Woodhams, the spokesman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s office, told Heavy, “We have no reason to believe that there are significant numbers of votes that are unaccounted for. All cities and townships in the state (1,500 of them) have reported unofficial vote totals.” He said that no recount has been requested because recounts are filed after certified results are available, not unofficial tallies.

Clinton won the popular vote in the United States as a whole. Trump won the three rust-belt states that were crucial to his victory in the electoral college by a combined total of only about 112,000 votes.

The AP did call the election overall for Donald Trump, naming him as presidential victor, despite remaining unsure about Michigan and New Hampshire. Michigan has 16 electoral votes and New Hampshire 4. Clinton would not prevail in the electoral college even if she won Arizona and those two states:

arizonaetc

The AP explains how it calls races, saying, “The responsibility for calling races rests with experienced journalists in each state. They are armed with on-the-ground knowledge of their territory that no other national news organization can match.” In addition, says the AP, “On election night, race callers in each state are assisted by experts in AP’s Washington bureau who examine exit poll numbers and votes as they are counted.”

Trump: 2,277,914
Clinton: 2,264,807
Johnson: 172,726
Stein: 51,420
Castle: 16,125
Soltysik: 2,231

The Trump victory is too large to trigger an automatic recount in Michigan. A margin of under 2,000 votes triggers an automatic recount in Michigan, but candidates can seek a recount even if the margin is larger. You can learn more about the Michigan recount rules here:

https://www.scribd.com/document/330810338/Michigan-Recount#fullscreen&from_embed 

Woodhams told Heavy: “It’s not for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office to get involved in when national media outlets ‘call’ a state. At this time, county boards of canvassers are verifying election results and will certify them. At the end of the month, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers will certify the results after the county boards complete their work. At that point, election results will be final.”

Asked whether he expected the results to change substantially, he responded, “No, but in every election small vote shifts occur during the canvassing process.”

Woodhams stressed that the canvassing process will by bi-partisan.

“The canvassing process takes weeks to complete to ensure that voters can have full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of Michigan elections,” Woodhams said. “The canvassing boards are made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats.”

The Detroit Free Press reported in a blaring headline that Trump had won Michigan, giving the margin as 13,225 votes. However, the newspaper had earlier mistakenly called the race for Clinton based on an analysis of early returns from key precincts.

Jessica McBride is a Heavy contributor. She was a crime, government, and breaking news reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and reporter for the Waukesha Freeman newspaper. Her award-winning work has appeared in numerous magazine, newspaper, and online publications. She has also appeared as a crime reporter on Investigation Discovery Channel, History Channel, and Oxygen Channel. She can be reached by email at [email protected]. 

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Recount in California: Trump’s Popular “Vote Deficit” May Approach Two Million

November 12th, 2016 by Patrick Martin

California state and local government officials reported Thursday afternoon that as many as five million votes remain to be counted in the presidential election. This includes both mail-in ballots postmarked no later than November 8 and provisional ballots cast by voters who went to the wrong precinct to vote because they had moved.

If the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton maintains the 62 percent majority that she has won so far in California voting, the count of all the outstanding ballots would likely increase her popular vote lead from the current estimate of 400,000 to approximately two million votes.

If anything, this is likely to be a low estimate, since provisional ballots are disproportionately cast in low-income and minority working-class districts, where Clinton ran up margins approaching 90 percent. More than one million ballots remain to be counted in Los Angeles County alone, and 600,000 in San Diego County. Clinton won more than 80 percent of the vote in Los Angeles and nearly 60 percent in San Diego.

This means that Clinton, the loser in the Electoral College to Donald Trump, would have a margin in the popular vote exceeding at least three winners of US presidential elections in the last half-century. John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election over Richard Nixon by 112,000 votes; Nixon won the 1968 election over Hubert Humphrey by 510,000 votes; and Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election over Gerald Ford by 1.7 million votes.

Clinton’s margin in the popular vote could be four times the size of Al Gore’s in 2000. Gore carried the popular vote by 540,000 over George W. Bush, only to lose in the Electoral College after the Supreme Court intervened to halt a recount of ballots in Florida.

Up until now the media has said almost nothing about the scale of Clinton’s popular vote margin. A posting by David Leonhardt in the online edition of the New York Times is the only reference in national publications, along with occasional reports in the California-based media.

Trump’s vote total was actually below that won by Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004, and just barely above the total received by John McCain in 2008, when he lost to Barack Obama by a margin of ten million votes.

As the scale of Clinton’s lead in the popular vote becomes more widely known, Trump’s elevation to the presidency will be seen ever-more widely as politically illegitimate.

It is known, of course, that victory in a presidential election is determined by the allocation of votes in the archaic Electoral College. But in the first 211 years of American presidential history, between 1789 and 2000, there were only three occasions in which the presidency went to the candidate who lost the popular vote.

This first occurred in 1824, when—after a four-way contest in which no candidate received sufficient electoral votes to win—the House of Representatives awarded John Quincy Adams the presidency. There was widespread popular outrage over the “corrupt bargain” that denied Andrew Jackson—the winner in the popular vote—the White House. The presidency of Adams remained under a cloud, and Jackson defeated him in the election of 1828.

In 1876, Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden received approximately 250,000 more votes than Republican Rutherford Hayes, but failed to secure the necessary Electoral College majority. After several months of intense negotiations, the Democrats accepted the elevation of Hayes into the White House. However, the Democrats exacted from the Republicans an immense political concession: the withdrawal of Federal troops from the South, which effectively ended the post-Civil War Reconstruction.

In 1888, President Grover Cleveland lost his bid for reelection to his Republican opponent, Benjamin Harrison. In this case, the Republican candidate won a substantial majority in the Electoral College, but he received approximately 80,000 votes less than President Cleveland. Harrison entered the White House, but the fact that he had lost the popular vote—even though by a relatively small margin—undermined his political authority. Cleveland defeated him in the election of 1892.

For the 112 years after Cleveland’s defeat in 1888, every winning presidential candidate obtained more votes than his rival. Throughout the twentieth century, the results in the Electoral College ratified the outcome of the popular vote.

But two out of the last five elections have resulted in the victory of Republican candidates—Bush and Trump—who lost the popular vote.

George W. Bush’s popular vote deficit in the election of 2000 was significant: approximately 500,000 votes. In Trump’s case, the deficit—which may reach between 1.5 and 2 million votes—will in all likelihood be so substantial that it can hardly be viewed as merely a peculiar anomaly.

The scale of Trump’s defeat in the popular vote underscores the political cowardice that has been displayed by the Democratic Party in its response to the election. Given the circumstances, the Democrats are under no political obligation to do more than acknowledge that Trump, because of his electoral vote majority, has merely won the right to plant his backside in the presidential chair of the Oval Office.

However, there is no justification for the haste with which the Obama administration and the Democratic Party have rushed to build up Trump’s authority and prestige. Neither Obama nor Clinton have issued a warning to Trump, stating bluntly that the unprecedented scale of his defeat in the popular vote has clearly deprived him of any right to claim a mandate for his reactionary agenda. Their silence is all the more criminal as demonstrations protesting Trump’s victory are taking place throughout the country.

The dubious legitimacy of a Trump administration is being further undermined as its political physiognomy becomes clearer. On Friday, Trump reshuffled his transition team, putting his vice president-elect and Christian fundamentalist Mike Pence in charge as chairman, installing ultra-right figures like Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich as vice chairs, and naming his three children and his son-in-law to the transition executive committee. The White House is to become another branch of the Trump family enterprise!

President Obama, the leader of the Democratic Party who campaigned throughout the country for Clinton, has said nothing at all about her victory in the popular vote and has repeatedly declared his determination to insure a peaceful and smooth transition to power for Trump and the Republicans.

Can anyone doubt that if the roles had been reversed, and Clinton had won the Electoral College while Trump rolled up a big margin in the popular vote, that the Republican Party would have proceeded far differently?

