Global Research

The level of irrationality, confusion and negative energy is the most astonishing signal emanating out of the US presidential election.  It is a strong indication that, whatever the result, we should be prepared for an escalation in the already serious tensions dominating our world.

It is probably the first time, since the crisis of Weimar Germany, that such phenomena have appeared in the centre of the world, in its strongest country.

80% of the population of the USA do not trust and do not appreciate either of the two candidates. The strongest argument for voting Trump is not so much what he says as opposition to Clinton being elected. And the main argument for voting Clinton is not to have Trump elected!

The other day, as I was struggling to finish this article, I sent mails to some good friends in the USA, very critical, experienced and serious observers, telling them that I am a little confused by what I am reading about their elections and asking them for their opinion on the foreign policy Trump will really follow if elected.

From the answers I received, I realized that they too are not at all sure about what is at stake here and what the future course of the United States will be. One of them, a well-known economist with quite radical ideas, answered in this way: “YOU’RE confused? Ha ha ha. Nobody has a clue! Trump is such a narcissist that he may easily be manipulated. His intuitive policy is to pull BACK from war. At least a blind choice is better than Hillary’s push for war, definitely. But who knows?” Really, who knows?

Another one, also a leftist and a seasoned student of international realities, who had written an angry article last summer, protesting, in very strong terms about the kinds of attacks the US mainstream media have launched against the Republican nominee, was more sober than in his article: “Νothing is worse than Clinton. Trump will rely on the Republicans in Congress for foreign policy, which makes him very dangerous. If he breaks with the party elites he will mend ties with Russia and Syria, but it is a big if. If he sticks to a protectionist trade policy he will face problems with China and the West coast. Nothing positive will result from these elections”.

The simile of a political life

In his Republic Plato describes a cave inside which a group of prisoners is able to see only the shadows of beings and of their movements. But nowadays, to follow world politics, including US elections, one sometimes has the impression of looking merely at the shadows of the shadows! The real game is very far away from the scene of the drama between Clinton and Trump, and we are kept in the dark concerning the real object of the competition. Are different strategic lines really behind it, and if so which ones? At one level they seem to exist. At another, some conspiracy theorists would argue that, at a deeper strategic level, all this is about the same “establishment of the establishment” proposing different products to different sections of its clientele. Who knows? as my friend put it.

During the previous eight years the strategic image was quite clear, at least for those who wanted to see it. On the one hand we had President Obama and people like Brzezinski. Obama was elected on the basis of opposition to imperial overextension and a crazy program of wars in the Middle East which many people inside the US and international establishment, large sections of public opinion, the US Armed Forces, etc. believed to be extremist, dangerous and not corresponding to any US interest.

On the other hand we had Clinton and the neocons (strongly supported by Netanyahu, who was also opposed by forces inside his own establishment). This camp pushed for escalation in the Middle East (and Ukraine), in order to complete the program announced long ago by the most extremist forces of the international establishment, around the project for a “new American century”. Obama resisted these plans, albeit in a not always consistent and often unspoken way. He was reluctant to stop the wars in Libya and probably did not understand, until it was too late, what was at stake in Ukraine. His political alternative to the “extremely extremist”, but nevertheless more coherent, project of the forces behind neocons, such as “political Islam” or Erdogan, proved to be very weak. And you cannot have a very serious policy when Clinton and Nuland are following other  agendas than the President, nobody in the Administration is really sure what the CIA is doing, and senior military people rely on  Seymour Hersh to put a brake on extremism!

Obama is rightly criticized for Afghanistan, Libya and other things, but we should remember that the President of the United States opposed the extremists, and he could not do it otherwise, in the general context of pursuit of American imperial politics. History will credit him (and Russian intervention) for stopping military intervention in Syria and sealing a nuclear agreement with Iran. Under his presidency, international neocons had to use mainly the services of Sarkozy in Paris and Cameron in London to launch the war which destroyed  Libya. Clinton was helpful in this connection.

The fact that the President of the United States was unable to close Guantanamo for instance, something he obviously wished to do, says a lot about the kind of forces that all but hijacked US state after the collapse of the USSR. And about their strength: a veritable state within the state.

Deception, virtual realities and conspiracies

Bear in mind that we have been living internationally, especially since the supposed end of the Cold War, in a historic era of deception and virtual realities. And it could not be otherwise. The infinitesimal minorities of power, money and knowledge ruling our world cannot announce their program and the future they are preparing for us. If they did, they would provoke a revolution. They are also unable at this time to launch head-on confrontation with societies and nations. Conspiracies have existed throughout history, but now they are tending to become the norm. There is no more effective weapon than the kind of smart (and evil) power that enables you influence your own opponent and lead him into choices that will seal his defeat. Classic political, social and geopolitical analysis is still the key to understanding social and international phenomena, but it must be supplemented by a deep and not always straightforward understanding of the real strategies in play.

