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In Western Ghouta, the Syrian forces managed to take control over the road between the southern side of al-Darousheh village and the Air-Defense housings. Following this, Syrian troops attacked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian al-Qaeda branch) and its allies in the eastern outskirts of Khan al-Sheih. There is no confirmed information about casualties of the sides.

Since November 8, the Syrian army’s Tiger Forces and the Desert Hawks Brigade have made a series of attacks on the Minyan area, liberating about 90% of this area from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and its allies from Jaish al-Fatah.

Clashes are ongoing in the neighborhoods of al-Assad and Jam’iyat al-Zahra in western Aleppo. At the same time, Syrian army and Hezbollah threaten the southern flank of Jaish al-Fatah’s positions in al-Assad. Considering the recent developments, the government forces would have control of al-Assad in the nearest future.

In the recent days, the government forces liberated the 1070 Apartment Project, the Al-Rakhmih Hill, the Motah Hill and seized the strategic area of Hikma School in western Aleppo.

On November 10, intense firefights erupted in the ‘Oweija District in northeastern Aleppo and reports appeared that the Syrian military was ready to re-launch the offensive in eastern Aleppo.

The coalition of Turkish-backed militant groups, known as the Free Syrian Army, and the Turkish Armed Forces took control of a number of areas in the direction of the strategic ISIS-controlled town of al-Bab in the province of Aleppo. The Ankara-led forces seized Musaybin, Zamkiyah and Şhex Alwane and deployed in about 11 km from al-Bab.

Turkey’s Fırtına howitzers shot 90 ISIS targets 306 times and 5 Kurdish PKK and YPG targets 5 times. The report confirms that the Turkish military continues to target Kurdish forces in Syria despite a shaky US-backed truce between the YPG and the Ankara-led forces. Clashes between the YPG and Turkish-backed militants were reported on the al-Hassiah-Tuwainiyah road.

Tensions between the Ankara regime and the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the YPG, have grown significantly since the SDF announced the advance on Raqqa with the support of US-led anti-ISIS coalition. Turkey was excluded from the operation.

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President Donald Trump? How did such a thing happen? A competent and purposeful Clinton campaign should have beaten Donald Trump. How did Hillary Clinton and one-percenter Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory?

It’s over. The crotch-grabbing racist con man beat the lying corporate warmonger. Donald Trump is president-elect of the US.

It didn’t have to happen that way. Trump’s winning 58 million votes were a hair fewer than Clinton’s popular vote, a million or two less than Republican losers McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012, six and ten million behind Obama’s 2012 and 2008 numbers. The buffoonish Trump was elected with such a low turnout because Hillary Clinton’s campaign was even less competent and credible. To borrow the condescending language Barack Obama deploys before black audiences, Hillary’s campaign never gave Cousin Pookie much reason to get up off the couch and vote.

Republican and Democratic parties are alike owned by their one-percenter investor/contributors. Democratic party shot callers decided they’d risk losing with Hillary Clinton rather than winning with Bernie Sanders. So Democratic party leadership, their media allies and the entire black political class got behind Hillary Clinton and helped collude and conspire to eliminate VT Senator Bernie Sanders, the Democrat with the best chance against any Republican opponent.

Once Bernie Sanders was eliminated Hillary waged a lazy and ineffective campaign, playing a hand with just three cards.

The first was the broken record of how unthinkable and unprecedented a disaster a Trump presidency would be… a clownish sexual predator who pronounced climate change a hoax and would criminalize abortion, open concentration camps, repeal Obamacare, legalize stop and frisk, build a wall, appoint neanderthals to the Supreme Court, deport six or ten million immigrants instead of Obama’s paltry two million and who might be in hock to the Russians. Except for the thing about the Russians, it’s roughly the same picture Democrats have drawn of every Republican presidential candidate since Nixon. A story told that many times just gets old. Party leaders counted on it anyway, and it wasn’t enough. That was incompetence.

A second and relatively weak card Democrats played was conjuring up an Imaginary Hillary Clinton, a defender of womens’ and human rights who held hands with the moms of killer cop victims, and occasionally mumbled about black lives mattering and the need to reform the criminal justice system. But Hillary’s decades-long record as a tool of banksters, billionaires and one-percenters was so well established in the public mind that Imaginary Hillary was a difficult sell, not credible.

The one-percenter Democrats’ third card, on which they staked a lot was the early and unconditional endorsement of Hillary Clinton by the First Black President and Michelle. This had proven effective in Chicago in 2011 and 2015 where Obama’s blessings in 2011 and 2015 were key to fastening Rahm Emanuel on the city’s jugular vein after a half century of Daley rule. The entire black political class got behind Hillary too, from civil rights icons who ruminated on how they hadn’t seen Bernie Sanders back in the day to some other wise heads who assured us a vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka was an act of “narcissism” or maybe white privilege. But at the end of the First Black President’s time in office, the Obama endorsement didn’t carry the clout it used to.

Thanks to two generations of lazy Democrats who refused to try to consolidate the victory of the 1965 Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court in 2013 nullified its key provisions, enabling a constellation of laws and practices aimed at limiting access to the ballot on the part of students, minorities, the elderly and constituencies likely to vote Democratic. In the 2016 election cycle these practices stripped another few million Democratic voters from the rolls.

All in all, Democrats were the authors of their own defeat this presidential election. Hillary couldn’t campaign against the one percent because her party is a party of the one percent. Hillary Democrats including Bernie himself after the convention could no longer acknowledge joblessness, low wages, lack of housing, permanent war or the high cost of medical care or they’d be campaigning against themselves.

Donald Trump didn’t win because of some mysterious upsurge of racism and nativism. He won because Hillary Clinton’s campaign was even less inspiring and less competent than his own, and worked hard to snatch its own defeat from the jaws of victory. America might not deserve President Donald Trump. But Hillary Clinton didn’t deserve to win,

Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and co-chair of the GA Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached at [email protected].

For much of the last six years since winning the hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup, Qatar appeared to be taking a slow and torturous path towards some degree of reform. Yet, in an increasingly conservative world in which human rights are put on the backburner, fears among rights and trade union activists that lofty Qatari promises of labour reform and some degree of greater liberalism may not be much more than just lofty undertakings appear to be gaining steam.

To be sure, the controversial awarding of the hosting rights has contributed to more open discussion in Qatar of hitherto taboo subjects including the rights of workers who constitute the vast majority of the population of the tiny, energy-rich Gulf state; the definition of Qatari identity; what rights, if any, non-Qataris should have in obtaining Qatari citizenship; and the rights and social position of women and gays.

A 28-year old Qatari, in the latest pushing of the envelope that brings into the open issues that in the past were kept private because of Qataris’ sense of privacy and family honour, earlier this month decried in an article in Doha News that government policy denies young men and women the right to marry the person of their choice.

Writing under the pseudonym Yousef, the young Qatari described how he was forced to divorce his wife of East European origin after the government refused to sanction the marriage and give his spouse a residence permit because she was not a Muslim even though she had converted.

“Our marriage changed me. It took me outside my bubble, and made me question our culture’s values. I didn’t understand why, for example, we Qatari men are allowed to go to clubs where alcohol is served, but at the same time the committee was telling me that my wife’s culture and traditions did not fit ours. This was not making any sense to me,” Yousef wrote.

“I feel that the Qatari government is playing with people’s lives. It hurt to see my country talking about human rights on the global stage, but then denying citizens the right to marry whoever they choose. I want to know why my request was refused. Was it because my family isn’t important enough? Do we not know the right people? I know plenty of Qatari men married to foreign women who got their approval in less than a month, just because they know someone in the government. And why is it ok to marry a second wife or a third wife, but refuse a man permission to marry just one? he added.

Yousef ultimately came to the conclusion that “I will have to leave Qatar and live abroad if I want to get married to a foreigner. I hate that it has to be like that. I love my country. I don’t want to leave Qatar or leave my family, but what options do I have?”

Like the rights of migrant workers caught in a sponsorship system that puts them at the mercy of their employers, Yousef’s plight goes to the heart of Qatar’s most existential problem: the viability of a demography in which the citizenry accounts for a mere 12 percent of the population and fears that any change will endanger their grip on their society, culture and state.

Six years into the preparations for the 2022 World Cup, the belief among many activists as well as world soccer body FIFA officials that Qatar’s stark demographic reality was forcing it to move slowly on reforming, if not abolishing the sponsorship or kafala system is wearing thin.

To be sure, Qatar in the wake of the awarding of the World Cup and in contrast to other Gulf states initially cooperated with it critics who took it to task for the labour and living conditions of workers constructing World Cup-related infrastructure. The Qatari 2022 committee as well as a few other major Qatari organizations adopted standards and model contracts in cooperation with the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

New measures designed to streamline and curtail abuse of the sponsorship or kafala system are scheduled to come into law before the end of the year. The measures fall short however of granting workers’ basic rights.

Against the backdrop of a recent Amnesty report that counters assertions of the Qatari committee that it is applying the standards but cannot enforce them on non-World Cup contractors, FIFA is likely to take on more direct responsibility for the issue and come under greater pressure regarding the labour issue.

With a Dutch trade union taking FIFA to court in Switzerland on the issue of labour rights in the Gulf state, the soccer body has announced that starting with the Qatar World Cup it would scrap local organising committees for its flagship event.

The 52-page Amnesty report listed eight ways in which World Cup workers employed for the showcase Khalifa International Stadium were still being abused and exploited. It charged that despite efforts to the contrary workers still pay absorbent recruitment fees, live in appalling conditions, are lured to Qatar with false salary and job promises, do not get paid on time, cannot freely leave Qatar or change jobs, and are threatened by employers when they dare complain.

The Qatari 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy asserted in a statement that “challenges in worker conditions existing during early 2015” that had been identified by Amnesty had largely been addressed by June of this year. It said the problems involved four of some 40 companies involved in work on the Khalifa stadium and that three of those firms had been banned

“The tone of Amnesty International’s latest assertions paint a misleading picture and do nothing to contribute to our efforts. We have always maintained this World Cup will act as a catalyst for change — it will not be built on the back of exploited workers. We wholly reject any notion that Qatar is unfit to host the World Cup,” the statement said.

The Qatari committee, in a further indication that Qatar may be backtracking on promises, said that current restrictions on alcohol consumption would be upheld during the World Cup. Qatar had earlier said that venues for alcohol consumption would be expanded from hotel bars to specific locations around the country during the tournament.

Not that alcohol is the litmus test of a successful Qatari World. The tournament moreover may attract a different demography with far more fans from the Middle East, North Africa and the Muslim world who care less about alcohol than their Western counterparts.

Nonetheless, the backtracking on alcohol coupled with increasingly strained Qatari relations with human rights groups and trade unions, and the snail pace of labour reform casts a shadow on Qatari sincerity.

Qatar may well feel that the rise of populist leaders across the globe could reduce pressure on it to embark on real reform. That could be true. Yet, by the same token, populist leaders who ride a wave of nationalism may also have to also be seen to be standing up for the rights of their nationals working in foreign lands.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a recently published book with the same title, and also just published Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario.

In this article I’m breaking a personal vow. It is a vow that I never made publicly but kept internally for a decade or more, probably since around 9/11. Anyone who has followed my writing over the years may have noticed that I rarely comment on American politics. While I have written widely on US foreign policy, I almost never write or talk about US internal or domestic politics.

I have long understood the US administration(s)—with the exception of JFK’s brief tenure—to be a puppet show that is two-parts smoke screen, one-part entertainment and one-part distraction from the neo-con, war mongering, globalist deep state that actually calls the shots. This is so true for me that when other people talk about US politics with deep seriousness—i.e., as if political candidates, parties, democracy, a free press, etc., actually matter or exist in the US—I almost automatically tune out. While all politics is theatre to a certain extent, the US is exceptional in this regard. And the notion that there is much that is real, authentic or autonomous in US government and politics is so foreign to me that I cannot connect to it, or respond to it, with much seriousness.

With all that said, today I break my silence, in order to comment briefly on the 2016 US presidential election in the aftermath of Trump’s victory. At the beginning of this presidential campaign, I thought Donald Trump’s candidacy might be a publicity stunt; like a bombastic prime time reality show. But I was aware that the hard-core neocon, war mongering Hilary Clinton was the real danger, in terms of foreign policy and international politics. Her policies and past crimes are completely in-line with the current US-imperial agenda of endless war and military might, and this makes her far far more dangerous than Trump. It also made her far more likely to win the election, I presumed.

His extreme outrageousness and egomania aside, I felt from the outset that Trump is perceived as a threat to the global corporate, militarized establishment and its political allies, and that this is the real reason he has been demonized adhominem by the political establishment and the media in the US, across party lines. Most democratic and republican politicians and media pundits are part of the global establishment machine.

Trump’s greatest crime seemed to be his unwillingness to acquiesce to the global establishment. His views on foreign policy, military spending and economic and trade policy demonstrate this. Because of his apparent threat to the global military industrial, US-led, global banking/war empire, I was certain that the deep state and global elites simply would not allow him to win. Even if they had to rig the elections in an already rigged political system, I was certain they would not “let him” win.

Now that he has, I’m not sure what to think, especially considering FBI director Comey’s sudden flip flop and condemnation of Clinton, reopening the investigation into the Clinton email (email Gate) scandal, in the eleventh hour. Does the FBI wish to see Trump in office? If so, what does that mean about his threat to the establishment? Is Trump the beginning of the end of the global establishment or is he just a revision, a new direction, a preparation for a new iteration of the status quo? Of course, Trump is part of the elite given his immense wealth and corporate muscle. But as the Centre for Research on Globalization explains, the elites are not a monolith [1], and there may be divisions and factions within the global elite that do indeed oppose the present and historical direction of the global establishment. Is that what Trump represents, the division within the global power structure? Does he have friends in high places that wish to revamp the current global militarized corporate and banking oligarchy? Or, is he but its latest iteration of it? Is he a gateway to what is to come–Martial Law, etc [2]? It remains to be seen.

For now, I’m guardedly optimistic about the new direction that economic policy and US foreign policy could take under his presidency. If he is willing (and able) to rein in either, then he will have surpassed the broken promises of the previous US administration. He has stated numerous times that he opposes many elements of the war on terror (the invasion of Libya, current US operations in Syria and attempts to oust the existing regime, covert support of ISIS by the US, etc) and the military industrial complex. And while he is no doubt a capitalist, he is more of the old-school nationalist capitalist or protectionist-isolationist kind, not the neoliberal global capitalism that has put everyone out of work. This alone made Trump better than Hilary, so to speak. But the fact that he is no doubt part of the economic elite and that he was able to win at all, despite resistance from all sides of the political and media spectrum (both democratic and republican), raises questions.

Notes

[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-elections-november-chaos-what-youre-not-being-told/5554954

[2] http://www.globalresearch.ca/joining-the-dots-why-the-establishment-hates-donald-trump/5518526

The establishment including the Military-Industrial Complex and the mainstream-media (MSM) put their money on Hillary Clinton and lost. They placed their bets on Clinton who was supposed to become the U.S. president but were clearly defeated as Donald Trump cruised to victory. Hillary Clinton sent her campaign chairman John Podesta to inform her loyal grieving supporters to “go home and get some sleep” and that “We will be back and we’ll have more to say tomorrow.” The following day she conceded to Donald Trump. Clinton must have been completely distraught by her loss (she was probably crying her tears out the night before on the missed opportunity to start World War III by launching a thermo-nuclear war against Russia). For now, Hillary Clinton is history.

The mainstream-media (MSM) particularly The New York Times published an article titled ‘Donald Trump’s Victory Promises to Upend the International Order’ by Peter Baker which claims that Trump’s victory is “upending an international order that prevailed for decades and raising profound questions about America’s place in the world.”America is the engine of the ‘international order’ or the ‘New World Order’ (NWO) in fact; it has intervened in numerous countries by launching wars of aggression and has instigated numerous coups since the end of World War II. They have imposed international trade policies that favored U.S. corporations, advocated for open borders on an international level and maintained U.S. dollar hegemony as the world’s reserve currency. The New York Times article claims that Trump’s “America First” policy will have repercussions worldwide:

For the first time since before World War II, Americans chose a president who promised to reverse the internationalism practiced by predecessors of both parties and to build walls both physical and metaphorical. Mr. Trump’s win foreshadowed an America more focused on its own affairs while leaving the world to take care of itself.

The outsider revolution that propelled him to power over the Washington establishment of both political parties also reflected a fundamental shift in international politics evidenced already this year by events like Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union. Mr. Trump’s success could fuel the populist, nativist, nationalist, closed-border movements already so evident in Europe and spreading to other parts of the world

Global markets fell after Tuesday’s election and many around the world scrambled to figure out what it might mean in parochial terms. For Mexico, it seemed to presage a new era of confrontation with its northern neighbor. For Europe and Asia, it could rewrite the rules of modern alliances, trade deals, and foreign aid. For the Middle East, it foreshadowed a possible alignment with Russia and fresh conflict with Iran

Is Donald Trump really an anti-establishment president?

The establishment is concerned that Trump would “shake-up” long standing policies under the Democratic and Republican duopoly that benefitted private interest groups:

He promised to build a wall along the Mexican border and temporarily bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States. He questioned Washington’s longstanding commitment to NATO allies, called for cutting foreign aid, praised President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, vowed to rip up international trade deals, assailed China and suggested Asian allies develop nuclear weapons

“I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall” Trump said in 2015. Trump’s plan to build a wall along the borders of Mexico will not stop immigrants from crossing the borders without addressing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which has devastated millions of small Mexican farmers. In a February 2014 report by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch titled ‘NAFTA’s 20-Year Legacy and the Fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’ specified NAFTA’s impact especially on Mexican farmers:

The agricultural provisions of NAFTA, which removed Mexican tariffs on corn imports and eliminated programs supporting small farmers but did not discipline U.S. subsidies, led to widespread dislocation in the Mexican countryside. Amidst a NAFTA-spurred influx of cheap U.S. corn, the price paid to Mexican farmers for the corn that they grew fell by 66 percent after NAFTA, forcing many to abandon farming. Mexico’s participation in NAFTA also helped propel a change to the Mexican Constitution’s land reform, undoing provisions that guaranteed small plots – “ejidos” – to the millions of Mexicans living in rural villages. As corn prices plummeted, indebted farmers lost their land, which newly could be acquired by foreign firms that consolidated prime acres into large plantations. 

As an exposé in the New Republic put it, 

As cheap American foodstuffs flooded Mexico’s markets and as U.S. agribusiness moved in, 1.1 million small farmers – and 1.4 million other Mexicans dependent upon the farm sector – were driven out of work between 1993 and 2005. Wages dropped so precipitously that today the income of a farm laborer is one-third that of what it was before NAFTA. As jobs disappeared and wages sank, many of these rural Mexicans emigrated, swelling the ranks of the 12 million illegal immigrants living incognito and competing for low-wage jobs in the United States

Mexico’s economic problems caused by NAFTA did not end there; in fact hunger became increasingly prevalent. NAFTA increased the poverty rate adding more than 19 million more Mexicans. More Mexicans are now living in poverty than they did 20 years ago. Today 60 percent of people live below the poverty line due to NAFTA’s policies:

Although the price paid to Mexican farmers for corn plummeted after NAFTA, the deregulated retail price of tortillas – Mexico’s staple food – shot up 279 percent in the pact’s first 10 years. NAFTA included service sector and investment rules that facilitated consolidation of grain trading, milling, baking and retail so that in short order the relatively few remaining large firms dominating these activities were able to raise consumer prices and reap enormous profits as corn costs simultaneously declined. This result stands in sharp contrast to promises by NAFTA’s boosters that Mexican consumers would benefit from the pact. 

Prior to NAFTA, 36 percent of Mexico’s rural population earned less than the minimum income needed for food, a share that grew by nearly 50 percent in the agreement’s first three years. On the 10-year anniversary of NAFTA, the Washington Post reported, “19 million more Mexicans are living in poverty than 20 years ago, according to the Mexican government and international organizations. About 24 million – nearly one in every four Mexicans – are classified as extremely poor and unable to afford adequate food.” Today, over half of the Mexican population, and over 60 percent of the rural population, still fall below the poverty line, despite the promises made by NAFTA’s proponents

NAFTA was a decisive victory for U.S. President Bill Clinton and the interest groups he represented behind closed doors. Trump wants to rewrite NAFTA. If Trump’s plan is genuine and it moves forward, Mexico can possibly regain its farming sector and provide the Mexican people with jobs that would allow Mexican immigrants residing in the U.S. to return home. One of Trump’s policies is the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants which is highly unpopular among many Latinos and pro-immigrant advocates.

As for NATO troops who are supported by U.S. taxpayers, Trump told Charles Lane and the editorial board of the Washington Post on March 21st, that he does “not” want to pull out NATO. Here is what he said:

LANE: As you know, the whole theory of NATO from the beginning was to keep the United States involved in the long term in Europe to balance, to promote a balance of power in that region so we wouldn’t have a repeat of World War I and World War 2. And it seems to be like what you’re saying is very similar to what President Obama said to Jeffrey Goldberg, in that we have allies that become free riders. So it seems like there’s some convergence with the president there. What concerns me about both is that to some extent it was always thought to be in our interest that we, yes, we would take some of the burden on, yes, even if the net-net was not 100 percent, even steven, with the Germans. So I’d like to hear you say very specifically, you know, with respect to NATO, what is your ask of these other countries? Right, you’ve painted it in very broad terms, but do you have a percent of GDP that they should be spending on defense? Tell me more. Because it’s not that you want to pull the U.S. out.

TRUMP: No, I don’t want to pull it out. NATO was set up at a different time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country. We’re borrowing, we’re borrowing all of this money. We’re borrowing money from China, which is a sort of an amazing situation. But things are a much different thing. NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe but we’re spending a lot of money. Number 1, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed. I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved. And I think we bear the, you know, not only financially, we bear the biggest brunt of it. Obama has been stronger on the Ukraine than all the other countries put together, and those other countries right next door to the Ukraine. And I just say we have, I’m not even knocking it, I’m just saying I don’t think it’s fair, we’re not treated fair. I don’t think we’re treated fair, Charles, anywhere. If you look everything we have. You know, South Korea is very rich. Great industrial country. And yet we’re not reimbursed fairly for what we do. We’re constantly, you know, sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games, doing other. We’re reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing

Trump will support NATO as long as the EU pays for it.

One other positive note, Trump does want a better relationship with Russia who has been fighting alongside Syrian government forces against the Islamic State. Trump wants the U.S. and Russian forces to work together to defeat the Islamic State. Putin has expressed his willingness to work with Trump to rebuild a relationship that is mutually beneficial. The New York Timesalso made accusations that “with Mr. Trump praising Mr. Putin and American investigators concluding that Russians had hacked Democratic email messages.” There is no proof that Russia hacked the Democratic National Convention’s (DNC) emails or that Trump is linked to Vladimir Putin. The New York Times itself reported on October 31st ‘Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia’, perhaps Mr. Baker forgot to read his own news organization’s articles on the subject:

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump

Baker’s article also mentions that Trump has “assailed China” when it comes to trade. Will Trump create a trade war against China? Trump has criticized China and wants to start “levying tariffs” on China’s exports to the U.S. In an interesting twist, Trump also wants to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement with 12-nations led by the U.S. designed to isolate China. U.S-China trade deals will become complicated under Trump. A trade war between the U.S. and China could become a possibility under a Trump presidency.

Trump supports Israel and some in Israel support Trump. However, Baker makes the case for Israel’s concerns regarding the U.S. role in the Middle East:

Israel was another place where Mr. Trump enjoyed some support, mainly because of the perception that he would give the country a freer hand in its handling of the longstanding conflict with the Palestinians. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders and commentators worried about a broader disengagement from a Middle East awash in war, terrorism and upheaval.

“Decisions cannot be postponed,” said Yohanan Plesner, a former member of the Israeli Parliament now serving as president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “The situation in Syria is very chaotic. The unrest in the region is continuing. America has to decide whether it wants to play an active role in shaping the developments of the region”

Washington wants to remain in the Middle East for its natural resources. Israel also needs Washington to continue to fund their military (Israel Defense Forces) for any conflict against their neighbors and to maintain their illegal occupation. Trump will not change that arrangement. In fact, Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital defying international law standards which would instigate an uprising by the Palestinians. Trump would also raise tensions with Iran (who he called a “state sponsor of terror”) by insisting that Iran’s Nuclear Deal must be renegotiated. The question is will the Iranian government renegotiate with the Trump administration? I don’t think so. Expect more conflicts and regime change in the Middle East. A Trump presidency would be a disaster in the Middle East.

Will Donald Trump Stop the ‘New World Order’? Questions Linger

Can Trump’s foreign policies stop the NWO in its tracks? Will Trump expand the military and give it unconditional support with more federal funding or will he close U.S. bases around the world? Would Trump escalate or deescalate the war in Syria? Will Trump reach out to Vladimir Putin and work together to defeat the terrorist networks originally created by Washington? Will he pull back U.S. bases out of Europe and elsewhere encircling Russia and China? Will Trump support “regime change” in Latin America? Would he pull out U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq? Would he continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemen? Would he give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians or its neighbors including Hezbollah and Syria? All remains to be seen. Trump has said that he will be both “reliable” and “unpredictable” as president in his foreign policy speech last April. So tighten your seatbelts, the planet might be in for a ride.

As for Trump’s domestic policies, he said he would cut taxes for businesses and working class families and would immediately eliminate Obamacare, which is something he can move forward with in the first 90 days in office. Would he eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy of doing business in the U.S.? Would he also implement a nationwide “Stop and Frisk” policy in an attempt to reduce crime which is clearly a fascist policy? Would he seek the arrest of Hillary Clinton and seek a criminal investigation into the Clinton Foundation? There are many more questions on what Trump would do when he assumes office this coming January.

Many say Trump is “anti-establishment” but at the same time he is choosing prominent members of the establishment like James Woolsey, a former CIA director and a neoconservative as his senior advisor on national security issues. Woolsey was an advocate for the war in Iraq and the Middle East. Trump initially has called the war in Iraq and Libya “disasters” now he selects an extremist advocate who is for war in the Middle East. You know where this is going. Trump’s Vice-President Mike Pence is also an ultra-right wing war monger. Pence mentioned that a safe zone should be established and launch a military strike against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad to protect civilians in Aleppo. He would also like to deploy a missile defense shield in the Czech Republic and Poland to counter Russia. That is something Russia would not tolerate. Trump would most likely authorize regime change in Latin America as Telesur reported on October 25th “With a victory in November everything will change, that change includes standing in solidarity with the suffering of the people of Cuba and Venezuela against the oppression of the Castro and Maduro regimes” Trump said at campaign rally in St. Augustine, Florida. Trump has said many things that are questionable especially when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.

What is interesting about Trump’s victory is that the MSM was writing him off as a serious contender. Trump did it without spending enormous amounts of money as did the Clinton campaign. The MSM gave him all the publicity he needed and ran with it. The majority of people who voted for Trump were voting against Hillary Clinton and the establishment. Many voters were also Bernie Sanders supporters (who were angry with Hillary Clinton undermining his campaign) and independents. With Trump, there are many uncertainties and that is something the world would have to learn to live with. The irony is that as horrible as Hillary Clinton was, at least you knew what to expect and that is something no one can ever deny.

In the two days following the election of Donald Trump as US president, Wall Street celebrated by driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a new record high. At the close of trading on Thursday, the Dow was up by an additional 218 points, or 1.2 percent. This brought it to 18,807, surpassing the previous high of 18,636 reached last August. The index has moved up by 5 percent this week.

The financial aristocracy is salivating over the prospect of major corporate and income tax cuts, increased military spending, and the scrapping of regulations, especially on banks and finance.

Trump has pledged to slash the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent and cut income taxes for the ultra-wealthy to the tune of hundreds of thousands and, in some cases, millions of dollars.

The other major factor behind the stock market surge is the political support for President-Elect Trump from the Democratic Party.

Democrats, beginning with President Obama, who has promised a smooth transition to the new administration, through to Hillary Clinton, “left” liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren and the self-styled “socialist,” Senator Bernie Sanders, have all pledged to work with the incoming president.

The rise in the Dow is paralleled by an increase in the broader-based Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which has posted a weekly gain of 4 percent. Some of the biggest gains in this index were recorded by banks in anticipation of higher interest rates, which boost profits from loans, and the scrapping of regulations on finance.

Trump has pledged the repeal of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which, while doing little to curb the predatory and outright criminal activities that led to the crisis of 2008, includes some regulations that finance regards as restricting its profit-making.

Financial shares in the S&P 500 rose 3.7 percent yesterday, taking their gains for the week to 11 percent. Shares of the New York finance houses Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase saw some of the biggest increases.

Firms in the armaments industry are also licking their chops in view of Trump’s opposition to the automatic cuts in military spending enacted under budget sequestration legislation that was enacted in 2011. Trump has advocated increased military spending across the board.

Others anticipating profit windfalls are pharmaceutical and health care companies, which saw their stocks rise on the prospect of their pricing policies facing less regulation under a Trump administration.

The only area of the market to decline has been the hi-tech sector. This is based on fears that Trump’s nationalist economic agenda, including his commitment to rewrite trade deals and enact measures against China, could impact their cost structure, because their bottom line depends so heavily on access to cheap labour through global supply chains. There are also concerns that immigration restrictions could affect their ability to bring in highly qualified staff.

The view in the markets that restrictions on the banks may be eased, if not entirely lifted, has been encouraged by reports that Trump’s transition team, headed by Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, may be considering Texas House of Representatives member Jeb Hensarling for the post of treasury secretary. Hensarling is a major opponent of the Dodd-Frank legislation and a critic of Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet Yellen. He chairs the House Financial Services Committee.

In brief note on its web site, the Trump transition team said it would be “working to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act and replace it with new policies to encourage economic growth and job-creation.” Hensarling described the statement as “music to my ears.”

Another clear sign that financial moguls are going to play a major role in the new administration is a report from the business news channel CNBC that Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan, is also being considered for treasury secretary, along with the present front-runner for the position, the Trump team’s campaign finance chief Steven Mnuchin.

Mnuchin started his career at Goldman Sachs, where he amassed a personal fortune of $40 million before branching out on his own.

A key appointment will be Trump’s chief of staff, where one of the leading contenders is Steve Bannon, who took over as Trump’s campaign chairman in August. Another former Wall Street operative for Goldman Sachs, Bannon has been head of the ultra-right-wing Breitbart News since 2012, making it the vehicle for the promotion of “white nationalism” and fascistic opposition to immigrants and minorities. He has criticised the Republican congressional leadership for being too soft on immigration and foreign trade.

Within just two days of the election, the response on Wall Street and the nature of those being lined up to fill key positions point to the character of the new administration. Trump has said he will run his presidency like he ran his businesses–in other words, through a combination of speculation, confidence tricks and, above all, a ruthless drive for profit.

His entire campaign was in the long tradition of American tricksters, con artists and snake oil salesmen. Tapping into the legitimate grievances of millions of workers and their hostility to the banks and corporations, the Democratic Party and the trade union apparatuses, he is organising an administration based on those same banks and corporations.

There are also other, even more significant historical parallels. In the 1930s, the regime of Adolf Hitler provided an immediate boost to the German economy based on an economic nationalist agenda, combined with a hothouse program of infrastructure spending and armaments. However, this economic agenda did not resolve the underlying contradictions that gripped German capitalism. Rather, it led to an economic crisis and ultimately to war.

The Trump administration is not a repeat of the Nazi regime, but there are both economic and political similarities. Apart from the promotion of a nationalist economic agenda, in this case “America First,” one of the most striking parallels is the way in which the US political establishment, like its German counterpart before it, has turned on a dime.

In both cases, after denouncing the contender as “unfit” to rule, it has immediately gathered around the new “leader” to pledge support, recognising that he defends the interests of the corporate elites on which they all rest.

So-called liberals and leftists in the US and around the world, are now wailing and gnashing their teeth in reaction to Hillary Clinton’s crushing defeat. They are, however, the first to blame for the outcome of the US presidential elections. Their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was the embodiment of a totally corrupt political system.  She is a hypocrite par excellence, talking to the bankiers of Wall Street behind closed doors differently than to the American people. Her rhetoric for the rights of women and blacks and other minorities sounded disingenuous.

The Clinton Foundation received large donations from Saudi-Arabia and Qatar, countries rewarded in return by huge arms transfers overseen by her as Secretary of State. Her involvement in this corruption was no theme for the media. According to emails published by WikiLeaks, her campaign manager John Podesta was or is on the payroll of the Saudis. All of this was not considered worth reporting by the media. Virtually all national media in the United States supported Clinton’s candidacy. Instead of reporting how the machinery of the Democratic Party and the Clinton team stole the primary elections to prevent the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the media demonized Donald Trump.