Always the more ruthless and aggressive of the two right-wing capitalist parties, the Republicans would have denounced a Clinton victory in the Electoral College as “rigged” and undemocratic, demanded her renunciation of the presidency, lobbied for the presidential electors to ignore the vote in their states and accede to the “will of the people” as expressed in the nationwide vote tally, and threatened obstruction and even impeachment of the new president.

The one area where the Democrats and those sections of the military and intelligence agencies that backed Clinton may be pushing for influence in a Trump cabinet is on foreign policy. They do not want to see a retreat on the aggressive attitude toward Russia, which was at the center of Clinton’s election campaign.

California Governor Jerry Brown, soon to be the most powerful elected Democrat, has said nothing about the political implications of the landslide against Trump in his state, the most populous in the United States. Trump has threatened mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, who number in the millions in California, with millions more California citizens in their immediate families.

Again, if the roles had been reversed, with Clinton taking office as a minority president, Republican governors would have been up in arms, seeking to demonstrate their opposition to and defiance of a federal government they would declare illegitimate and oppressive. This was already the case with the Republicans under Obama.

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Breaking: One Million Koreans in Historic Protest to Oust U.S. ‘Puppet’ President Park Geun-hye

November 12th, 2016 by Zoom in Korea

As of 8:30 pm (Seoul time) on Saturday, November 12, 2016-

South Korean media report 1 million gathered at Gwanghwamun Plaza to demand Park Geun-hye’s resignation. This is the largest protest South Korea has seen since the democratic uprising of June 1987. People from across the country, including conservative strongholds Busan and Daegu have traveled to Seoul to join the protest. Youth in school uniforms and mothers with children are among the protest.

Protesters on the way to the Blue House are blocked by a barricade of police buses near Gyeongbok Palace. The police have also blocked off entrances to subway stations between the police barricade and the presidential residence. Protesters are intent on reaching the Blue House but so far remain peaceful.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon refused to supply water from the city’s fire hydrants to the police, which had threatened to use water cannons to block protesters.  Referring to the death of farmer Baek Nam-gi, hit by a high-pressure water cannon at a mass demonstration in November 2015, Mayor Park said in a radio interview, “No more.” He added, “Water from fire hydrants is intended for putting out fires, not peaceful protests.”

A reporter outside the Blue House says protesters can be heard from the Blue House, which has been in a state of emergency since Saturday morning but has not issued an official response to the calls for the president’s resignation.

screen shots al Jazeera

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has vowed a general strike if Park Geun-hye refuses to resign. 150,000 workers are among the protesters at Gwanghwamun Plaza- 35,000 public sector and transport workers, 20,000 government employees, 15,000 metal workers, 15,000 service workers, 10,000 teachers, 5000 health and medical workers.

The Saenuri Party has called for an emergency meeting tomorrow amidst growing calls inside the party for Park Geun-hye to leave the party and its leadership to resign.

For updates on the historic demonstration, follow ZoominKorea on Facebook and Twitter.

 

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Al Qaeda on the Run – Trump Induces First Major Policy Change on Syria

November 12th, 2016 by Moon of Alabama

The people loyal to the Syrian government are happy with Donald Trump winning the U.S. election:

At the passport counter, a Syrian officer’s face lit up when he saw an American traveler.

“Congratulations on your new president!” he exclaimed, giving an energetic thumbs up. Mr. Trump, he said, would be “good for Syria.”

The first significant step of the new administration comes while Trump is not even in office. Obama, selfishly concerned with his historic legacy, suddenly makes a 180 degree turn and starts to implement Trump polices. Lets consider the initial position:

Asked about Aleppo in an October debate with Clinton, Trump said it was a humanitarian disaster but the city had “basically” fallen. Clinton, he said, was talking in favor of rebels without knowing who they were.The rebels fighting Assad in western Syria include nationalists fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner, some of them trained in a CIA-backed program, and jihadists such as the group formerly known as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

The Obama administration, through the CIA led by Saudi asset John Brennan, fed weapons, training and billions of dollars to “moderate rebels”. These then turned around (vid) and either gave the CIA gifts to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al Nusra) or joined it themselves. The scheme was no secret at all and Russia as well as Syria pointed this out several times. The Russian foreign Minister Lavrov negotiated with the U.S. secretary of State Kerry who promised to separate the “moderate rebels” from al-Qaeda. But Kerry never delivered. Instead he falsely accuse Russia of committing atrocities that never happened. The CIA kept the upper hand within the Obama administration and continued its nefarious plans.

That changed the day the president-elect Trump set foot into the White House. While Obama met Trump in the oval office, new policies, prepared beforehand, were launched. The policies were held back until after the election and would likely not have been revealed or implemented if Clinton had won.

The U.S. declared that from now on it will fight against al-Qaeda in Syria:

President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government, U.S. officials said.That shift is likely to accelerate once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. … possibly in direct cooperation with Moscow.
…
U.S. officials who opposed the decision to go after al-Nusra’s wider leadership warned that the United States would effectively be doing the Assad government’s bidding by weakening a group on the front line of the counter-Assad fight.
…
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and other Pentagon leaders initially resisted the idea of devoting more Pentagon surveillance aircraft and armed drones against al-Nusra.


al-Qaeda hears of Clinton’s defeat,  haz a sad (illustrative pic)

Ash Carter is, together with John Brennan, the major anti-Russian force in the Obama administration. He is a U.S. weapon industry promoter and the anti-Russia campaign, which helps to sell U.S. weapons to NATO allies in Europe, is largely of his doing. He saw al-Qaeda in Syria as a welcome proxy force against Russia.

But Obama has now shut down that policy. We are not yet sure that this is for good but the above Washington Post account is not the only signal:

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took action today to disrupt al-Nusrah Front’s military, recruitment, and financing operations. Specifically, OFAC designated four key al-Nusrah Front leaders – Abdallah Muhammad Bin-Sulayman al-Muhaysini, Jamal Husayn Zayniyah, Abdul Jashari, and Ashraf Ahmad Fari al-Allak – pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism.
…
These designations were taken in coordination with the U.S. Department of State, which today named Jabhat Fath al Sham as an alias of al-Nusrah Front – al-Qa’ida’s affiliate in Syria.
…
Abdallah Muhammad Bin-Sulayman al-Muhaysini was designated for acting for or on behalf of, and providing support and services to or in support of, al-Nusrah Front.

This is a major change in U.S. policy. Nusra will from now on be on the run not only from Russian and Syrian attacks but also from the intelligence and military capabilities of the United States.

The newly designated Al-Muhaysini, a Saudi cleric, is Nusra’s chief ideologue in Syria. Some considered him the new Osama Bin-Laden. Here he is, on the left, arm in arm with chief al-Qaeda in Syria propagandist and “journalist” Hadi Abdullah.


bigger

Hadi Abdullah, friend of the designated al-Qaeda terrorist Muhaysini, just received the 2016 Press Freedom Pricefrom the CIA/Soros financed “regime change” influence operation Reporters Without Borders. Might this mean that Hadi Abdullah is himself a CIA assets? He would not be the first such “journalist” in Syria.

Obama, obviously as a direct consequence of the Trump election, now ordered the Pentagon to wage war on al-Qaeda in Syria just as the Russians do. This after five years of nearly unlimited U.S. support for al-Qaeda and its “moderate” Syrian affiliates. It is not yet know what new orders, if any, Obama gave to the CIA. Will the CIA follow these policies or will it (again) try to counter the Pentagon policies in Syria? It is unusual that the WaPo report above about this new direction includes no commenting voice from the CIA. Why is such missing?

Russia and Syria will welcome the new Obama policies should they come to fruit on the ground. Hillary Clinton had planned and announced to widen the conflict in Syria and with Russia and Iran. Obama would surely not have acted against such policies if she had been elected. But with Trump winning and thereby a new policy on the horizon he now changed course to a direction that will provide “continuity” when Trump takes over.