Look how many incredible things have happened in a period of  30 years and are continuing to happen. The leader of the Soviet Union and “world communism” himself destroyed his own country and system, in a way the most powerful foreign army could not dream of. In Iraq Sunnis who so bravely resisted the US invasion were provided with a Wahhabi ISIS leadership arranged by the CIA and other allied services laboratories. In Greece the (verbally) most radical of the European “radical Left” parties is now following a policy most neoliberals would regard as extremist. And in the USA we are following a presidential campaign which is merely the distorted reflection, the tip of the iceberg, of huge battles going on behind the scenes, among the main centres of Imperial Power such as  Wall Street, the CIA, the army, the lobbies, etc.

Not many sensible people would disagree with some of the ideas put forward by Trump on foreign policy, especially in relation to US-Russia relations and Syria, in his latest interview with Reuters. But does he mean them? Can we believe that he will do what he says? Is he speaking the truth or he is just performing a manoeuvre that Professor James Petras predicted as early as June , when he wrote that “Trump’s electoral victory will hinge on his capacity to cover-up his neo-liberal turn and focus voters’ attention on Clinton’s militaristic, Wall Street, conspiratorial and anti-working class politics” (http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=2086)

Trump has said too many contradictory things on various subjects, from Cuba to Korea and from Islam to Ukraine (which he visited after Maidan) for it to be easy for the uninitiated to know what star he will really follow if elected. He is a very intelligent man and everything he says can be read two ways. (For instance, he said he will not automatically defend the Baltics, which is music to Russian ears, but he explained that US allies have to do more for NATO defenses if they are to count on the US. The probability of Russia invading Baltics is near zero. The second part of the equation, the increase in military spending by NATO allies is what really remains from such declarations).

Generals do not win the same battles a second time: in order to win one must change tactics, always bearing in mind that war remains to a great extent a continuation of politics by other means. Clinton appears much more than Trump the war candidate. But let us remember that Clinton will be, politically,  a very weak president, if elected. Trump will be much stronger if elected “against the Establishment”.  His rise embodies the anger of the  popular and middle strata in the USA. The million dollar question is: in which direction will he channel their anger?

After all, globalization is not only, or not as much, about subjugating and destroying nations, as nationalists claim. It is doing that, and nationalists are right to protest and oppose it. But, behind its amorphous surface and ideology there also lies the domination of some nations by others and, also, the domination of the strategically coherent wing of finance over everybody. As the decade of the 30s should have taught us, domination can be effected not only by crushing nations but also by exploiting their nationalism. Some smart unorthodox generals of globalization, such as the member of the steering committee of Bildeberg Peter Thiel, are drawing up their own plans on how to use Trump and the deep protest of the American demos to the service of the forces they provoked it, the classic example how such a turn around can be achieved, remaining again German history of the 20th century (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/21/peter-thiel-republican-convention-speech)

People in the USA, but also around the globe, are so fed up with the policies of the Western establishment, especially the US and the banking establishment and, also, so discouraged at their own capacity to stop these policies, that they are ready to believe blindly and follow uncritically any politician, of the Left or of the Right, promising a radical change, taking at face value whatever they say. As the tragic European experience of the 20th Century amply proves, this can be the road to disaster.

Isolationism, Interventionism, Militarism

Many people believe for instance that the election of Mr. Trump will lead to a sort of withdrawal of America from world affairs. This would be a very positive evolution, given the role America is playing in the world. But if Trump really wants to get America back, then why he is proposing an increase in military spending and why is he saying that America must be militarily stronger than any other power? What is the meaning of his slogan “America First”? Who will be the second, the third, the fourth, or the 100th in this hierarchy? By what means and through what policies, other than intervention, he will be able to deliver this result?

In fact, no one should give much credit to what US politicians say about the role of USA in the world. It is much wiser to see what they do.

President Wilson, for instance, proclaimed in 1917 that Americans would never become involved in the European slaughter. Two months later the United States intervened military in the First World War, sealing the defeat of Germany and initiating their own domination of Europe for a century! (*)

Ask any political scientist worldwide about the US Democrats and Republicans. You will invariably get the answer that Democrats are the interventionists, Republicans the isolationists. But how is it then to be explained that it was the Republican George Bush Jr. that invaded Iraq, inaugurating a “strategy of chaos” and jeopardizing peace around the globe?