I do not wish here to defend Donald Trump. He made numerous stupid, racist, sexist, and anti-Islamic statements that were rightly criticized.  Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was treated with kid gloves while her huge criminal political record was glossed over.  Instead of coming to grips with their abject failures, the liberals and their media continue in slandering Donald Trump. Trump’s first declarations show already that he has conquered new frontiers.

An American President is not a free and politically independent person. From day one, a President-elect can’t anymore go around the corner and grab a hot dog or a hamburger. He is reigned in by a military and security establishment that holds the President fit for public consumption. Trump, as any other president, can be expected to follow their rule and political suggestions.

I doubt very much that Trump will keep the promises of his election campaign, such as building a wall along the American-Mexican border, deport all illegal immigrants or ban Muslims from immigrating into the US. I even doubt that he will go after Hillary Clinton and her husband’s dubious foundation. There exists a code of honor among thieves.

Trump won precisely because of the shrill one-sided media propaganda and because of his rhetoric against the Washington establishment, including his own Republican Party. Now, this Republican establishment dominates both houses of Congress. Trump belongs also, however, to the US establishment but of another sort. Nobody should believe that the Washington establishment will follow Trump’s lead. Even his positive statements about Vladimir Putin or his suggestion to discard NATO, will probably vanish. But what I do hope is that he stands to his rejection of TPP and TTIP and his pragmatic view of Vladimir Putin.

Whether Trump will stop American adventurism in the Middle East remains to be seen. His close ties with Netanyahu do not bode well for the Palestinians. He sees Zionist colonization of the rest of Palestine as no hindrance to peace. And while he has promised to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I doubt that he will carry out this provocation against international law and the entire Muslim world.

The German political and media class was not only surprised by the results of the US elections, but did not even try to hide its revulsion against the choice of the American people. The entire political class in Germany perceived and presented the Trump campaign in the same one-sided manner as American media did. Chancellor Angela Merkel sent the President-Elect Trump a warning in the guise of a congratulation. Her political impudence was garbed within obsequious blabber about the allegedly honorable nature of German-American ties:

“Germany and America are bound by common values — democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person, regardless of their origin, skin color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or political views. It is based on these values that I wish to offer close cooperation, both with me personally and between our countries’ governments.”

Other German politicians did not even attempt to hide their disdain for American voters by diplomatic language. Germany’s Foreign Minister Steinmeier called Trump a “preacher of hate”, and Deputy Chancellor Gabriel cartooned Trump as a

“trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement… [who wants] a rollback to the bad old times in which women belonged by the stove or in bed, gays in jail and unions at best at the side table.”

During the election campaign, Trump called Merkel’s mass-immigration policy “insane” and “what Merkel did to Germany” a “sad shame”.

The media and the political class should at this point stop pontificating. Their double morals and unprofessional coverage of the US elections should prompt them to more humility. They should rather blame themselves for their biased reporting, which led directly to Clinton’s defeat. Ordinary Americans are not as stupid as the Establishment wants us to believe. Established parties and media would be well advised to give the new US President a chance to prove his worth. There will be, without doubt,  many occasions in the future for fact-based criticism.

The University of Manitoba is on strike. Since 1st November, more than 1,200 faculty members took to the picket line to protest the lack of funding for education, a need for workload protection and safeguarding for fairer tenure and promotion procedures, in addition to addressing several job security issues for instructors and librarians. Author of The Capitalist University, Henry Heller is a professor of History at the University of Manitoba, he writes here of the strike and how the walkout resonates with the themes of his book.

*        *       *

Authors don’t often get to live out the denouement of their books. Yet that is what is happening to me as I blog. On 20 October Pluto published The Capitalist University: The Transformations of Higher Education in the United States, 1945-2016. Its last chapter deals with the development of the neoliberal university and the growing resistance to it on the part of faculty and students and other workers. Two weeks have gone by and I find myself on a picket line at the University of Manitoba on a faculty strike against the neoliberal university. As we stand vigil at the gates of the University the days are rapidly shortening and getting colder. Overhead the geese are quickly and excitedly fleeing to the south. But each morning since 1 November I find myself on the morning shift defying the university’s attempt to impose total control over the work of professors and librarians at our university. We are an important part of a rising tide of class struggle developing both inside and outside of universities across the globe against the ravages of neoliberal capitalism.

The heyday of the universities came between 1945-80 at the height of the Cold War and was marked by massive support from government including the military for universities. Universities defined their mission as directed to public service and strove to create knowledge which had both practical as well as theoretical aspects. In the humanities and social sciences a few scholars even pursued a critical knowledge which sought disinterested truth in the analysis of ideas and society. The climax of this era came in the 1960s when unprecedented student protests over civil rights, the U.S. war in Vietnam and bureaucratic domination over university life spilled over into society at large and led to challenges to the capitalist order.

Academic Capitalism

But from the 1980s onward so-called academic capitalism took hold and universities not only more and more redefined their mission as serving private business and themselves becoming as far as possible profit-orientated in their mode of operation and objectives. In the light of this academic capitalism new faculty, administrative and business networks sought to promote a cognitive capitalism, creating new forms of knowledge which could be more or less immediately commodified as intellectual property.

These changes are central to the emergence of the neoliberal university marked by the decline of the humanities and social sciences, cuts in public financing, enfeeblement of faculty and student roles in governance, increases in tuition, growing student debt and a fall in the number of tenured faculty and increasing use of adjunct professors. These changes have been accompanied by dramatic increases in the number and salaries of administrators, centralization of management in the hands of presidents and boards of governors based on total quality management, preoccupation with endowments, predatory financing of growing student debt, research parks, real estate deals and globalized university ranking systems.

The influence of big business already great became overwhelming. Capping off these changes are the growth of for-profit universities like Phoenix University and the growth of mainly business-backed Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) which augur a decline in the need for permanent faculty and investments in fixed capital. These developments which follow from the logic of neoliberal economics which continues regnant in the operation of universities suggest the eventual extinction of the modern university and its replacement by new kinds of market-driven institutions of higher learning – a depressing prospect for most people that can bring a smile only to the lips of a University of Chicago economics professor.

But in The Capitalist University I show that these trends toward privatizing knowledge far from auguring well for capitalism inhibit its functioning and put into question its legitimacy and reflect the depth of capitalism’s crisis in which it seeks to parasitize and undermine those practices and institutions which once helped to sustain it economically and ideologically.

Historical Amnesia

A conservative tendency emerged on campuses, beginning with the election of Reagan in 1980. Followed by a widespread abandonment of Marxism and depoliticization, linked to the emergence of postmodernism, the cultural turn and neoliberal economics. All three intellectual currents were marked to a greater or lesser degree by a turning away from history in a way which is reminiscent of the historical amnesia in the humanities and social sciences during the 1950s. At the same time all three saw a further opening of American academic life to cosmopolitan influence. Reinforced by the scientism and reifications of neoliberal economics these decades saw the step-by-step offensive of academic and cognitive capitalism and reorganization of the universities into neoliberal institutions. Seemingly in isolation, Marxist literary critic and philosopher Fredric Jameson towered above American scholarship as the interpreter of this dark period.

The onset of financial and economic crisis in 2008 brought with it widespread revival of interest in Marxism, the growth of union militancy on campus and the revival of political movements like Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and the Bernie Sanders primary election campaign in which students played leading roles. As in the 1960s, universities proved to be springboards to campaigns aimed at the transformation of American society. Moreover, as key sites of training, research and economic development, universities have become central locations within the structures of contemporary capitalism for which knowledge industries closely inter-connected to universities are the leading edge. The labour force within academic institutions and these enterprises including most teachers and researchers are of course already made up of wage workers who are already involved in productive, i.e. profitable labour or soon will be. Tenured faculty themselves are losing control of their work. In the face of these currents imposed from above the obvious rejoinder is struggle from below which in the form of the development of unions is only in its early stages. Knowledge workers, who by definition have high levels of skill, work at strategic productive locations and need to cooperate with one another in an increasingly dependent work process, are in a position to struggle effectively against academic capitalism.

Driven by the need for revenue and for reasons of prestige, universities have become deeply enmeshed in seeking intellectual property rights or monopolistic control of patents, inventions, copyrights and even trademarks. The number of patents applied for by universities has multiplied from a few score in the 1970s to over 5000 at the turn of the millennium. In an early phase of capitalism such rights undoubtedly helped innovation. Today, the dominant economic view is that protection of such intellectual property rights is key to economic innovation. Indeed, the contention is that the privatization of new knowledge in this way is creating new links on a national and global level with private industry. The economic progress of the recent past was due not to intellectual property rights but was the fruit of earlier public investment in science and technology, rather than facilitating the spread and application of knowledge such claims are creating an atmosphere of exclusivity and secrecy; litigation is becoming more important than creativity and the spread of intellectual property rights will obstruct future progress by promoting fragmentation of information, unnecessary duplication of effort, secrecy and lawsuits. Historically science has been a collaborative process in which large numbers of individuals contribute a part to a cumulative and collective process. This ethos is at antipodes to the neoliberal system of intellectual property which depends on a single agent claiming credit for the entire process.

This returns us to the fundamental questions raised by the students in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley fifty years ago. While university administrators, politicians, businessmen and neoliberal economists seek to turn knowledge into exchange value, it proves difficult to do so. Indeed, the creation and dissemination of knowledge is being held captive by the fetters of academic capitalism. The incredible accumulation of academic knowledge begs to be set free as a use-value as part of a general intellect or mass democratic consciousness which almost certainly will assume political and social control over society. At the same time, the continuing attack on the idea that the universities should serve the public good and the undermining of the place of the humanities and social sciences in universities is among other factors helping to undermine the political legitimacy of capitalism.

Right now faculty at the University of Manitoba are holding firm on the picket lines. Talks with management continue. To settle this strike we are demanding minimal protection against arbitrary workload increases, fair assessment practices and job security. Yet as I walk the line in the bitter cold talking with chemists, social workers, sociologists, accounting professors it occurs to me that we are in the end the university and that management is in the end the product of an ongoing usurpation of both labour and knowledge. Next week I will lecture on this in an improvised teach-in on the picket line. Learning must go on. •

Henry Heller is a Professor of History at the University of Manitoba, Canada. He is the author of The Birth of Capitalism: A 21st Century Perspective (Pluto Press, 2011), The Cold War and the New Imperialism: A Global History, 1945-2005 (Monthly Review Press, 2006) and The Bourgeois Revolution in France (Berghahn Books, 2006).

I hear that crowds of Americans are protesting the election of Donald Trump as the 45^th US head of state. They blame the president-elect himself.

Who is really at fault? And to whom or what should these disillusioned voters address their demands?

Unhappy citizens have to blame someone, or something; I understand this. So here are some suggestions:

•  The celebrated, pervasive and multifaceted, right-center-left US media are first and foremost responsible. Our press, the ‘fourth estate’, regarded as the ultimate check on abuse is, in my view, guilty of gross exploitation, motivated by profit, creator of teams of shoddy pundits, polls, and personalities. The US public and perhaps global viewers too have been lured, misinformed and manipulated for eighteen months while media giants, both print and broadcast corporations, indulged themselves in their free speech license. They focused on presidential personalities of any caliber to the exclusion of real issues and their task of educating the public. They sought out and exaggerated salacious detail – tempting us with sexual scandal and financial abuse. Commentators Glen Greenwald  and Wayne Barrett  rightly focus criticism here.
• Those forlorn protesters in the streets ought to shout not in front of Trump Towers; they need to hammer real hard at the gates of the NY Times, WaPo, Fox News, ABC, NBC, and even the breaking-with-the-rulers-Democracy Now. Journalism students: start questioning your professors’ habitual invocation of purportedly liberal NYT coverage. Aspiring journalists: reject invitations to these deceivingly biased, self-serving news manufacturers.
•  News agencies themselves will be leading the call for the capture of Wikileaks director Julian Assange. With his masterful hacking service, even while exiled for four years within the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange has arranged releases of emails exposing Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign plotting. This party and their candidate’s campaign have indeed rigged the election process.
• Unquestionably the Democratic Party must answer for its illegal methods to lockout rival Bernie Sanders. It hasn’t even apologized for its insider dealing, which are more damaging to democracy than Clinton’s email irregularities as secretary of state.
• Related to this was FBI director Comey announcing just before election day that more Clinton email investigations were underway. What? Clinton-supporting news media were outraged by this reprehensible government meddling, but not by internal party plots.
• This is the second US election where social network platforms, especially Twitter and Face Book, are considered essential and reliable democracy handhelds (part of what is now called Fifth Estate). Millennials and media professionals indulge these communication tools as a sure means of free speech, inclusive citizenship and truth. With these in hand, their liberal views will surely prevail. So convinced are American free speech advocates of the merits of these devices, that youths in China, Syria, Venezuela –whichever governments the US seeks to undermine– must have them too. (Although social networking seems to have flummoxed American Clinton supporters, they are supposed to help stir democratic revolutions abroad.)
• Nationalists will claim foreigners are responsible for November 8^th’s  failures. Not Russia but Syria will top the list, with Afghanistan and Somalia as seconds. After all, those hordes of fleeing citizens threaten US stability and security–thus the success of Trump in winning over so many Americans. Cheap Mexican labor dislodging US workers is another culprit that won Trump votes.
• One sees little attention directed to the flawed US electoral system however, or to the imperfect American constitution. The US is run by a party duopoly that chokes us between two megastars. Then, the Electoral College (capitalized by Webster dictionary!) defies the popular vote.
• Have you ever heard of a coalition government in the US? When fellow Americans are questioned about why the constitution can’t be changed to remove its proven flaws, they respond with blank stares and wonder. What: question the wisdom of America’s founding fathers?

Then what about finding a way to dislodge an incompetent or criminal president without launching a long, disruptive process of congressional impeachment and court procedures? Ever heard of a simple vote-of-no-confidence, a snap election? No; American presidential and congressional elections can occur only every four years. Period.

Finally, although this list can be expanded, we have to admit sloppy procedures at the many polling stations. A country engaged in the electronic collection of mega data on citizens and foreigners could surely streamline its election process to ensure that no citizen has doubts or fears about their eligibility and where and when to vote.

As the U.S. Presidential selection circus draws to a close, the United States and Turkey have announced a new plan to defeat ISIS, the same terrorist organization both countries have created, funded, armed, and facilitated, in Syria. The plan revolves around the conquering, occupation, and governing of sovereign Syrian territory in the East, most notably Raqqa.

According to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, after meeting with his Turkish counterpart, that “The coalition and Turkey will work together on the long-term plan for seizing, holding and governing Raqqa.”

The statement by Dunford seems to confirm the fact that the United States will not move forward in its campaign for Raqqa without working closely with the Turks, who are themselves concerned about the makeup of the proxy forces destined to hold power once the campaign is over. The Syrian Democratic Forces, the proxies of choice in this battle, are made up of many Kurdish militias and fighters, an issue that provides much worry on the part of the Turkish government.

As CNN reports,

But DoD News reported that Sunday’s meeting reinforced a longstanding agreement that the US-led coalition would not move ahead with the seizure of Raqqa, “without incorporating the Turks and their perspective into our plans,” according to Dunford.

The Turkish army said in a statement that the military heads had discussed “the methods of a common struggle” against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, “especially in Al Bab and Raqqa in coming days.”

Addressing the sensitivities around the ethnic makeup of the forces involved in the operation, Dunford said: “We always knew the SDF wasn’t the solution for holding and governing Raqqa.

“What we are working on right now is to find the right mix of forces for the operation.”
He said the US would work with Turkey to determine the composition of the forces that would seize and govern the territory, he said.

He said the right approach was for locals to lead the mission to retake the city and run it after ISIS was driven out.

“[The operation needs] a predominantly Arab and Sunni Arab force,” he said, according to DoD News. “And there are forces like that. There is the moderate Syrian opposition, the vetted Syrian forces and the Free Syrian Army forces, and there is some initial outreach to forces in Raqqa proper.”

Dunford said the SDF were moving south to isolate ISIS positions in Raqqa and the surrounding areas — a phase that would take months.

Essentially, the United States and Turkey are devising a plan by which to control Raqqa and the territory surrounding it by using proxy forces to overthrow other proxy forces. In other words, the fighters in Raqqa will simply undergo another name change, be replaced with a heavy Kurdish contingent, and act as a carefully placed chess piece by which to prevent the Syrian or Russian militaries from liberating the city. After all, these SDF forces will be presented as “moderate,” a label that cannot be attached to the ISIS fighters currently inhabiting Raqqa.

Raqqa has acted as the ISIS capital since the mysterious appearance of the group two years ago and has gone virtually untouched as the Syrian military has been bogged down in major cities and western/central areas of the country in their fight against the Western-backed terrorists. Notably, despite its rhetoric of fighting to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, the U.S.-led coalition has yet to bomb Raqqa.

Fresh on the heels of a major public relations victory in Palmyra, however, the Syrian military is now inching toward Raqqa and, if successful, it will score one of the biggest victories in the five-year war. This is not only because the de facto ISIS capital will be eliminated or because the SAA will gain more territory, it is because the liberation of Raqqa will be yet another example of how the Syrian military will have accomplished in weeks what the United States and coalition members have claimed may take a decade to do. It will be another instance where the lack of will on the part of the United States to actually destroy Daesh is put on display for the rest of the world, either causing the U.S. to look weak in the eyes of the world or exposing it for actually supporting the terrorist organization to begin with. Regardless, the victory for the Syrian government will be twofold.

That is, unless the U.S. gets there first . . . .

The U.S. has been using the presence of ISIS in Syria as an excuse to bomb, send Special Forces, publicly support terrorists, and possibly invade since the Western-backed terror group appeared on the scene two years ago. Yet, despite its rhetoric, the United States and its coalition have not bombed Raqqa and have largely abstained from bombing (see here and here) any other terrorist group. Instead, the U.S. has focused on bombing Syrian military targets, civilians and civilian infrastructure (see here also), and acting as a deterrent to the Syrian military’s movement in many “rebel-held” areas of the country.

Now, however, the United States seems to have great interest in Raqqa as it aids its loose collection of terrorists, fanatical Kurds, and Arabs known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in “battles” around the ISIS capital.

So why the sudden interest in Raqqa? It’s fairly simple. The United States sees clearly that the Syrian military and its Russian allies are going to liberate Raqqa soon enough and the U.S. does not want to suffer another public relations setback. A defeat for ISIS is thus a humiliation for the United States. That fact alone should raise some eyebrows.

Regardless, the United States would like to have its own “victory” in Raqqa before the Syrians and the Russians can have theirs. If the SDF is able to “take” Raqqa, the U.S. will then be able to shout from the rooftops that America has liberated Raqqa and defeated ISIS in its own capital.

The U.S. also has another goal in Raqqa – the theft of more Syrian territory by using its proxy forces going by the name of the SDF. Whether or not ISIS proper is in control of Raqqa is merely a secondary concern for the United States. If the SDF succeeds in imposing control over the city and the province, then the West will have succeeded in cementing control over the area in the hands of its proxy terrorists once again, but with yet another incarnation of the same Western-backed jihadist fanaticism. The U.S. can then use the “moderate rebel” label to keep Russia and Syria from bombing the fighters who merely assumed a position handed to them, albeit through some level of violence, by ISIS.

This also allows the Western powers supporting their terrorist proxies the opportunity to provide the terrorists with a parcel of land inside Syria’s borders which can be used as a forward operating base and a staging ground for more attacks and operations launched at the rest of the country.

With the situation as it stands, there is now the very real possibility of some type of major confrontation taking place in Raqqa that could very well have international ramifications. On one hand, there is the Syrian military, backed by the Russian Air Force and Russian Special Forces heading east to Raqqa while, on the other side, there is the SDF, backed by the U.S. Air and Special Forces, heading west toward Raqqa. Both sides are in a race to gain control over the ISIS capital, gain territory, and declare a victory for the world to see. But what if they arrive in Raqqa at the same time?

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 U.S./SDF (terrorist) alliance. At that point, the question will be who, if either, will back down? If both forces decide to push forward, the result could be devastating not only for Syria but for the rest of the world.

Regardless of what happens, it is important to remember that the Syrian military is acting entirely in self-defense both against the terrorists posing as “rebels” and the United States. Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah have all been invited in to Syria, acting legally and with the assent of the Syrian government, while the United States and its coalition are once again acting completely outside of international law in an attempt to shore up its terrorist proxies; and, once again, the United States and its coalition of the willing is pushing the patience of the rest of the world.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 850 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

Donald Trump, even without raising a single pen, or signing a single legal document, has already had a profound effect on activism in the United States.  Much of this has taken form among the student body of various schools, a brushfire reaction of fury that has seen empty classrooms and vacated schools.  Walkouts have taken place over two days.  Instructors have followed.

Two days after the result, San Francisco witnessed gatherings of young protesters, most below voting age, marshalling themselves at the Civic Centre and effectively shutting down Market Street. Local journalists repaired to the scene in hurried enthusiasm, and helicopters were dispatched to film the gathering crowd.  Would Trump’s America flare up, notably in parts of the country where his support was minimal?

The San Francisco Unified School District explained that it had not given the seal of approval to the protest, though it was hard to flaw the actions of students emboldened by their constitutional protections. “We recognize our students’ right to free speech and understand their need to use it.  The walkout this morning was not authorized by SFUSD staff.”

Curiously enough, news anchors were careful about how best to cover these actions.  On realising they were being filmed, various members of the crowd proceeded to chant obscenities with gusto.  Unmistakably colourful gestures were also flashed in front of the camera, causing consternation among the local news anchors.  Even in Trump’s emotionally liberated America, civility had to be shown.  Yet again, the establishment was telling people how best to behave.

A few sensible voices found time to give news crews what they wanted.  An African American girl loomed into view, eager to express her opinions about the events of the last few days.  “I feel that Donald Trump is a horrible man.”  She insisted, not that we did not notice, that she was “a woman of colour.”  She was also gay and troubled.

The night before, the violent aspect of the anti-Trump response came to the fore.  Some 7,000 protestors found voice on Oakland’s streets.  Molotov cocktails, fireworks and other projectiles were directed at police.  Over time, the fractious gathering dispersed into smaller groups, setting fires and inflicting acts of vandalism upon businesses.  Three Oaklandpolice officers were also injured, and three Pleasanton patrol cars damaged.

According to the official statement from Oakland police, “Throughout the evening, the large group splintered into smaller groups that began vandalizing numerous businesses in the downtown area.”  Oakland’s Mayor, Libby Schaaf, was beside herself with frustration the next day, urging calm and the need for peaceful protest.  Hooliganism would not be tolerated.

Behind the protest agenda here is the monumental difficulty of acceptance.  Blue collar whiteness doesn’t wash well in these noisy circles.  Aggrieved, the message of “Not my president” has been chanted across city centres – in as many as twenty-five across the country.  Trump effigies have been burned.

This language of protest signals the cutting divisions through the country: be wary of what is white, and working class if you find yourself in metropolitan centres, or in areas of a technology boom.  If you are an immigrant, be even more fearful.

“Trump and Pence make so sense,” went the Wednesdaymessage among anti-Trump protestors as they marched from Union Square to Washington Square Park in Manhattan.  Outside Trump Tower, Lady Gaga joined some 5,000 others.  Such instances of pop agitation do little to measure the levels of inclusion.  Across the aisles, the country remains divided, and intolerance is being met by intolerance.

In truth, Trump has given little to his detractors to work with.  Slogans have been aplenty, and the “vision thing” about making America great again has been more mantra than substance. He has been indifferent to blueprints and policy outlines, making any genuine critique of him beyond personal characteristics and tendencies near impossible.  Only the emotions count.

What has mattered is the feared contingency and hypothetical.  Trump’s nascent tenure might, argued protestor Nick Powers to CNN in New York, encourage more robust stop-and-frisk policies in the name of law and order.  Sexist opinions would also be normalised.  Society would somehow become more brutal.  The ease, in other words, of seeing Trump as the instigator of violent exception, rather than a beneficiary of a rotten malaise, becomes a rule.

The protestors might have to wait that bit longer, notably for Trump’s cabinet appointments and those to the Supreme Court, before burning down the front store with urgent enthusiasm. It is hard to imagine that the president elect will be restrained on various fronts, be it Obamacare, social policy or the regulating of finance and capital.  Nor should it be assumed that his relations with the Republicans will be warm and functional in Trumpland.

Trump took on the dynasts, including those within the Republican movement. He generated such hostility from the paladins and doyens that even Clinton thought she might have a chance garnering their support. How wrong they all were, as they continue to be.  Deafness tends to be a fatal drawback in politics.

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

The case of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India has reached the Supreme Court. The government has said it will bow to the court’s eventual ruling. That ruling could green-light GM mustard as first commercial GM food crop. If this goes ahead, there will be wide-ranging implications for Indian food and agriculture.

Environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues has petitioned India’s Supreme Court, seeking a moratorium on the release of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment pending a comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocol in the public domain conducted by agencies of independent expert bodies, the results of which are made public.

As the lead petitioner, Rodrigues’ case is that, to date, serious conflicts of interest, sleight of hand, regulatory delinquency, cover-ups, lies and scientific fraud has tainted the entire appraisal process concerning GM mustard. Moreover, the case is made that there is a general lack of rigour and expertise and overall incompetency where India’s assessment and regulation of GMOs is concerned.

In a response to the petition, the government (Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change) has issued a Reply Affidavit, which Rodrigues now says (in a rejoinder affidavit) is an astonishing filibustering, copious response that clearly reflects a high degree of scientific and technical incompetence in the regulatory oversight of HT Mustard DMH 11 (GM mustard). She says that the ‘Reply’ is brazen, misleading and weak in its interpretation of available data and facts.

In a 7,000-plus word response (read the Rejoinder Affidavit here: rejoinder-affidavit-mustard-final-dmh-8th-nov-2016ia) response to the government’s Reply Affidavit, Rodrigues goes into a fair amount of technical detail. She argues that that HT Mustard DMH 11 and its two HT parental lines that are before the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) for commercial approval are funded by the regulators, promoted by them and regulated by them. This is, she argues, simply unacceptable: the evidence shows the outcome of such hand-in-glove, subterranean regulation that seeks to hide the data from scientific and public scrutiny and release HT mustard to the detriment of India.

She states that the regulators acquiescent role in the fudging of field trail data invites “a charge of criminal conduct and intent to deceive, with inestimable ramifications of harm to our nation. A criminal investigation is required into these processes.”

The Rejoinder Affidavit argues that, counter to the arguments set out in the 72-page Reply Affidavit by the government, the following is the actual reality underpinning GM mustard in India.

1)      Field trial data was fudged.

2)      HT DMH 11 and its two parental line GMOs are scientifically and unambiguously herbicide tolerant (HT) crops.

3)      India is indeed a centre of diversity/domestication of mustard with a rich germplasm. Contamination from commercialised HT DHM11 of India’s mustard germplasm is a certainty.

4)      Field trails of the GM mustard discarded scientific norms wholesale and are invalid.

5)      HT Mustard DMH 11 remains unproven on scientific grounds as a superior hybrid-making technology.

6)      The cumulative evidence is that HT DMH11 (and its GMO parental lines) are a monumental and dangerous bluff and the nation has been fooled into believing that it will reduce imports of oilseeds because it will provide high-yielding hybrids.

Fudged data and invalid field tests

Rodrigues presents various field trial data and goes into much technical detail to make the case for how data was fudged to present GM mustard in a favourable light. Readers are urged to consult the Rejoinder Affidavit for the details.

Made for Bayer?

While there appears to be an attempt to confuse the issue in the government’s Reply Affidavit, Rodrigues argues that the gene for glufosinate herbicide resistance will be present in GM mustard hybrids, making the crop resistant to (Bayer’s) herbicide. And while the government argues “there is no proposal to use this herbicide in the farmers’ field,” such arguments, according to Rodrigues “smack of ignorance and carelessness of how a HT GM crop can be possibly used and more dangerously, approved for commercialisation by the GEAC.”

In other words, the government’s argument in the matter of DMH 11 is “a blatant misrepresentation of facts, expedient policy and scientifically untenable.”

Contamination and the crucial importance of centres of genetic/biological diversity

Rodrigues cites examples to highlight that a 20-year history of GMOs in various countries shows that GMO Contamination of non-GMO crops is a biological certainty and is irreversible. Such contamination leads to a loss of native varieties that contain important genetic diversity needed for future traits. These traits are bred into crop varieties through traditional breeding techniques that genetic engineering has failed to match.

GM crops themselves must rely on nature’s genetic diversity to supply what is required in traits of parental lines to meet new problems and diseases. India holds a rich store house of genetically diverse germ plasm and plant traits that is vital for future food security and well-being.

The case of Bt brinjal is referred to. India has the world’s greatest brinjal diversity of 2,500 varieties and this is in large part why the indefinite moratorium was imposed in 2010. An assessment by several leading international scientists revealed the great malaise of Indian GMO regulation at the time and exposed the rot. Rodrigues argues that the regulatory oversight of HT mustard DMH 11 overtakes the regulatory shambles connected with Bt brinjal.

Bogus claims and a “monumental bluff”

Various arguments are then put forward to discount many of the other claims made by the government, and Rodrigues takes issue with the fact that HT Mustard DMH 11 remains unproven on scientific grounds as a superior hybrid-making technology. She makes the case that GM mustard is a monumental and dangerous bluff and the nation has been fooled into believing that HT DMH 11 will reduce imports of oilseeds because it will provide high-yielding hybrids.

However, as described here, the government’s own admission s that GM traits in mustard would not be responsible for increased yields. Moreover, the issue of oilseeds imports has nothing to do with the supposed low productivity of Indian oilseed agriculture and everything to do with trade policies which has seen India become a dumping ground for subsidised imports.

Supporters of GM have cynically twisted this situation to call for the introduction of GM mustard to increase productivity. But if HT Mustard DMH 11 will not enhance yields and if the real cause of rising edible oils imports is not the result of poor productivity within India, what is the point of this GM mustard? We need look no further than the geopolitics of food and energy that derive from certain corporate-written trade deals.

Rodrigues also questions the efficacy (and, by implication, the politics) of hybrid seeds, especially as farmers must purchase them every year to obtain the properties of the hybrid. Becoming dependent on the seed industry (which is becoming increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few major transnational corporations) can again lead to loss of native varieties that contain important genetic diversity needed for future yield gains, pest resistance and responses to climate change and could increase farmer costs (Bt cotton is a case in point).

The evidence is far from conclusive with regard to the superiority of hybrids, and Rodrigues cite examples of non-GM mustard hybrids currently on the Indian market. When there are also so many conventional mustard hybrids available, the case for GM mustard looks even more shaky to say the least.

What Rodrigues has set out to show is a lack of logic and hard science in the Reply Affidavit by the government. In fact, she calls out the government for relying on statements based on “pure spin” and concludes that the case in favour of GM mustard in India relies on “unremitting regulatory fraud,” is “ethically deviant” and defies “democratic processes.”

The case of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India has reached the Supreme Court. The government has said it will bow to the court’s eventual ruling. That ruling could green-light GM mustard as first commercial GM food crop. If this goes ahead, there will be wide-ranging implications for Indian food and agriculture.

Environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues has petitioned India’s Supreme Court, seeking a moratorium on the release of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment pending a comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocol in the public domain conducted by agencies of independent expert bodies, the results of which are made public.

As the lead petitioner, Rodrigues’ case is that, to date, serious conflicts of interest, sleight of hand, regulatory delinquency, cover-ups, lies and scientific fraud has tainted the entire appraisal process concerning GM mustard. Moreover, the case is made that there is a general lack of rigour and expertise and overall incompetency where India’s assessment and regulation of GMOs is concerned.

In a response to the petition, the government (Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change) has issued a Reply Affidavit, which Rodrigues now says (in a rejoinder affidavit) is an astonishing filibustering, copious response that clearly reflects a high degree of scientific and technical incompetence in the regulatory oversight of HT Mustard DMH 11 (GM mustard). She says that the ‘Reply’ is brazen, misleading and weak in its interpretation of available data and facts.

In a 7,000-plus word response (read the Rejoinder Affidavit here: rejoinder-affidavit-mustard-final-dmh-8th-nov-2016ia) response to the government’s Reply Affidavit, Rodrigues goes into a fair amount of technical detail. She argues that that HT Mustard DMH 11 and its two HT parental lines that are before the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) for commercial approval are funded by the regulators, promoted by them and regulated by them. This is, she argues, simply unacceptable: the evidence shows the outcome of such hand-in-glove, subterranean regulation that seeks to hide the data from scientific and public scrutiny and release HT mustard to the detriment of India.

She states that the regulators acquiescent role in the fudging of field trail data invites “a charge of criminal conduct and intent to deceive, with inestimable ramifications of harm to our nation. A criminal investigation is required into these processes.”

The Rejoinder Affidavit argues that, counter to the arguments set out in the 72-page Reply Affidavit by the government, the following is the actual reality underpinning GM mustard in India.