Not only is Trump kicking a black family out of its longtime limewashed home, he also ends U.S. government support for the disenfranchised Jihadis in Syria and elsewhere. This even months before taking office. He really is the menace we have all been warned about.

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Trump’s Worse Than Bush and Obama Because You Think He Isn’t

November 12th, 2016 by Land Destroyer

US President-elect Donald Trump is already lining up a tell-tale team of Wall Street and Washington insiders as well as warmongering Neo-Conservatives and sponsors of terrorism to fill his cabinet and serve in key positions within his upcoming administration. He’s also openly reneging on his campaign promises, before even getting into office.

The Intercept in an article titled, “Donald Trump Recruits Corporate Lobbyists to Select His Future Administration,” would reveal that:

Trump for America Inc., a nonprofit group chaired by Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., to oversee the Trump transition, has quietly moved ahead, meeting with interest groups and reaching out to lobbyists to plan a future Trump administration.

The group has held regular meetings at the Washington, D.C., offices of Baker Hostetler, a law and lobbying firm.

On Thursday, the group hosted a breakfast at Baker Hostetler attended by Microsoft’s Ed Ingle and Steve Hart, two lobbyists who, according to filings, have worked to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Other transition meetings have included briefings with the Financial Services Roundtable and the Investment Company Institute, two lobby groups that represent Wall Street interests, as well as with the BGR Group, a lobby firm that represents Saudi Arabia and the South Korean government.

Perhaps BGR relayed some information to Trump’s team during these meetings on behalf of their South Korean clients, which is why Trump has now already announced a complete reversal regarding his alleged platform of no longer maintaining America’s vast collection of protectorates around the globe – South Korea included.

Vox in its article, “Trump just completely reversed his policy on South Korea — only 2 days after being elected,” would report that:

Trump has tried to put those concerns to rest by speaking directly with Park over the phone and promising to maintain the existing security alliance. “We will be steadfast and strong with respect to working with you to protect against the instability in North Korea,” Trump told the South Korean president, according to a statement from her office.

This is in stark contrast to Trump’s comments during the presidential campaign. Vox stated:

“We are better off frankly if South Korea is going to start protecting itself,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper back in March. “They have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.” In a January interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump said, “We have 28,000 soldiers on the line in South Korea between the madman and them,” referring to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “We get practically nothing compared to the cost of this.”

But this is relatively minor in comparison to some other warning signs.

Image: John Bolton (left) is a Bush-era Neo-Conservative. 

As early as August of this year, Trump revealed his consideration of John Bolton as his potential Secretary of State. Breitbart in an article titled, “Trump: We are Seriously Thinking About Picking John Bolton as Secretary of State,” would claim:

“I think John Bolton’s a good man,” Trump replied. “I watched him yesterday, actually, and he was very good in defending me in some of my views, and very, very strong. And I’ve always liked John Bolton. Well, we are thinking about it, Hugh. I will say that. We are thinking about it. I mean, the negative is what I told you. But we are seriously thinking about it.”

John Bolton is a Bush-era Neo-Conservative who helped sell the war in Iraq to the American people under the false threat of “weapons of mass destruction.” The war would claim a million Iraqis and over 4,000 US troops and has left the nation in ruination to this very day. Bolton would go on to use “weapons of mass destruction” as a pretext for America moving on to a narrowly averted war with Iran.

Additionally, Bolton has spent years lobbying for the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist groupthat has killed US military personal, US civilian contractors, as well as Iranian politicians and civilians through decades of terrorist attacks both within and beyond Iran’s borders. Until recently, and including during Bolton’s lobbying activities, MEK was a US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization, listed side-by-side Al Qaeda, the self-proclaimed “Islamic State,” and Boko Haram.

Image: Gingrich, Giuliani and Bolton are all present and accounted for at a confab supporting MEK terrorists. Now all three men are under consideration for positions within Trump’s White House.

 

Today, Bolton characterizes Russia, China, and Iran as US enemies and seeks expanded military spending and military operations abroad to widen already unprecedented tensions with all three nations.

That Trump even considered making this man his Secretary of State should alarm all Americans, whether they opposed the Iraq War under Bush or US military interventions in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Iraq under Obama.

Bolton’s consideration for a place within Trump’s incoming administration all but assures the wars not only continue, they will disastrously expand.

Lobbying for MEK terrorists alongside Bolton was former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. They and other fixtures of American Neo-Conservatism backed MEK along with the Royal Saudi Family, according to the US State Department’s own Voice of America (VOA) media platform.

VOA’s article, “Saudi Backing of Iranian Exile Group Inflames Mideast Conflicts,” would reveal:

Prince Turki al-Faisal, a respected former Saudi ambassador to Britain and the United States, startled many observers when he turned up Saturday at a conference in Paris of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq or MEK.

VOA would also report:

In the course of that campaign, the MEK and its “diplomatic” arm, the so-called National Council of Resistance in Iran, paid millions of dollars to ex-U.S. officials of both major political parties. Saturday’s confab featured many of these individuals including Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a contender to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, as well as Bill Richardson, a former New Mexico governor and U.N. ambassador under Bill Clinton, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.

Both Giuliani and Gingrich are also likely to receive positions within Trump’s administration. The fact that Trump has cozied up to men working not only for listed terrorist organizations, but terrorist organizations backed by the Saudis, is particularly alarming not to mention ironic considering Trump’s campaign trail rhetoric.

Continuity of Agenda and How to Break the Cycle

The convergence here between Neo-Conservatism, sponsoring terrorism, warmongering, despotic regimes like that in Riyadh, and all the other abuses and outrages started under Bush and eagerly continued under Obama is no coincidence.

Continuity of agenda continues under Trump, just as it would have under Hillary Clinton, just as it has under Obama and before that under Bush, Bill Clinton, and before that under George Bush Sr.

The only real question America should be asking themselves now is not whether the right-wing claws of this scorpion are more dangerous than the left-wing poisoned stinger, but why we are arguing about it and not just going straight for the head.

Protests in the streets by the left, and a right prepared to go back to sleep for 4-8 years as “their guy” takes the helm of wars they have learned to loved to hate for the past 8 years, does nothing to affect the bottom lines of the corporations and financial institutions that dominate both parties of American politics, benefiting regardless of who is in the White House, moving their agenda and interests forward under the cover of a partisan smokescreen, and all at the cost of not only the American people, but increasingly the peace and stability of the entire planet.

If America’s left and right ever decide to meet in the middle, fighting the multinational corporations festering on Wall Street will be the ground upon which they do so. They will not require “elections” or protests to succeed – simply redirecting the daily financial support, time, and energy Americans pour into these corporations and institutions, instead into local alternatives, is all it will take. Recognizing this as the actual solution, amid increasingly tempting partisan pitfalls, will be the hardest part of reaching toward real progress.

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Syria Extends Donald Trump an Olive Branch

November 12th, 2016 by Adam Garrie

The Syrian government is willing to discuss options for cooperation with a Trump-led United States, says prominent politician and adviser to President Assad.

The reverberations of Donald Trump’s seismic victory were not just limited to Russia, China and Europe. They were felt in Damascus where as it is for many others, a cautious optimism surrounding  the foreign policy potential of a Trump led America, has replaced years of utter pessimism and consternation with the neo-imperial policies of Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama.

Syrian politician and an adviser to the president Bouthaina Shaaban was interviewed on American radio where she said that Damascus would be willing to work with a Trump administration, should he deliver on his statements that he doesn’t seek to remove the legitimate President of Syria in a misguided and illegal regime change war. In his debates with Hillary Clinton, Trump stated multiple times that he would prefer to work with Russia and by extrapolation with Syria in going after Islamic terrorism, rather than hysterically agitate for regime change.

Shaaban said that, “I think the American people have sent a great, a very important message to the world” and indeed this is the case. Whilst many say that most voters were more concerned with domestic American issues than foreign policy, during his recent interview with Peter Lavelle, Dr. Ron Paul partially challenged this received wisdom.