Are political scientists stupid? Of course not. They simply don’t want to face the constant reality of US imperial policy since the Monroe doctrine was proclaimed in 1902. They don’t have any desire to uncover the deep roots of this phenomenon in the economic structure of the USA, the role of its multinationals, etc. This is why they prefer to focus on important but still secondary factors such as the personalities of presidents or the ideology of the two parties. The same is true of many politicians around the globe, who prefer not to look straight into the eyes of the monster and, instead, try to accommodate its existence, one way or another.

The phenomenon of US imperialism is not the result of the particular character of one president or another. It is deeply rooted in the economic structure of the USA and in the relationship they build with the outside world.

The USA was built as an empire during the 20th century. Only a very deep social, economic and cultural transformation could change the character and the role of this country.

If one wants to make predictions about future US policies, it is better to look at the military programs of the United States than to study various declarations and ideologies. US militarism emerged in a big way in 1914, first as a means of supplying Europeans with what they needed to kill each other and, after 1917, Americans with what they needed to dominate the world. It has been developing unabated since that time, even after the post-World War II enemy, the Soviet superpower, decided to commit suicide! The United States spend on weapons as much as all other countries together. They have troops and bases in more than 50 countries around the globe. They have renounced to the ABM treaty, which was the cornerstone of the arms control system during the Cold War. (And it was the Americans who insisted on, and finally secured, the agreement of the Soviets for this treaty).

Only the emergence of a big popular peace movement such as the one existing in the West in the past can stop the descent to war that is rooted in the very structure of the prevailing economic and social system. And such a movement can have a chance only if combined with efforts to defend the achievements of Western societies after 1945 and to create a better order than the existing one.

More and more forces around the globe are emerging to resist the terrible aspects: social, ecological, military-geopolitical, of an emerging “totalitarian Empire of globalization”. But they still lack an alternative vision.

(*) Another classic example of “isolationist” talk preparing an interventionist policy is Yugoslavia. In 1990, as the USSR was collapsing, nobody seemed to need the USA in the Balkans. All the peninsula was looking to Europe for its future and, at the same time, it had strong economic, cultural and military ties with Russia. When Germany, Austria and the Vatican encouraged the war in Yugoslavia, Washington kept a distance, letting the Germans do the dirty job with the Serbs and provoke a lot of dissatisfaction with their own partners, especially the French, British, Greeks. From time to time US politicians were even saying that they would leave the Balkans, that they were not interested in Europe. Of course they had no intention of leaving, otherwise they would not at the same time have built one of their greatest military bases abroad in FYROM. Every time the Americans said they were leaving a kind of panic came over  European capitals. Berlin had inaugurated the destruction of Yugoslavia, but it could not finish the job. The war in Yugolsavia was meant in Berlin as a way of reaffirming the new international role of a reunited Germany. In the end Europeans were begging Americans to come back.

When Germany was sufficiently exposed and Europe had failed miserably, the Americans stepped in with NATO airplanes and Holbrook diplomacy to finish the job in two phases (the Dayton agreement and the Kosovo War). They sealed the defeat of Serbia, the exclusion of Russia (which failed to protect its Serbian brothers) and the end of any ambition of an autonomous European foreign and defense policy for the foreseeable future. Nobody needed them in 1990, but in 2000 they were again fully dominating the strategic landscape in the Balkans,  a region of capital importance for any future war with Russia and also a possible energy transit road  (by the way, what happened inYugoslavia has many similarities with the debt war against Greece and the Germany/IMF role).

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos is a journalist and writer. He has worked as advisor on Arms Control and East-West relations in the office of Greek PM Andreas Papandreou (1985-88) and as the chief correspondent of Athens News Agency in Moscow (1989-99)

This isn’t the first time that the United States has faced a potential constitutional crisis or charges that the presidential race is being rigged under the influence of a foreign power.

Rumors of conspiracy and war were already rampant at the end of the eighteenth century. The “enemy” then was France. Some warned ominously that Napoleon’s troops were moving on Florida and Louisiana. By April 1798 Congress had voted funds to arm merchant ships and fortify the harbors. In May it instructed US warships to capture any French vessel caught in American waters.

Public fears were on the rise and the pressure for action was intense. John Adams’ wife Abigail supported a declaration of war and criticized Congress for acting too slowly. But the President and Congress decided instead to focus on enemies at home.

As the summer temperature soared past 90 degrees in Philadelphia, lawmakers went further than even Adams hoped, passing the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts. Adams called them emergency wartime measures. After all, there were more than 25,000 French immigrants in the country! And most of them were survivors of the slave uprising in Haiti on the island of Santo Domingo. Obvious security threats, right?