1)      Field trial data was fudged.

2)      HT DMH 11 and its two parental line GMOs are scientifically and unambiguously herbicide tolerant (HT) crops.

3)      India is indeed a centre of diversity/domestication of mustard with a rich germplasm. Contamination from commercialised HT DHM11 of India’s mustard germplasm is a certainty.

4)      Field trails of the GM mustard discarded scientific norms wholesale and are invalid.

5)      HT Mustard DMH 11 remains unproven on scientific grounds as a superior hybrid-making technology.

6)      The cumulative evidence is that HT DMH11 (and its GMO parental lines) are a monumental and dangerous bluff and the nation has been fooled into believing that it will reduce imports of oilseeds because it will provide high-yielding hybrids.

Fudged data and invalid field tests

Rodrigues presents various field trial data and goes into much technical detail to make the case for how data was fudged to present GM mustard in a favourable light. Readers are urged to consult the Rejoinder Affidavit for the details.

Made for Bayer?

While there appears to be an attempt to confuse the issue in the government’s Reply Affidavit, Rodrigues argues that the gene for glufosinate herbicide resistance will be present in GM mustard hybrids, making the crop resistant to (Bayer’s) herbicide. And while the government argues “there is no proposal to use this herbicide in the farmers’ field,” such arguments, according to Rodrigues “smack of ignorance and carelessness of how a HT GM crop can be possibly used and more dangerously, approved for commercialisation by the GEAC.”

In other words, the government’s argument in the matter of DMH 11 is “a blatant misrepresentation of facts, expedient policy and scientifically untenable.”

Contamination and the crucial importance of centres of genetic/biological diversity

Rodrigues cites examples to highlight that a 20-year history of GMOs in various countries shows that GMO Contamination of non-GMO crops is a biological certainty and is irreversible. Such contamination leads to a loss of native varieties that contain important genetic diversity needed for future traits. These traits are bred into crop varieties through traditional breeding techniques that genetic engineering has failed to match.

GM crops themselves must rely on nature’s genetic diversity to supply what is required in traits of parental lines to meet new problems and diseases. India holds a rich store house of genetically diverse germ plasm and plant traits that is vital for future food security and well-being.

The case of Bt brinjal is referred to. India has the world’s greatest brinjal diversity of 2,500 varieties and this is in large part why the indefinite moratorium was imposed in 2010. An assessment by several leading international scientists revealed the great malaise of Indian GMO regulation at the time and exposed the rot. Rodrigues argues that the regulatory oversight of HT mustard DMH 11 overtakes the regulatory shambles connected with Bt brinjal.

Bogus claims and a “monumental bluff”

Various arguments are then put forward to discount many of the other claims made by the government, and Rodrigues takes issue with the fact that HT Mustard DMH 11 remains unproven on scientific grounds as a superior hybrid-making technology. She makes the case that GM mustard is a monumental and dangerous bluff and the nation has been fooled into believing that HT DMH 11 will reduce imports of oilseeds because it will provide high-yielding hybrids.

However, as described here, the government’s own admission s that GM traits in mustard would not be responsible for increased yields. Moreover, the issue of oilseeds imports has nothing to do with the supposed low productivity of Indian oilseed agriculture and everything to do with trade policies which has seen India become a dumping ground for subsidised imports.

Supporters of GM have cynically twisted this situation to call for the introduction of GM mustard to increase productivity. But if HT Mustard DMH 11 will not enhance yields and if the real cause of rising edible oils imports is not the result of poor productivity within India, what is the point of this GM mustard? We need look no further than the geopolitics of food and energy that derive from certain corporate-written trade deals.

Rodrigues also questions the efficacy (and, by implication, the politics) of hybrid seeds, especially as farmers must purchase them every year to obtain the properties of the hybrid. Becoming dependent on the seed industry (which is becoming increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few major transnational corporations) can again lead to loss of native varieties that contain important genetic diversity needed for future yield gains, pest resistance and responses to climate change and could increase farmer costs (Bt cotton is a case in point).

The evidence is far from conclusive with regard to the superiority of hybrids, and Rodrigues cite examples of non-GM mustard hybrids currently on the Indian market. When there are also so many conventional mustard hybrids available, the case for GM mustard looks even more shaky to say the least.

What Rodrigues has set out to show is a lack of logic and hard science in the Reply Affidavit by the government. In fact, she calls out the government for relying on statements based on “pure spin” and concludes that the case in favour of GM mustard in India relies on “unremitting regulatory fraud,” is “ethically deviant” and defies “democratic processes.”

The Schiller Institute has received an e-mail from Kiev, reporting on the seizure and occupation, by government security forces, of the offices of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU). The raid occurred on Friday, October 28. The statement below was issued by the PSPU Press Service today.

“Azov” refers to the Azov Battalion (image right), an armed formation rooted in the fascist Right Sector movement, which was instrumental in the violent coup of February 2014, in which Ukraine’s elected President Victor Yanukovych was overthrown. This year, Azov registered itself as a political party, called the National Corps.

Dr. Natalia Vitrenko, the economist who leads the PSPU, has warned since the early 1990s that the brutal economic policies demanded by the International Monetary Fund would set the stage for political chaos and a fascist movement in Ukraine. She was a Presidential candidate in 1999, running at over 30 percent in public opinion polls before her campaign was thrown into disarray by an assassination attempt. Her party this year has been physically attacked by Right Sector toughs and is facing government attempts to deregister it.

Background information and Dr. Vitrenko’s speeches in English are available via the links shown at the end of this release.

PSPU Press Department Statement

The Ukrainian government’s political terror machine is moving to crush any free thinking, any small shoots of independent opinion, and any evaluations of current events, made on their own by political parties, public organizations, journalists or writers.

Hiding behind the cover of slogans about European values, democracy and the rule of law, in reality the institutions of state power in Ukraine are acting through law enforcement agencies and neo-Nazi battalions, to carry out a systematic mop-up of any dissidence.

The struggle of the Euromaidan government against the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) and its leader, Natalia Vitrenko, is a challenge to the world community.

On 28 October 2016 a group of individuals, including fighters from Azov, broke down the entrance door and seized the premises of Siver Ukraina LLC. Since 2005 among the tenants of this building has been the PSPU, as well as the editorial offices of the PSPU newspaper Dosvitni ogni (Light before Dawn), and later the public organizations Dar zhizni (Gift of Life), the Eurasian People’s Union, and the Assembly of Orthodox Women of Ukraine.

Siver Ukraina LLC obtained ownership of these premises in 2003 and has not been legally deprived of these rights in the intervening years. Neither has any party contested or dissolved the leases contracted with the aforementioned tenants.

Nonetheless, carrying out a political order to act against the PSPU, which has a unique status as a party in opposition to current domestic and foreign policy, and against its leader, Natalia Vitrenko, the police essentially allowed these premises to be seized and handed over to the SBU for an illegal search. This marks the beginning of a new phase of political terror against the PSPU.

Background information

“Ukrainian economist Natalia Vitrenko: Finding a noble path out of the crisis”, 6 November 2009

“Ukrainian patriots expose EU support for neo-Nazi coup”, 7 March 2014

“Let us end this nightmare, and turn to building things”, speech by Natalia Vitrenko to Citizens Electoral Council of Australia International Conference, March 2015

“Facing terror under a Kiev regime”, 24 April 2015

“A report on the state of Ukraine”, 24 February 2016

“Neo-Nazi thugs attack Vitrenko’s Kiev demonstration”, 23 March 2016

“Vitrenko’s Progressive Socialists dramatize economic hardships, rights violations in Ukraine”, 28 September 2016

Dr. Natalia Vitrenko, leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, in a screen grab from her video interview, posted 1 November 2016. It was filmed outside her office, now occupied by security forces. The interview can be watched in Russian at https://youtu.be/luE8frGHjgY.

The original source of this article is Politico. Below are selected excerpts.

President-elect Donald Trump does not have the traditional cadre of Washington insiders and donors to build out his Cabinet, but his transition team has spent the past several months quietly building a short list of industry titans and conservative activists who could comprise one of the more eclectic and controversial presidential Cabinets in modern history.

Trumpworld has started with a mandate to hire from the private sector whenever possible. ….

He’s also expected to reward the band of surrogates who stood by him during the bruising presidential campaign, including Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, all of whom are being considered for top posts. A handful of Republican politicians may also make the cut, including Sen. Bob Corker for secretary of state or Sen. Jeff Sessions for secretary of defense. …

….

Secretary of state

Former House Speaker Gingrich, a leading Trump supporter, is a candidate for the job, as is Corker, current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Tennessee senator has said he’d “strongly consider” serving as secretary of state.

Trump is also eyeing former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

Treasury secretary

Trump himself has indicated that he wants to give the Treasury secretary job to his finance chairman, Mnuchin, a 17-year-veteran of Goldman Sachs who now works as the chairman and chief executive of the private investment firm Dune Capital Management. Mnuchin has also worked for OneWest Bank, which was later sold to CIT Group in 2015.

Secretary of defense

Among the Republican defense officials who could join the Trump administration: Sessions (R-Ala.), a close adviser, has been discussed as a potential defense secretary. Former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) have also been mentioned as potential candidates.

Top Trump confidant retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, would need a waiver from Congress to become defense secretary, as the law requires retired military officers to wait seven years before becoming the civilian leader of the Pentagon. But Trump’s chief military adviser is likely to wind up in some senior administration post, potentially national security adviser. And other early endorsers, like Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), could be in line for top posts as well.

Attorney general

People close to Trump say former New York City Mayor Giuliani, one of Trump’s leading public defenders, is the leading candidate for attorney general. New Jersey Gov. Christie, another vocal Trump supporter and the head of the president-elect’s transition team, is also a contender for the job — though any role in the cabinet for Christie could be threatened by the Bridgegate scandal.

Another possibility: Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, though the controversy over Trump’s donation to Bondi could undercut her nomination.

TO READ COMPLETE ARTICLE ON POLITICO, CLICK HERE

Bryan Bender, Jeremy Herb, Connor O’Brien, Joanne Kenen, Marianne Levine, Michael Crowley, Doug Palmer, Nahal Toosi, Helena Bottemiller Evich, Zachary Warmbrodt, Ian Kullgren and Benjamin Wermund contributed to this report.

No more than two days were needed for the CETA text, only just signed in front of the cameras, to be rejected again.  The German Greens announced their intention of blocking its ratification, in its present form, in the Bundesrat, something that is within their capacities given the way that its system functions. Is the participation of the Bundesrat indispensable for ratification of the treaty? German jurists are working on this question, and it is thorny.

The Greens have lined up with the Walloons and demand that there should be provisions, in the event of disagreement between the investors, for an appeal to the established juridical system and to intervention by professional judges applying existing laws.  This question will certainly provide a focus for the ratification of the Treaty at the heart of the European Union, something requiring years, during which the arrangements initially intended in this connection will not be able to be implemented. The issue is not under the jurisdiction of the Commission, which conducted negotiations on the basis of a confidential and inaccessible mandate. Along with the brilliant idea of confronting parliaments with the choice of all or nothing at the moment of ratification. They succeeded in this.

In the meantime voices have been heard regretting that provision was made for such a formality and suggesting that it should be abolished. But what government could now take such a proposal on board ? In its present form the CETA treaty with Canada has no future, and TTIP with the United States even less. It is a blessed first blow against the liberal contract.  Not everything is permitted after all.

Many of the essential decisions have been delegated to the European Central Bank and the Commission, who have it in common that they are not elected. Will this stratagem have continuity and be amplified or will parliaments again be given a voice. In these times of political crisis, a time when the requisite majorities are impossible to find, the question is important. To brush aside the last democratic rules necessitating the attainment of parliamentary majorities, all so as give carte blanche to liberal policies… is undeniably tempting. All that remains is to find the mechanisms for imposing it. The campaign against the judicial system did not go well.

Translated from French by Wayne Hall

http://www.pauljorion.com/blog/2016/11/01/la-page-du-ceta-nest-pas-pres-detre-tournee-par-francois-leclerc/

Newsweek’s licensee Topix Media printed and shipped out 125,000 copies with a Hillary Clinton cover to shops and newsstands across the nation, and is now rushing to print a Donald Trump issue that will go to press on Thursday.

It is expected to hit stores next week.

“Like everybody else, we got it wrong,” Tony Romando, CEO of Topix Media, the Newsweek partner which produces special issues, told the New York Post.

Romando claims that they had “worked up a President Trump issue,” in case Trump won, but rushed to print the Clinton issue as they believed she would win.

A Barnes and Noble in Union Square in New York began selling the issue on Tuesday, and none were left on the shelves by Wednesday. A clerk told the Post that they were unsure if the issues had been pulled off or if they had simply sold out.

“All wholesalers and retailers have been asked to return any issues they have as we need to clear room for [150,000 copies of] the President Trump issue,” Romando said. “We expect it to sell very well as there is obviously a great demand.”

Newsweek, like other major news media outlets in the United States, lobbied hard for Clinton throughout the election season, even printing bizarre conspiracy theories, including one about Sputnik News being tied to the Republican candidate, a notion dreamed up by the magazine’s senior writer Kurt Eichenwald.

Despite being called out on their tenuous claims and debunked by multiple publications — including the Washington Post and the Intercept — Newsweek continuously doubled down by using false information in what appeared to be an effort to boost their chosen candidate.

Newsweek was so sure their efforts would pay off, they seem to have forgotten that it is the people who choose the president.

Both men clearly dislike each other. Their meeting was strained. During months of campaigning, they attacked each other with insulting rhetoric.

Obama called Trump “unfit to serve as president.” He’s “the classic reality TV character…a great publicity-seeker…He has a long record that needs to be examined.”

“What I think is scary is a president who doesn’t know their stuff and doesn’t seem to have an interest in learning what they don’t know.”

“He’s just offering slogans, and he’s offering fear…I would feel deeply frustrated (about welcoming Trump to the White House) not because of anything he’s said about me, but because I would fear for the future of our country.”

Fact: On November 10, Obama “welcom(ed) Trump” to the oval office for a 90-minute discussion, a photo-op showing both men shaking hands. More on this below.

Earlier, Trump called Obama

“the worst president maybe in the history of our country. I think he has been a disaster. He has been weak. He has been ineffective. You look at this so-called recovery. It’s setting record lows.”

Both men meeting in the oval office on Thursday was surreal, polite remarks substituting for campaign vitriol.

Obama:

“…I just had the opportunity to have an excellent conversation with president-elect Trump…(M)y number-one priority in the coming two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful.”

“Most of all, 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.”

Trump: “…(T)hank you very much, President Obama…We had never met each other. I have great respect…I very much look forward to dealing with the president in the future, including counsel.”

“So, Mr. president, it was a great honor being with you, and I look forward to being with you many, many more times in the future.”

On Thursday, I gagged listening to their comments – near mortal enemies during months of campaigning now buddies?

White House press secretary Josh Earnest called their meeting “less awkward than some might have expected.”

As president-elect, Trump now gets the same daily briefing as Obama, including classified intelligence information.

Trump campaign rhetoric stressed “crooked Hillary,” “trigger-happy Hillary,” adding she’s “reckless (and) unstable…”

“Sometimes it seemed there wasn’t a country in the Middle East that (she) didn’t want to invade, intervene in, or topple…This is (her) legacy, failure and death.”

“(T)he price of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (alone cost) approximately $6 trillion. We could have rebuilt our country over and over again.”

“Yet after all this money was spent and lives lost, Clinton’s policies as secretary of state have left the Middle East in more disarray than ever before. Not even close.”

“Unlike my opponent, my foreign policy will emphasize diplomacy, not destruction.”

Addressing supporters after becoming president-elect, he deplorably about-faced, “congratulat(ing) (a war criminal, racketeer, perjurer) and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign.”

“…(W)e owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country. I mean that very sincerely.”

For the moment at least, likely continuing once inaugurated, based on his above remarks, forgotten are her high crimes enough to land ordinary people in prison longterm.

An FBI investigation into Clinton Foundation racketeering remains ongoing. Will Trump order it stopped – letting Hillary get away with RICO crimes, besides her war crimes and lying to Congress and the FBI?

Will absolution replace long overdue justice? After taking office in January 2009, Obama refused to hold CIA torturers accountable for their high crimes.

Is Trump following the same pattern for “crooked Hillary” and others complicit with her RICO crimes alone?

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.

In the last week of October, civil society came another step closer to achieving a legally binding instrument on transnational corporations (TNCs) and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. Delegates from many large social movements and networks met alongside state representatives at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, to further proceedings for an open-ended intergovernmental working group set up two years ago. Despite considerable opposition from Western powers to a binding treaty in any form (particularly the United States, United Kingdom and other countries of the European Union), activist groups are now ramping up the struggle as part of a Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples’ Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity.

The fact that this process is now an official part of the UN agenda is itself remarkable. Since the 1970s, there have been a long series of failed attempts to develop binding international systems to regulate corporations for their human rights violations. The abortive efforts to create a code of conduct for TNCs through the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) were completely thwarted by the early 1990s, until fresh proceedings were launched in 1998 under a subordinate body of the then-Human Rights Commission. In 2003, the Sub-Commission approved a ‘non-voluntary’ set of norms that could hold TNCs accountable, although these were rigidly opposed by the business sector, and ultimately declared to have ‘no legal standing’ by the Human Rights Commission.

As an alternative, the (former) UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had appointed a Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, who became renowned for pursuing a less ambitious or ‘partnership’ approach to corporate regulation. His UN Guiding Principles, when eventually released in 2011, were accepted by all governments but remain voluntary and non-binding, only calling on corporations to act with due diligence. Civil society organisations wholly decried the inadequacy of the proposed follow-up mechanisms, which they stated even risked undermining efforts to strengthen corporate responsibility and accountability for human rights.

Against this background, it was therefore a huge step forward in 2013 when a grouping of countries, predominantly from the Global South, called for a renewal of efforts towards a legally binding framework to regulate the activities of TNCs and to provide appropriate protection, justice and remedy to the victims of human rights abuses. An historic resolution was adopted by a majority of States (again mostly from the Global South, including Russia and China) at the Human Rights Council in June 2014, establishing an intergovernmental working group with the mandate of drafting a legally binding instrument. It is the first time in almost 25 years that a UN intergovernmental body is dedicating itself to the regulation of corporations, which is set to be an intensive process with considerable hurdles if a genuine legal regime for TNCs is to be eventually agreed and implemented.

‘Damage to life’

The case for holding TNCs to account for their activities could not be tighter, considering the gap that exists in the international legal architecture which means they cannot be prosecuted directly for human rights abuses. Yet the harm that TNCs are wreaking is well-documented, referred to by the Global Campaign as ‘damage to life’; for example, through repressing social struggles and resistance, causing pollution in the extractivist industries, displacing indigenous peoples from their land, exploiting workers through poor labour conditions, and so on. Over several years, a Permanent People’s Tribunal has given representatives from affected communities the opportunity to testify on the socio-environmental impacts of harmful corporate activities, and to highlight the numerable cases that demonstrate how TNCs are able to act with effective impunity. Indeed it is the consistent work of many human rights defenders that has brought the issue of corporate impunity to the agenda of the Human Rights Council, leading to demands for the rights of affected persons to be central to a binding treaty, both in terms of regulation and remedy.

Campaigners talk of an entire ‘architecture of impunity’ that has protected the operations of TNCs for decades, and placed the rights of corporations above the rights of people through the privatisation of legal norms and institutions. Some of the largest TNCs have greater economic power than many nation states, while their tremendous political power is reinforced and protected on a legal level by a multitude of norms, treaties and agreements.

Often described as a new global corporate law, or the lex mercatoria, it is made up of mechanisms such as the Investor to State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions and arbitration tribunals that are enshrined in bilateral trade agreements; or the International Monetary Fund’s imposed structural adjustment programs (now replicated in Europe under the so-called Competitiveness Pact policies); or the World Trade Organisation’s dispute-settlement system. While the rights of TNCs are shielded by this complex global legal framework based on trade and investment rules, there are no adequate counterweights or enforceable mechanisms to control the social, cultural, environmental or labour impacts of their operations. The result is a normative asymmetry between the binding norms that protect investor interests, and the soft law that reduces TNCs obligation to respect human rights to mere voluntary measures.

A binding treaty to regulate the activities of TNCs could therefore provide a vital counterpoint to the controversial free trade and investment agreements that are being continually negotiated in secret, without any democratic legitimacy. As the UN’s Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, Alfred de Zayas, has forcefully argued, these ongoing agreements – such as the TTIP, TPP, CETA and TISA – are all prepared without the inclusion of key stakeholders or parliaments, and are thus in direct violation of international human rights law. They also enable international investors to override the national sovereignty of democratic States, and seek to impose their own system of ‘arbitration’ that isn’t required to adhere to any nation’s law and constitution. Inequality and asymmetry are built into the legal foundations of the current trade and investment regime, which is solely intended to serve the immediate profits of investors, speculators and transnational enterprises, at the wider expense of social and economic progress.

Inverting the normative pyramid

In this context, the implications of mainstreaming human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice through a legally binding instrument are potentially radical and transformative. The basic intent of civil society proposals is to invert the international normative pyramid to place the rights of social majorities at the top, hence the repeated calls for a final treaty to obligate States to introduce a binding human rights supremacy clause into all trade and investment agreements they sign, in conformity with the principles of the UN Charter. The repeated calls for States to comply with their extraterritorial obligations in the area of economic, social and cultural rights – as set down in the Maastrict Principles – is also central for ensuring that human rights can assume their rightful role as the legal basis for regulating global trade and finance.

As a result of invoking the pre-eminence of these hierarchically superior norms, it could require renegotiating all existing trade and investment agreements, and could certainly overturn the investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime, as well as the secretive corporate arbitration system in its entirety. Indeed if States and TNCs were truly compelled to respect and comply with the conventions, recommendations and declarations that are the established basis of international human rights law, then it could lead to an exhaustive list of necessary reforms to the global economic system: strict regulations on financial transactions and speculation, the closure of tax havens, the cancellation of illegitimate public and sovereign debt, the reversal of privatisations on public goods and services to ensure the right to food and health, and so much more.

This greater vision is upheld by a joint civil society proposal to elaborate an International People’s Treaty, which aims to go much further than articulating the need for control mechanisms to halt human rights violations committed by TNCs. The growing demand for access to justice is also linked to the ideal of creating international law “from below”, and establishing “peoples’ sovereignty over the commons” by opposing the expansion of TNCs into sectors that should be controlled by communities and citizens. As part of a work-in-progress, the current base document for global consultation has a lengthy section on alternatives to the dominant socioeconomic paradigm, emerging from the experiences and proposals of the many social movements, scholars, activists and affected communities who are resisting the growing power of TNCs in their diverse spheres.

A radical alternative proposal

At the centre of these proposals is the need to promote effective mechanisms for the realisation of fundamental human rights as governments formulate a new international political, economic and legal order, based upon an equitable distribution of wealth and respect for nature. The principle of sharing is therefore recognised as the basis of all transitional measures that promote cooperation and solidarity, as emphasised in the section of the People’s Treaty on envisioning new economies:

“To address the basic needs of more than half of the world’s population and end the disruption of the vital cycles of the Earth system, global and national economies have to redistribute wealth to reduce asymmetries under the limits of nature. Some sectors and countries still need to improve their wellbeing while others need to reduce their overconsumption and waste. Well-being for all will only be sustainable when we share what is possible and available. The real challenge is not only to eliminate poverty but, more importantly, to eliminate the concentration of wealth and power and achieve economic and social justice based on rights.”

No doubt many will dismiss this broader vision of global equity and justice as politically unrealistic, in light of the growing number of corporate abuse scandals across the world, and the continuing disregard for basic labour and human rights standards in many developing countries. Campaigning groups are still trying to resist corporate capture of the process for a binding treaty through the Human Rights Council, and are calling on all States to at least participate in good faith, considering the overt antagonism of the European Union during the first session held in 2015. The prospect of achieving a concrete draft proposal next year in line with progressive civil society demands is currently less than optimistic, even with the staunch support of countries like Ecuador, Cuba and Bolivia. Without massive, continual and unending support from ordinary citizens for securing the basic socioeconomic rights of all – as envisioned in STWR’s flagship publication, Heralding Article 25 – the balance of power will remain firmly in the hands of transnational capital and its servile political representatives.

Nevertheless, the treaty process remains an important opportunity for interlinking popular resistance struggles, building counterpower, and slowly cracking the immense wall of corporate impunity. It is a process that should concern not only human rights activists, but everyone who campaigns for a more democratic, sustainable and egalitarian world that places people and nature ahead of transnational corporate interests.

Further resources:

The Treaty Alliance: www.treatymovement.com

The Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power: www.stopcorporateimpunity.org

Storify on the Second Session of the Open Ended Inter-Governmental Working Group (OEIGWG) at the Human Rights Council: #StopCorporateAbuse with a #BindingTreaty

Transnational Institute: Building a UN treaty on Human Rights and TNCs – A way forward to stop corporate impunity

Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz: The struggle for a UN Treaty: Towards Global Regulation on Human Rights and Business, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

UN Human Rights Council: Draft report of the second session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights

Adam Parsons is the editor at Share The World’s Resources

President Trump: Big Liar Going to Washington or Tribune of the People?

By Prof. John McMurtry, November 10 2016

On the face of it, Trump is an ideal leader for US empire. He is like Ronald Reagan on steroids. His long practiced camera image, his nativist  US supremacism, his down-home talk, and  his reality-show confidence all go one better. He is America come to meet itself decades down the road as its pride slips away in third-world conditions. But unlike Reagan and Bush who spoke to the rich becoming richer, Trump speaks to the losing white working class and those who have come to hate the money-corrupted Washington forging the policies of dispossession Reagan started.

The Trump Presidency and U.S. Foreign Policy, Financial Markets, Trading Blocks and Military Alliances

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 10 2016

A Trump presidency in order to maintain any semblance of what is perceived as economic stability and growth must continue the same capitalist relations of productions and international relations. The failure of this phase of imperialist domination could provide renewed opportunities for world solidarity of the working class and oppressed.

Does President-Elect Donald Trump Have a Strategy?

By Prof. Tim Anderson, November 10 2016

The populism which pervades US politics makes predictions difficult; including those for President Trump. This nation of ‘freedom’, founded on mass slavery, was always hard to take at face value. As Hillary Clinton said, US politicians need both ‘a public and a private position’. Further, Trump will face great pressures to ‘normalise’ with the military-financial elite, once in office.

Thankfully, It’s Not Madam President… Hold the Cheers for Donald Trump…

By Stephen Lendman, November 09 2016

Thankfully humanity is freed from the scourge of a third Hillary and Bill Clinton crime family co-presidency – she in the lead role with her finger on the nuclear trigger as US military commander-in-chief, perhaps eager to squeeze it.

Why Trump Won; Why Clinton Lost

By Robert Parry, November 10 2016

In the end, Hillary Clinton became the face of a corrupt, arrogant and out-of-touch Establishment, while Donald Trump emerged as an almost perfectly imperfect vessel for a populist fury that had bubbled beneath the surface of America.

The Working Class Won the Election? What Kind of Trump Administration?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, November 10 2016

The US presidential election is historic, because the American people were able to defeat the oligarchs.  Hillary Clinton, an agent for the Oligarchy, was defeated despite the vicious media campaign against Donald Trump.  This shows that the media and the political establishments of the political parties no longer have credibility with the American people.

What Does Trump Victory Mean for Asia? An “Isolationist America” or More “Soft Power”?

By The New Atlas, November 10 2016

With the victory of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential elections, many commentators, analysts and academics have “predicted” a more isolationist America. For Asia specifically, particularly those in need of US intervention to prop up their unpopular, impotent political causes, they fear an ebbing of US support.

FBI Agents Say James Comey ‘Stood In The Way’ Of Clinton Email Investigation

By Kerry Picket, November 10 2016

FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey deciding not to suggest that the Justice Department prosecute Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information.

“Quando você dá [dinheiro aos políticos], eles fazem tudo o que você quiser que eles façam. Como homem de negócios convém-me que seja assim.” Donald J. Trump (1946-), em entrevista ao Wall Street Journal, 29 de julho de 2015.

“Nós [os Estados Unidos] gastámos 2 biliões de dólares; milhares de vidas. … Obviamente, foi um erro…George W. Bush cometeu um erro. Podemos cometer erros. Mas aquilo era uma evidência. Nós nunca deveríamos ter estado no Iraque. Nós desestabilizámos o Médio Oriente… – Eles [o presidente George W. Bush e o vice-presidente Dick Cheney] mentiram… Disseram que havia armas de destruição maciça. Não havia nada. E eles sabiam que não havia nada. Não havia armas de destruição em maciça. ” Donald J. Trump (1946-), durante um debate para a nomeação do candidato às eleições presidenciais pelo Partido Republicano (GOP), na CBS News, sábado, 13 de fevereiro de 2016.

“Na minha opinião, gastámos 4 biliões de dólares tentando derrubar várias pessoas que, francamente, se se tivessem mantido, e se tivéssemos gastado os 4 biliões nos Estados Unidos para consertar as nossas estradas, as nossas pontes e todos os outros problemas; os nossos aeroportos e todos os outros problemas que tivemos, teríamos feito muito melhor. Eu posso dizer isso agora.

– Nós causámos um tremendo dano, não só ao Médio Oriente; causámos um enorme dano à humanidade.

– As pessoas que foram mortas, as pessoas que foram eliminadas, e para quê? Não parece que tenhamos tido qualquer vitória.

É uma bagunça. O Médio Oriente está totalmente desestabilizado. – Uma bagunça total e completa.

– Gostaria que tivéssemos os 4 biliões ou os 5 biliões de dólares. Gostaria que tivessem sido gastos aqui nos Estados Unidos, nas nossas escolas, hospitais, estradas,aeroportos e tudo o mais que se está a desfazer”. Donald J. Trump (1946-) num debate presidencial do Partido Republicano, terça-feira. 15 de dezembro de 2015, Las Vegas, NV.

“Ao longo da história, qualquer profunda mudança política e social foi precedida por uma revolução filosófica, pelo menos entre uma parte significativa da população.” M. N. Roy (1887-1954), em “O Futuro da Democracia”, 1950.

Ocorreu um terramoto político geracional nos Estados Unidos e os choques que se irão seguir são potencialmente enormes. Na verdade, em 8 de novembro de 2016, contra todas as probabilidades, o candidato republicano Donald Trump (1946-) foi eleito como o 45º presidente americano, repetindo ad nauseam o seu slogan principal “Make America Great Again”. Será o primeiro presidente americano desde Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) a ocupar a Casa Branca sem ter qualquer experiência política.

A retórica e as propostas de Trump foram inequivocamente anti-establishment e anti status quo, tanto a nível nacional como internacional. Como tal, a vitória de Trump é uma revolução política na sua génese porque anuncia uma rutura com as políticas americanas seguidas por ambas as administrações republicanas e democratas dos E.U.A. desde os anos 90.

Por isso, a eleição de Trump inspira tanto medo quanto esperança. Medo entre as elites estabelecidas, especialmente entre os meios de comunicação e interesses financeiros estabelecidos e dominantes em Washington, já que a vitória de Trump será, sem dúvida, vista como um repúdio dos valores e das políticas desses interesses. E porque, depois do Brexit, em junho passado, pode ser também uma antecipação de derrocada das elites europeias, que também impulsionaram ativamente um mundo globalizado, com fronteiras abertas, imigração ilegal, mudanças tecnológicas e desindustrialização das economias mais avançadas.

Dados da noite de eleição, 8 de novembro, 22h

No entanto, há esperança entre aqueles que foram deixados para trás económica, politica e socialmente, especialmente entre os membros da classe média americana cujos rendimentos reais estão estagnados ou em declínio e que sofreram muito com a agenda e as políticas perseguidas durante as últimas três décadas. Nos últimos 30 anos, de fato, os 10% mais ricos e os 1% super-ricos da população dos Estados Unidos beneficiaram altamente com a mudança de uma economia de manufatura para uma economia de serviços, enquanto os 90% mais pobres foram deixados para trás.

Muitos dos trabalhadores americanos mais desprotegidos, especialmente aqueles com formação abaixo do ensino secundário, viram no candidato republicano Donald Trump e no candidato democrata derrotado Bernie Sanders a esperança de ver as coisas mudarem para melhor. É sintomático que os americanos nas grandes áreas urbanas tenham votado massivamente na candidata democrata, enquanto as áreas industriais e rurais o tenham feito massivamente no candidato republicano. Contrariamente às sondagens, os modelos de previsão que incluíam o contexto histórico e o desejo de mudança na sua previsão tinham razão. É o caso do modelo do professor universitário americano Allan J. Lichtman.

Os trabalhos de Hércules que esperam o novo Presidente

O presidente eleito Donald Trump e sua equipa têm pela frente uma tarefa hercúlea, se quiserem cumprir as promessas que fizeram.