Dr. Paul said that when offered the clear alternative between costly war which ultimately puts American lives in danger and destroys America’s credibility abroad, and a non-interventionist/cooperative and diplomatic approach to world affairs, people would generally vote for the latter. He went on to blame the mainstream media for drumming up war fever and effectively brainwashing an otherwise peace loving public into believing that aggression is virtuous.

What Dr. Paul did not mention is that new media sources have taken away much of the influence that mainstream pro-war media once had on the public. As the public become more informed, they become more anti-war.

Furthermore, I believe that Donald Trump did a far better job of selling the anti-war message than he is given credit for, even among his supporters. Whilst Hillary’s line about Russia being a source of evil in the world clearly fell flat, Trump’s pragmatic anti-war but also anti-Islamic terror message, resonated. Even if people state that jobs, tax, health, immigration and trade were the ‘issues of the day’, the unconscious effect of Trump’s challenge to the pro-war establishment is more important than many seem to think it was.

Even for those who know little about foreign affairs, Dr. Paul is absolutely right in saying that most people want peace. The problem is that between the old dying mainstream media and pro-war politicians, they rarely feel that this option is a choice that’s on the table. Trump has changed that.

Even before he is inaugurated, Trump ought to clutch the olive branch being cautiously offered from Syria and open channels of communication with Damascus. Both Trump and Assad are deeply pragmatic men, both are deeply patriotic and both share a hatred for Islamic terrorism. If they were to find common ground, even on a personal level, it could go a long way in opening up meaningful inter-governmental dialogue which could lead the way towards new cooperative efforts in Syria.

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The KKK Just Announced a Trump Victory Parade in North Carolina

November 12th, 2016 by James Woods

The Ku Klux Klan, who officially endorsed Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump back in April of this year, has announced they will be holding a victory rally for him in North Carolina.

The location is significant as North Carolina, a tightly contested state over the last 20 years, was won by President-elect Trump by 5% points. He received more votes than any other candidate in the history of the state, and outperformed both John McCain and Mitt Romney in the last two elections against President Obama.

North Carolina has become ground zero for the “alt-right” movement. It has become famous for its voter discrimination, rampant redistricting, and the controversial HB2 or “bathroom law,” all of which have cost the state millions of dollars in lost revenue due to boycotts and loss of corporate events and facilities. The NBA recently moved the All-Star Game out of Charlotte stating:

“While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2.”

So far, very few details about the planned rally have been released. The “Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,” located in Pelham, North Carolina, will be hosting the actual rally.

According to their website, the North Carolina rally will be held on Dec. 3. But there is little information about the actual event, including a time or a location. Their “Victory Klavalkade Klan Parade” states that “Trump’s race united my people.”

The group is believed to have been behind a rally in South Carolina last year protesting the removal of the Confederate flag from the state Capitol building.

David Duke, a former Klan Grand Wizard and Republican State Representative took to social media to thank “his people” for helping to elect Trump.

 

James Woods ( AKA – JamesFromTheInternet) is an independent journalist based in New York City who can be reached on twitter @JamesFTInternet or via email:[email protected]

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Hybrid Wars: Strategies against Africa

November 12th, 2016 by Andrew Korybko

The introductory text prefaced the general concepts that the author will be extrapolating on further in the research, and now that the basics of the overall analytical foundation and the contours of the reference map are out of the way, it’s time to begin exploring the influence of hegemonic and institutional regionalism on African geopolitics, widely investigating the asymmetrical threats endemic to each area, and start elucidating China’s overall Silk Road vision for the continent.

African Regions, Their Respective (And Prospective) Leaders, And Interregional Conflict Scenarios

The author’s preferred method of explaining Africa’s geopolitics is to begin as broadly as possible and then gradually become more specific, with the entire continuum of study eventually leading to the reader’s solid understanding of China’s visionary plans. To start off, it’s necessary to divide Africa into five separate regions and identify the state within each which holds the most influential demographic, economic, and military sway (cumulatively described as leadership) and has the most promising long-term potential (operative word) to become a regional heavyweight if it isn’t one already:

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* Brown – North Africa – Egypt
* Yellow – West Africa – Nigeria
* Orange – Horn And East Africa – Ethiopia
* Blue – Central-South Africa – Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
* Red – Southern Cone – South Africa

Interpretation:

It should immediately be said that the above map is a conceptualized representation that includes both current and prospective realities (the latter in reference to the DRC), and that the shaded areas are rough estimates of the approximate spread of each region. There are certainly limits to each identified core country’s influence and it’s predicted that there will obviously be competitive coalitions both within its own sphere and outside of it that assemble to challenge the given state’s leadership over the said region. For example, this can currently be seen by the former French colonies of West Africa having their own Paris-controlled currency and collectively viewing Nigeria’s regional ascendency with suspicion, which has been particularly evident when it comes to Chad and its uninvited (but unopposed) anti-terrorist military involvement in northeastern Nigeria. While admittedly imperfect in certain respects, the simplified map does present a relatively accurate snapshot of the broader geopolitical processes that are presently underway in Africa and allows observers to relatively accurately extrapolate on their predicted trajectory. Therefore, the map should only be seen as a basic working model through which the reader can acquire a generalized idea about the continent and a prism of perspective through which they can thus interpret the rest of the unfolding Hybrid War analysis.

Focal Points Of Overlap:

The introduction spoke about some of the overlap potential between the earlier-identified regions of Hybrid War study, but seeing as how the most recent map is somewhat different in categorizing the entire continent into geographic blocs, it’s necessary to succinctly touch upon some of the areas of overlap that may not have been addressed previously.

North-Central Nexus:

This tinderbox of a locale is defined as the convergence area between Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan, and South Sudan, and it’s marked by an array of interlinked involvement between state and non-state actors in each other’s affairs. Chad and Sudan had earlier vied for influence in the latter’s region of Darfur, and N’djamena also exerts influence in the Muslim reaches of Northern CAR. Khartoum is involved in a back-and-forth proxy war with Juba along their shared frontier which sees both sides supporting a mix of non-state rebel actors (some of which are defined by the respective targeted governments as terrorists), and the globally notorious non-state bogeyman of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army operates between CAR and South Sudan. The below map conceptualizes the dangerous interplay between forces in this totally destabilized region and shows how the only missing factors are the ‘geographic diagonal’ involvement of Chad in South Sudan and Sudan in CAR, and a possibly disruptive humanitarian/militant influence emanating from CAR to Chad (which is not unlikely if confessional tensions spike once more):

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Mountain Mayhem:

The next most conflict-prone area of regional overlap is the mountainous area that straddles the DRC and Uganda, Rwandan, and Burundian borders. After the end of the Second Congo War (“Africa’s World War”), Ugandan and Rwandan pro- and anti-government militia groups ended up controlling this part of the DRC and seizing the profitable mining deposits located here. There’s a lot of legal and illegal cross-border traffic between the two sides, and it’s well known that conflicts from one part of the mountains could easily spill over to the other due to the well-established economic and demographic connections that link them. Burundi figures into the equation because it’s the ‘weak man of East Africa’, a recent civil war state that is now being pushed back to the brink as part of the US’ Hybrid War agenda against China (which will be addressed in full later on at the appropriate section). Destabilization in this country could easily move west and north to DRC and Rwanda, creating a tri-state ethno-regional conflagration that would inevitable come to involve Uganda as well.

For the time being, though, dominant influence between the two identified African regions is pretty one-sided, with Rwanda and Uganda exerting control over the DRC and not the other way around. This is primarily due to their respective nationals and affiliated militias (both pro- and anti-government ones) creating a sort of ‘strategic depth’ that has profoundly penetrated just about all levels of life in the eastern DRC. However, if the DRC ever got back on track after being spectacularly sidelined by the West’s covert war against it in the early 1960s and further weakened by the First and Second Congo Wars, then it’s foreseeable that the cross-border flow of influence could either be equalized or even reversed if the right demographic factors were leveraged under the proper geopolitical conditions.

Regardless of the ‘positive’ movement of influence in either direction, if cross-border Hybrid War triggers are activated, then it’s likely that the general destabilization could also involve Tanzania and possibly even Zambia. The last possibility is more likely so if a renewed Katanga separatist or anti-government campaign is ever launched within the region, which might pan out to be the case if popular former governor and “opposition” leader Moisi Katumbi stirs the pot of regionalism should President Kabila run for what would at this point be an unconstitutional third term, delays the elections, or is accused (whether rightfully or wrongfully) of committing voter fraud that helps him or a hand-picked political successor win at the polls.

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Sahara Terror:

The next interregional conflict overlap in Africa deals with terrorist groups in the Sahara, in particular the interplay between transnational militant organizations operating in the broad expanse between Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, and Libya. The NATO War on Libya destroyed the most prosperous and stable state in Africa and was the catalyst for destabilizing the rest of the aforementioned states ‘downstream’ via the newly opened weapon and militant channel that was created in the former Jamahiriya. This wide space is sparsely populated but is rich in oil, natural gas, and uranium deposits. For this reason, Sahara terrorism directly affects the global commodities trade and the interests of certain Great Powers and their most prominent transnational corporations.

As a fitting example, France’s nuclear leader Areva controls uranium mines in Niger, and the in-country French military contingent there is also tasked with protecting them, among its other responsibilities. Furthermore, the mixture of destabilization in the region, low energy prices, and rapid LNG industry developments have led to the indefinite shelving of the tentative proposal for a Trans-Saharan gas pipeline from Nigeria to southern Europe via Niger and Algeria, but this idea nonetheless still remains a possibility that might one day be revived.

Widening the interregional scope of the Libyan-originated destabilization that is now plaguing the Sahara, the terrorist hijacking of the Tuareg’s 2011-2012 “Azawad” self-determination movement in Mali has also led to a spillover effect of Islamic/Salafist violence in Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast, non-Sahara countries which are part of the greater West African region. Therefore, the two launching pads of inter- and intra-regional destabilization can be identified as Libya and Mali, with the latter becoming totally unbalanced only after the former’s collapse following the US-led NATO war against it.

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Malawi In The Middle:

Formerly part of the British Empire and administered together with Zambia and Zimbabwe as a member of the “Central African Federation” in the closing days of colonialism, Malawi is categorized as part of the Southern Cone sphere of regional influence because most of its international trade runs through Mozambique. The landlocked country is one of the world’s poorest and least-developed nations, and the state’s dire poverty has created a situation where anti-government sentiment can be easily manipulated.

While Malawi isn’t directly a part of China’s larger integrated Silk Road network in Africa, the two countries have quickly moved closer to one another economically over the past couple of years after the African state disowned its prior decades-long relationship with Taiwan, thus raising the covert consternation of the US and pushing Washington to order its top diplomat in the country to prepare for a coup and possible Hybrid War attempt.

Malawi’s geopolitical position is such that any large-scale destabilization within the country’s borders could easily spread to Mozambique, but most important for the research’s focus, it could also just as likely move northwards to Zambia and Tanzania, two pivotal countries that are involved in China’s transcontinental Silk Road projects. Because of the conflict overspill potential that a seemingly tiny and assumedly geopolitically irrelevant state like Malawi can have, it’s accurate to label it a “Second Burundi” in terms of the chances that it could be used to trigger a regional conflagration that could subsequently offset China’s integrative vision for the continent.

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If timed to coincide with a Hybrid War in Burundi, then a prospectively planned one in Malawi would deal double a dose of destabilization to Tanzania and could be used to spark a larger transregional conflict zone between Uganda and Mozambique.

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Furthermore, there exists the potential (which will be discussed at a future point in the research) that this could either trigger the renewed Katanga secessionist crisis or anti-government movement that was mentioned before or be timed to coincide with it in its own right during the elections that are tentatively forecast for late 2016. If this scenario eventuates, then the simultaneously exploding series of latent conflicts would certainly spell the end for all of China’s transcontinental integrative plans, although it might still be possible to salvage the ones dealing only with East African coast (and which will also be described later on in detail).

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The Real African World War:

The nightmare scenario that could one day transpire in Africa is if the super- and sub-equatorial active and potential conflict zones find a way to interlink with one another and turn the whole continent into a massive Hybrid War battleground. While somewhat far-fetched at the moment and tactically hindered by the DRC’s jungled geographic ‘firewall’, if another ‘African World War’ takes place in the Congo, then the resultant destabilization could be enough to surmount this physical difficulty and summon a Black Hole of Chaos that sparks a real “African World War’ which ends up connecting the Saharan-based terrorists with the Lake Malawi militants. This could most realistically be achieved via an outbreak of large-scale turmoil in the Nigerien-Chadian buffer zone and the Zambia-Tanzania-Katanga Province New Silk Road infrastructural nexus.

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Non-African Foreign Military Bases

Keeping with the present security theme, non-African foreign militaries have left a remarkable footprint on the continent. For the most part, it’s primarily the US and France that have spread their units far and wide, although Washington “officially” claims that it only has a single military facility in Djibouti. Despite the technical ‘legalese’ of the Pentagon’s pronouncements, investigative journalist Nick Tursehas unearthed piles of evidence proving that drone bases, logistics hubs, and other covert warfare-facilitating outposts are surreptitiously being utilized all across Africa. The reader is strongly encouraged to read this author’s works and become familiar with his findings, as they detail the contours of the shadow war that the US has been waging on Africa ever since 9/11. To summarize the US role in Africa in the most concisely pertinent way, the Pentagon regularly conducts training exercises with almost every single African military in one capacity or another, and it keeps a more lasting presence in the contiguous Sahara-Sahel-jungled area that stretches from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and has been called “The New Spice Route”. As taken from the last hyperlinked source, here’s a map displaying how this network, which has also been nicknamed “the hippo trench”, looks from a continental perspective, but it should be kept in mind that Ethiopia is no longer a formal part of this arrangement after it asked the US to remove its drone base in early 2016 in the months following the original article’s publication:

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The other military power most actively involved in Africa is France, which had earlier colonized a large chunk of the continent in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. The most active part of its force is deployed in the Sahel region as part of “Operation Barkhane” which stretches across what has been referred to as the “G5 Sahel” countries of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. In addition to this, Paris also keeps troops in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Central African Republic (CAR), and Djibouti. Here’s what France’s military deployments look like when they’re mapped out:

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* Red: G5 Sahel
* Pink all others

Comparing the two maps, it’s possible to observe a military overlap between the US and France in Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, CAR, and Djibouti:

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While most of the double concentration of foreign military bases lies in Western and Central Africa, the fact that this is also present in Djibouti mustn’t be overlooked. In fact, the miniscule East African nation has a disproportionate military significance in that it concurrently hosts American, French, Japanese, Chinese, and soon even Saudi bases, making it by far a global military anomaly in this regard. With the focus now on East Africa, it’s timely to state that this part of the continent beyond Djibouti is also becoming heavily militarized by foreign forces as well. The UAE is suspected of having a naval base in Eritrea and is purportedly prospecting for facilities in Somalia’s autonomous breakaway region of Somaliland, while Turkey is also building a military base in the civil war-torn country.  On top of all of this, Qatar maintains a small amount of “peacekeepers” in both Eritrea and Djibouti ever since 2010as part of its UN-related responsibility in supposedly “mediating” between the two asides after a tense border dispute in 2008. This strategic concentration of forces has the effect of creating the perception that landlocked yet economically promising Ethiopia is being encircled, especially by the GCC-member states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, which will be an important fact that will be returned to later on when the research addresses the Horn of Africa region.