1- Comecemos com as principais mudanças que se esperam na política externa.

Os maiores perdedores das eleições de 8 de novembro serão os falcões da política externa e os neoconservadores dos governos anteriores dos Estados Unidos, desde o governo Bill Clinton até aos últimos governos de Obama. Foram eles que levaram avante o reacender da Guerra Fria com a Rússia e que desenharam as políticas intervencionistas, que estão a destruir o Médio Oriente.

Espera-se que uma administração Trump reverta a política da NATO liderada pelos EUA para provocar a Rússia, multiplicando movimentos militares hostis nas suas fronteiras. Além disso, pode-se esperar que uma administração Trump chegue a um acordo com o governo russo de Vladimir Putin para pôr fim ao desastroso conflito sírio. Esta é uma má notícia para a organização medieval e assassina do ISIS.

Naturalmente, espera-se que um governo Trump possa transformar as diretrizes da política comercial dos EUA. A política comercial deverá ser provavelmente acompanhada por uma política industrial. Na prática, isso pode implicar que o curso dos dois grandes tratados multilaterais de comércio livre e de investimento livre, o Acordo de Livre Comércio Transatlântico (TAFTA) e o Acordo de Parceria Transpacífico (TPP) será interrompido.

Nesse sentido, a revolução Trump pode significar que a globalização económica e financeira está morta.

2- As principais alterações que se podem esperar de uma administração Trump na política interna.

Uma administração Trump tentará estimular a economia dos EUA através de uma série de políticas económicas. Afinal, o candidato Trump prometeu impulsionar a taxa de crescimento dos EUA para um valor médio anual de 3,5% e criar 25 milhões de postos de trabalho na próxima década. E também prometeu “rever as nossas políticas fiscais, regulatórias, energéticas e comerciais”.

Como pode uma administração Trump estimular o crescimento? Primeiro, propondo um enorme corte de impostos de 4,4 biliões de dólares para estimular o crescimento, não muito diferente do programa de corte de impostos de 1,3 biliões de dólares da administração Bush-Cheney em 2001-2003, que teve resultados duvidosos, além de ter aumentado o deficit fiscal do governo dos EUA.

Em segundo lugar, um governo Trump tentará impulsionar a criação de empregos na indústria dos EUA. Para isso, terá que fazer melhor do que o recorde alcançado durante os dois mandatos de Bush-Cheney, quando os Estados Unidos perderam mais de seis milhões de empregos na indústria. Para reverter essa tendência, Trump pode tentar forçar o repatriamento dos lucros de 2,1 biliões de dólares que as empresas americanas possuem no exterior e induzir essas empresas a investir mais nos Estados Unidos. Pode também aumentar alguns impostos sobre as importações para persuadir as empresas americanas a criar empregos nos EUA. Até que ponto um Congresso controlado pelos republicanos aceitará essa política comercial protecionista ainda está para se ver.

Finalmente, o candidato Trump prometeu lançar um enorme programa de investimento em infraestruturas, afirmando que queria “construir a próxima geração de estradas, pontes, ferrovias, túneis, portos e aeroportos”.

3- Os desafios do governo Trump nas políticas sociais

De longe, o maior desafio que um governo Trump enfrentará será lidar com a promessa do candidato Trump de abolir o programa nacional de saúde conhecido como Obamacare. Ele propôs a substituição da lei americana de saúde com uma transferência do Medicaid para os estados, acompanhada por um programa estadual de subsídios, e isenção de impostos para as empresas que facultem planos de seguro de saúde aos trabalhadores, sendo alargada a indivíduos que comprem os seus próprios planos de saúde. O candidato Trump chegou mesmo a namorar a ideia de os EUA adotarem um sistema de saúde de contribuição única. A ver vamos como uma questão tão complexa irá ser resolvida.

Conclusão

Rodrigue Tremblay 

Artigo em inglês :

Political Earthquake: The Trump Revolution in The United States, 9 de Novembre de 2016

Tradução : Júlio Manuel Dias Gomes (Economics teacher at Faculty of Economics at University of Coimbra, Portugal, now retired.)

In a major push to widen the scope of commodity derivatives market in India, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has recently allowed options trading on commodity exchanges. On September 28, 2016, SEBI issued an official notification allowing exchanges to launch options contracts in commodity derivatives market. Currently, trading in commodity futures contracts is only allowed in exchanges such as Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) and National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX).

It is expected that trading in options contracts will be introduced in the current fiscal year as the Finance Minister in his Union Budget Speech (2016-17) had announced that “new derivative products will be developed by SEBI in the commodity derivatives market.” In addition, Commodity Derivatives Advisory Committee, constituted by SEBI in January 2016 to advice on policy and regulatory issues, had also recommended the introduction of new products in the commodity derivatives market.

Like futures, commodity options contracts are traded on major commodity exchanges across the world. The majority of commodity exchanges (including CME and ICE) offer commodity options on underlying commodity futures. Eurex Exchange offers options contracts on underlying commodity spot (physical gold and crude oil). While Taiwan Futures Exchange allows market participants with open positions to seek delivery of physical gold in the case of gold options contracts.

Although options trading in equity segment was introduced in 2001, India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) occupies the top position in global index options trading. According to World Federation of Exchanges, 1765 million Nifty options contracts were traded at NSE in 2015.

As the SEBI has granted permission for options trading in commodities, market analysts predict that commodity derivatives trading may grow 10-fold over the next five years.

The government may soon allow foreign banks, mutual funds, institutional investors and other financial players to trade in Indian commodity derivatives market which will further boost trading volumes in both options and futures contracts.

At the time of writing, it is unclear how many commodities would be permitted for options trade in the Indian market. It is also not yet known whether the SEBI will allow European options (exercisable on expiration date only) or American options (exercisable any time on or before expiration date).

Currently, the modalities are being worked out and the options trading is expected to begin in early 2017.

Meanwhile commodity market experts have asked SEBI to develop eligibility criteria for option writers (based on financial soundness) given the high degree of risk involved in selling options contracts.

What are commodity options? 

An option is a financial contract between two parties (the buyer and seller) granting the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a futures contract at a predetermined price on or before a certain date.

Futures and options are both derivatives products but the key difference between them is that the options give the holder the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at expiration while the holder of a futures contract is obligated to buy or sell the underlying asset on a future date.

In the case of commodity derivatives market, options provide an opportunity or the right (not the obligation) to investors to buy or sell a commodity futures contract at a specified price. It needs to be emphasized here that the “underlying commodity” for the commodity options is a futures contract, not the physical commodity itself. Whereas futures contracts are derivatives of the physical commodity.

There are two kinds of options: call options and put options.

A call option gives the holder the right, not the obligation, to buy futures contract at a specific price on or before a certain date. Call options are most commonly used to protect against rising prices.

A put option is an option contract giving the holder the right, not the obligation, to sell futures contract at a specific price on or before a certain date. Put options are most commonly used to protect against falling prices.

The date on which the actual trade takes place in called Expiration Date.

The predetermined (fixed) price of the contract is called Strike Price.

Premium is the amount one pays to enter into an options contract. In other words, the cost of the option.  The buyer loses the premium irrespective of the fact whether s/he has exercised the options contract or not.

In many ways, options act like insurance policies. For instance, put option buyers insure themselves against falling price of a commodity while the seller of a put option acts like an insurer by offering a price guarantee to buyers. Just like an insurance company, the seller of put option charges a premium whether the contract is exercised or not.

To understand the workings of commodity derivatives markets, read A Beginner’s Guide to Indian Commodity Futures Markets.

Risky options 

Since options are more complex instruments than stocks and bonds, they are not suitable for every trader, leave aside an average Indian farmer. Due to volatility factor, options require a higher degree of sophistication on the part of the trader.

Sophisticated traders can use options to benefit from any up and down market movements. Options enable traders to make money even in those situation when is no market movement either way. Most options traders do not simply buy call and put options. They use complex trading strategies by combining many options and futures contracts or use dual directional strategies to make speculative profits from price movements in either direction.

Therefore, commodity options are more suitable for sophisticated traders and investors who have in-depth understanding of commodity derivatives markets and strong financial base. Options contracts can be very risky if used purely for speculative purposes because of the high degree of leverage involved. Leverage magnifies both potential profits and potential losses.

There are plenty of instances where improper use of options by traders have led to huge financial losses and bankruptcy. For instance, Aracruz Celulose, a Brazilian firm and world’s biggest producer of bleached eucalyptus-pulp, lost $2.5 billion after its forex option bets to hedge against the US dollar went the wrong way in 2008.

It is important to note that the buyers of option contracts have a different risk than sellers. Unlike futures contract which can potentially expose a trader to unlimited losses, the risk in options to buyers is limited to the premium paid upfront plus commissions to brokers and exchange fees. Besides, there are no margin calls for options buyers so they know the amount of payment and the maximum risk involved in buying options at the outset.

But in the case of call options, the potential losses are theoretically limitless for sellers as the prices of underlying futures contracts can rise indefinitely and, therefore, the value of an options contract can also rise indefinitely. In the case of put options, the potential downside for sellers is limited to the value of the underlying futures contract. An option seller has to meet margin requirements (cash or securities deposited with brokerage firm as collateral) until the contract is exercised or expires.

What about positive spillovers? The arguments supportive of positive spillovers of options trading are highly overstated and backed by very little hard evidence, particularly in the context of commodity markets. The benefits in terms of greater information transmission, higher market liquidity and improved market stability are yet to be demonstrated empirically in commodity markets across the world.

A game changer for farmers?

The commodity exchanges and brokerage houses have welcomed the decision to introduce options trading on the expectation that higher trading volumes would boost their fees and commissions. This is understandable considering the nature of their business model. What is really perplexing is that the hard selling of options trading on the grounds that this move is essentially meant to help the Indian farming community.

In a press statement, Samir Shah, Managing Director of NCDEX said, “This is a historic step which will go a long way in significantly deepening the commodities market. We are extremely excited and welcome this decision which will help expand the product basket and make it attractive for new participants. For the farmers, it will be a game changer. It would help them sell their produce in the derivatives market and thereby get the benefit of price protection in case the prices fall below their cost of production and also derive the benefit of any rise in the price. Options are also a much better hedging instrument as compared to futures for hedgers.”

Not surprisingly, similar arguments were made in the 1990s to introduce commodity futures trading. At that time, tall claims were made that commodity futures trading would facilitate efficient price risk management and price discovery in a fair, transparent and orderly manner. It was claimed that futures market will help Indian farmers to hedge against potential risks arising out of price movements in spot markets so that they can get guaranteed price for their produce in the future. Besides, trading in futures would provide reliable price signals to farmers about the likely prices of their crops in the months ahead.

However, both these economic objectives have not yet been realized across agricultural commodities (and for some metals and minerals), even though commodity futures markets have been in operation in India since 2003. It is unfortunate that futures markets continue to be dominated by speculators and non-commercial players who frequently indulge in price rigging and other market abusive practices with impunity. The frequent trading scandals (from guar to pepper) have further eroded the trust and confidence of Indian farming community in the commodity futures markets which are popularly perceived as “Satta Bazaar” (gambling market).

Against the backdrop of a massive trading scandal at NSEL, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) – the then regulatory body for commodity futures – was merged with SEBI last year.

In India, the participation of farmers in commodity futures markets is negligible. According to market estimates, not even 2000 farmers in India are directly trading on commodity futures exchanges. Even the participation of farmers marketing cooperative bodies (such as NAFED and HAFED) is very limited due to lack of adequate knowledge of the functioning of futures market. Such bodies can act as aggregators and hedge positions in futures exchanges on the behalf of their farmers.

While futures have failed to achieve their avowed objectives of price discovery and price risk management, it remains to be seen how options alone, or in combination with futures contracts would serve the interests of Indian farmers, especially small and marginal ones (owning less than 2 hectares of land) which constitute 78 percent of the country’s farming community.

The introduction of options trading in sensitive food security commodities calls for a cautious approach as price instability has been a major concern for producers and consumers in India.

An average Indian farmer lacks a basic understanding of what is involved in futures trading. The options trading is even more difficult to comprehend as it adds yet another layer of complexity on what is already a very complex trading instrument. Therefore, options contracts are not ideal for Indian farming community. In the same vein, small enterprises lack the resources and capacities to trade actively in derivatives contracts for hedging purposes. Even experienced traders struggle to understand the risks involved in trading both futures and options contracts.

Nowadays commodity exchanges are conducting short duration training workshops for small stakeholders but such workshops are inadequate to impart information and insights on the nuances of derivatives trading.

Instead of launching highly sophisticated derivatives instruments such as commodity options to help farmers, the Indian authorities should first focus on removing the bottlenecks such as fragmented nature of spot markets; over-politicization of state agricultural produces marketing committees (APMCs) and state agricultural produces marketing boards (APMBs); inadequate warehouses, storage and grading facilities; and poor condition of roads and other infrastructure in the rural India.

A speculator’s playground

The proponents argue that options contracts would complement the existing futures contracts and thereby would make Indian commodity derivatives more attractive to farmers and SMEs for hedging purposes.

Hedgers are market players (consisting of producers, processors and consumers) with an exposure to the underlying commodity and they use derivatives markets primarily for hedging purposes. The hedgers simultaneously operate in the spot market and the futures market. They try to reduce or eliminate their risk by taking an opposite position in the futures market on what they are trying to hedge in the spot market so that both positions cancel one another.

In the absence of strictly enforced guidelines classifying different categories of market participants, it is difficult to differentiate between speculators and hedgers in commodity derivatives markets. As a result, no one knows the true proportion of derivatives contracts used for purely hedging purposes in the Indian market. It is also difficult to determine whether a trader is buying or selling commodity derivatives contracts for purely speculative or hedging purposes.

Not long ago, the FMC had acknowledged that the bulk of trading in the Indian commodity futures market is carried out by speculators and non-commercial traders who attempt to profit from buying and selling futures contracts by anticipating future price movements but have no intention of actually owning the physical commodity, while the participation of hedgers is almost negligible. Most market analysts feel that the participation of hedgers in the futures market is relatively small. The frequent price manipulation scandals have further eroded their confidence and trust in the commodity derivatives market.

It should be noted that in the Indian equity markets where options contracts are traded, these contracts are mostly used as a speculative tool to profit from market movement, rather than to hedge existing portfolios.

In all likelihood, the introduction of commodity options trading will attract more speculative investments from big traders and speculators. These market players will now have a new instrument to add to their trading arsenal.

With the expected entry of foreign banks, institutional investors and other financial players, the Indian commodity derivatives markets would move further away from fulfilling the twin objectives of hedging and price discovery. The policy makers should take steps to avoid turning the entire commodity derivatives markets into an arena for pure speculative activities.

What is good for financial investors and commodity speculators is not necessarily good for Indian farmers and small entrepreneurs. This policy move will have significant implications for inclusive growth and development and therefore requires a major rethink.

Kavaljit Singh works with Madhyam, a policy research institute, based in New Delhi. 

“A US-Afghan raid against the Taliban, involving NATO airstrikes, left 26 civilians, three Afghan troops and two US service members dead, officials say.  

Afghan officials said they were still investigating the attack and its civilian casualties, some of which may have been caused by the airstrikes called in to support Afghan and US troops under fire.”  (ABC.au news report)

*      *      *

There is a storm of indignation all around the world because of US’ airstrike on Kunduz hospital in the northern part of Afghanistan within the latest three days. From the very beginning it was clear that it was the US who had stricken a blow. It was also confirmed by various international humanitarian organizations.

The UN reacted immediately and declared to hold an investigation on mass casualties among civilians. According to the United Nations, at least 32 were killed and 19 were wounded in the tragedy. Addressing the audience, the Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in AfghanistanTadamichi Yamamoto said such civilian casualties are unacceptable and undermine efforts on strengthening peace and stability in the region.

The Clarification of the incident’s circumstances is still going on. But the American command has already admittedtheir air strikes resulted in civilian casualties. It is really requires investigation. In this way the US President Barack Obama expressed condolences over civilians’ deaths speaking with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani as if that’ll help!

It should be mentioned that the US senior officials recently did not hesitate but admitted their mistakes and shortcomings. Such autocriticism becomes clear considering some facts.

First the US is acting on the basis of the aims and the experience of their own errors. State Department’s analytics have analyzed numerous instances of civilian infrastructure’s destruction and the losses of civilian lives, exposing a deep assessment of the international community’s reaction to these incidents. They came to the simple conclusion that in a few days such events are practically forgotten in the background of many others and the United States realize their bloody ambitions in the end. Only this year Western coalition’s Air Force stroke dozens of blows on civilian facilities, which were happily forgotten.

Let us remember some of the mistakes like the blows at the Doctors without borders’ hospital near the town of Maarrat al-Nu’man in Syria killing at least 7 and wounding 10 people on February 15. Similarly coalition’s planes attacked the city of Manbij on July 18 and 30, causing the losses of lives of more than 110 civilians, including 30 children. In addition, on July 28 it has destroyed the market in the village of Al-Ghandur in Aleppo province. There were 28 civilians killed there including seven children. The US Air Force’s blow on September 17 at the city of Deir ez-Zor was also a mistake. However there were not any terrorists killed, but the Syrian army. It should be recalled that about 60 military were killed and over 100 wounded in the attack. No one had been brought to justice as a result of the investigation so far.

Second the Americans usually investigate incidents having a finger in the pie. Controlled by the US media provide active support defining a favorable background information. There is an interesting article on the problems with the information in the western media written by Glenn Greenwald from Intercept. He claims CNN and The New York Times support the interests of their owners and are often used to manipulate the public opinion and promote propaganda or questionable political projects. In addition, the major Western media are too corrupted.

This is the very scheme used in the case of the last air strike of the hospital in Kunduz. According to White House Press Secretary Josh Ernest, Barack Obama has already contacted with the Doctors without Borders’ current international president Dr. Joanne Liu, and assured her the investigation of the incident would be ‘comprehensive and objective’.

This confirms once again that the United States use all the administrative, military, political, financial and information resources available to promote their own interests. The Americans have developed an algorithm of actions, which they try to impose on the UN leadership for misrepresentation. Let us hope that the United Nations won’t be led by the nose by the United States this time and not allow suppressing the facts. The investigation must be followed to its logical end and those responsible must be held accountable to the fullest extent of international law.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova affirmed that Western countries including the United States are currently funding the so called “local councils” which are affiliated to terrorist organizations in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo city.

In a statement on Tuesday, Zakharova said that according to the available information, these councils were funded at the beginning by Qatar, but now the US, Britain, France, the UAE, and Scandinavian countries are the major funders of these councils.

She pointed out that these councils were working to foil the UN operation for delivering aid to the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo via al-Castello road, and they were responsible for preventing the evacuation of sick and injured people from those neighborhoods recently.

Zakharova noted that it is obvious that these self-appointed councils do not represent people of the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo, who have become hostages in the hands of the militants, and that the representatives of those councils are fulfilling the orders of their sponsors and hypocritically speaking on behalf of civilians while in fact they support terrorists and the most extreme militants in the ranks of illegal armed groups, all of which leads to the continuation of bloodshed and furthers the suffering of civilians in the city.

With the victory of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential elections, many commentators, analysts and academics have “predicted” a more isolationist America. For Asia specifically, particularly those in need of US intervention to prop up their unpopular, impotent political causes, they fear an ebbing of US support.

However, as history has shown, the whims of US voters rarely has an impact on US foreign policy, particularly amidst the more subtle use of US “soft power.”

US policy toward Asia has been a historical, socioeconomic and military continuum marked by a consistent desire for geopolitical and socioeconomic primacy in the region stretching back for over a century. Since World War 2, the US has attempted to contain a rising China, temper and exploit emerging developing nations across Southeast Asia and prevent nations subjugated to US domination (Japan, South Korea and the Philippines) from achieving anything resembling an independent foreign and domestic policy.

This is a continuum that has transcended presidential administrations and congressional shifts of power for decades.

To believe that the recent victory by Donald Trump amid America’s 2016 presidential election will suddenly change this decades-long continuum is naive and folly.

The networks that primarily seek to establish, protect and expand US primacy in Asia are driven by corporate and financial special interests including banks, the energy industry, defence contractors, agricultural and pharmaceutical giants, the US entertainment industry and media as well as tech giants.

They achieve primacy through a variety of activities ranging from market domination through incremental advances in “free trade,” the funding of academic and activist groups through organisations like the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Open Society, Freedom House and USAID as well as direct pressure on the governments of respective Asian states through both overt and covert political, economic and military means.

This is a process that takes place independent of both the White House and the US Congress.

Regardless of how elections turn out, this process will continue so long as the source of these collective special interests’ power remains intact and unopposed.

For Asian states, in the wake of Trump’s victory, keeping track of and dealing with the actual networks used to project American primacy into Asia Pacific is more important than weighing the isolationist rhetoric of president-elect Donald Trump.

Until networks like NED and USAID are either entirely reformed or dismantled, and Asian alternatives are able to permanently displace US economic and institutional domination in the region, the threat of American primacy asserting itself over the interests of Asia itself will persist.

Something is in the air in Jerusalem and if Israel has its way it soon won’t be; the Muslim call to prayer – the adhaan – is under threat. The state which is built upon the ethnic cleansing of the majority of the indigenous Palestinian people is inching its way towards banning the call for prayer, which was probably first heard in Jerusalem in 637 AD. That was the year in which Caliph Umar Ibn Al-Khattab travelled to Palestine to accept its surrender from Patriach Sophronius, bringing a six-month siege of the Holy City to a peaceful end.

The required respect for people of other faiths was exemplified by one of Caliph Umar’s first acts upon entering Jerusalem. He understood the sensitivity surrounding religious sites and the potential danger of changing the status quo. He thus declined an invitation from Sophronius to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre lest Muslims turn it into a mosque. Instead, he stepped outside the Church to perform the midday prayer; a mosque named after him was later built on the site and exists to this day. This is in sharp contrast to the establishment of Israel in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homeland at gunpoint. Villages and towns were ethnically cleansed and wiped from the face of the earth, and their mosques were alsodestroyed or turned into synagogues or museums; at least two became cafes and one became a cowshed.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967 and one of Israel’s first acts as the occupying power was to raze the 770-year old Moroccan Quarter of East Jerusalem in order to improve access to Al-Buraq Wall, which Jews call the Western (“Wailing”) Wall, in order to facilitate their prayers there. Just a year after issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917, Britain had actually dismissed attempts by Chaim Weizmann to vacate the Moroccan Quarter and to place the Western Wall under Jewish ownership. Fifty years later, Israel had no qualms about bulldozing the Shaikh Eid Mosque which had stood since the time of Saladin.

Christian sites

Churches continue to come under attack by the Israelis. Benzi Gopstein, the leader of extreme right-wing Jewish group Lehava, voiced support for arson attacks against Christian churches in 2015; he has also called Christians “blood sucking vampires” who should be expelled from Israel.

Jewish extremists have on a number of occasions targeted churches in what are called “price tag” attacks. There was a particular rise in these in the lead-up to Pope Francis’s visit to the Holy Land in 2014. A top Catholic official received death threats and Hebrew graffiti appeared on the wall of the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Centre, the local headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church: “Death to Arabs and Christians and to everyone who hates Israel”.

At the end of last month, the Israeli flag was raised at the Eastern entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, enraging the Christian community and raising serious concerns about Israel’s commitment to protecting Christian sites. The Church fought a two-year battle with its water supplier which threatened to cut the supply due to unpaid bills, which was settled in 2012. Add to this Israel’s restrictions on visits by Christians to the holy sites in Jerusalem, and on Christians from Gaza visiting either Jerusalem or Bethlehem, and the difficulties faced by Palestinian Christians becomes clear.

Muslim sites

The situation for key Muslim sites in the occupied Palestinian territories is even more precarious than those of Christians. When East Jerusalem was occupied in 1967, the Israeli flag flew for a short time over the holiest site, Al-Aqsa Mosque. The mosque was set alight in 1969, reportedly by an Australian tourist; the damage included the complete destruction of a 1,000-year old pulpit.

An agreement between the Israelis and the Jordanian custodians of the holy sites, which covers the whole of the area on which Al-Aqsa Mosque stands, stated that the Jordanian Waqf would administer the compound and that Jews would be able to visit but not pray. The status quo has largely stood the test of time but in recent years has come under great strain, particularly since Ariel Sharon’s “visit” to the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa in 2000, which triggered the Second Intifada. The visit seems to have given Jewish extremists the green light not only to dream about praying on what they call the “Temple Mount” but also to plan to build a Jewish temple thereon; the plans include the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock Mosque.

Recent years have seen an upsurge in the frequency and extent of incursions by extremists during which the use of the sanctuary by Muslim worshippers is restricted. This practice has increased tensions and prompted fears of a change to the “status quo”, moving the Jordanian government to act by withdrawing its ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest. Clashes have erupted frequently between Israeli security forces and Palestinians devoted to protecting their mosque. Israeli forces have also harassed worshippers, banning some from entering the Noble Sanctuary or withholding their Jerusalem ID cards, without which they struggle to move around the territories. Such practices were a major contributory factor to the ongoing year-long uprising in which individual Palestinians have attacked mainly security forces but in some instances Israeli civilians in what has been termed the “knife intifada”.

Another city that has suffered disproportionately, probably due to its religious significance, is Al-Khalil (Hebron). The city is home to 120,000 Palestinians whose lives are blighted by the planting of 700 particularly extreme Israeli settlers in the centre of the city; they are protected by hundreds of Israeli soldiers and a system of closed military zones and checkpoints. The city is home to the Ibrahimi Mosque which Jews call the Cave of the Patriarchs. The mosque was the scene of a terrorist attack in 1994 by a Jewish American-Israeli named Baruch Goldstein who killed 29 Muslim worshippers while they were praying; although the murderous attack was condemned by the Israeli government it was – and is – applauded by some Israelis, particularly the extreme right-wing settlers. Israel’s response was – perversely – to impose greater restrictions on Palestinians and to divide the Ibrahimi Mosque physically, as well as to open it up exclusively to Jews for ten days of the year and to Muslims for another ten days.

Restricting the call to prayer

Israel’s restrictions on access to the holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron have recently been complemented with bans on the daily call to prayer. In Hebron, the practice has been ongoing for a number of years and included the call being silenced 49 times in January 2014, 52 times in December 2015 and 83 times last month.

The practice seems to be spreading to Jerusalem. Israel recently banned three mosques in Abu Dis from broadcasting the morning call. Lawyer Bassam Bahr, head of a local committee in Abu Dis, condemned the “unjustified ban”, saying that “Israel attacks Palestinians in all aspects of their lives.” It seems that the ban was a response to complaints from illegal settlers in nearby Pisgat Zeev who complained to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat about the “noise pollution” coming from local mosques. Both Barkat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are clearly set on applying the “unbearable noise” law to the call for prayer.

The mayor and prime minister know the importance of the call to prayer to the Muslim community; their plan to eradicate it from the air of Jerusalem to appease illegal settlers shows that neither has the wisdom of Caliph Umar. Their plan has not only enraged Palestinians, but also damaged yet further attempts to create a climate that will lead to peace; it is most definitely part of Israel’s attempts to Judaise Jerusalem and empty the Holy City of its Islamic and Christian heritage. The ban is, in fact, just the tip of the Judaisation iceberg.

As far the settlers objecting to the Muslim call to prayer are concerned, there is an easy solution. They could leave the houses that they have built — illegally — on land stolen from its Palestinian owners and either go back to where they came from in North America or Europe or live within the internationally recognised borders of the state whose citizenship they carry. That would be the most moral of solutions, although it is doubtful if they know what morality is.

Perhaps the biggest challenge the US faces regarding its credibility globally is the self-inflicted damage it does to its alleged principles and values as a center of global power.

A perfect example of this is unfolding in the dramatic unraveling of US-Philippine relations where any and every means of finding leverage over Washington’s wayward ally is being brought to bear on Manila.

The most recent manifestation of this occurred when the US blocked the shipment of US rifles destined for the Philippines’ police forces. PhilStar Global’s article, “Duterte cancels rifle sale blocked by US over rights concerns,” would report that:

The US State Department had earlier halted the sale of about 26,000 rifles to the Philippines when US Sen. Ben Cardin said that he will oppose it due to concerns over human right violations attributed to the government’s war on drugs.

At face value, and ignoring any wider context, it would appear that the United States took a moral stand on what would have otherwise been a lucrative arms deal and would have helped draw Washington and Manila closer together politically. However, zooming out slightly from Manila, the situation in Asia Pacific finds the US being incrementally pushed out of the region as a geopolitical power broker. As nations, including the Philippines rebuff the United States and its attempts to reassert itself vis-à-vis China, Washington has resorted to leveraging human rights issues, economic pressure and even covert political and military pressure to maintain its grip on each respective nation in the region.

Putting pressure on Manila through a humiliating political stunt, not adhering to moral convictions, is the primary factor driving Washington’s decision to block its own delivery of weapons to the Philippines’ police forces.

And beyond simply identifying the true motive of America’s recent stunt, there is the matter of overt hypocrisy to account for.

Philippines Denied Rifles, Saudis Given Tanks, Warplanes and Bombs 

While the US poses as morally bound to block its weapons deal with the Philippines, it continues to supply the nation of Saudi Arabia with billions of dollars of advanced weaponry, including air-delivered munitions, warplanes and main battle tanks.

In fact, according to the Guardian, in 2010 the US approved of a record weapons deal amounting to $60 billion, the largest such deal in US history. It included the delivery of additional F-15 fighters, Apache gunships and Black Hawk transport helicopters, many of the weapons now being used in armed aggression against neighboring Yemen.

The war in Yemen prosecuted by Riyadh with US and European weaponry, has become a growing humanitarian disaster with even the US and Europe’s own human rights advocacy groups forced to acknowledge the growing abuses being carried out by America and Europe’s close Arab ally.

And just this year, Reuters would report that the US Senate approved of an additional $1.15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia for the delivery of over 130 M1 Abram main battle tanks as well as 20 armored recovery vehicles and addition equipment to support the newly acquired systems.

Absent amid these immense weapon deals with Saudi Arabia, noted globally as a dictatorship, guilty of brutalizing its own people including through the use of public beheadings and torture, was any semblance of hesitation based on moral convictions.

Indeed, the torrent of weapons the United States supplies the Saudis, in the face of a recent block on rifle sales to the Philippines, proves the United States places politics over principles. Special interests in Washington use such principles merely as a politically-convenient prop when the opportunity presents itself, and otherwise views such principles as a surmountable obstacle to be effortlessly skipped over.

A United States guided by true convictions would be arming neither nation. A United States that sees convictions as politically convenient gimmicks, easily denies the Philippines rifles based on selective moral outrage while propping up a regime on the Arabian Peninsula that is brutalizing its people at home, prosecuting a devastating war in a neighboring nation and sponsoring terrorism worldwide. It is this lack of genuine, consistent moral principles that undermines the United States’ own self-declared status as a global leader, undermining its credibility along with the faith both Americans and foreigners alike have in the waning superpower.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

At least five Russian major banks came under a continuous hacker attack, although online client services were not disrupted. The attack came from a wide-scale botnet involving at least 24,000 computers, located in 30 countries.

The attack began Tuesday afternoon, and continued for two days straight, according to a source close to Russia’s Central Bank quoted by RIA Novosti. Sberbank confirmed the DDoS attack on its online services.

“The attacks are conducted from botnets, consisting of tens of thousands computers, which are located in tens of countries,” Sberbank’s press service told RIA.

The initial attack was rather massive and its power intensified over the course of the day.

“We registered a first attack early in the morning … the next attack in the evening involved several waves, each of them was twice as powerful as the previous one. Bank’s cybersecurity noticed and located the attack in time. There have been no problems in client online services,” Sberbank representative said.

Alfabank has also confirmed the fact of the attack, but called it a “weak” one.

“There was an attack, but it was relatively weak. It did not affect Alfabank’s business systems in any way,” the bank told RIA Novosti.

According to Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab, more than a half of the botnet devices were situated in the US, India, Taiwan and Israel, while the attack came from 30 countries. Each wave of attack lasted for at least one hour, while the longest one went on for 12 hours straight. The power of the attacks peaked at 660 thousands of requests per second. Some of the banks were attacked repeatedly.

“Such attacks are complex, and almost cannot be repelled by standard means used by internet providers,” the news agency quoted Kaspersky Lab’s statement as saying.

According to a source in Central Bank, the botnet behind the attack consists not only of computers, but also of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Computer security experts note, that various devices ranging from CCTV cameras to microwaves, are prone to hacking and pose a significant threat when assembled into a botnet. Owners of such devices underestimate the risks and often do not even bother to change a default password. A massive botnet, able to send more than 1.5Tbps and consisting of almost 150 thousands of CCTV cameras has been reportedly uncovered in September.

According to Kaspersky Lab, it was the first massive attack on Russian banks this year. The previous attack of such a scale came in October 2015, when eight major banks were affected.

FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey deciding not to suggest that the Justice Department prosecute Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information.

According to an interview transcript given to The Daily Caller, provided by an intermediary who spoke to two federal agents with the bureau last Friday, agents are frustrated by Comey’s leadership.

 “This is a textbook case where a grand jury should have convened but was not. That is appalling,” an FBI special agent who has worked public corruption and criminal cases said of the decision. “We talk about it in the office and don’t know how Comey can keep going.”

The agent was also surprised that the bureau did not bother to search Clinton’s house during the investigation.

“We didn’t search their house. We always search the house. The search should not just have been for private electronics, which contained classified material, but even for printouts of such material,” he said.

“There should have been a complete search of their residence,” the agent pointed out. “That the FBI did not seize devices is unbelievable. The FBI even seizes devices that have been set on fire.”

Another special agent for the bureau that worked counter-terrorism and criminal cases said he is offended by Comey’s saying: “we” and “I’ve been an investigator.”

After graduating from law school, Comey became a law clerk to a U.S. District Judge in Manhattan and later became an associate in a law firm in the city. After becoming a U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Comey’s career moved through the U.S. Attorney’s Office until he became Deputy Attorney General during the George W. Bush administration.

After Bush left office, Comey entered the private sector and became general counsel and Senior Vice President for Lockheed Martin, among other private sector posts. President Barack Obama appointed him to FBI director in 2013 replacing out going-director Robert Mueller.

“Comey was never an investigator or special agent. The special agents are trained investigators and they are insulted that Comey included them in ‘collective we’ statements in his testimony to imply that the SAs agreed that there was nothing there to prosecute,” the second agent said. “All the trained investigators agree that there is a lot to prosecuted but he stood in the way.”

He added, “The idea that [the Clinton/e-mail case] didn’t go to a grand jury is ridiculous.”

According to Washington D.C. attorney Joe DiGenova, more FBI agents will be talking about the problems at bureau and specifically the handling of the Clinton case by Comey when Congress comes back into session and decides to force them to testify by subpoena.

DiGenova told WMAL radio’s Drive at Five last week,

“People are starting to talk. They’re calling their former friends outside the bureau asking for help. We were asked to day to provide legal representation to people inside the bureau and agreed to do so and to former agents who want to come forward and talk. Comey thought this was going to go away.”

He explained, “It’s not. People inside the bureau are furious. They are embarrassed. They feel like they are being led by a hack but more than that that they think he’s a crook. They think he’s fundamentally dishonest. They have no confidence in him. The bureau inside right now is a mess.”

He added, “The most important thing of all is that the agents have decided that they are going to talk.”

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Only hours after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called Republican candidate Donald Trump to concede the November 8 election, the political establishment of both corporate-controlled parties has embraced Trump as president-elect and buried any criticism of his fascistic appeals.

Clinton spelled out her capitulation in a speech Wednesday morning in which she said nothing about the deep economic distress that was the foundation of Trump’s victory. Although acknowledging “our nation is more deeply divided than we thought,” she was silent on the most fundamental division, the yawning economic gulf between the super-rich and the vast majority of working people.

“Donald Trump is going to be our president,” she said. “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” She made no reference to where Trump threatens to “lead” America, with his incessant attacks on Muslims, immigrants and other minorities, his bullying towards other countries, and his manifest authoritarianism and contempt for democratic rights.

Clinton also said nothing about the fact that Trump actually lost the popular vote, where he continued to trail by about a quarter million votes, with most uncounted ballots in states like California, Colorado and Maryland, which voted for the Democrat.

President Obama appeared before the press an hour after Clinton, noting his planned meeting with his successor on Thursday, and declaring, “We are now all rooting for his success in uniting, and leading, this country.”

“Everybody is sad when their side loses an election,” Obama said. “But the day after, we have to remember that we’re actually all on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage. We’re not Democrats first, we’re not Republicans first. We are Americans first. We’re patriots first.”

This is more than just political boilerplate. It amounts to an admission that for all the vitriolic exchanges and mutual mudslinging of the bourgeois election campaign, the two parties of big business are “actually all on one team.” They both defend the property, profits and strategic world position of corporate America, at the expense of the working class at home and abroad.

Two days before Obama appeared on the steps of the White House to salute the president-elect, he was denouncing Trump as a menace to the republic, a threat to democratic rights, someone who was “temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief” and would be a danger to mankind if put in charge of the US nuclear arsenal.

Now he declares, “We all want what’s best for this country. That’s what I heard in Mr. Trump’s remarks last night. That’s what I heard when I spoke to him directly. And I was heartened by that.”

Obama likewise made no mention of Clinton’s victory in the popular vote, or suggested that Trump should be cautious about wielding his alleged “mandate” because a majority of those who went to the polls voted against him.

For his part, Trump showed that his own denunciations of “crooked Hillary” were just as cynical as Obama’s attacks on him. Announcing Clinton’s concession phone call to his supporters at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, he declared, “Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.” Only a few hours before, his supporters were chanting “lock her up” as they watched the election returns on a giant screen at the closing rally of the campaign.

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who had distanced himself from Trump during much of the campaign, praised the victorious candidate at a news conference Wednesday morning. “Donald Trump will lead a unified Republican government,” Ryan said.

The corporate-controlled media obediently plays its assigned role in the transition from the Obama to Trump, painting the president-elect in bright colors and covering up his racist and authoritarian tirades and threats against democratic rights.

The actual tally of the vote and available data from exit surveys demonstrates the widespread hostility to both presidential candidates.

Remarkably, 60 percent of voters had an unfavorable opinion of Trump, including 20 percent of those who voted for him, while 23 percent of Trump voters described him as unqualified and 29 percent said he was not honest and trustworthy. Clinton was seen as both more qualified and more dishonest, and viewed unfavorably by 54 percent of voters.

These figures demonstrate the dead end of the corporate-controlled two-party system, which gave voters the “choice” of the two most unpopular figures ever to run as candidates of the two major parties.

Trump will come to Washington in partnership with a Congress that is near-universally reviled, with only 9 percent of those voting having a favorable opinion of the institution. Nonetheless, within the confines of the two-party system, nearly every incumbent senator and representative won reelection on November 8.

While Democrats had expected to regain control of the Senate, where 24 Republican-held seats and only 10 Democratic seats were at stake, they fell far short. The Democrats gained only two seats in the Senate, leaving the Republican Party with a narrow 51-48 edge, pending a December runoff in Louisiana where the Republican candidate is heavily favored. Clinton proved a drag on “down-ballot” Democratic candidates, as not a single Democratic Senate hopeful won in a state carried by Trump.

Democratic challengers Tammy Duckworth in Illinois and Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire defeated incumbent Republicans, although Hassan’s margin of victory was barely 700 votes and is likely to be subject to recount. Two prominent former senators, Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and Evan Bayh in Indiana, lost their bids to return to office, and other Democratic challengers lost close races in Pennsylvania, Missouri and North Carolina.

Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto won the Nevada seat vacated by retiring Democratic leader Harry Reid. Clinton narrowly defeated Trump in Nevada, and the Democrats took two Republican-held House seats, their only significant statewide sweep.

In the House of Representatives, Democrats gained seven seats, barely denting the massive Republican majority. Besides the two in Nevada, they gained House seats in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia, and three seats in Florida, but they lost two open seats in Florida. Several contests remain undecided in California, where ballots postmarked Election Day are still to be counted, but Democrats already control most of the 53 seats in the most populous US state.

In one high-profile race, liberal Democrat Zephyr Teachout, the most prominent Bernie Sanders supporter seeking an open House seat, lost her race in a Hudson Valley district in New York.

Of the 11 gubernatorial contests, Democrats won six, a net loss of one statehouse, ousting incumbent North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, but losing governorships in both Vermont and New Hampshire. Republicans control 33 statehouses compared to only 17 for the Democrats.

The US presidential election is historic, because the American people were able to defeat the oligarchs.  Hillary Clinton, an agent for the Oligarchy, was defeated despite the vicious media campaign against Donald Trump.  This shows that the media and the political establishments of the political parties no longer have credibility with the American people.

It remains to be seen whether Trump can select and appoint a government that will serve him and his goals to restore American jobs and to establish friendly and respectful relations with Russia, China, Syria, and Iran.

It also remains to be seen how the Oligarchy will respond to Trump’s victory.  Wall Street and the Federal Reserve can cause an economic crisis in order to put Trump on the defensive, and they can use the crisis to force Trump to appoint one of their own as Secretary of the Treasury. Rogue agents in the CIA and Pentagon can cause a false flag attack that would disrupt friendly relations with Russia.  Trump could make a mistake and retain neoconservatives in his government.

With Trump there is at least hope.  Unless Trump is obstructed by bad judgment in his appointments and by obstacles put in his way, we should expect an end to Washington’s orchestrated conflict with Russia, the removal of the US missiles on Russia’s border with Poland and Romania, the end of the conflict in Ukraine, and the end of Washington’s effort to overthrow the Syrian government.  However, achievements such as these imply the defeat of the US Oligarchy.  Although Trump defeated Hillary, the Oligarchy still exists and is still powerful.

Trump said that he no longer sees the point of NATO 25 years after the Soviet collapse.  If he sticks to his view, it means a big political change in Washington’s EU vassals.  The hostility toward Russia of the current EU and NATO officials would have to cease. German Chancellor Merkel would have to change her spots or be replaced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would have to be dismissed.

We do not know who Trump will select to serve in his government.  It is likely that Trump is unfamiliar with the various possibilities and their positions on issues.  It really depends on who is advising Trump and what advice they give him.  Once we see his government, we will know whether we can be hopeful for the changes that now have a chance.

If the oligarchy is unable to control Trump and he is actually successful in curbing the power and budget of the military/security complex and in holding the financial sector politically accountable, Trump could be assassinated.

Trump said that he will put Hillary in prison. He should first put her on trial for treason and war crimes along with all of the neoconservatives. That would clear the decks for peace with the other two major nuclear powers over whom the neoconservatives seek hegemony. Although the neoconservatives would still have contacts in the hidden deep state, it would make it difficult for the vermin to organize false flag operations or an assassination. Rogue elements in the military/security complex could still bring off an assassination, but without neocons in the government a coverup would be more difficult.

Trump has more understanding and insight than his opponents realize. For a man such as Trump to risk acquiring so many powerful enemies and to risk his wealth and reputation, he had to have known that the people’s dissatisfaction with the ruling establishment meant he could be elected president.

We won’t know what to expect until we see who are the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries. If it is the usual crowd, we will know Trump has been captured.

A happy lasting result of the election is the complete discrediting of the US media. The media predicted an easy Hillary victory and even Democratic Party control of the US Senate. Even more important to the media’s loss of influence and credibility, despite the vicious media attack on Trump throughout the presidential primaries and presidential campaign, the media had no effect outside the Northeast and West coasts, the stomping grounds of the One Percent. The rest of the country ignored the media.

I did not think the Oligarchy would allow Trump to win. However, it seems that the oligarchs were deceived by their own media propaganda. Assured that Hillary was the sure winner, they were unprepared to put into effect plans to steal the election.

Hillary is down, but not the Oligarchs. If Trump is advised to be conciliatory, to hold out his hand, and to take the establishment into his government, the American people will again be disappointed. In a country whose institutions have been so completely corrupted by the Oligarchy, it is difficult to achieve real change without bloodshed.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

Note: The following article was written up to the November 8 presidential election before Trump’s victory was declared

Know a man by his enemies.  Trump has countless enemies, but most of them march to the drums of endless wars of aggression and care less about the casualties of tens of millions of lost good jobs in America. Most are neo-liberals in fact, the bipartisan doctrine of dispossession of citizens and foreign wars to grow the system further.  The worst have been Washington servants of the world corporate machine looting the world. They above all condemn his peace overtures to Russia and his promise to repeal NAFTA – both unspeakable heresies on the US public stage  until Trump’s movement against them.

HiIlary Clinton is a perfect enemy of Trump. She has become rich in office, and as Harry Truman said “anyone who gets rich in politics is a crook”. She has dedicated her life to political power at the top while growing ever wealthier from its use.  And she loves foreign wars. She has supported a long line of eco-genocidal attacks and bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine, all of them still in motion and waiting for her to be escalated further.

She wants a return to this bombing in Syria as a “free-fly zone” – free for US and NATO bombers – just as she led Libya’s destruction from 2011 on. She abuses  Russia and slanders Putin at every opportunity and she supported the neo-Nazi coup overthrowing the elected government of Ukraine and the civil war since.  She has done nothing but advocate or agree to endless US-led war crimes without any life gain but only mass murder, social ruin and terror which she ignores. Like her mentor Madeleine Allbright , even the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq by Clinton-led bombing are “worth the price”.

Where Trump agrees with the US money-and-war party is on Israel and Iran. He started with a policy of more neutrality towards the Israel-Palestine conflict, but soon backed out when the attack-dogs went into action with a $50 million gift for his campaign from a wealthy Zionist at the same time.  Then he declared “ Israel is America”. So Trump can proclaim opposite positions without a blink, including on the continuous war crimes of Israel supported by the US.

Trump also bellows against on the giveaway of many billions of US money to Iran and prefers to bomb their nuclear facilities as Israel wants, and has already done in Syria.  He does not tell his audience that all of this US money is Iran’s money being returned to it from its US seizure in exchange for its nuclear disarmament  never suggested for Israel which has enough nuclear weaponry to blow up the whole Middle East and beyond. Trump too is not to be trusted when it suits his run to be US President. Yet even here Trump still holds to his position that use of nuclear weapons means “game over”. Clinton and the bipartisan money-and-war party express no such constraint.

Why the Establishment Hates Trump, But Will Accept Him

All of them have reason to hate Trump for a more basic reason. He is seemingly alone in the money-media-military establishment to publicly deplore the rigged electoral system in which big money and media rule – formerly unspeakable in the press and political discussion on stage.  Trump has even voiced suspicion of the 9-11 killing spectacle and the “six-trillion- dollar” haemorrhage of US money on Middle East and Afghanistan wars  propelled and justified by 9-11 from 2001 on.

Yet here again the problem is that Trump backs off as soon as he thinks he will not be able to sell it.  This is the art of political lying at which Trump, like Reagan, is a master. But the hard-line difference between Trump and Reagan and neo-con-lib rulers over the last 30 years is deep – Trump’s denunciation of NAFTA and willingness to have peace with other nations not bowing to Uncle Sam.

Before Trump, job-destroying edicts of transnational global corporations and captive states called ‘free trade’ have been anathema to oppose in official society.  But Trump sticks to his heretical position.  Right up to the election he has promised a “35% tariff” on products of US factories that disemploy workers to get cheaper labor elsewhere.  No-one in the US political establishment has risked such a position, or blamed these corporate-rights treaties for hollowing out American society itself.  It is apostasy in the corporate ‘free press’.

Trump is still hated for such deviations from the official corporate-state line. But the haters cannot say this. They stick to the politically correct repudiations, and call him “racist”, “sexist”, “bigot” and so on even if the conclusion does follow from what he says or does. Selected instances are the ruling fallacy here.

Trump and the Media-Lie System

Trump is unique in calling out the major mass media as continuous purveyors of lies and propaganda – although he centers it on himself and not  global corporate rule across borders which they worship. Anyone not doing so is excommunicated from the press. This profound disorder is never allowed into the mass media as an issue, and Trump never raises it. He too is a believer, but one who sees the life costs of the sacrifice-workers rule inside the US. He also advocates job-creating  public spending on physical infrastructure  which is as crucial to his movement as it was to FDR.  It is no longer taboo inside the dumkopfen party

Trump is a first. Never before has anyone been able to denounce the mass media framing, half-truths and fabrications and still come out stronger The onslaught of ideological assassination by a hireling intelligentsia and media of record like the New York Times has always succeeded before.  Trump reacts only as it affects his own position, but his raw defiance right into the cameras has been eye-popping and unique in America.

This may be Trump’s most remarkable achievement. He has been slandered and demonized more than Russia’s Putin, and Russia-baiting him with McCarthy-like accusations of collaboration with Putin has been part of the attack by Hillary and the press. Yet passionate voter support of Trump has still grown in the face of all this denunciation by the political establishment.

An underlying revolution in thinking has occurred.  Trump has tapped the deep chords of worker rage at dispossession by forced corporate globalization, criminally disastrous Middle East wars, and trillions of dollars of bailouts to Wall Street. He never connects the dots on stage. But by Clinton’s advocacy of all of them, she has made them her own and will go down because of it.

Trump’s unflinching vast ego and media savvy have been what she and the political establishment are too corrupted to defeat, The underlying contradiction that now raises its head pits the mass media against the President of the United States himself – against the long sacred office of the commander-in-chief of US power across the world, precisely what he is proposing to pacify with friendly relations instead of ruinous war invasions as in Iraq. Many observers think that Wall Street and big money won’t let it happen.  Or that Trump will like others before him will be determined by the office.  Or that Clinton’s billion dollars of PAC money will succeed work in the end. But the meaning is out and cannot be reversed out of sight.

Whatever happens next in this saga it will be ground-shaking. The worst that can happen to Trump’s enemies is that he wins despite the all-fronts attack. They define his underlying meaning, just as the Enemy they construct abroad defines them. If he loses, there will be a carnival of the money-war-media party pretending a healing of the great division that has come to view. But this is not a Republican-Democrat division. It is as deep as all the lost jobs and lives since 2001, and it is ultimately grounded in the tens of millions of dispossessed people which the life-blind global market system and its wars have imposed on America too.

The Great Division Will Not Go Away

Trump is the closest to an egomaniac that has ever run for the presidential office. If he were not, he could not have withstood the public shaming heaped upon him by the political establishment and dominant media everywhere.

But the tens of millions of Americans for whom Trump speaks tend to have one thing in common more than anything else. They have been dispossessed and smeared by the neo-con/ neo-liberal alliance that has taken or traded away their life security and belittled them with political correctness – the establishment’s patronizing diversion from their fallen state.

All the while, the ruling money party behind the media and the wars is system-driven to seek limitlessly more money under masks of ‘free trade’ and “America’s interests abroad’. The majority is left behind as the sacrificial living dead. Multiplying transnational money sequences of the very rich have bled the world into a comatose state, and perpetual wars against the next Enemy of the cancerous system have sown chaos across the world.

Trump at least starts remission by seeing a criminally blind rule and chaos inside America itself.  Before his campaign, there was helplessness against the invading wars and money sequences always profiting from the global ruin. The reality has been taboo to see in public. Only entertainments have appeared in ever new guises as the corporate money-and-war machine has rolled and careened on across all borders, now marching East through Ukraine into Russia, Brazil to Venezuela to the Caribbean, from the Congo to the South China Sea.

The Trump entertainment, the most watched in the world, may be the long bridge   to taking down the neo-liberal pillars of majority dispossession and war-criminal state.

Trump is the Opposite to Reagan in Policy Directions

On the face of it, Trump is an ideal leader for US empire. He is like Ronald Reagan on steroids. His long practiced camera image, his nativist  US supremacism, his down-home talk, and  his reality-show confidence all go one better. He is America come to meet itself decades down the road as its pride slips away in third-world conditions.

But unlike Reagan and Bush who spoke to the rich becoming richer, Trump speaks to the losing white working class and those who have come to hate the money-corrupted Washington forging the policies of dispossession Reagan started.

Washington has since ignored and patronized their plight over 30 years. Trump’s  constituency has been the disposable rejects from the corporate global system that it is rigged from top to bottom with rights only for the profits of transnational abroad and bought politicians at home.

The Trump constituency may have no clear idea of this inner logic of the system. But they directly experience the unemployment, underemployment, ever lower pay, deprived pensions, degraded living conditions, public squalor, contempt from official society, and no future for their children.

At the surface level, what drives them mad is the ‘political correctness’ that diverts all attention from their plight to pant-suit ‘feminists’ getting a leg up, racial rights with no life substance, sexual queers they had been conditioned to abhor, and other symbols of oppression changed as the actually ruling system of dispossession becomes inexorably worse all the way down to their grand children.

Here too Hillary Clinton has been an embodiment of the smug ideology of the system that bleeds the unseen job-deprived into powerless humiliation: an existential crisi where the secure jobs and goods of US life have been stripped from them in continuous eviction from the American way with no notice.

While Trump’s narrative is that the American Dream seeks recovery again, the dominant media and political elite relentlessly denounce him for his message. He gives lots of ammunition to them. His most popular line is “build the wall”, “build the great wall” between Mexico and the US. No political correctness cares that the biggest source of near-slave labor for the big businesses of the US South is Mexican ‘illegals’, and Trump himself never mentions this. He prefers to blame the Mexican illegals themselves for drugs, rape and violence, the standard lie of blame-the-poorer for your problems. Trump also wants to tax their slim earnings to pay for the wall.  This is the still running sore of America beneath the lost jobs.

Trump has thus attracted lots of votes. But many non-ignorant people too recognise that the tens of millions of illegal migrants seeking work in the richer USA cannot continue in any country with borders, or any nation that seeks to keep worker wages up not down by lower priced labor flooding in. The legal way must be the only way if the law of nations is to exist and working people are to be secure from dispossession by starvation wages illegal migrants can be hired for. Borders are, few notice, the very target of the carcinogenic neo-liberal program.

Of course the political discourse never gets to this real and complex economic base of the problem. Nor does Trump. His choral promise is “’l’ll fix it. Believe me”.  But something deeper than demagoguery and blaming the weak is afoot here. An untapped historic resentment is boiling up from underneath which has long been unspeakable on the political stage. Trump has mined it and proposed a concrete solution – one grand gate through which immigrants must pass.

Is this really racist? It is rather that Trump is very good at bait and switch.  From his now deserted promise to halve the Pentagon’s budget to getting the Congress off corporate-donation payrolls, now by fixed congressional terms, the public wealth that the politicians and corporate lobbies stand to lose from a Trump presidency is very disturbing to them. The Mexican wall does not fit the borderless neo-liberal program either. But all of it is welcome to citizens’ ears.  That is why the establishment hates Trump for exposing all these issues long kept in the closet and covered over by politically correct identity politics.

On the other hand, Trump leaves the halving of the Pentagon’s budget behind as soon as he sees the massive private money forces against it. It is Reagan in reverse. He now promises hundreds of billions more to the military – but he still opposes foreign wars. That might even do it. But this most major issue of the election has been completely ignored by the media and opposing politicians alike. It is the historic core of his bid for the presidency.

Yet the US political establishment across parties cannot yet even conceive it so used are they to the Reagan-led war state, the military corporate lobbies paying them off in every Senate seat, anti-union policies at macro as well as micro levels, and always designated foreign enemies to bomb for resistance. “Say Uncle” said Reagan to the Sandinistas when they asked what could stop the mercenary killers paid by US covert drug running from bombing their harbours, schools and clinics.

Trump is going the opposite direction in foreign affairs, but the establishment commentators call it “isolationist” to discredit it. Clinton talks of overcoming the divisions in America, but has never mentioned holding back on foreign wars. On the contrary, she approves more war power against Russia and in Syria and in the Ukraine.  This is the biggest danger that no media covers – ever more ruinous US wars on other continents.  The formula is old and Reagan exemplified it. Russia is portrayed as the evil threat to justify pouring up to two billion dollars-a-day of public money into the US war-for-profit machine occupying across the world, now prepping for China.

But the bipartisan war party backed by Wall Street is going down if Trump’s policy can prevail.  This may be the salvation of America and the world, but it is silenced up to election day.

Trump Against the Special Interests

At the beginning g of his public campaign, Trump’s policy claims threatened almost every big lobby now in control of US government purse strings. And these policies grounded in no more foreign wars which have already cost over ‘six trillion dollars’ of US public money. At the same time, the country’s physical infrastructures  degrade on all levels, and its people’s lives are increasingly impoverished and insecure for the majority.  Trump promises to rebuild them all.

Yet the cut-off of hundreds of billions of public giveaways to the Big Corps that Trump advocated did not end here. It hit almost every wide-mouthed transnational corporate siphon into the US Treasury, taxpayers’ pockets and the working majority of America. Masses of American citizens increasingly without living wages and benefits and in growing insecurity listened to what the political establishment and corporate media had long silenced.

Trump raised the great dispossession into the establishment’s face, and this is why he will win. “In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage”.”The grapes of wrath have risen from the long  painful stripping of the people’s livelihoods, their social substance and their cities by corporate globalization selecting for the limitless enrichment of the few living off an ever-growing takes from public coffers and the impoverishment of America’s working citizens. A primal rage has united them across party lines in the public person of Donald Trump.

Can he deliver? Well he certainly has shown the guts necessary to do so, most uniquely in facing down the corporate media  and Washington politicians.

Looking Past the Victory

The issue still remains that Trump does not promise any fixing of the greatest transfer of wealth to the very rich in history that Reagan started.  This great transfer of wealth includes his own. We may recall that his model Ronald Reagan started this Great Dispossession to “make America great again” too.

Now Trump has promised a massive tax cut to the rich and private capital gains as Reagan did. In the meantime nothing has been less talked about in election commentary than the globally powerful interests Trump promised to rein back from the public troughs bleeding the country’s capacities to build for and to employ its people. On this topic, there has been only silence from the media and politicians, and retreating vague generalizations from Trump.

At the beginning, he not only went after the foreign wars, but the sweetheart deals of the government with Big Pharma, the health insurance racket, lobby-run foreign policy, off-shore tax evasion, and global trade taking jobs in the tens of millions from home workers. This is why the establishment so universally hated him. Most of their private interests in looting public wealth were named. He reversed the tables on the parasite rich in Washington lobbying and gobbling up public money faster than it could be bribed, printed and allocated to their schemes – except on real estate, his own big money ‘special interest’ not centered in Washington.  Indeed Trump loves ‘eminent domain’, state seizure of people’s private property for big developers like him.

This is where Trump joins hands with those depending on the deep system corruptions he has promised to reverse. He even asked, in his loud way, how these huge private interests go on getting away with a corporate-lobby state transferring ever more public wealth and control to them at the expense of the American working majority and their common interest as Americans. But it had all pretty well slid away by election day except the hatred of self-enriching Washington fixers like Hillary, Mexican illegals, the Obamacare new charges (with no mention of the HMO’s doing it), and the disrespect for people bearing arms by the second-amendment right.

Do we have here the familiar positional determinism where political and economic class leaders desert what they promised as they enter into elected office or have sold the goods?

Yet the victory Trump is about to reap is far from empty for America and the world if he keeps to the promises he made.  The money-and media-rigged elections have stayed front and center where no-one in official politics dared say it before. The black-hole of US foreign wars has above all has remained his historic target.

His entire strategy has been based on getting public attention, and he is a master at it. He is unbuyably rich, has energy beyond a rock star, and is the most watched person in America across the country and the world for months on end.  He can’t be shut up. Media stigmatization and slander without let-up do not work as always before.

Trump is also capable of meeting perhaps the world’s most important challenges, holding back the global US war machine from perpetual eco-genocidal aggression and investing back into public infrastructure and workers’ productive jobs.

Most importantly, Trump challenges “the Enemy” cornerstone of US ideology when he says “wouldn’t it be nice to get along with Russia and China for a change?” And as he said to Canada whose branch-plant corporate state still plays minion to its US corporate masters, “congratulations. You have become independent”.

As for Trump’s much publicized ‘denial of climate change, it is not really accurate. He has said little on the topic, but has expressed his opposition to “bullshit government spending” on preventing climate. So does James Lovelock, the famous global ecologist behind ‘the Gaia hypothesis ’. Certainly the green-wash hoaxes of the private corporations (and Al Gore) becoming much richer than before on solutions that do not work to prevent the global market-led climate destabilization do need more astute appraisal.

When you join the dots to Trump preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable corporate jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the underlying meaning emerges. He wants to stop the non-productive transnational corporations from feasting on the public purse. At the beginning after 2008, he even dared to recognize that Wall Street should be nationalized, as it once was by the American Revolution, Abraham Lincoln and FDR’s Federal Reserve.  This would be as big a turn of US government in the people’s interests as stopping ruinous foreign wars.

Trump also once said that the US “must be neutral, an honest broker” on the Israel-Palestine conflict – as unspeakable as it gets in US politics. Big Pharma was also called out with “$400 billion to be saved by government negotiation of prices”. He even confronted the more powerful HMO’s with the possibility of a “one-payer system” far better than the Obamacare pork-barrel for ever higher insurance premiums.

Trump is no working-class hero. He has long been a predatory capitalist with all the furies of greed, egoism and self-promotion that the ruling system selects for. But he is not rich from foreign wars of aggression, or from exporting the costs of labor to foreign jurisdictions with subhuman standards. He has not been getting richer or more smug by seeking high office in a context of saturating slander and denunciation from official society. He has initiated a long overdue recognition of parasite capitalism eating out and wasting the life capacities of the US itself as well as the larger world.

Trump has now won the first major step that his enemies declared inconceivable, and he can now do what he has promised ‘in the place where the buck stops’.

Prof. John McMurtry is author of The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure (available from University of Chicago Press) and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

US real estate billionaire, Donald Trump, is president-elect. In an age when 97% of all GDP-national income gains since 2010 have accrued to the wealthiest 1%–of which Trump is one—how could American voters come to elect Trump? How could they vote for a candidate that they simultaneously were giving a ‘negative rating’ of 60% to 80%? That fundamental question will ever haunt this election.

What the election shows is that American voters in electing Trump wanted ‘anything but the above’ Obama policies of the previous eight years, policies which were just extensions of the neoliberal regime established in the 1980s in the US since Reagan. And voters didn’t care about the political warts, past or present, of Trump. They just wanted something different. They wanted to ‘stick their thumb in the eye’ of the ruling political elites (of both parties).

The voters’ message was: ‘you, the political elite, have hurt and harmed us these past eight years. You have ignored us and left us behind while ensuring your wealthy friends recovered quickly and well from the 2009 crash. We have experienced great anxiety and insecurity. Now have a taste of that yourself!’

Trump’s campaign gaffs, his personal character, his missteps and outrageous ‘off the cuff’ statements, his lack of any government experience, only enhanced the view that he was not just another elite politician. His lack of TV ad spending, absence of a so-called ‘ground game’ organization to turn out the vote, his having lost all three TV debates according to pundits and the press, his lack of ‘field organization’ and a poorly run Republican Party convention—all that was irrelevant. What his win, in spite of all that conventional political wisdom of what it takes to win an election, reflects is that the equation of politics is changing in the US as the people, the ‘masses’ to use jargon of prior times, are entering the political arena as a political force.

And that fact is not just revealed in Trump’s election. It was evident in Britain’s recent ‘Brexit’ referendum to leave the European Union. It will next be reflected in Italy’s vote this coming December, in which political elite proposals for political reform to give them more power will also be rejected. It will reflect thereafter in the increasingly likely election of the far right ‘national front’ in French elections next year. And could further reflect in German elections thereafter, in which that country’s long standing and presumably untouchable political leader, Angela Merkel, may also be over-turned.

Obama’s Vanished Coalition

Trump’s election can be traced to the shift in key groups of voters who had supported Obama in 2008 and who gave Obama his ‘one more chance’ to do something in 2012, and who were deeply disappointed when he failed to do so since 2012. At the forefront of these groups was the white non-college educated working class, especially those concentrated in the great lakes industrial states in that geographic ‘arc’ from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. This group not only turned from Democrats but turned to Trump—as they had in 1980 as the so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’—in response to another economic crisis of the 1970s during which they were also abandoned by the Democratic Party. Clinton 2016 thus lost key swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, and Michigan that helped put Obama ‘over the top’ a second time in those states.

Another important voter group that delivered for Obama in 2012 and did not for Clinton in 2016 in similar percentages were Latinos. They voted by a margin of 44% for Obama 2012, but only 36% for Clinton. Apparently, Trump insults of Latinos were less important than Obama deportation policies in recent years. Women voters were supposed to vote overwhelmingly for Clinton, but white women aged 45 and over did not. And 75 million ‘millennials, 34 and under, were driven away by Clinton and the Democratic Party’s treatment of the Sanders campaign during the primaries and by offering no solution to the hopeless scenario of insecure, low pay service jobs in exchange for record student debt. In short, white non-college educated workers abandoned the Democrats, while other groups simply ‘stayed home’ and did not vote in the numbers they previously had in 2012. (For my 2012 analysis of why Obama was given one more chance by these groups, see articles on this blog written during that election).

Somehow over recent years the Democrats, once a party purporting to represent workers, abandoned them to free trade, to low paid insecure service jobs, and to the wholesale privatization of retirement and healthcare systems in America. What was begun under Bill Clinton, expanded under George W. Bush, was allowed to accelerate under Obama. Democrat leaders instead came to envision themselves as the ‘corporate light’ party, agreeing to extending and expanding George Bush tax cuts for the rich and their corporations, free money interest rates, and focusing instead on educated suburbanites as their prime voter base.