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* Red: Horn of Africa states with foreign military bases
* Orange: Ethiopia

African Military Blocs

Although there’s a diversified non-African military presence all throughout the continent, Africa has still been able to assemble a loose network of regional military-security blocs that operate under the nominal aegis of the African Union (AU). The African Standby Forces, as they’re known, are dividedaccording to Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and Regions and given defined areas of responsibility. The economic boundaries of most of these geographic blocs overlap with their military ones and will be described more in the next section, but for the time being, here’s what the AU’s allocation looks like:

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* Brown: North Africa Regional Capability
* Yellow: ECOWAS
* Purple: Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS)
* Orange: East African Standby Force (EASF)
* Red: Southern African Development Community (SADC)

NOTE: South Sudan is not yet a full member of the East African Standby Force, while Angola and Burundi are listed as having dual responsibilities within their shared ECCAS and SADC and the EASF, respectively. Additionally, it’s important to point out that the East African Community is divided between South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi’s commitment to the EASF, Burundi’s additional responsibilities to the ECCAS, and Tanzania’s incorporation into the SADC zone of responsibility. Also, because Morocco is not part of the AU as per the Western Sahara dispute, it’s not party to the African Standby Forces agreement in any capacity.

The last thing that’s important to point out about Africa’s military blocs is that Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad have aligned their forces to battle the Boko Haram threat that afflicts their shared Lake Chad basin. Documenting this on a map, it superficially looks like a formidable military alliance, but it’s actually a poorly coordinated and internally competing force dominated by mutually suspicious Nigeria and Chad:

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To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Hybrid Wars 5. Breaking the Balkans

Hybrid Wars 6. Trick To Containing China

Hybrid Wars 7. How The US Could Manufacture A Mess In Myanmar

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Trump’s Top Adviser on Israel to Become Ambassador to Tel Aviv

November 12th, 2016 by The Palestinian Information Center

Maariv newspaper has said that David Friedman, Donald Trump’s top adviser on Israeli affairs, is a prime candidate to take over the post of the US ambassador to Israel.

57-year-old Friedman, who works as a real estate and bankruptcy lawyer for Trump for long years, is an American Jew whose late father was the rabbi of Temple Hillel in North Woodmere and the president of the New York Board of Rabbis.

About six months ago, Trump appointed Friedman and Jason Greenblatt, another of his attorneys, as co-chairmen of his Israel advisory committee.

Friedman is positioned on the far right of the Israeli political map and considered more hardline in his views than Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

David Friedman with Trump

David Friedman with Donald Trump

He has been a columnist for two Israeli right-wing English-language news outlets, Arutz Sheva and The Jerusalem Post. He also serves as president of American Friends of Bet El Institutions, which financially supports the settlement enterprise.

According to his views, the US must not impose any solutions on Israel or oppose its use of violent methods against the Palestinians to protect its citizens.

He considers Israel’s settlement activity illegal and advocates all kinds settlement construction activity in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

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From Monster to Mr. President-Elect: Democrats Grovel Before Trump

November 12th, 2016 by Andre Damon

Within a day of the election of Donald Trump, leading Democrats have moved with extraordinary speed to declare their support for the president-elect.

President Barack Obama invited Trump to the White House for a friendly 90-minute meeting on Thursday. He declared afterwards that his “number-one priority in the coming two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful.” He added, speaking to Trump, “I want to emphasize to you, Mr. President-Elect, that we now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed—because if you succeed, then the country succeeds.”

Obama’s declaration stands in stark contrast to his own statements just a few days ago. Then he asserted that Trump “appears to only care about himself” and “doesn’t know basic facts that you’d need to know” to be president. He added that Trump “spent 70 years on this earth showing no regard for working people.”

That was before the Democratic debacle on Election Day. Now he declares his highest priority to be ensuring that Trump is “successful.”

Obama’s comments followed the statement by Hillary Clinton on Wednesday that she hoped “[Trump] will be a successful president for all Americans.” Senator Bernie Sanders, the supposed socialist, issued his own groveling statement, declaring, “To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him.”

With such declarations, the Democrats are in effect abandoning any pretense of acting as an opposition party to a President Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress.

The proclamations of support from top Democrats are made in relation to an individual whose election clearly marks a watershed in American politics. What is coming to power is a government of the extreme right, with fascistic characteristics. There are reports that Trump wants to appoint as his chief of staff Stephen Bannon, the head of Breitbart News, an ultra-right and fascistic media outlet. His top advisors and likely cabinet appointees include reactionary figures such as former New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

In their rush to lend the transition of power an aura of normalcy, the Democrats and the media have maintained a studious silence about certain quite striking elements of the election.

No one is noting that a principal factor in the election of Trump was a significant decline in voter turnout. For all of the media talk of a “surge” of white working class voters behind Trump, the Republican candidate actually received one million fewer votes than Mitt Romney received in losing the 2012 election to Obama. Clinton won 6 million fewer votes than Obama won in his reelection, when the outgoing president obtained significantly fewer votes than he had received in 2008. Also virtually ignored is the extraordinary fact that Trump failed even to win the popular vote. Clinton had a higher percentage of the national vote, but she lost in the Electoral College, which involves a complex and antidemocratic apportionment based on victories in individual states. Trump will take office having failed to secure a plurality, let alone a majority, of the overall vote.

In the entire 240-year history of the United States, there have been only five elections in which the incoming president did not win the popular vote. When this happened in 1876, the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, became president, though he had fewer votes than the Democrat, Samuel J. Tilden. The political conflict over the outcome was so intense that the Republicans were able to hold the White House only after agreeing to the effective end of post-Civil War Reconstruction, through the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.

After a split vote in 1888, when Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison, the winner of the Electoral Vote was also the winner of the popular vote for the next 112 years. In the 21st century, this anomaly has now happened twice—in 2000 and again in 2016. In the former case, the selection of George W. Bush as president required the intervention of the Supreme Court to halt the recount of ballots in Florida.

Had Trump found himself in the position of Clinton, he would have taken his time before conceding. His concession speech, when and if it came, would have stressed that he had won the popular vote and that “Crooked Hillary” could not claim a mandate.

The media message would have stressed the need for Clinton to be conciliatory and acknowledge that the majority of the voters had chosen Trump. One can easily imagine CNN announcing the “breaking news” that Clinton had withdrawn the nomination of Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court and invited the Republicans to name the replacement for the deceased Antonin Scalia.

But the Democrats have done just the opposite.

What is behind this universal about-face? President Obama said perhaps more than he intended when he declared Wednesday that “we have to remember that we’re actually all on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage”—that is, a test competition involving players from the same school.

The United States does not really have an oppositional political system. The divisions between the Democrats and Republicans, and between Clinton and Trump, are of an entirely tactical character. They all defend the same basic interests—those of the corporate and financial aristocracy that controls the political system.

Within this framework, the Democrats are always the more accommodating and conciliatory party, since their rhetorical references to defending the interests of working people—including by the likes of Bernie Sanders—are thoroughly vacuous and insincere. In relation to Trump and the dangers he poses, there is an element of complete complacency, which arises from the fact that the danger is not to the Democrats or the privileged social forces for which they speak, but to the working class.

The chief concern of the Democrats is to contain popular anger. Their moves to circle the wagons around Trump are above all a response to the danger they see of the emergence of popular opposition that threatens not only the incoming government, but the capitalist system itself.

Even as Obama, Clinton, Sanders and company prostrate themselves and pledge their loyalty to Trump, thousands of youth and workers are demonstrating around the country against the president-elect. These protests are only a pale and politically disparate foretaste of mass struggles of the working class that are to come.

What is critical is that the lessons of the 2016 election be drawn and all attempts to keep opposition to war and austerity chained to the political corpse of the Democratic Party be rejected. The task is not to “take back” the Democratic Party or push it to the left—the inevitable result of that false perspective has already been demonstrated in the reactionary outcome of the Sanders campaign—but to break with both parties of big business and all forms of capitalist politics and build an independent socialist and internationalist movement of the working class.

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Donald Trump and the Dangers of Expectation

November 12th, 2016 by Larry Chin

As the unexpected US president-elect took to the stage, the crowds erupted in jubilation, basking in the historic moment of populist revolution, certain that reform and change had finally come.