The Origins of Trump’s Victory—Or, It’s Still the Economy Stupid!

The root of the Trump victory lies in the history of the past eight years and the deep failure of the Democratic Party—and its now lameduck president, Barack Obama—to ensure that Main St. America recovered from the economic crisis of 2007-09 and not just the wealthiest 1% and their corporations.

Hillary Clinton was not defeated so much by Trump, but by the failed performance of the Obama administration the past eight years, and her obvious inability to separate herself clearly from policies associated with the past eight years and to offer an alternative more radically different—as Trump clearly did.
We hear today from pundits and talking heads, who just yesterday were declaring that Hillary Clinton was a ‘shoe-in’, that the election has been a reaction of the ‘have nots’—i.e. those left behind. That’s true. The Trump victory is clearly another expression of the global wave of working class and non-elite reaction against the political elite, their parties, and the so-called neoliberal policy ‘Establishment’. But ‘left behind’ what?

The data show clearly that US corporate profits more than doubled after 2009. The US Dow stock market tripled in value. Bond market prices accelerated to record levels. And returns from derivatives and other forms of financial speculation, conveniently kept opaque from public scrutiny, no doubt surged to record levels as well.

The record US corporate profits alone were generously distributed to stock and bond shareholders—the 5% and especially 1% of wealthiest US households: since 2010 more than $5 trillion has been distributed in stock dividend payouts and stock buybacks alone in the US and in the past two years at a rate of more than $1 trillion a year. And to ensure that the corporations and wealthiest 1% got to keep most of that distributed income, corporate and investor taxes under Obama since 2009 were cut by more than $6 trillion—extending the Bush tax cuts and then some. And all that’s not counting other forms of capital incomes earned by the wealthiest 1%.

Augmenting this historic massive profits gains and income redistribution favoring the 1% and corporate America, US businesses have had access to trillions of dollars more in virtually free money, made possible by the US central bank’s policies of quantitative easing and zero bound interest rates. In each of the last three years corporations ‘borrowed’ $2 trillion a year by issuing corporate bonds. They then hoarded the cash instead of investing and creating jobs. The zero rates also accelerated real estate property prices benefitting the wealthiest. Since 2009, commercial real estate property has boomed in price, as has high end residential housing.

And what did the ‘have nots’ get since 2009? Stagnant wage gains. Low paid service jobs—often part time, temp, contract, and ‘gig’—in exchange for the higher paid jobs they lost. And tens of millions of young millennials with little hope of anything better for decades to come. The near zero rates for eight years engineered by the Federal Reserve, in turn meant 50 million retirees—grandpa and grandma— earned no interest income whatsoever for the past eight years and still don’t. Meanwhile, more pensions collapsed and medical costs rose. The ‘have nots’ got to deal instead with 13 million home foreclosures and trillions of dollars of home values ‘under water’ as they say, where the home value is less than the mortgage. And millions of homeowners still struggle with that. Mortgage companies and banks were quickly ‘bailed out’ by the Obama administration by 2010, but millions of small homeowners were ‘left behind’ and still are.

During the last eight years no bankers went to jail for their actions after 2009 and have steadily chipped away at any remnants of financial regulation. Big tech companies continued to hoard trillions of dollars of their cash overseas in subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes, while bringing hundreds of thousands of skilled tech workers every year into the US (legal immigration) on H1-B and L-1 visas to take prime jobs that should have gone to US workers. Big Pharmaceutical companies continued to price gouge, causing thousands to die as a consequence of unaffordable prescription drugs. Millions of college students accrued more than a trillion dollars in debt. Latino minorities were deported in record numbers, breaking up thousands of families; police militarization and violence repressed African-Americans in the inner cities; unchecked fracking poisoned water supplies and air; and the country’s infrastructure continued to rot from the inside out at an accelerating rate.

After previous administrations failed to privatize health care in the US, Obama succeeded with the Affordable Care Act—aka ‘Obamacare’. At a cost of nearly $1 trillion a year, covering less than 15 million of the former 50 million uninsured, Obamacare redistributed income to provide subsidies to those covered. In exchange the subsidized who bought Obamacare policies got super-high deductible, low coverage, health insurance. Health insurance companies in turn got tens of millions new customers guaranteed and paid for by taxpayers, and then continued to game the system for more profits. Obamacare became less a health care system reform act than a health insurance company subsidy act. It was the logical consequence of Obama’s withdrawal of the ‘public option’ and Democrats’ refusal to even allow debate on extending Medicare for all. It will be repealed very shortly.

Not least, the Obama administration championed an acceleration of free trade deals that promised to send even more jobs offshore, after having pledged to oppose free trade when he was first elected. Bilateral trade deals were signed by him, TPP and TTIP (Europe) pushed, and the worst effects of NAFTA and CAFTA were ignored. Obama not only became the greatest deporter of immigrants in US history, as H1-B legal immigration was expanded by several hundreds of thousands.

In foreign policy, the US continued its constant wars in the middle east that were never won or ended, as Obama promised. Hillary herself was the prime instigator of the Libyan fiasco, a proponent of more direct military intervention in Syria, and probably supported the coup in Ukraine behind the scenes. All that did not win her votes, especially among millennials. American voters have become sick and tired of the incessant war policies of the administration.

By not fundamentally breaking from this destructive economic and political legacy—the legacy of Obama and neoliberalism itself since 1980—Clinton all but ensured her fate and abandoned the field to Trump on the real issues. Trump didn’t even have to offer specifics of what he’d do different; just the impression that he somehow would reverse the policies quickly and in some way.

What’s Next: The Immediate Consequences of Trump’s Election

• Contrary to predictions of financial collapse, the Trump victory has already meant a big gain in stock markets, as corporations and investors prepare for what they believe will be further big tax cuts quickly. After more than $10 trillion in business-investor tax cuts since George W. Bush in 2003 to the present, trillions more are coming, and fast.
• The fate of the TPP is also now questionable—unless of course some way is arranged to push it through Congress rapidly in a lame duck session before Trump is sworn in as president in January, and providing he turns a blind eye to that (which is likely).
• The US Supreme Court will now become even more conservative and for decades to come, as Trump delivers on appointing ‘two, three’ Antonin Scalia-like nominees to the court. It is unlikely Democrats in the Senate can successfully oppose that until 2018.
• Racist elements at the grass roots will be greatly heartened by the Trump victory. As will militarized police forces. More clashes with immigrant and minority citizens on these issues will almost certainly grow in the period ahead.
• Obamacare will be repealed in toto in early 2017. Tens of millions will be left back where they were in 2008. Health care premiums and drug prices will surge still further.
• Dodd-Frank financial reform will also disappear, as weak as it was. Bankers will escalate their policies of financial speculation creating more financial instability. Consumer financial protections will be rolled back.
• Environmental policies will be rolled back. The EPA will be gutted and reduced to a token function in the government. Recent global climate deal in Paris will now unravel.
• Infrastructure spending by government will be on the table, passed by a Republican Congress in exchange for further massive corporate tax cuts. Infrastructure spending will be insufficient and will not significantly boost US growth and jobs.
• An immigration bill will pass, but will prove harsh and harmful for immigrants from Latin America. H1-B and L-1 visas will expand, bringing more skilled foreign workers to the US to take high paying US jobs.
• In foreign policy areas, NATO policies of the US will shift. Europe will reconsider Russian sanctions. The recent Iran deal will get a ‘new look’. A US-Russia deal on Syria will be explored. More Asian countries, like the Philippines, will consider closer ties to China as US influence wanes in Asia.

Of course, all the above shifts and changes are based on the assumption that Trump’s campaign positions and promises will actually translate into domestic and foreign policy changes. That may not happen. It may have been all campaign rhetoric. Time will tell. Watch whether the US political and economic elites in the immediate weeks again can successfully maneuver Trump into appointing their kind to the key policy implementation roles in a Trump administration—as they did with Obama and other neoliberal presidents before. My guess is that they will, for the real power in US politics lies with the elites behind the political parties and their formal political institutions.

Trump made his billions by simply providing his name to properties and assets that he himself doesn’t not even own. We may soon see a political form of this celebrity economic strategy.

US Neoliberal policy may not change fundamentally in a Trump regime; just its appearance. Neoliberalism formed under Reagan-Clinton-Bush imploded in 2007-09. Obama has not been able to fundamentally restore it in its original form. A new form of Neoliberalism will now be attempted—a form even more harsh than before.

US voters may come to realize that their ‘rebellion against the political elite’ cannot be achieved through either wings of the single party of that elite—whether Republicans or Democrats. The rebellion will have to move outside the neoliberal political party structure. That may be the next major political lesson to be learned.

San Francisco,  Jake was at the polling station at A La Turca restaurant on Geary Street answering questions and shepherding voters to their respective booths.  “I need to speak to you a hundred feet from the polling station.”  Expressing overt political opinions, be it by insignia, shirts or speech within a certain proximity of the voting station is frowned upon, an odd state of affairs given this country’s free speech protections. The point here is impartiality.

Gravely, Jake claimed to be ashamed.  Blushingly ashamed at the choices on the electoral platter for president, but still hopeful that the less wicked option would get by.  “Hillary Clinton should still get across the line. She is trained, experienced.”  In some countries, having a politician without such pedigree is revered, a sign of not being tainted. Such a resume shows public service outside the machinery of politics.

A fight breaks out just in front of the polling station.  Tempers are frayed, and here, the seething Chihuahua of a homeless lady, strapped to her wheelchair, attacks another being held by a scruffy man having his glass of noon day wine. They promise vengeance on each other.  Jake urges calm.  The sidewalk had to be kept clear.

For all of that, there is faith on the part of this volunteer.  (Can there be anything else?)  The system will work. The ballots will be counted properly and care was being taken.  The United States was fortunate to be the country it was.

Even gathering opinions from watering holes during the day – a proudly transgendered Rochelle, several sheets to the wind with vodka and ice at Emperor Norton’s Boozeland – claimed that Clinton would romp in.  “There are no hidden Trump supporters; there are many hidden Hillary supporters.”  All that unnecessary fuss and lunacy might have made waves in some way, but surely it would not translate into electability?

As the poll began closing to the east of the country, and the counting began, the numbers squeaked towards Trump gains. The Democratic temper of the city seemed a bit troubled, but not as yet flustered. The celebration parties across the San Francisco and Bay Area were going to be overwhelmingly, and fatally, optimistic for Clinton.  As with so much in her campaign, the sense of entitlement prevailed. The election, for them, was already in the bag before the first ballot had been cast.

One particular party, held at Brigade at its open plan office far more reminiscent of a warehouse, promised to be typical.  It proudly claimed to be responsible for the “world’s first voter network”, an effort to take back a thinning democracy.  Ironically, it was the very thing that Trump, the target of their ire, was touting: political reclamation.  The event featured garish badges mocking Trump, his hair, his spray tanned face.  It was also ground zero for Clinton supporters, filled with the new breed of technology wizards who had found a home in the city. Not a single voter from the rust belt in sight here.

These wizards had formulated various tactical approaches to those attending the event. Pizza would be brought out at stages, and microwaves could be used.  Plentiful, though atrocious beer, a vinegary slush, was available, and there was one bar man worked off his feet in the cocktail section.  The audience gradually settled down, and the smell of pizza crust and booze gradually mingled as several stations broadcast the results.

With each projected win for Clinton came a bellow and yelp.  But the Trump Train, having started fairly smoothly with the first counting, kept going. The gains in time became an avalanche where it mattered.  The mountain was being climbed and The Donald was winning the very states where he should have perished in.

The blue collar voters, those courted by Ronald Reagan in 1980, were speaking in droves.  Rusted, worn America, a world barely understood by the Clintons except in an abstraction of figures, were reacting. Florida fell to Trump.  As did Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Wisconsin, considered so Democratically blue as to be irrelevant to Clinton’s campaign, went red.  “The forgotten men and women of our country,” observed Trump, “will be forgotten no longer.”

As with Al Gore in 2000, Clinton was winning more popular votes, but not in the areas that mattered.  The Donald had been on message in places where the Clinton campaign was disregarding and disingenuous.  The perversion that is the Electoral College did the rest, netting him 279 votes with 47 percent. Clinton received 48 percent of the overall popular vote.

The Democrats also received a beating in both the Senate and House of Representatives, meaning that Trump’s only obstacles, though formidable ones, will be coming from a party he has never had much time for. The GOP for him was never an ideological badge, but a form of necessary camouflage. This victory is certainly not a Republican one so much as one for Trump.

Clinton duly fled into the night.  She would not be giving any concession speeches till the morning. The balloons floated listlessly in the open plan area of this company, and the bottles of champagne remained unopened, chilling away in communion in the fridge. No one even noticed the fridge being opened, or the cork being prized open. Glued to the television in Trumpland, the remaining watchers gazed in bruised disbelief, some looking through a curtain of tears, eyes swollen with grief.Then, the Trump victory speech, a painful, heart wrenching exercise for those who remained at the gathering. Masochism knows few boundaries.  The now paltry audience, slumped in the set up couches, woke up briefly from their dejection, wondering what Trump would do.  Prejudices would surely be confirmed by a ridiculous remark or a moronic reflection.Instead, Trump braved himself to some generosity, thanking his opponent for a sterling campaign, claiming that Clintonwas “owed a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.”  Having thrived on the polarising and stoking, Trump promised to be healer-in-chief.  “Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division.”

The speech concluded, the trash men converged, swooping on the detritus of what had been a desperately sad party.  Be they the forgotten, or the invisible, the voters who haunted this gathering were the ones who never featured before the vast, dynastic Clinton machine.  They were America’s Brexiteers, yearning for nostalgia.

Trumpland may well be a vicious one prone to the free expression liberated instincts, but the tearing of the United States to its core was a long time in the making.  May the creative chaos that ensues ultimately be a constructive one. It certainly cannot be much worse.  Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT Un

In the end, Hillary Clinton became the face of a corrupt, arrogant and out-of-touch Establishment, while Donald Trump emerged as an almost perfectly imperfect vessel for a populist fury that had bubbled beneath the surface of America.

There is clearly much to fear from a Trump presidency, especially coupled with continued Republican control of  Congress. Trump and many Republicans have denied the reality of climate change; they favor more tax cuts for the rich; they want to deregulate Wall Street and other powerful industries – all policies that helped create the current mess that the United States and much of the world are now in.

A sign supporting Donald Trump at a rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016 (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Further, Trump’s personality is problematic to say the least. He lacks the knowledge and the temperament that one would like to see in a President – or even in a much less powerful public official. He appealed to racism, misogyny, white supremacy, bigotry toward immigrants and prejudice toward Muslims. He favors torture and wants a giant wall built across America’s southern border.

But American voters chose him in part because they felt they needed a blunt instrument to smash the Establishment that has ruled and mis-ruled America for at least the past several decades. It is an Establishment that not only has grabbed for itself almost all the new wealth that the country has produced but has casually sent the U.S. military into wars of choice, as if the lives of working-class soldiers are of little value.

On foreign policy, the Establishment had turned decision-making over to the neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks, a collection of haughty elitists who often subordinated American interests to those of Israel and Saudi Arabia, for political or financial advantage.

The war choices of the neocon/liberal-hawk coalition have been disastrous – from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya to Syria to Ukraine – yet this collection of know-it-alls never experiences accountability. The same people, including the media’s armchair warriors and the think-tank “scholars,” bounce from one catastrophe to the next with no consequences for their fallacious “group thinks.” Most recently, they have ginned up a new costly and dangerous Cold War with Russia.

For all his faults, Trump was one of the few major public figures who dared challenge the “group thinks” on the current hot spots of Syria and Russia. In response, Clinton and many Democrats chose to engage in a crude McCarthyism with Clinton even baiting Trump as Vladimir Putin’s “puppet” during the final presidential debate.

It is somewhat remarkable that those tactics failed; that Trump talked about cooperation with Russia, rather than confrontation, and won. Trump’s victory could mean that rather than escalating the New Cold War with Russia, there is the possibility of a ratcheting down of tensions.

Repudiating the Neocons

Thus, Trump’s victory marks a repudiation of the neocon/liberal-hawk orthodoxy because the New Cold War was largely incubated in neocon/liberal-hawk think tanks, brought to life by likeminded officials in the U.S. State Department, and nourished by propaganda across the mainstream Western media.

Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

It was the West, not Russia, that provoked the confrontation over Ukraine by helping to install a fiercely anti-Russian regime on Russia’s borders. I know the mainstream Western media framed the story as “Russian aggression” but that was always a gross distortion.

There were peaceful ways for settling the internal differences inside Ukraine without violating the democratic process, but U.S. neocons, such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and wealthy neoliberals, such as financial speculator George Soros, pushed for a putsch that overthrew the elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.

Putin’s response, including his acceptance of Crimea’s overwhelming referendum to return to Russia and his support for ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine opposing the coup regime in Kiev, was a reaction to the West’s destabilizing and violent actions. Putin was not the instigator of the troubles.

Similarly, in Syria, the West’s “regime change” strategy, which dates back to neocon planning in the mid-1990s, involved collaboration with Al Qaeda and other Islamic jihadists to remove the secular government of Bashar al-Assad. Again, Official Washington and the mainstream media portrayed the conflict as all Assad’s fault, but that wasn’t the full picture.

From the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, U.S. “allies,” including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel, have been aiding the rebellion, with Turkey and the Gulf states funneling money and weapons to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and even to the Al Qaeda spinoff, Islamic State.

Though President Barack Obama dragged his heels on the direct intervention advocated by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama eventually went in halfway, bending to political pressure by agreeing to train and arm so-called “moderates” who ended up fighting next to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and other jihadists in Ahrar al-Sham.

Trump has been inarticulate and imprecise in describing what policies he would follow in Syria, besides suggesting that he would cooperate with the Russians in destroying Islamic State. But Trump didn’t seem to understand the role of Al Qaeda in controlling east Aleppo and other Syrian territory.

Uncharted Territory

So, the American voters have plunged the United States and the world into uncharted territory behind a President-elect who lacks a depth of knowledge on a wide variety of issues. Who will guide a President Trump becomes the most pressing issue today.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona. March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Will he rely on traditional Republicans who have done so much to mess up the country and the world or will he find some fresh-thinking realists who will realign policy with core American interests and values.

For this dangerous and uncertain moment, the Democratic Party establishment deserves a large share of the blame. Despite signs that 2016 would be a year for an anti-Establishment candidate – possibly someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Sen. Bernie Sanders – the Democratic leadership decided that it was “Hillary’s turn.”

Alternatives like Warren were discouraged from running so there could be a Clinton “coronation.” That left the 74-year-old socialist from Vermont as the only obstacle to Clinton’s nomination and it turned out that Sanders was a formidable challenger. But his candidacy was ultimately blocked by Democratic insiders, including the unelected “super-delegates” who gave Clinton an early and seemingly insurmountable lead.

With blinders firmly in place, the Democrats yoked themselves to Clinton’s gilded carriage and tried to pull it all the way to the White House. But they ignored the fact that many Americans came to see Clinton as the personification of all that is wrong about the insular and corrupt world of Official Washington. And that has given us President-elect Trump.

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

An apparent rightward shift will continue the imperialist policies of Washington and Wall Street

Former United States Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton phoned real estate magnate Donald Trump in the early morning hours of November 9 to concede defeat in the national presidential elections.

During the course of 2015-2016, the corporate media networks were highly critical of all campaigns outside the one conducted by Clinton. Nonetheless, both Clinton and Trump were perhaps the most unpopular and even loathed contestants for this office in the modern history of the U.S.

International financial markets were shaken by the prospects of the unknown quantity of Trump in an election which so-called “mainstream” corporate and government-sponsored media had repeatedly predicted up until the last several hours would result in a Clinton victory.

Reports in the press late into the night on November 8 indicating a Trump victory was inevitable prompted U.S. stock futures to decline by five percent in global trading. Asian markets which are essential in American trade policy responded to the shockwaves sent around the world responding to the rhetorical character of the purported “protectionist” line of the Trump campaign. Although by the close of trading on November 9 it was said that markets were rebounding, it is by no means clear what these developments portend for the next few days and weeks.

In an article published in the Wall Street Journal it says:

“The National Retail Federation is keeping a close eye on how Mr. Trump might alter cross-border trade, tax policy and labor laws. ‘The retail supply chain is a thoroughly global supply chain,’ said David French, senior vice president of government relations at the NRF on Wednesday. ‘Anything that threatens two-way trade can hurt retail and consumers,’ Mr. French said. It is unclear how the results could impact consumer sentiment and spending in the key holiday season. ‘This morning there are a lot of people who woke up very surprised,’ Mr. French said. ‘The divisions in the country are going to be hard to heal.’” (Nov. 9)

Overnight after the polls closed the U.S. dollar declined and gold futures gained value along with other commodities seen as a “safe haven” for capitalist investors. This unsettled situation had surfaced the previous week when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey indicated that the criminal investigation into the Clinton e-mail scandal was being reopened. Although two days before the final elections Director Comey announced that Clinton had been “cleared” once again, the damage had already been done. The potential for a newly-elected president facing a lengthy Justice Department probe weighed on the psyche of the electorate and the financial markets.

The New York Times had called the critical state of Pennsylvania at least an hour before the television networks resigned to the loss of Clinton. The former Secretary of State during the first administration of President Barack Obama refused to even come before thousands of her supporters at the Javits Conference Center in New York City. Prospects for an even more divided political landscape in the U.S. will compound the existing economic anxieties surrounding the persistent problems of high unemployment, increasing poverty, rising racial unrest and intensifying class conflict.

A report published by the London-based Financial Times noted that:

“The National Retail Federation is keeping a close eye on how Mr. Trump might alter cross-border trade, tax policy and labor laws. ‘The retail supply chain is a thoroughly global supply chain,’ said David French, senior vice president of government relations at the NRF on Wednesday. ‘Anything that threatens two-way trade can hurt retail and consumers,’ Mr. French said.” (Nov. 9)

This same report went to emphasize: “It is unclear how the results could impact consumer sentiment and spending in the key holiday season. ‘This morning there are a lot of people who woke up very surprised,’ Mr. French said. ‘The divisions in the country are going to be hard to heal.’”

Impact on Financial Blocs, Imperialist Political Groupings and Military Alliances

The European Union (EU) had already experienced a reaction to the capitalist economic crisis when the British public voted in June to leave the imperialist federation which grew out of the post-World War II scenario imposed by the dominance of the U.S. A court case filed by Members of Parliament to involve them in the Article 50 process of disengagement from the EU will prolong the Brexit causing further uncertainty within both economic and political institutions.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) officials are also concerned since there is speculation of a possible thawing of relations between the western imperialist states and the Russian Federation. At a NATO Summit several months ago in Poland resolutions were adopted which will enhance the military presence on the border with Russia as well as the escalation of Pentagon and its allies’ interventions in the Asia-Pacific region.

A consistent military policy of intervention by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Pentagon and NATO in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen has devastated the Middle East and Central Asia.  These wars of regime-change and genocide have created the worst crises of displacement both domestically and internationally since the conclusion of WW II. Some 60-75 million people have been driven from their homes due to initiatives launched in Washington and on Wall Street.

Over the last decade the world capitalist system has undergone the most profound decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Millions have lost their homes, jobs, savings and pensions. A quarter-century of failed military policies has drained the economies not only of the impacted states and regions but also those within the industrial states themselves particularly in Western Europe and North America. A Trump presidency cannot fulfill its promises because modern day imperialism is representative of the notions of “free trade”, neo-liberalism and globalization.

Africa Policy and the Trump Administration

Over the last two administrations of Obama and his predecessor, President George W. Bush, Jr., the militarization of Africa has escalated. The founding of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in early 2008 has engendered greater instability and displacement on the continent.

The bombing of Libya under false pretenses, its destabilization and brutal assassination of longtime leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi can still be felt some five years later. Today Libya has become a major source of human trafficking and flight from the African continent across the Mediterranean into Europe. Pentagon bombing operations are being conducted on a daily basis in this North African state. Several attempts by Washington and its allies to create a stable neo-colonial dominated regime in Tripoli have failed miserably. Thousands are dying in their desperate attempts to reach a Europe under distress itself which is facing monumental economic challenges including unemployment and rising poverty.

In the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, a burgeoning military base at Camp Lemonier is serving as a staging ground for an ongoing air and ground campaign under the guise of fighting “Islamic terrorism” in Somalia. The Republic of Sudan, once the largest geographic nation-state in Africa, was partitioned at the aegis of Washington in order to undermine the emerging country’s oil industry which was in partnership with the People’s Republic of China.

The Republic of Zimbabwe and the Republic of South Africa are being subjected to efforts by Washington and London aimed at installing right-wing regimes which are compliant to imperialist foreign policy imperatives. These same policies are very much in operation throughout Latin America and the Caribbean considering the attempts and actual political coups which have been carried out against Honduras (2009), Ecuador (2010), Paraguay (2012), Brazil (2016) not to mention the present destabilization campaign against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Despite the public posture of “normalization” of relations with the Republic of Cuba, the Obama administration along with Congress are not working towards the lifting of the decades-old embargo nor halting their covert intelligence programs with the expressed intent to reverse the course of the national revolutionary and socialist trajectory.

A Trump presidency in order to maintain any semblance of what is perceived as economic stability and growth must continue the same capitalist relations of productions and international relations. The failure of this phase of imperialist domination could provide renewed opportunities for world solidarity of the working class and oppressed.

The global capitalist system must inherently find markets to exploit in order to earn ever-increasing rises in profits. Such a program will place the Trump administration and its corporate backers on a collision course with the majority of people both inside the U.S. and the world.

The populism which pervades US politics makes predictions difficult; including those for President Trump. This nation of ‘freedom’, founded on mass slavery, was always hard to take at face value. As Hillary Clinton said, US politicians need both ‘a public and a private position’. Further, Trump will face great pressures to ‘normalise’ with the military-financial elite, once in office.

Yet there are signs that, behind the crude front, Trump wants to break with the elite consensus; a type of ‘American third way’ which combines aggressive military expansion and finance capital rule with a facade of social liberalism. He tapped a vein of mass resentment at this consensus, so apparent in the Wall Street and mass media backing for Hillary Clinton. Of course, Trump is eminently capable of betraying any constituency. And his claim to revive the US economy using his property development skills is just absurd.

Yet he is not a stupid man. As José Martí wrote of the US: ‘We should not exaggerate its faults … nor should these faults be concealed or proclaimed as virtues’. There are real forces at work in the former great power which require elite adjustment. The economic dynamism of the US is mostly gone and its military over-reach is evident in the Middle East.

Trump rejects the proxy war on Syria, mainly because he is realist enough to distance himself from a failed imperial venture. He pledges to work with Russia against the terrorist groups Bush and Obama deployed. He even attacks the sacred doctrine of US ‘exceptionalism’. All this seems to run against the anti-Russian and ‘New Middle East’ projects.

Yet Trump has employed old school Pentagon types, argues for military revival and uses strong rhetoric against Iran and Cuba, focal points recently ‘de-conflicted’ by Obama. We should not exaggerate Obama’s ‘virtues’. The US was outmanoeuvred in both cases, and maintains vicious economic sanctions against those and other independent countries.

It seems almost certain that Trump will initiate a welcome retreat from the US proxy war on Syria. But to what extent this represents a shift in global strategy remains to be seen. The most hopeful sign for the rest of the world is not that Trump will change Washington from imperial monster into responsible global citizen. The hope should be seen more in a possible internal redirection of US chauvinism, which might allow the rest of the world a chance to breathe.

Thankfully humanity is freed from the scourge of a third Hillary and Bill Clinton crime family co-presidency – she in the lead role with her finger on the nuclear trigger as US military commander-in-chief, perhaps eager to squeeze it.

Newsweek magazine jumped the gun, printing a special edition, distributing it to outlets before November 8 – Hillary on the cover below the heading “MADAM PRESIDENT.”

Shades of November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune headlining “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” A beaming President HST held up a copy of the broadsheet, saying: “That ain’t the way I heard it!”

Like polls predicted a Hillary victory this electoral cycle, they said Dewey would defeat Truman back then – wrong both times.

Madam president wasn’t to be. Some day eventually in America, someone other than Hillary. Overnight Tuesday, her political career ended with a bang, not a whimper.

If it was Christmas, we’d sing Joy to the World. Hold the cheers for Trump. He’s no populist leader, his policies less than people friendly. His “Contract with the American Voter” includes disturbing promises he’ll pursue as president.

A previous article discussed them. Here are the lowlights:

• Let business operate as regulation-free as possible, facilitating greater corporate predation.
• Direct the Treasury security to declare China a currency manipulator – on the one hand wanting better relations with Russia, he says; on the other, contesting China’s economic policy unfairly.
• Allow unrestricted fossil fuel production, instead of prioritizing development and use of alternative green energy sources.
• Authorize construction of the environmentally destructive Keystone Pipeline and similar projects.
• Cancel US participation in UN climate change programs.
• Replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with someone matching his right-wing extremism.
• Cancel federal funding for Sanctuary Cities.
• Mass deport millions of undocumented (largely Latino) immigrants.
• Cancel visas to foreign countries unwilling to take them back.
• Suspend immigration from so-called “terror-prone regions,” largely the Middle East, ignoring America’s responsibility for creating ISIS and likeminded groups.
• Simplify the tax code from seven to three brackets.
• Cut taxes, largely benefitting high-income Americans.
• Cut the corporate tax rate (few firms pay) from 35 – 15%.
• Replace Obamacare with health savings accounts – swapping one failed system for a worse one.
• Cut approval red tape to let inadequately tested drugs be offered for sale.
• Build a wall along America’s border with Mexico, its government funding the cost.
• Increase America’s gulag prison system population by imposing mandatory minimum sentences for undocumented immigrants reentering the country after being deported.
• Get tougher on crime and so-called illicit drugs than already.
• Increase funding and other resources for already militarized state and local police.

Additional policies he’ll pursue include greater support for Israel than already, including recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, breaching international law.

He wants the Iran nuclear deal abolished. He’ll likely ignore it rather than rescind an international agreement involving seven countries, including the five permanent Security Council members.

He wants a more robust, expanded US military instead of major cutbacks needed along with ending all imperial wars.

He saved humanity from the scourge of nuclear war on Russia, while unlikely to pursue peace over war in multiple theaters involving US forces or their surrogates.

A new dawn won’t arrive in America under his leadership. Expect dirty business as usual to continue – short of devastating nuclear war.

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.

Readers of the Guardian woke up last Tuesday (November 1, 2016) to find that the newspaper and website had been given over to promoting MI5. To be more precise: the paper was trumpeting a fearmongering ‘exclusive’ with MI5 Director-General, Andrew Parker. It was billed as ‘the first interview of its kind’ and was conducted by the paper’s deputy editor, Paul Johnson, and the diplomatic editor, Ewen MacAskill. However, it quickly became clear that this ‘interview’ consisted largely of the two senior Guardian journalists listening to the MI5 chief and diligently writing down what he said with no discernible challenge or scrutiny.

Ex-Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook summed up perfectly the contents of the ‘interview’:

• the Russians under Vladimir Putin are an evil empire;
• Islamic jihadists are everywhere but MI5 is brilliant at foiling their terror attacks;
• the increased budget MI5 has received is entirely justified because it is doing such a brilliant job of foiling terror attacks;
• MI5’s extra powers to surveil us all are necessary to foil those terror attacks;
• whatever happens with Brexit, MI5 will continue doing a brilliant job protecting the British people;
• MI5 is determined to become a friendlier place for women and minority ethnic applicants.

This was state ideology masquerading as robust reporting; in Britain’s ‘flagship’ newspaper of liberal journalism, no less. The front page of the Guardian website, with an accompanying photograph of two armed policemen, was a model example of propaganda that should be pored over by journalism students for decades to come:

EXCLUSIVE / MI5 chief warns of growing Russian threat to UK
• Moscow ‘using cyber-warfare’ against targets across Europe
• ‘About 3,000’ violent Islamic extremists in Britain
• Andrew Parker is first serving spy chief to give newspaper interview
Andrew Parker / There will be terrorist attacks in Britain
Paris-style attacks / UK police warn of jihadi gun threat
Opinion / ‘Hear us out before you knock Prevent’

The featured opinion piece was by Simon Cole who is chief constable of Leicestershire and the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for Prevent. This is a government mass surveillance programme rolled out under ‘the war on terror’ which has been heavily criticised for dividing and alienating sectors of the British public, notably Muslims.

Nowhere in this coverage did the Guardian point out that US and British foreign policy – including wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, bombing in numerous other countries, support for Israel while it brutally oppresses Palestinians, and drone programmes of ‘targeted’ killings – has boosted the risk of terror attacks here in the UK. Indeed, intelligence services had warned Tony Blair of the increased terrorist threat to Britons before the invasion of Iraq. Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5 (and thus a predecessor of Andrew Parker), told the Chilcot inquiry in 2010 that the invasion of Iraq had ‘undoubtedly’ increased the terrorist threat in Britain. Intelligence and security officials also saidthat UK foreign policy was a factor in the ‘radicalisation’ of the suicide bombers who committed the 7/7 terror attacks in London in 2005.

Moreover, as historian and foreign policy analyst Mark Curtis has shown, Britain has long colluded with radical Islamic forces in order to pursue imperialistic foreign policy objectives. Curtis observes that the UK is now participating in seven covert wars: in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.

Somehow, none of this was deemed relevant to the Guardian‘s big interview with the head of MI5. Aren’t newspapers supposed to do actual journalism, and thus scrutinise and challenge claims made by those in powerful positions? Does the Guardian treat its readers with such indifference, perhaps even contempt, that it feels no need to adhere to such basic standards?

Consider, for example, the following words from the MI5 head about the alleged ‘increasing threat’posed by Russia:

It is using its whole range of state organs and powers to push its foreign policy abroad in increasingly aggressive ways – involving propaganda, espionage, subversion and cyber-attacks. Russia is at work across Europe and in the UK today. It is MI5’s job to get in the way of that.

There was no hint in the Guardian‘s coverage of MI5’s newspeak that the West is engaged in all of these activities too and, given the huge resources deployed by the US and Nato, to a greater extent worldwide. Nor was there any mention of the West’s much larger death toll with millions of victims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. It beggars belief that the Guardian ‘interviewers’ would be unaware of all this. So, did they consciously decide not to point out that the West does all the things Parker pinned on Russia, and to a far greater and more deadly effect? Are we to believe that Paul Johnson and Ewen MacAskill – supposedly tough, hard-hitting experienced journalists – were so meek as not to challenge Parker? Don’t they realise how supine that makes them appear to their readers?

Public Security Is Only ‘A Marginal Concern Of Policy Planners’

Jonathan Cook gives a number of possible reasons why Andrew Parker and the Guardian colluded in their ‘first interview of its kind’. First, why did the piece not appear in the more obviously establishment-friendly Times as a platform for MI5 propaganda? Cook speculates that it might be because the Guardian has now become ‘the preferred British news source for American elites, whose own media are even more servile to power’. The Guardian‘s ‘unjustified reputation for leftwing and critical journalism will bestow on this MI5 press release the necessary pretence that Parker has been subjected to tough questioning’. Moreover, Parker ‘knew that the Guardian would be as docilely accepting of his propaganda as any rightwing outlet of the corporate media.’ Any, or all, of these statements are likely true. But none of them apparently occurred to Mark Urban, the BBC Newsnight diplomatic editor, who warmly welcomed the ‘nice scoop’ for the Guardian, praising the MI5 chief for his ‘bold call’. Such is the ‘impartiality’ of senior BBC News journalists.

Cook also notes the Guardian‘s deception in framing the encounter with Parker as though he had entered ‘a combative environment’ in coming to the newspaper, when the Guardian journalists reminded readers that the paper was the first to report on the Edward Snowden story. Cook expands:

In fact, the Guardian’s Snowden revelations seem like another era. Remember that the Guardian got access to Snowden’s documents only via their star columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has since departed after what appeared to be an increasingly troubled relationship, especially after the Snowden revelations. Instead Parker is once again given an opportunity to attack Snowden, accentuating the “damage that was done to the work of British and allied intelligence agencies” by Snowden’s efforts to bring to public attention the systematic and secretive invasions of our privacy.

Later in the day, the Guardian published an article on its website titled, ‘Kremlin pours cold water on MI5 chief’s claims of Russian threat’. This was presumably intended as a ‘balancing’ piece to the propaganda blitz that had preceded it; in much the same way that the ‘mainstream’ media in 2002-2003 routinely quoted the Official Enemy Saddam Hussein as ‘balance’ to incessant Western propaganda about Iraq’s mythical ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Where, instead, were the expert western analysts who could easily ‘pour cold water’ on MI5 claims?

Perhaps what was most galling about the Guardian coverage was that the most real and pressing threat of all was not even mentioned: climate chaos. Nor was there any mention of the ever-present threat of global nuclear annihilation; a danger made worse by establishment support for the renewal of Trident, the supposed nuclear ‘deterrent’ much loved by the arms industry and their political and financial backers.

The reality is that political, military, intelligence and security elites are not primarily concerned about the safety and security of the general population. Perhaps Noam Chomsky put it best:

What about the security of the population? It is easy to demonstrate that this is a marginal concern of policy planners. Take two prominent current examples, global warming and nuclear weapons. As any literate person is doubtless aware, these are dire threats to the security of the population. Turning to state policy, we find that it is committed to accelerating each of those threats — in the interests of the primary concerns, protection of state power and of the concentrated private power that largely determines state policy.

In short:

Power systems seek short-term power and domination; they’re not concerned with security.

The Guardian‘s latest propaganda service on behalf of state power demonstrates this all too well.

 Re: Republic of Rwanda v. Leopold Munyakazi                         

Dear  Chief  Justice:

Professor Munyakazi was deported from the United States of America following a decision by the United States Court of  Appeal in Richmond, Virginia. That tribunal has a legacy of racism and of discrimination against African people dating from colonial slavery days,  the rebellion of the Southern Confederacy, and later, the Ku Klux Klan and  Jim Crow resistance  to  human dignity and civil rights for African Americans.

From my standpoint as a  legal observer to the proceedings conducted within the Fourth Circuit, the evidence connecting Professor Munyakazi appeared to be either shallow, and when not that, contrived.

Despite the paucity of evidence and the token due process, Leopold‘s application for relief was denied by a judiciary hypersensitive to the waves of hysteria permeating American national life against immigrants and refugees.

It was shameful for the U.S. Justice Department, albeit under token African-American executive leadership, to collaborate in an agenda for deportation to satisfy interests other than the interests of substantial justice.

The 2015 Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda is an impressive document containing a courageous and generous declaration to secure a sweeping variety of freedoms and protections for the inhabitants of your beautiful country. The question that I have, is whether they will fully and meaningfully apply to Professor Leopold Munyakazi.  In America he has become known as a modest and humane gentleman gifted in his capacity to educate and inspire others.

Is there a provision for legal observers to contribute an amicus curiae brief upon his behalf, to assist the indigent Professor, now reduced to a penniless prisoner of the National Police and Prosecutor General, in making a case for his innocence and his  mistaken, if not malicious, prosecution?

Reports are being received from several sources concerned for Leopold’s safety in custody. There are indications that he has already received a serious assault in the Brigaide prison and further, that he has been  dministered medications designed to cloud his mentality and inhibit his capacity to defend himself at trial. Are you able to invoke your final superintendency over  the lower courts to guarantee that Leopold receives a fair and public trial, presided over by a jurist independent of and indifferent to either fear of or favor to the powers that be?

Beginning in 2006 with the launch of the vessel Kunlun Shan, China started along the road to modernizing its amphibious assault capabilities. The first vessel of the Type 071 class Amphibious Transport Dock (LPD), the Kunlun Shan, is the first of six vessels planned. Four vessels have been launched and commissioned since December 0f 2006. These LPDs are equipped with an aft flight deck and hangar to support helicopter operations, and a well deck to allow amphibious assaults via AAVs, landing craft or LCAC (Landing Craft Air Cushioned) hovercraft. The LPD has the inherent flexibility to provide over the horizon air assault and amphibious assault capability. The LPD is the perfect platform to respond to both military incursions into disputed island territories such as the Spratly and Paracel Islands, as well as a support platform for Chinese island bases in these areas.

The PLAN has 15 Type 072A Class LSTs in service. It is unclear how many total vessels are planned, but it is surmised that the Type 072A is meant to replace older Type 072 Class LSTs. The vessel has a small flight deck that can accommodate one helicopter, and enough underdeck space to stow a maximum of 10 MBTs, or 500 tons worth of light vehicles and cargo. Approximately 250 to 300 troops can be accommodated. There are a total of 32 Type 072 LSTs of all classes in service with the PLAN. These LSTs are traditional amphibious assault vessels that are loaded via a stern ramp and are beached bow-first during an assault.

By August 22 plans were in place to seize Libyan oil fields and ports that were under the control of the oil installation guards led by Ibrahim Jadhran who is allied with Tripoli’s government of accord, working under the command of the presidential council’s national guard (LIFG).

To prepare the way for the liberation of the oil crescent, Sheikh Saleh Alatyosh delivered a stern warning to the men serving under Jadhran.

*I ask the people of my tribe to ensure that no one has a son in the oil installations guards…and advise them to return to the embrace of the tribe…We are with the national army under the leadership of the Khalifa Haftar, with Parliament headed by Saleh and the government emanating from it and we in Cyrenaica do not recognize the legitimacy of the presidential council.

In 2013 Ibrahim Jadhran declared war on Tripoli’s GNC, announcing Cyrenica’s autonomy and return to the kingdom of Libya’s 1963 regional borders.

With Sheikh Saleh Alatyosh’s announcement, not only were Jadhran’s political ambitions annihilated. The imperialist plot to partition Libya was crushed.

The Libyan National Army launched their strategic strike on the oil installations on Sunday. Aerial bombardments were immediately followed by ground assaults. Within hours the oil fields and ports were firmly under their control.

In an appeal following the victory, Sheikh Saleh Alatyosh offered assurances to Jadhran that if he surrendered to the army he would be well treated. He urged employees of the oil installations to cooperate in a peaceful handover of the facilities to the armed forces in Ajdabiya. He cautioned them to refrain from further sedition and bloodshed and return to their homes.

The victory was a humiliation for the UN-instated presidential council and the foreign nations backing the puppet regime. Fayez al-Sarraj was in the midst of a meeting in Italy when the news of the LNA victory reached him. Clearly shaken, he returned to Tripoli to assess the damage and save what he could of his reputation and that of the sham regime propped up by the United Nations and NATO.

After months of the government of accord’s show battle in Sirte under the command of al Qaeda and LIFG forces, where hundreds of Misratan fighters lost their lives as Da’esh left the city in concerted waves seeking a new base, the Libyan National Army, impeded by international sanctions, proved itself to be the superior, most effective force in the country, capable of defeating terrorist armies, securing Libya’s resource wealth for the people, restoring the rule of law and protecting the civilian population.

The power of the Tribes must also be considered. This victory was achieved through the Libyan National Army’s alliance with Tribal leaders. While the United Nations and foreign interlocutors continue to exclude the Tribes, this victory demonstrates that nothing of benefit to the people in Libya happens without their cooperation. However many meetings the United Nations may host in the name of national reconciliation, they have no power or authority. Their efforts, their declarations and political agreements are dismissed as irrelevant, illegitimate, unwarranted interference in Libya’s sovereign affairs – the most recent deprecation being the Supreme Council of Libyan Tribe’s response to the Tunis meeting held earlier this month.

Authentic Libyan dialogues are the sole province of the Libyan people and the Tribes.

Today the governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and the US issued a joint statement condemning the Libyan army’s victory, demanding that the legitimate armed forces withdraw immediately, without preconditions. They falsely claim that the energy infrastructure is under threat and that only their client regime in Tripoli should have control over Libya’s rich reserves.

In a statement issued last night, the General Command of the Libyan armed forces made it absolutely clear that oil production and export would continue under the control of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and that their role would be limited to protecting the facilities from further attempts by terrorist militias to unlawfully profit from the sale of Libya’s resources.

*“Zueitina, Ras Lanuf, Brega and Sidra are under the protection of the Libyan National Army whose responsibility it is to guard the people’s livelihood from tampering and corruption. While the army will continue to protect the installations and ports, the responsibility for all operations is in the hands of the National Oil Corporation given that this task falls under civilian jurisdiction.

They assure the Libyan people that their actions were aimed at restoring the people’s control over their resources and destiny, to alleviate the suffering of the people and to enable them to fully benefit from wealth generated from their sovereign resources.

The General Command urged the legitimate competent authorities to assume its responsibilities immediately, in accordance with the legislation in force.

The imperialist nations will not relinquish their neocolonial ambitions without a fight. Indeed today, there are calls for urgent foreign military intervention to wrest control of the oil crescent from the legitimate armed forces, placing them back under al Qaeda-LIFG management.

What has become clear from this weekend’s victory is that the neocolonial powers have fewer friends and far less power in Libya than they had previously thought, and what little influence they possess has been greatly diminished by this single act of defiance and assertion of sovereignty.

That the Libyan Army’s liberation of the oil crescent took the NATO allies by surprise also reveals the inadequacy of the allegedly omnipotent foreign intelligence presence when confronted with superior strategists of a people that will never be subjugated.

This victory is the beginning of a series of surprises for empire as phase by phase, plots against the Libyan people are exposed and defeated, foreign occupation forces and their minions vanquished.

*“Translations of official statements are approximate. Please refer to the original through the link provided in the body of the text.

The European Union forum that deals with Middle East affairs is recommending that the EU’s 28 member states ask Israel to reimburse them for the demolition of buildings and infrastructure projects in Area C of the West Bank that they helped finance, European and Israeli diplomats told Haaretz.

European diplomats attributed the new non-binding resolution to the lack of progress in negotiations between Israel and EU over the situation in Area C.

The negotiations involved, among other issues, the European demand to stop the demolition of Palestinian structures Israel claims were built illegally, including many built with European funding.

The committee comprises Middle East experts from all 28 member states. The committee’s resolutions are not binding but can be used as the basis for binding resolutions that may be adopted later by the EU’s Political and Security Committee.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry was outraged by the resolution and has lodged protests with the EU and several member states.

The European diplomats said that Germany categorically objected to the move and managed to soften the resolution so that it only recommends requesting compensation, saying member states could do so if they chose.

In the European Parliament, pressure in the opposite direction is being brought to bear on EU Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini by EU Parliament members who are demanding tough action against Israel for demolishing projects built by the EU or by member states.

In addition to the EU itself, several EU states help build Palestinian structures or infrastructures in Area C directly, among them several key allies of Israel such as Germany, Italy, Britain, France and Poland. Demolishing these structures or even just issuing demolition orders puts stress on Israel’s ties to these countries. Demands for compensation by these countries could lead to serious diplomatic crises.

The Syrian army intensified operations against ISIS east of Palmyra yesterday evening when the Cheetah Forces, a subunit of the Syrian army’s Tiger Forces, launched a fresh push in the direction of ISIS-controlled town of Arak. By November 8, the government forces have seized a few of ISIS checkpoints in the area, destroying 2 vehicles belonging to the terrorist group.

The army and the NDF continued military operations against Ahrar Al-Sham, Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham and other militant groups in northern Hama. Main developments took place along the Aleppo-Hama highway and near the towns of Aqrab, Buwaydah and Taiibat al-Imam. Some 20 militants were killed and at least 1 vehicle destroyed as result of the attacks by the Syrian army and the Syrian Air Force.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by Kurdish YPG units, have recaptured from ISIS more areas north of Raqqa. Last night, they took control of Sheikh Salih Farm, Laqtah and surrounded some ISIS units in the village of Al-Hisha. While the Kurdish forces are able to seize some areas from ISIS north of Raqqa, there are almost no chances that the SDF will be able to isolate the city and set a foothold for its storm. The main difficulty is tensions with Ankara-led forces in northern Syria.

The Turkish Armed Forces and Ankara-backed militants have seized 5 more villages, including al-Burj, Shebran and Tal Jiri, from ISIS in northeastern countryside of Aleppo city.

The Syrian army’s Tiger Forces, the Desert Hawks Brigade and Hezbollah pressure on Jaish al-Fatah militants in western Aleppo. November 7 evening, the government forces seized about 6 building blocks in the 1070 Apartment Project. On November 8, the Syrian army’s Tiger Forces and its allies continued the operation in the southwestern Aleppo and seized the full control over the 1070 Apartment Project, the Al-Rakhmih Hill and the Motah Hill.

Meanwhile, reports have appeared that Jaish al-Fatah is deploying 2,000 more fighters from Idlib to Aleppo. This confirms that Jaish al-Fatah’s defenses are collapsing in the southwestern Aleppo and the current militant striking force is already not enough to achieve any gains in the city.

Western experts and local sources expect the intensification of Russia-led military operations in Syria in period between November 10 and November 22. The rumors relates to alleged requests to the Syrian military from the Russian Navy for carrying out flights and firing operations off Syria’s coast. Meanwhile, the Admiral Kuznetsov battlegroup was reported in the area of Cyprus.

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Two myths pervade the NATO-aligned accounts of the Syrian conflict with greater persistence than all others. First is the “peaceful uprising” suppressed by “violent and brutal government security forces, armed to the teeth,” and the second is the 2013 Ghouta chemical attacks.

Both have been largely discredited and dismantled by the evidence and testimony from Syrians inside Syria and a number of respected researchers and analysts such as Professor Tim Anderson in his universally acclaimed book, the Dirty War  on Syria.

“The popular myths of this dirty war – that it is a ‘civil war’, a ‘popular revolt’ or a sectarian conflict – hide a murderous spree of ‘regime change’ across the region. The attack on Syria was a necessary consequence of Washington’s ambition, stated openly in 2006, to create a ‘New Middle East’. After the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, Syria was next in line.” ~ Prof. Tim Anderson

Independent journalist, Eva Bartlett who has traveled many times to Syria to report from on the ground, wrote an in depth article about the US Coalition lies and propaganda.  In her detailed analysis, “Moderate Terrorists. Deconstructing the NATO Narrative on Syria. Leftists Keeping the Myth Alive”, Bartlett says:

“Yet, it is known that from the beginning, in Dara’a  and throughout Syria, armed protesters were firing upon, and butchering, security forces and civilians. Tim Anderson’s “Syria: how the violence began, in Daraa” pointed out that police were killed by snipers in the March 17/18 protests; the Syrian army was only brought to Dara’a following the murder of the policemen. Additionally, a storage of protesters’ weapons was found in Dara’a’s al-Omari mosque.”

In a letter published in January 2012 on the Dutch-Flemish Mediawerkgroep Syriëwebsite, Father Frans wrote:

“From the start, the protest movements were not purely peaceful. From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels.”

In the same letter, Father Frans insisted that what was occurring in Syria could not be described as a “popular uprising,” since the majority of Syrians do not support the opposition and “certainly not” its armed component.

During my recent 4 weeks spent traveling inside Syria, including Aleppo, I had the opportunity to meet with and interview the REAL Syria Civil Defence crews in various governorates across Syria.

Part I of a series of articles on the REAL Syria Civil Defence, exposing the NATO-state multi million funded, Al Qaeda-linked, White Helmets as imposters who fraudulently use the Syria Civil Defence name: The REAL Syria Civil Defence Exposes Fake White Helmets as Terrorist Linked Imposters

Among the crews I met with, were the Syria Civil Defence of Latakia.  To follow and support their brigade, please go to their Facebook page, Latakia Fire Brigade. 

Part II of the series on the REAL Syria Civil Defence will be published at 21st Century Wire very shortly.

25^th March 2016

“On this black day five years ago, we witnessed the negotiations in Jableh Al Duraibeh, to resolve issues between “peaceful protestors” and security forces. Back then, none of us knew what was really happening.  In the early days of “peaceful freedom protests” witnessed by Latakia, many members of the security forces were murdered by the “peaceful bullets” of protestors.  Back then, the only arms allowed for the security forces and civil defence, were batons, plastic riot shields and the fire brigade water cannon.

Negotiations were being held with the “children of freedom” who brought the demand that we release one person from the Al-Harmoush family.  Our only task, as the Syria Civil Defence was to take position in front of the Jableh prison in case of any emergency.

We were shocked when we saw the protestors. People dressed in foreign looking religious garb with long beards that reached their chests.  On this first day of “freedom” in Latakia, it was also the first time we witnessed Syrians of such extreme appearance. Naively we asked ourselves, what do they have to do with this whole process.  Of course, in the end, all our misery came from those beards.

What follows is the Lattakia Fire Brigade documentation of that black day.  Some details have been omitted as they are too horrifying to be shared:

Every year on this day we have a duty to remember what happened in Latakia and we must learn from what befell our dear city.

On this day in 2011, began a dark period for our city and for its people. We have an obligation to remember and to remind everyone of what happened on that day and how we witnessed it as Latakia Syria Civil Defence.

Firstly, our brigade was divided into two groups. One to cover Latakia city and one for Jableh city in order to be ready for any possible riot.

On that day, the protests began in Al Amara square in Jableh city, after Friday prayers. Two protests met in the square, one supporting the Syrian government and the other against it.

Security forces took up position in between the two factions, “armed” only with batons and plastic shields.

We had instructions to use the water cannon to disperse the crowds if violence erupted.  This instruction included both sides without any exceptions.

When the situation calmed down in Al Amara square we were told to move to the Corniche (coastal road) in the Al-Duraybeh area.

When we arrived we saw two security force members rescuing two civilians whose faces were disfigured by heavy beating after being kidnapped. We went to help them and immediately put the civilians into an ambulance.

We were shocked to see that all shops on the Corniche had been destroyed, litter bins were on fire and the road was littered with rocks.

Standing in front of us were the “freedom fighters” with their “freedom weapons”.  They started advancing towards us and pelting us with their rocks.

One of our colleagues was injured in his leg.

Our only protection were the security forces with their plastic shields and batons.  All of a sudden we heard gunfire.  It was aimed at us and the security forces.  One security force member was fatally shot in the chest, he died immediately.

Another was shot in the shoulder.

The first day of protests, these freedom fighters used live ammunition.  This was the “peacefulness” of the first day.

Like thunder, the news of the protests rolled in from different areas of Latakia, our colleagues told us what was happening in Al-Sheikh Daher Square during one of the protests.

We rushed to the square to be confronted by burning tyres & litter bins and we saw that the entrance to the square was blocked on the opposite side to Jol Jammal school.

Political Earthquake: The Trump Revolution in The United States

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, November 09 2016

Trump’s rhetoric and proposals have been squarely anti-establishment and anti-status quo, both domestically and internationally. As such, Trump’s victory is a political revolution in the making because it announces a break from American policies pursued by both Republican and Democrat U.S. administrations since the 1990’s. For this reason, Trump’s election inspires both fear and hope.

Who is Donald Trump? Why the US Globalist Elites Dread President-Elect Donald Trump

By Joachim Hagopian, November 09 2016

This article was first published in March 2016 under the title Ruling Elite Grows Desperate to Destroy Trump’s Presidential Bid In the wake of the November 8 elections, it is important to reflect upon the prospects of a Trump presidency.

First Thoughts On The “Not-Hillary” Election Results. World War IIII Was Called Off…

By Moon of Alabama, November 09 2016

My “not Hillary” hunch for the election was right. That is, I believe, how Trump won. No so much by gaining genuine votes but by taking them from the crappiest candidate the Democrats could send into the race. This was not a “white vote”. Trump did better with black (+5) and latino (+2) voters than Romney. Racism does not explain that. Clinton promised more wars. Those who would have to fight them on the ground rejected that position.

Hillary versus Donald: Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead! Victory for the Wizard of Oz!

By Diana Johnstone, November 09 2016

The real meaning of this election is not, as bitterly disappointed Hillary supporters still maintain with tears in their eyes and fear in their throats, a victory for racism and sexism. The real meaning of this upset is that Wall Street’s globalization project has been rejected by the citizens of its homeland. This has major implications for the European nations that have been dragged along into this ruinous project.

Trump’s Victory, “Stripping and Flipping” the Vote, Election Report from Ohio

By Bob Fitrakis and Michael Welch, November 09 2016

Global Research’s Michael Welch reports from Columbus, Ohio The pontificating about what happened on the evening of November 8, 2016 has begun, and will no doubt continue for years to come. The mechanics of ‘stripping and flipping’ the vote is well understood. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have written extensively on this subject. The disenfranchisement of racially and economically marginalized voters who would likely have voted for Democratic candidates is a factor the pundits are not discussing.

Will Improved US-Russia Relations Follow Trump’s Electoral Triumph? “Will Putin Become my New Best Friend?”

By Stephen Lendman, November 09 2016

The greatest risk of a Hillary electoral triumph was possible nuclear war on Russia – perhaps China and Iran to follow. Her defeat lets peace activists exhale for the first time in the campaign – but not relax. He wants increased military spending at a time America’s only enemies are ones it invents. How aggressive he’ll be geopolitically remains to be seen.

American Liberals Unleashed the Trump Monster

By Jonathan Cook, November 09 2016

The earth has been shifting under our feet for a while, but all liberals want to do is desperately cling to the status quo like a life-raft. Middle-class Britons are still hyperventiliating about Brexit, and now middle-class America is trembling at the prospect of Donald Trump in the White House.

The earth has been shifting under our feet for a while, but all liberals want to do is desperately cling to the status quo like a life-raft. Middle-class Britons are still hyperventiliating about Brexit, and now middle-class America is trembling at the prospect of Donald Trump in the White House.

And, of course, middle-class Americans are blaming everyone but themselves. Typifying this blinkered self-righteousness was a column yesterday, written before news of Trump’s success, from Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, Britain’s unofficial stenographer to power and Washington fanboy. He blamed everyone but Hillary Clinton for her difficult path to what he then assumed was the White House.

Well, here is some news for Freedland and American liberals. The reason Trump is heading to the Oval Office is because the Democratic party rigged the primaries to ensure that a candidate who could have beaten Trump, Bernie Sanders, did not get on the ticket. You want to blame someone, blame Clinton and the rotten-to-the-core Democratic party leadership.

But no, liberals won’t be listening because they are too busy blaming Julian Assange and Wikileaks for exposing the truth about the Democratic leadership set out in the Clinton campaign emails – and Russia for supposedly stealing them.

Blame lies squarely too with Barack Obama, the great black hope who spent eight years proving how wedded he was to neoliberal orthodoxy at home and a neoconservative agenda abroad.

While liberals praised him to the heavens, he poured the last US treasure into propping up a failed banking system, bankrupting the country to fill the pockets of a tiny, already fabulously wealthy elite. The plutocrats then recycled vast sums to lobbyists and representatives in Congress to buy control there and make sure the voice of ordinary Americans counted for even less than it did before.

Obama also continued the futile “war on terror”, turning the world into one giant battlefield that made every day a payday for the arms industry. The US has been dropping bombs on jihadists and civilians alike, while supplying the very same jihadists with arms to kill yet more civilians.

And all the while, have liberals been campaigning against the military-industrial complex that stole their political system? No, of course not. They have been worrying about the mass migrations of refugees – those fleeing the very resource wars their leaders stoked.

Then there is the liberal media that served as a loyal chorus to Clinton, trying to persuade us that she would make a model president, and to ignore what was in plain sight: that Clinton is even more in the pocket of the bankers and arms dealers than Obama (if that were possible) and would wage more, not less war.

Do I sound a little like Trump as I rant against liberals? Yes, I do. And while you are busy dismissing me as a closet Trump supporter, you can continue your furious refusal to examine the reasons why a truly progressive position appears so similar to a far-right one like Trump’s.

Because real progressives are as frustrated and angry about the status quo as are the poor, vulnerable and disillusioned who turned to Trump. And they had no choice but to vote for Trump because there was no one aside from him in the presidential race articulating anything that approximated the truth.

Sanders was ousted by Clinton and her corrupt coterie. Jill Stein of the Greens was made invisible by a corrupt electoral system. It was either vote for Clinton and the putrid status quo, or vote for Trump and a possibility for change.

Yes, Trump is very bad. He is as much a product of the plutocracy that is now America as Clinton. He, like Clinton, will do nothing to fix the most important issue facing humankind: runaway climate change. He is a climate denier, she is a climate evader.

But unlike Clinton, Trump understood the rising popular anger at the “system”, and he was articulate enough to express it – all it took was a howl of pain.

Trump isn’t the antithesis of liberal America. You liberals created him. You unleashed this monster. It is you in the mirror. You stayed silent, you took no stand while your country was stolen from you. In fact, you did worse: you enthusiastically voted time after time for those who did the stealing.

Now the path is clear and the route fast. The precipice is ahead, and American liberals are firmly in the driving seat.

Russia is ready and looks forward to restoring bilateral relations with the United States, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, commenting on the news of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.

So I just woke up and found that the world has changed. World War III was called off. Trump won, Clinton conceded. His victory speech is fair and integrating.

My “not Hillary” hunch for the election was right. That is, I believe, how Trump won. No so much by gaining genuine votes but by taking them from the crappiest candidate the Democrats could send into the race. This was not a “white vote”. Trump did better with black (+5) and latino (+2) voters than Romney. Racism does not explain that. Clinton promised more wars. Those who would have to fight them on the ground rejected that position.

The people voted against corruption, against international warmongering, against attacks of the culture of their life and against Zionist and Arab potentate manipulation. In short – they voted against Hillary.

The media with their outright and widespread manipulation and one sided reporting against Trump and for Clinton lost too. People did not believe the partisan crap that fact-checked Trump on every minor issue but hardly reported on the huge, huge scandals and corruption Wikileaks revealed about the Clintons. Fact-checkers ain’t a good weapon in a culture war. The people want authenticity – lying is not seen as bad – if it is fairy open and authentic. Clinton is not authentic even when she tells the truth. The polls, but the one of the LA Times, turned out to be systematic manipulation.

The leading politicians in Europe will crap their pants. Nearly all but Putin bet heavily on Clinton. The European media were also strongly pro Clinton, even more so than in the U.S. There was zero reporting about Trump’s real political positions and support. Only tiny bits about Clinton’s corruption were revealed on the back pages. They always believe what the NYT writes is the essence of U.S. thinking. It is far from it. No one but a few east-coast party goers and the NYT cares about some 16 year old girl, who thinks she is “transsexual” and wants to use a men’s public toilet. The average people think that such craziness deserves zero attention if not a hefty kick in the ass. Pro-migration and other political correctness movements in Europe will have a difficult stand now. They can no longer work against the instincts of the people by pointing to the soothing, fake words of an Obama or Clinton.

The Democratic party failed. The outright corruption of the party heads, who pushed Sanders out to move Clinton in by manipulating the primaries, blocked the natural development that went on at the base. They even wanted Trump as a candidate because they though Clinton could easily beat him. They were totally detached from real life. I am sure that post-mortem analysis will show that many, many potential pro-democratic voters were just disgusted and stayed at home or voted for a third party. The establishment of the Republican party were no better. They failed their voters just as much by shunning Trump and working for Clinton. All the neo-cons that flocked to Clinton will now scramble to get back to Trump. They will have little chance.

But the election also created huge new dangers. People around Trump, including his vice-president, are not sane realist but fairly extreme ideologues. Trump himself isn’t. He is, in my estimate, fairly pragmatic. The Republicans also won the Senate and House. There is a danger that extreme policies will be implemented with huge and terrible long-term consequences. But remember that Obama had the same chance in his first two years of his Presidency. He never used it. From a progressive view he blew it.

Winning back the House and Senate in two years is a must for anyone with some middle-of-the-road thinking.

I believe that this result is good for Syria and the non-Jihadi and non-Zonist Middle East. Al-Qaeda in Syria will have a sad. Their main supporters leave the stage. The result is likely good for Europe including for Russia. It is bad for economic equality and other important issues in the United States and elsewhere. But would Clinton have been really better on these?

I for one feel mightily eased (with a not-so-small dose of Schadenfreude).  The U.S. voters knocked over a chessboard that brought war and misery to many people. We do not know how the new game will look, but I think there is a fair chance now that it, in total, will be somewhat less devastating for the global good.

Israeli settlers stole the harvest of 400 olive trees planted on private Palestinian land, farmers in Nablus reported yesterday.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that more than 30 Palestinian families from the Nablus district village of Deir Sharaf entered their agricultural lands yesterday after being banned since Friday by Israeli authorities.

According to Daghlas, the families “were shocked to find out that Israeli settlers had picked the olives of 400 olive trees planted in their lands,” near the illegal Israeli settlement of Shavi Shamron.

“Israeli settlers stealing olive harvests is a crime against Palestinian farmers and their properties,” Daghlas said, denouncing “the Israeli government’s knowledge [of settlers’ actions] and the complete silence of international society and human rights organisations.”

Daghlas also demanded compensation for the Palestinian families who lost their olive harvest.

The olive harvest is an important economic and cultural event for Palestinians, with nearly half of all cultivated land in the occupied Palestinian territory planted with olive trees, according to the United Nations.

However, due to illegal settlement expansion, land confiscation, mobility restrictions due to Israel’s Separation Wall, and various permit laws, Palestinian farmers are often unable to access their land and the number of olive trees is dwindling.

This year’s olive harvest season, which began early last month, has already witnessed attacks by Israeli settlers and Israeli government restrictions on Palestinian farmers and their lands.

The Palestinian government has no jurisdiction over Israelis in the West Bank, and violent acts carried out by Israeli settlers go unpunished.

Israeli human rights groups Yesh Din and B’Tselem have previously condemned Israeli authorities for failing to protect Palestinians from settler violence or to investigate attacks, particularly during olive harvest season when incidents of attacks occur on an almost daily basis.