This describes Jimmy Carter’s election night win. And Barack Obama’s. As well as many more. Not just Donald Trump’s.

America has been here countless times. Each time, the people were hoodwinked.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter was the “humble peanut farmer” outsider who was expected to clean up the nation after the corruption of the Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford/Watergate era. Instead, the Carter administration was a bastion for David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and international bankers, and the foreign policy agenda of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was expected to save America from the “malaise” of Carter. The aged Reagan was nearly assassinated shortly after taking office, and further rendered a doddering figurehead. The power was held by vice president George H.W. Bush, who would become the next president, and whose criminal apparatus and overriding influence and New World Order would continue to run or influence every presidential administration to the present.

In 1992, Bill Clinton was “The Man from Hope”, alongside “powerful new age woman” Hillary Clinton, slated to provide salvation from the horrors of the Iran-Contra/Gulf War and George H.W. Bush. Bill and Hillary Clinton, co-conspirators with the Bush network during the Iran-Contra era, continued the agenda of the Bushes, while posing as their adversaries.

ObamaIn 2008, charismatic Barack Obama arrived as the embodiment and symbol of change, expected to rescue a nation outraged and tired of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Obama declared that “change has come to America!”  Posters of Obama’s face with the word “Change” covered walls throughout the world. Instead, Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden and the State Departments of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, continued and worsened the programs of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

So now, the question facing America and the world is:

President Trump: big liar going to Washington or Tribune of the People?

There are no clear answers.

Trump the enigma

Trump is a maverick and an independent who fits no pattern. He combines elements of old-line paleo-conservativism with libertarian ambivalence towards many social issues, and other views that fit no category. He has expressed contradictory views on numerous issues, and has shown no qualms about changing his mind.  He will disagree with those who advise him.

Is he a true anti-globalist, or a stealth establishment neocon? Is he a plant who has gamed the system for personal satisfaction, or on behalf of others?

Trump has hobnobbed with figures of the very “swamp” that his ardent supporters want him to “drain”, including those who believes must be “locked up”. He contributed to the Clinton Foundation, which he has since attacked as a criminal apparatus. He has golfed with Bill Clinton. The Clintons were invited to, and attended, his wedding. Trump is connected to convicted pedophile and Clinton crony Jeff Epstein (but likely did not participate in the pedophilia).

He is a proud mega-capitalist and a libertine, but has devoted his campaign to the issues of the disaffected. Richard Black, Republican senator from Virginia, believes that Trump will usher in a new era of cooperation with Russia and a retreat from foreign conquest. But he also advocates “American exceptionalism”, and muscular military that “kicks ass”.

He entertained a White House run previously as a third party candidate, but instead, for practical reasons,  conducted a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, outraging and alienating the Republican establishment (including the Bushes), making enemies of the Bushes, the Bush-aligned, and the mainstream right-wingers such as Paul Ryan.

Donald Trump is “his own man”—an unpredictable one.

Emerging Trump cabinet promises danger

Trump is but one man, entering a snake pit of corruption, criminality and intrigues. One man alone cannot run a government.

The Trump circle is already swarming with Republicans and neocons, including infamous figures from previous Bush administrations, and right-wing opportunists.

The presence of vice president-elect Mike Pence almost speaks for itself.

Pence is a super conservative neocon, who has supported all things Bush. He supported the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, is pro-torture (opposes the closing of Guantanamo Bay), and supports war in the Middle East and is hawkish on Russia. He supported the toppling of Libya, and thanked Hillary Clinton for doing it. He supports globalization and free trade agreements, supported NAFTA and CAFTA.

He is a corporatist who opposes banking and campaign finance reforms, who praised the criminal Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that made corporations people. Although Trump openly disagreed with Pence on certain foreign policy issues, he trusts Pence, who now heads the transition team.

The list of names being floated for Trump cabinet positions raises alarms:

  • Gen. Michael Flynn, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Described as “America’s angriest general”. He is a fervent anti-terrorist, who adheres to the idea that America is under attack by outside enemies. His rage towards the Obama administration is based on personal slights (he was forced out) and the belief that Obama’s management of the “war on terrorism” was politicized. He is a major influence on the Trump foreign policy. Flynn believes that the Iraq War a strategic mistake by Bush. Flynn may be the originator of the favorite Trump talking point that ISIS was “created out of vacuum” of Iraq, and Obama/Clinton “stupidity” and “weakness”.
  • John Bolton, fanatical neocon. One of the most notorious warmongers of the Bush/Cheney administration, who continues to aggressively push regime change agendas.
  • James Woolsey , former CIA director, member of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and fanatical war hawk
  • Stephen Hadley . The former National Security Adviser under Bush/Cheney, was one of the chief architects of the lies leading to the Iraq War. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a partner of RiceHadleyGates, a think tank that he runs alongside war criminals Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates RiceHadleyGates. Hadley has pushed to attack Syria with missiles.
  • Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York. Mike Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon builds a strong case to question Giuliani’s possible operational connections to 9/11, including his knowledge of war games (which manipulated fighter jet response), emergency disaster drills (Office of Emergency Management), communications with Dick Cheney and the White House, and coordination of various federal and local agencies. Michel Chossudovsky notes in America’s “War on Terrorism” that Giuliani’s firm, Giuliani Security and Safety LLC specializes in “mock terror drills” and “emergency preparedness”. Giuliani was present in London during the 7/7 bombings in 2005.  Giuliani is cautious about the idea of prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
  • Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, is an evangelical Republican with standard Republican positions and presidential aspirations. He more recently came out against the Bushes, which has endeared him to Trump.
  • Newt Gingrich, infamous, corrupt and scandalized establishment Republican.
  • Alabama senator Jeff Sessions is a right-wing conservative who fervently supported Bush/Cheney’s war agenda as well as the Bush tax cuts and other Bush domestic programs.
  • Steve Mnuchin, rapacious Wall Street hedge fund and banking mogul, Goldman Sachs veteran, who also did business with George Soros
  • Forrest Lucas of Lucas Oil, candidate for secretary of interior
  • Sarah Palin, corrupt and scandal-ridden former governor of Alaska, and John McCain running mate, lampooned celebrity; fanatical right-winger pushing a “Drill, baby, drill!” approach to energy policy.
  • Chris Christie , corrupt former New Jersey governor under criminal investigation for abuses of power. Like Trump, he is a blowhard celebrity and opportunist who has cozied up to both the Bushes and Obama. A former prosecutor, he is against prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
  • Possible choices for chief of staff include Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, or the Republican National Committee’s Reince Priebus.
  • House Speaker Paul Ryan. He openly withdrew his support from Trump months ago, with great animosity and vitriol, but claims to have had “fantastic conversations” with Trump since election night.

There are no independents on this list—and no Republicans that are not connected in some way to the Bushes.

Trump alone stands between himself and forces capable of co-opt his presidency, and worse. He faces opposition from a Congress full of Bush surrogates, and angry Hillary Clinton loyalists eager to destroy him.

Will Trump keep the burned bridges burned, or make amends with political enemies?

Will he hold true to the promises made to his supporters, or instead cave to the pressures and intimidation of the political players with whom he will be forced to work with?

Will Trump be threatened by New World Order figures, if he defies their agenda?

According to Roger Stone, an outside advisor to Trump, the greatest concern is for Trump’s personal safety.

Transition of tension

International reaction to Trump has been mixed, adding to global uncertainties. Trump’s win signaled an improvement in US-Russia relations, possibly averting an immediate nuclear conflict that would have come with a Hillary Clinton victory. Similarly, the leadership in China prefers Trump to future dealings with the even more antagonistic Clinton.

Trump and Obama had what appeared to be a cordial meeting to discuss the transition of power. However, it was a noticeably cooler meeting compared to the gleeful handovers between crime partners Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and between George W. Bush and Obama.