Two partners at major law firms have likely been holding their breath since WikiLeaks released an email on November 1 showing that Obama had vetted Hillary Clinton for Vice President and the review came back “too critical,” thus leading Obama to select Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential pick during the 2008 campaign. The vetting memorandum on Clinton shows in the email thread to have been transmitted with the email but WikiLeaks has not provided it – yet.

According to the email, which carries a capitalized heading of “CONFIDENTIAL,” the vetting of Clinton had been done by James Hamilton, then a law partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP. Hamilton is now a partner at Morgan Lewis, a firm with a long history of ties to Wall Street. His official bio shows that he “served as the Clinton-Gore transition counsel for nominations and confirmations,” “as the principal Clinton White House vetter for Supreme Court nominations,” “was in charge of vetting vice presidential candidates in 2000 for Al Gore,” did the same for John Kerry in 2004 and for Obama in 2008. His bio also indicates that he “vetted candidates for Cabinet, the Department of Justice, White House, and Supreme Court for the Obama administration.”

Michael Froman

Upon receipt of the email and memorandums on September 4, 2008, Michael Froman issued an email to other members of Obama’s Transition Team stating: “Per our discussion, please do not circulate any further.” Froman was an executive at the insolvent Wall Street behemoth, Citigroup. At the time of this email, Citigroup had been secretly receiving tens of billions of dollars in below-market-rate loans from the Federal Reserve to prop up its insolvent carcass and stood as the poster child for gross mismanagement. Citigroup would go on to receive the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. Froman was employed at the very division of the bank that blew it up before the year was out.

Notwithstanding Froman’s ties to Citigroup, Froman was in charge of staffing the cabinet and subcabinet positions for Obama’s first term. Among the emails released by WikiLeaks, there are 351 emails which show the tight reins Froman held in the selection of Obama’s administration. (See related articles below.)

The September 4, 2008 email was forwarded to Cassandra Butts, a member of Obama’s Transition Team, who responded to Froman as follows:

“Yes, of course. It should be noted that Mark Patterson didn’t share the Biden, Clinton or Edwards memos with me when he gave me the hard copies on Tuesday. He was concerned that the Clinton memo was too critical in ways that didn’t need to be shared outside of the vp process, the Biden memo was no longer relevant to our process and the same for Edwards. I agreed with Mark’s judgment on this, and it definitely raises the importance of keeping these memos very closely held.”

The reference to the Biden memo no longer being relevant is because Obama had already announced his pick of Biden as his Vice President on Saturday, August 23, 2008.

Read complete article

I watched Donald Trump’s presidential victory speech. He spoke a lot about unity, the potential of ordinary, marginalised people and about making the US great again. He spoke about rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, creating jobs and about finding common ground with other nations. He can be quite charismatic and, taken at face value, quite convincing. His victory was, to a large extent, achieved because many (white) working class folk could identify with much of his rhetoric.

After watching his speech, I was immediately reminded of something I wrote back in 2012 about Donald Trump and his actions in Scotland. The piece is presented below because it is a timely reminder of what the Trumps of this world are capable of and ultimately just who and what they represent.

You’ve Been Trumped: A Case Study in Liberal Capitalist Democracy

If you have not yet watched the documentary ‘You’ve been Trumped’ (2012) by Anthony Baxter, you should try to. It’s a film about how money and power, with the collusion of politicians, the media and the instruments of state, have complete contempt for and ride roughshod over ordinary people. It’s a lesson in how capitalist ‘democracy’ functions.

Here is the synopsis.

A group of proud Scottish homeowners take on a celebrity tycoon. At stake is one of Britain’s very last stretches of wilderness. US billionaire Donald Trump has bought up hundreds of acres on the northeast coast of Scotland. Trump needs to get some locals to move out of their homes to make the deal come true. He is going to build two golf courses alongside a 450-room hotel and 1,500 luxury homes. The trouble is the land he has purchased occupies one of Europe’s most environmentally sensitive stretches of coast and sand dunes, described by one leading scientist as Scotland’s Amazon rain forest. The handful of local residents who reside there don’t want to move out or have the land destroyed.

Despite the local council rejecting the proposal, the Scottish Government overturns its own environmental laws to give Trump the green light. This causes much consternation as the area is a designated ‘Site of Special Scientific Interest’. As the bulldozers spring into action to demolish the dunes and dig up the land, local residents’ water and power is cut off, land disputes erupt, and some residents have mountains of earth piled up next to their homes to try to force them out. Complaints go ignored by the police, who instead arrest the film’s director, Anthony Baxter. Apparently, filming in public constitutes a ‘breach of the peace’! The police are firmly in Trump’s court.

Adding insult to injury, Trump also gets an honorary doctorate from a local university, even as his tractors turn wild, untouched dunes into fairways.

‘You’ve Been Trumped’ encapsulates the chasm between the powerful, glamorous, jet-setting Donald Trump and a deeply rooted, relatively powerless Scottish community. For Trump, the golf course is just another money-making deal. For the residents, it represents the destruction of a globally unique landscape that has been the backdrop for their lives and an eventual influx of rich foreigners who will jet in and out for a quick round or two on their newly constructed millionaire playground.

The film raises issues that strike at the very heart of democracy. Seduced by Trump’s wealth, it’s the politicians, the media, much of the business community, a local university and the police that kow-tow to the billionaire. The police are his protector. Politicians overturn their own laws in the face of dubious promises of jobs, which are never genuinely investigated by them to see if they actually stand up to scrutiny.

Someone like Trump does not get to where they are without knowing how to play the media, or the politicians for that matter. The film shows his half truths, untruths, tacky PR gloss and ridiculous slurs against local residents who stand in his way are taken as facts by much of the media and many of those in authority. The rich have the knack of talking absolute rubbish, but say it with utter conviction that it becomes accepted as ‘fact’. That much was clear in the film.

‘You’ve been Trumped’ shows what most of us already know: money talks and officialdom – often ‘public servants’ – listens and looks the other way when the ordinary people they are supposed to serve end up paying the price.

The film is a depressing case study of how the ‘one per cent’ is able to control the world for its own benefit. Acting alone, the Trumps of this world exert enormous power.

But when they come together to forward a collective agenda, their influence is even more grotesque. Look no further than the International Crisis Group. Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institute and any other number of bodies populated, funded or controlled by big corporate interests on behalf of supremely wealthy individuals. Forget about the power of one billionaire to exert his influence in Scotland. Forget about one Donald Trump ever becoming US president. We already have a plethora of multi-billionaire interests dictating national and international policies.

Although Trump now has his golf course, something positive can be taken from the film: the spirit of ordinary people and their fortitude in standing up to money, wealth and power and its corrupting influences. They may not have prevented Trump’s scheme, but residents stood firm in the face of intimidation and threats. And they garnered the support of thousands of local people who knew wrong when they saw it.

What happened in Scotland is on one level similar to what is taking place right now in other parts of the world, not least in India: the corruption of democracy by power and wealth.

Thousands of ordinary people have been protesting against the building of nuclear plants in India. Notwithstanding safety concerns, unconstitutional land grabs resulting in people being booted off their lands have acquired headline status. The full force of the state has been brought to bear on protesters via police and paramilitary violence and intimidation.

In South India for example, local people are peacefully protesting against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant. More than 56,000 have been falsely charged, including 6,000 for the offence of ‘sedition’. 53 have been imprisoned.

Why? Again, because of the influence of money; because of unaccountable power.

India’s expanding multi-billion dollar nuclear sector represents rich pickings for the key players both within India and abroad. The Indian government has agreed to buy US$150 billion worth of nuclear reactors, equipment and other materials from the US, whose companies will benefit for decades from Indian orders for military equipment. It has also promised various other countries that their companies will receive lucrative contracts in India. The French company Areva, US companies GE Hitachi and Westinghouse and the Russian company Atomstroy export are all building nuclear plants in the country. In return, the US lobbied to allow India to engage in civilian nuclear trade, despite not being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

What is happening concerning the expansion of nuclear sector is however symptomatic of the wider situation in India. Anti-nuclear activist Neeraj Jain says the Indian elite’s vision for the country is to freely allow Western multinationals to access the Indian market and hand over thousands of hectares of land to them to set up projects like mines, refineries, airports, shopping malls and expressways, while dispossessing people from their mineral-rich lands in rural areas, and demolishing slums in urban areas.

Some like to call this ‘progress’. Others choose to call it ‘development’.

But let’s state it for what it actually is: self-serving, powerful, wealthy elite interests acting in collusion with politicians and demonstrating utter contempt for democracy and ordinary folk.

Whether we live in Scotland, India or elsewhere, it begs the question: Are we willing to be ‘Trumped’ on a massive scale?

Well, that all depends on us, the 99 per cent, and what we are prepared to do about it.

The Russian Navy’s aircraft carrier group is ready to launch military strikes targeting terrorists in the province of Aleppo in the next 24 hours, Gazeta.ru reported Tuesday, citing a source in the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The attack will likely target militants outsde the city of Aleppo, with Kalibr cruise missiles. According to the report, the Admiral Kuznetsov battlegroup has completed its deployment to the Mediterranean Sea and is getting ready to strike.

After the success in the 1070 Apartment Project and nearby areas, the Syrian army and its allies attacked Jaish al-Fatah militants in the area of Minyan in the western part of Aleppo city. Following a series of firefights, the government forces seized a large part of Minyan and pushed Jaish al-Fatah militants to retreat from the area. According to pro-government sources, Jaish al-Fatah is on the verge of losing of Minyan to the army.

The Russian Aerospace Forces delivered a series of air strikes on the Al-Nusra(Al-Qaeda)-led militant coalition, Jaish al-Fatah, in the province of Idlib. Since November 8, Russian warplanes made up to 55 air strikes on militant weapon depots and supply lines. 3 weapon depots and a convoy, consisting of 4 vehicles, and 5 militant tactical units were reported destroyed. The Russian Aerospace Forces’ activity in the province is linked with reports that Jaish al-Fatah is deploying reinforcements to western Aleppo where the militant coalition has recently lost the area of 1070 Apartment Project and the strategic Motah Hill to the Syrian government forces.

The recently released video depicts a militant vehicle that has been targeted by an Iranian Toophan anti-tank on the road between Daer Mkaren – Efreh in the western countryside of Damascus. Iran provides to the Syrian army’s troops and other pro-government groups a wide range of supplies, including anti-tank guided missiles. Toophan is a series of Iranian-made anti-tank guided missiles. Toophan 1 was a reverse-engineered copy of the US-made BGM-71 TOW missile.

The greatest risk of a Hillary electoral triumph was possible nuclear war on Russia – perhaps China and Iran to follow. Her defeat lets peace activists exhale for the first time in the campaign – but not relax.

He wants increased military spending at a time America’s only enemies are ones it invents.

How aggressive he’ll be geopolitically remains to be seen.

Hopefully his election means improved Russia/US relations after years of hostility under Obama. Here are some Trump quotes about Vladimir Putin, positive signs:

October 2007: “Look at Putin – what he’s doing with Russia – I mean, you know, what’s going on over there. I mean this guy has done – whether you like him or don’t like him – he’s doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period.”

December 2011: Trump praised Putin’s “intelligence (and) no-nonsense way,” adding he “has big plans for Russia. He wants to edge out its neighbors so that Russia can dominate oil supplies to all of Europe.”

“I respect Putin and Russians but cannot believe (Obama) allows them to get away with so much…Hats off to the Russians.”

June 2013: Trump tweeted “(w)ill (Putin) become my new best friend?”

October 2013: “I think he’s done a really great job of outsmarting our country.”

July 2015: “I think I’d get along very well with Vladimir Putin. I just think so.”

October 2015: He and Putin “are very different,” but they’d “get along very well. I think that I would probably get along with him very well. And I don’t think you’d be having the kind of problems that you’re having right now.”

December 17, 2015: Trump called Putin a “talented person…It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”

“I have always felt that Russia and the United States should be able to work well with each other towards defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other benefits derived from mutual respect.”

December 18, 2015: “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country. I think our country does plenty of killing also.”

February 2016: I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius. He said Donald trump is a genius and he is going to be the leader of the party and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.”

“These characters that I’m running against said, ‘(w)e want you to disavow that statement.’ I said what, he called me a genius, I’m going to disavow it? Are you crazy? Can you believe it? How stupid are they.”

“And besides that, wouldn’t it be good if we actually got along with countries. Wouldn’t it actually be a positive thing. I think I’d have a good relationship with Putin. I mean who knows.”

April 2016: “…I’d possibly have a good relationship (with Putin). He’s been very nice to me. If we can make a great deal for our country and get along with Russia that would be a tremendous thing. I would love to try it.”

July 2016: “I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there’s nothing I can think of that I’d rather do than have Russia friendly, as opposed to the way they are right now, so that we can go and knock out ISIS with other people.”

“President Trump would be so much better for US/Russian relations. It can’t be worse.”

“I don’t think he has any respect for Clinton. I think he respects me. I think it would be great to get along with him.”

If nothing else, Trump deserves credit for ending Hillary’s political career, preventing a third Clinton crime family administration. And that’s a good thing, as he might put it.

Putin welcomed his triumph, saying

“(w)e heard (him say he) would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there’s nothing I can think of that I’d rather do than have Russia friendly, as opposed to the way they are right now, so that we can go and knock out ISIS with other people.”

“We understand and are aware that it will be a difficult path in the light of the degradation in which, unfortunately, the relationship between Russia and the US are at the moment.”

“(I)t is not our fault that Russia/US relations are as you see them.”

Putin believes “building a constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington, based on principles of equality, mutual respect and each other’s positions, meets the interests of the peoples of our countries and of the entire international community.”

Humanity can breathe a little easier with Trump’s triumph over Hillary. An emotionally unstable neocon war goddess won’t succeed Obama.

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.

“There’s no place like home.”

That’s the lesson. Even when home is Kansas.

The real meaning of this election is not, as bitterly disappointed Hillary supporters still maintain with tears in their eyes and fear in their throats, a victory for racism and sexism.

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

This has major implications for the European nations that have been dragged along into this ruinous project.

Hillary Clinton was the candidate of the military industrial complex and international finance capital.  She designed herself to be the figurehead of those forces, as queen of regime change. She aspired to be the one to remake the world in the image Wall Street dictates. It was a project enthusiastically and expensively supported by the one percent who profit from arms contracts and the trade deals they write themselves for their own interests.

To distract from the genuine significance of her candidacy, the Clinton campaign appealed to the desire for respectability of educated city dwellers, portraying Trump supporters as racist yokels motivated by a hateful desire to scapegoat minorities as revenge for their own inadequacies.  They were “deplorables”, and you wouldn’t want to be one of them, would you?

Trump was sexist, because he referred to certain women as “bimbos”.  Elizabeth Warren called him out for this, on a platform where Hillary sat listening, mouth wide open in delight – she who had referred to Bill’s girlfriends as “bimbo eruptions”.  Sleaze and hypocrisy drowned out policy discussions. The worst the Clinton campaign could come up with was an eleven-year-old locker room exchange – just words, hardly comparable to Bill’s chronic actions.

Still, millions who were taken in by the Clinton campaign line are devastated, terrified, convinced that the only reason Trump won was the “racism” and “sexism” of that lower caste in globalized society: white heterosexual working class males.

But no, Virginia, there were other reasons to vote for Trump.  Racism and sexism are surely low on the list.

Trump voters were scandalized by Hillary’s lies and corruption.  Many of them would have voted for Bernie Sanders if they had the choice.  That choice was taken away from them by Democratic Party manipulators who were sold on their own advertising campaign to elect “the first woman President.” A brand new product on the Presidential election market!  Be the first to vote for a woman President!  New, improved!

Bernie’s success already showed that millions of people didn’t want that woman.  But the Democratic Party manipulators and their oligarch sponsors went right ahead with their plans to force Hillary Clinton on an unwilling nation.  They brought this defeat on themselves.

Contrary to what you could believe by reading the New York Times, there were even intellectuals who voted for Trump, or at least refused to vote for Hillary, for the simple reason that Trump appears less likely to lead the world into its third and final Great War.  He said things giving that impression, but such statements were ignored by mainstream media as they worked overtime to inflate the ogre image.  No war with Russia?  You must be a Putin puppet!

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.

But racism is the only motive recognized by the globalized elite for rejecting globalization.  British citizens who voted to leave the European Union in order to recover their traditional democracy were also stigmatized as “racist” and “xenophobe”.  Opposition to racism and xenophobia is the natural moral defense of a project of global governance that deprives ordinary citizens of any important power of decision.

This extraordinarily vicious campaign has brought out and aggravated sharp divisions within the United States.  The division between city and countryside is most evident on the electoral maps. But these real divisions are exacerbated by a campaign that portrayed Donald Trump as a racist madman, a new Hitler about to bring fascism to America. The antiracism of this campaign, denouncing “hate”, has actually spawned hate.

No, Virginia, Trump is not Hitler.  He is the Wizard of Oz.  He is a showman who pulled off an amazing trick thanks to the drastic moral and intellectual decline of the American political system.

He is neither as dangerous as his opponents fear, nor as able to “make American great again” as his supporters hope.  He is the Lesser Evil.  What will become of him in Washington is anybody’s guess.

“When you give [money to politicians], they do whatever the hell you want them to do… As a businessman, I need that.” Donald J. Trump (1946- ), in an interview to the Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2015.

“We [the United States] spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives. … Obviously, it was a mistake… George W. Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East… —They [President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney] lied… They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.” Donald J. Trump (1946- ), during a CBS News GOP presidential debate, on Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016.

“In my opinion, we’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if we could’ve spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we’ve had, we would’ve been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now. 

—We have done a tremendous disservice, not only to the Middle East; we’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity.

—The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away, and for what? It’s not like we had victory.

It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized. —A total and complete mess.

—I wish we had the $4 trillion or $5 trillion. I wish it were spent right here in the United States, on our schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart.” Donald J. Trump (1946- ) in a GOP presidential debate, on Tues. Dec. 15, 2015, in Las Vegas, NV.

“Throughout history, any profound political and social change was preceded by a philosophical revolution, at least among a significant section of the population.” M. N. Roy (1887-1954), in ‘The Future of Democracy’, 1950.

There has just been a generational political earthquake in the United States and the after shocks are potentially going to be huge. Indeed, on November 8, 2016, against all odds, the Republican candidate Donald Trump (1946- ) was elected to serve as the 45th American President, repeating ad nauseam his main slogan “Make America Great Again”. He will be the first American president since Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) to occupy the White House without having personal political experience.

Trump’s rhetoric and proposals have been squarely anti-establishment and anti-status quo, both domestically and internationally. As such, Trump’s victory is a political revolution in the making because it announces a break from American policies pursued by both Republican and Democrat U.S. administrations since the 1990’s.

For this reason, Trump’s election inspires both fear and hope. Fear among the established elites, especially among the dominating Washington media- financial establishments, because the Trump victory will undoubtedly be seen as a repudiation of their values and policies. And after last June’s Brexit, the writing may also be on the wall for the current crop of European elites, who have also actively pushed for a globalized world, with open frontiers, illegal immigration, technological changes, and the deindustrialization of the more advanced economies.

Election night data, November 8, 22.oopm

There is hope, however, among those who have been left behind economically, politically and socially, especially among those in the American middle class whose real incomes have been stagnant or declining, and who have suffered badly from the agenda and policies pursued during the last three decades. Over the last 30 years, indeed, the upper 10 % and the super-rich 1 % segments of the U.S. population have greatly benefited from a shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, while the bottom 90 % was left behind.

Many disenfranchised American workers, especially those with less than a high school diploma, saw in Republican candidate Donald Trump and in defeated Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders the hope to see things change for the better. It is symptomatic that Americans in large urban areas voted massively democratic, while industrial and rural areas voted massively republican. Contrary to polls, the forecasting models that included the historical context and the desire for change in their prediction had it right. This is the case of American University professor Allan J. Lichtman’s model.

Trump’s Herculean task ahead

President-elect Donald Trump and his team have a Herculean task ahead of them if they are to deliver on the promises they made.

1- Let us begin with the main foreign policy changes to be expected. 

The biggest losers of the November 8 election will be the foreign policy hawks and the Neocons in the previous U.S. administrations, from the Bill Clinton administration to the current Obama administrations. They are the ones who have pushed to rekindle the Cold War with Russia and who have designed the interventionist policies, which are destroying the Middle East.

It is expected that a Trump administration will reverse the U.S.-led NATO policy to provoke Russia by multiplying hostile military moves at its borders. Also, it can be expected that a Trump administration will strike a deal with the Russian government of Vladimir Putin to bring the disastrous Syrian conflict to an end. This is bad news for the murderous Middle-Ages style ISIS organization.

Of course, a Trump administration can be expected to turn U.S. trade policy on its head. Trade policy would likely be paired with an industrial policy. In practice, this could mean that the two large multilateral free trade and free investment treaties, the Transatlantic Free Trade agreement (TAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) will be stopped in their tracks.

In this sense, the Trump revolution could mean that economic and financial globalization is dead.

2- The main domestic policy shifts expected from a Trump administration.

A Trump administration will attempt to prime-pump the U.S. economy through a series of economic policies. After all, candidate Trump has promised to boost the U.S. growth rate to an average of 3.5 percent and to create 25 million jobs over the next decade. He has also promised the “overhaul of our tax, regulatory, energy and trade policies.”

How can a Trump administration stimulate growth? First, by proposing a massive $ 4.4 trillion tax cut to spur growth, not dissimilar from the 2001-2003 Bush-Cheney administration $1.3 trillion tax cut program, which met with dubious results, besides increasing the U.S. government fiscal deficit.

Second, a Trump administration will attempt to boost U.S. manufacturing jobs. For that, it would have to do better than the record achieved during the two Bush-Cheney terms, when the United States lost over six million manufacturing jobs. To reverse that trend, Trump may attempt to force the repatriation of the $2.1 trillion profits that U.S. companies are holding overseas and induce those corporations to invest more within the United States. He may also raise some import taxes to persuade American-owned corporations to create jobs in the U.S. — To what extent a Republican-controlled Congress will acquiesce to such a protectionist trade policy remains to be seen.

Finally, candidate Trump has promised to launch a massive infrastructure investment program, stating that he wanted to “build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports, and airports.”

3- The Trump government’s social challenges 

By far, the biggest challenge that a Trump administration will face will be to make good on candidate Trump’s promise to abolish the national health program known as the Obamacare. He has proposed to replace the American health care law with a transfer of Medicaid to the states, accompanied by a state block grant program, and to provide tax exemption for employer-based health insurance plans, to be extended to individuals who purchase coverage on their own. Candidate Trump has even flirted with the idea of having the U.S. adopt a single-payer health care system. It remains to be seen how such a complex issue can be resolved.

Conclusion

It will take weeks and months before the Trump administration’s real agenda becomes clear. Under a Donald Trump presidency, the United States can be expected to change direction on many policies. As this revolution unfolds, the eyes of the world will be on the Trump administration and on the new policies it will attempt to implement. Let us hope that this will be done with care and intelligent thinking, and not in precipitation and chaos.

Economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, and of “The New American Empire”.

CNN reported at about 2:45 AM Eastern Standard Time that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had made a concession call to her Republican opponent Donald Trump, acknowledging that the billionaire real estate mogul had won the presidential election in a stunning upset and debacle for the Democratic Party.

Trump’s victory was accompanied by a rout of the Democrats in the congressional races, with the Republicans retaining control of the Senate and suffering only a small reduction in their majority in the House of Representatives.

When the concession call came, vote counting was continuing in a handful of states, but Trump had effectively secured a victory in the Electoral College. According to television network projections, Trump had 244 electoral votes and was leading in states with enough electoral votes to give him the 270 required to win.

Some 45 minutes before the announcement of Clinton’s concession, the Hillweb site reported that Trump had won Pennsylvania, one of the industrial states that had been chalked up by pollsters and the media as firmly in the Clinton column. The win in Pennsylvania brought Trump’s electoral vote total to 264.

Shortly thereafter, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told the gloomy crowd gathered at Clinton campaign headquarters in Manhattan that the candidate would not make an appearance until the morning.

The result came as a political shock, as pre-election polls and media commentators had almost unanimously predicted a Clinton victory by a relatively comfortable margin. Financial markets went into convulsions, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures market plunging 900 points in overnight trading. The NASDAQ market halted futures trading as prices fell through preset triggers.

According to network projections, Clinton was trailing by 1.2 million in the national popular vote. She could retake the lead in the popular vote after late vote counts in the Pacific Coast states, where she was winning by wide margins. It is the Electoral College, however, that determines the outcome of the presidential race.

When CNN announced Clinton’s concession, the networks had not yet called the major industrial states of Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes, Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10), as well as New Hampshire (4) and Arizona (11). There were two other undecided electoral votes, one each in Nebraska and Maine—states that award electoral votes by congressional district as well as statewide.

By 11 PM on Tuesday, Trump had won five of the closely-contested “battleground” states, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa, while taking substantial leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. Clinton won only Virginia, Colorado and Nevada, while taking a narrow lead in New Hampshire.

Trump carried every Southern state except Virginia, which he lost narrowly, as well as the less populated states of the Great Plains and Mountain West, except for Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. He also won Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Iowa in the Midwest, and took leads in Wisconsin and Michigan, while Clinton won only Illinois and Minnesota outright.

In the Midwest and Pennsylvania, Trump broke through in previously Democratic strongholds in the presidential race by combining large majorities in traditionally Republican rural areas with victories in smaller industrial cities that had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. These included Eau Claire and La Crosse in Wisconsin; Saginaw, Bay City and Battle Creek in Michigan; Erie, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania.

Fueling Trump’s lead in the polls was a further shift by whites without a college education—characterized as “working-class whites” by the media, although many workers have a college degree—against the Democratic Party. While 40 percent of this demographic voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and he won a majority on their votes outside the South, only 27 percent voted for Hillary Clinton.

This reflects both the impact of the financial crash and the pro-corporate policies of the Obama administration on the jobs and living standards of the poorest sections of white workers, and the complete indifference of the Democratic Party to the plight of the working class as a whole. The Clinton campaign sought to mobilize voter turnout among black and other minority workers on the basis of identity politics, while offering no policies to benefit workers as a class.

Voter turnout was at record levels in many states—Florida alone saw one million more votes cast than in 2012—and there were long lines at polling places both in urban centers and in rural areas.

In the contest for control of the US Senate, where the Republican Party was widely expected to lose its 54–46 majority because 24 Republican seats were at stake compared to only 10 Democratic seats, the Democratic debacle was as pronounced as in the presidential race. As of this writing, only one Democratic challenger, Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, had ousted a Republican incumbent.

The networks confirmed that the Republicans would retain at least 51 seats in the Senate, guaranteeing their continued control of the upper legislative chamber. This puts a Trump administration in a position to determine the successor on the US Supreme Court to Antonin Scalia, the ideological leader of the far-right faction on the court who died earlier this year.

Heavily favored Democratic former senators Russ Feingold and Evan Bayh went down to defeat in Wisconsin and Indiana, and Democratic challengers were trailing in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Missouri, three other closely contested seats. Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a former challenger to Trump for the presidential nomination, retained his seat in Florida.

In the House of Representatives, the Democrats hardly made a serious dent in the huge 60-seat Republican majority, gaining only a half-dozen scattered seats.

For two decades, computer touch-screen voting machines have been derided as “push and pray” voting. You had to take it on faith that the machine records your vote as you intend. The machines lacked a “paper record” to audit and recount.

So, voting rights attorney Robert Fitrakis was thrilled to learn that many of Ohio’s voting machines would, for this election, have a brand-new anti-hacking capability. The computers could now take a photo of every voter card loaded in, time stamp each marking and keep the images in an order that allows an audit and recount.

But there’s one thing wrong with the new tamper-proof voting machines. “They’ve decided to TURN OFF the security.”

What? In 2004, Ohio’s “push-and-pray” machines produced suspect tallies that won President George W. Bush’s re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry—although Kerry had a comfortable lead in exit polls. And in this year’s contest, the FBI has raised fears of fiddling these machines by Russian hackers.

Yet, the Republican Secretary of State of Ohio, Jon Husted, is allowing county officials to simply turn off these security functions—with no explanation as to why.

The counties, Fitrakis discovered, “bought state-of-the-art equipment and turned off the security,” both the ballot imaging function and the audit application that can detect and record evidence of machine tampering.

Fitrakis, Green Party candidate for Franklin County Prosecutor, sought a temporary restraining order to require voting officials to simply turn on the ballot integrity functions on the machines. As a reporter for Democracy Now, I was permitted to observe, though not film, the hearing in the judge’s chamber in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas in Columbus, Ohio’s capital.

Lawyers for the Republican Secretary of State as well as county officials from around the state gave no reason for turning off the ballot protection functions on the machines. Instead, they pleaded that turning them on “would cause havoc.”

Fitrakis, armed with a copy of the machine’s instructions noted that the “havoc” was no more than clicking on a drop-down computer menu and choosing “record” images instead of “do not record.” The menu has a similar yes/no option for the audit application.

Nevertheless, Judge David Cain, a Republican, ruled that Fitrakis’ demand was “borderline frivolous.” Counsel for the state’s GOP Attorney General argued, successfully, that Fitrakis would have to return after the election and prove the election was stolen. Of course, he’d have no audit trail nor ballot images with which to make the case.

Fitrakis told me, “It’s Catch-22. It’s Ohio.”

And the stakes are high. This is the ultimate swing state that could decide not only the Presidency but the balance in the US Senate.

Long Lines for Black Votes; Zero Lines for whites

On Sunday, I joined the members of the Freedom Faith Missionary Baptist Church of Dayton for early voting. All over Ohio, churches bus the faithful to the polls for early voting. Nearly 70% of Ohio’s African-Americans vote on “Souls-to-the-Polls” Sunday as many do not have the transport nor the day off to vote on Tuesday.

They arrived at the one and only early polling station and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. The lines for several thousand voters at the one poll snaked up and down three floors of the county building and spiraled through the multi-story garage. At the end of the line they were given numbers to wait in an auditorium to be called to vote.

Yet, today, on Election Day Tuesday, when the majority of white Ohioans vote, there will be 176 polling stations in Montgomery County (Dayton) alone. For many whites the lines are not short—they are non-existent, with more poll workers than voters.

The system was created by that same GOP official, Jon Husted, who had permitted counties to turn off ballot protection applications on the voting machines. Husted had wanted to eliminate Sunday voting completely.

But Husted ran into resistance. I located Dennis Lieberman, until recently, a Dayton County elections board member. Lieberman told me, “We had voted, both Republicans and Democrats, for long [voting] hours on weekends so that people, like this” – he gestured to the church groups – could come and vote.”

But Secretary Husted was none too pleased.

“After we did that [voted for Saturday and Sunday voting], we were told by the Secretary of State that if we didn’t change our vote, that he would fire us.”

Lieberman and the others refused to give in. And, as a result, said the voting official, “I got fired.”

Secretary Husted has refused several requests for an interview.

The Purge begins of half a million suspected “duplicate” voters

Donald Trump claims that, the election is “rigged”—specifically because, “You have people …voting many, many times.”

Trump’s accusations simply repeats the claim of more than two dozen Republican state voting chiefs who have created a secret list of those suspected of voting twice or registering twice with the intent of voting a second time. Altogether, there are an astonishing 7.2 million names on the GOP blacklist, labeled “Crosscheck” by Republican operatives.

Ohio’s Secretary of State has a whopping 497,000 suspects on his list in that one state – and he is systematically removing them. Of these, approximately 60,000 Ohioans will find their names simply removed from the swing state’s voter rolls—and they will have no idea of the accusation against them.

Crucially, the list is racially loaded—tagging an astounding one in six voters of color in the GOP states using Crosscheck.

Voting twice is a felony crime—and, despite the humongous list, only one Ohioan has been convicted. Yet thousands are losing their vote.

Although it is “confidential,” our team obtained over 100,000 of Ohio’s blacklisted voters facing disenfranchisement. We spoke to several—and one, Donald Webster, agreed to speak to us on camera.

Donald Alexander Webster Jr. of Dayton, Ohio, is accused of having registered a second time in Virginia as Donald Eugene Webster Sr.

He claims that he never used the name “Eugene” – and he can’t imagine why someone would vote a second time when, to fix an election, he would have had to conspire with thousands of others.

So I asked, “Well, do you? Are you part of a large conspiracy?”

“No, no. No I am not, sir.”

Yet he and the other Donald Webster are at risk of losing their vote—and will not know why.

Rights attorney Fitrakis said of Husted’s “Crosscheck” game,

“He knows what he’s doing is illegal. What he’s doing is counting on bigotry to get away with it. He’s picking first and last names only because he doesn’t want to actually [catch double voters]. He wants to purge Blacks and Hispanics. And he’s trying to make Ohio winnable in the only way he knows how: by stealing American citizens’ votes.”