However, Obama still has over one month in power, and can still start or provoke a war, set off false flag events, or cause financial chaos to force Trump’s presidency into a corner, even before it begins. A massive cyberattack of Russian banks on November 10 remains unexplained.

Obama would know this trick. In 2008, he inherited a financial crisis deliberately set off by Wall Street and the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration, an intractable war, and a deadlocked Congress (including Republicans who swore that they would never cooperate with him).

The hordes of “Madam President”

A behind-the-scenes counter coup staged by whistleblowers, and current and former military and intelligence officers, may have foiled Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. As previously written:

There is one more remote possibility that would cast [FBI Director] Comey’s actions in a different light. Perhaps the counter coup has actually done its job, by having now publicly exposed the existence and possession of highly damaging evidence against the Clintons and much of Washington, capable of bringing the entire system down. The Hillary campaign did lose significant ground in the past week, while Trump has surged since Comey’s October 28 flip-flop. Maybe this “nudge” was enough. If the threat of exposure alone has been enough to force the Clinton campaign to “stand down”, even if the most damaging revelations never see the light of day, then the counter coup has given the Clintons and Washington a dose of their own blackmail poison. “Stand down, and we will let you go without exposing you. Or we will blow up the entire system.

In this highly optimistic ‘peaceful surrender that leaves the system intact’ scenario, which was suggested in the Steve Pieczenik video statement, the Establishment will permit Trump to win, and Hillary will be allowed to walk away like Richard Nixon: disgraced but not prosecuted.

Trump’s win may have been a result of this process. Another possibility is that Trump himself cut a deal, allowing Hillary to get off the hook (altogether or lightly), perhaps with Obama pardoning her, if she stood down.

But have Hillary Clinton and her apparatus given up?

Hillary may have put on the show of concession, but this has not stopped operatives from orchestrating violent protests around the country, fomenting carnage to reverse the election, to avenge their victimized martyr queen. The violence reeks of Democratic Party fronts exposed by Project Veritas. They are pushing America towards a civil war, as well as to an all-out race war.

The Obama administration has not lifted a finger to stop any of it so far.

Violent propaganda about “racist/sexist/misogynist/fascist/Russian agent/Hitler” Trump is being pumped out around the clock by the Clinton-controlled mainstream corporate media. Every mainstream newscast pushes a strong anti-Trump line. Hollywood celebrities and entertainment figures, whose dimwitted views drive much of popular opinion, are uniformly massing against Trump, calling for boycotts and protests. While the facts of Hillary Clinton’s criminality and fanatical views are whitewashed, the depiction of Trump as the world-ending demon has been coordinated to fuel and expand street violence.

The Clinton forces, who engaged in election fraud throughout the campaign and on election night, are now accusing the Trump campaign of fraud. They are pushing to flip the election results on December 19 by  strong-arming electors. They are likely concocting ways to add “previously lost” votes to the Hillary vote counts in disputed swing states.

If indeed a counter-coup was what “encouraged” Clinton to stand down, then yet another one may be needed between now and January 2017 to stop one last ditch attempt by the Clintons to grab power.

Too tall an order?

Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters and fans are embracing bombastic hopes that he will lead the greatest American revolution since 1776; that he will “drain the swamp”, clean out Washington, and usher in a sunny American future.

The odds are against him. But Trump is a businessman, and the art of business deals is compromise and negotiation, not purity. He must control the looming figures within his own cabinet, defend against legions of political enemies, battle a hostile Congress, a vicious mainstream media, and deal with hatred from segments of a deeply divided nation.

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Where are UN Calls for Regime Change in Saudi Arabia? Barbaric Punishment of 1000 Lashes Continues to Be Inflicted on Saudi Journalist Raif Badawi

November 12th, 2016 by Carla Stea

It is clear that Saudi Arabia’s ability to bribe and blackmail the highest United Nations officials, including, by his own admission, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, makes a mockery of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and of the United Nations itself. 

It is a disgrace that. after blackmailing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and bullying him into removing Saudi Arabia from the “ list of shame” for mass slaughter of civilians in Yemen,  and Saudi Arabia’s egregious and flagrant violation of Articles 5 and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights, as well as  its violation of the Universal  Convention on the Prohibition of Torture, Saudi Arabia, nevertheless, has been permitted to bribe and bully its way  on to a seat on the Human Rights Council.  This transpired last week despite Saudi Arabia’s heinous violations of human rights, both domestically and internationally.   Saudi Arabia should, instead be referred to the International Criminal Court for the tyrannical and barbarous practices of its regime, one of the most notorious in modern history.

As the precedent of referring countries to the Security Council for alleged gross human rights abuses has been established, the case of Saudi Arabia should be “seized” by the UN Security Council, for referral  to the International  Criminal Court.  Why is the United Nations totally impotent in prohibiting  or sanctioning Saudi Arabia’s gross human rights violations?  Why is the UN failing to effectively protect Saudi journalist Raif Badawi, sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for criticizing the notorious Saudi tyranny, and the country’s infamous hardline religious establishment which inflicts barbarous Sharia law?  The torture of Badawi, the excruciating torture of 1000 lashes, in addition to 10 years imprisonment is the most obvious example of systemic and egregious Saudi human rights violations.  According to Dr. John Hayward, the doctor who evaluates torture victims for the organization “Freedom From Torture, the torture inflicted on Badawi and innumerable others not only causes depression and can precipitate suicide, but causes the trans-generational trauma which will inflict agonizing suffering on his wife and three children, and their decendants.

While there are loud calls for regime change in Syria, where are calls for regime change in Saudi Arabia?  Why has the UN not prohibited Sharia law, which condemned a 12 year old girl to death by stoning  in Somalia for refusing a forced marriage?

Where is the line between religious “freedom” and colluding in the tortures and massacres inflicted by religion, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, to the Sharia torture of Badawi?  Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:  “No one shall be subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.”  Article 19 states:  “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;  this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”  Raif Badawi is the victim of criminal infringement of these rights.

Saudi Arabia is the most notorious example of the monstrous hyprocrisy denounced by the great philosopher, Freidrich Nietzsche, who, in abhorring religion, exposed the duplicity of religious leaders who inflict sadistic rules on their subjects, the very restrictions which they themselves flagrantly ignore.  Nietzsche’s “The Geneology of Morals” is the ultimate scathing condemnation of this hypocrisy.

The culpability of Saudi Arabia was highlighted in a 1980 documentary entitled: “The Death of a Princess,” which exposed the licentious behavior indulged in by the Saudi royal family.  The documentary filmed and revealed the Saudi monarchy’s depravity, in which the Royal males are notorious for having harems, while their pampered wives cruise the streets in limosines and recruit men whom they fancy for amusing sexual adventures.  This very same Saudi monarchy pronounced the death sentence, by beheading, of a Saudi Princess who fell in love with a student, not of royal birth, and married him.  Both she and her husband were beheaded.  The famous documentary was produced by the British, who coveted Saudi oil, and, cowering before Saudi threats to cut off their oil supply,  immediately withdrew presentation of this documentary which revealed the degeneracy and extreme cruelty of the Saudi monarchy and the entire system.

Where are UN calls for Regime Change in Saudi Arabia?  Since the UN Security Council authorized the destruction of two of the most progressive states in the Arab world, Iraq and Libya.  where is UN Security Council authorization for regime change in one of the most corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Arab world?   Where is the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) boasted about by the United  Nations, and why is this “Responsibility to Protect” not extended to Saudi journalist Raif Badawi, demanding that the 1000 last punishment inflicted by Saudi Arabia be overturned?  Does Saudi Arabia control the United Nations?

As an ally of the United States, under US protection, a strong case could be made that Saudi Arabia controls the UN, dictating policy to the Secretary-General, burying its criminal violations of the UN Charter, and now stealing a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.  How much was paid to craven UN member states to collude in the theft of this seat on the UN Human Rights Council?  And how much was paid in treasure and threats by the Saudi protector to eject Russia from the Human Rights Council?

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