As historian David McCullough notes, there were French newspapers in Philadelphia as well as French schools, booksellers, boardinghouses and restaurants. “The French, it seemed, were everywhere,” he writes, “and who was to measure the threat they posed in the event of war with France?”

The Alien Act was a Trumpian initiative aimed directly at immigrants, increasing the period of residency to qualify for citizenship and giving the President the power to deport any foreigner he considered dangerous. But the more consequential law turned out to be the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to stir people up or write anything critical of the government, Congress, or the President. Editor Noah Webster backed the idea, declaring it time to stop other newspaper editors from libeling public figures. Even George Washington commented privately that some publications deserved punishment for their attacks. War was the pretext, but a little censorship sounded reasonable to many leaders. We’ve heard similar calls from the GOP candidate.

Officially, the purpose of the Sedition Act was to crack down on illegal actions that tended to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government. Rather than a foreign spy, however, the first target was Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, an opposition editor in Philadelphia arrested for libeling Adams. In daily attacks he had belittled Adams as “President by three votes,” mocking his weight and describing him as a British tool. But Bache was never convicted, instead dying of yellow fever before he could stand trial.

Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon was equally high on Adams’ list. After the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, he had demanded a roll call vote to see “who are friends and enemies of the Constitution.” Jefferson agreed, calling the repressive new laws an unconstitutional “reign of terror.” But what triggered President Adams into action was a letter to the editor. Responding to an attack in the Federalist Vermont Journal, Lyon wrote the US should stay out of war with France. The Adams administration, he went on, had forgotten the welfare of the people “in an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation and selfish avarice.”

There was also a comment about Lyon’s foot and the seat of the president’s pants.

That was enough for Adams and his allies. Lyon was placed on trial, in Vermont, in front of a judge who had run against him for Congress, convicted of bringing the President and government into contempt, fined $1,000, sentenced to four months, and marched in chains through the streets of Vergennes to jail. The sentence was imposed in October 1799, just a month before he was up for re-election.

But Adams and the Federalists had made a tactical error. They had targeted a hero, a popular figure who had come to the colonies as an indentured servant, fought the British with Ethan Allen, and married one of Allen’s cousins. As a result Vermont voters defied the President and re-elected him anyway. Despite Lyon’s occasionally extreme behavior the arrest had made him even more popular, an early example of the state’s outspoken, contrarian, and sometimes defiantly independent streak.

The next year, for the only time in US history, the President – John Adams – ran against the Vice President – Thomas Jefferson. Since Matthew Lyon’s trial for sedition, eleven more people had been convicted under Adams’ law. But that didn’t stop the Anti-Federalist press from calling him a monarchist, an old man too impressed with the British. Some claimed he was insane.

The attacks on Jefferson were equally harsh, from weakling and French intriguer to libertine and unrepentant atheist who mocked Christian faith. But the criticism of Adams came from both Anti-Federalist republicans, who considered him a warmonger, and Federalists, who said he was too cowardly to confront the French.

The race turned out to be closer than anyone expected. Adams did well enough in New England, but lost in New York, the West and South. The outcome in New York was largely the result of Aaron Burr’s influence in New York City. Counting up electoral votes from the nation’s 16 states, Jefferson had 73 to 65 for Adams and 63 for Charles Pinckney, a Federalist stalwart from South Carolina. But Burr also had 73 votes, which created a tie. That meant the choice went to the House of Representatives. It could happen again.

Burr’s refusal to step aside and clear the way for Jefferson fueled suspicions that he was privately bargaining with the Federalists. Alexander Hamilton distrusted both men but opted for the current Vice President. “Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself,” he charged, “thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement…Jefferson is in my view less dangerous than Burr.”

In the end, the tie-breaking vote was cast by Lyon, the same person whom Adams had targeted with sedition charges. Lyon respected Burr as a New York power broker, but he was philosophically allied with Jefferson. It thus surprised few when he picked the Virginian over Boston’s first citizen to be the next president. Burr became vice president and Adams became a one-term President

In 1801, the former president was still bitter — and still blaming immigrants. “Is there no pride in American bosoms?” Adams wrote. “Can their hearts endure that (James) Callendar, (William) Duane, (Thomas) Cooper and Lyon should be the most influential men in the country, all foreigners and all degraded characters?” All four had been charged with sedition.

Adams called them “foreign liars.” He also charged, a bit oddly at the time, that there were “no Americans in America.” It all sounds too familiar.

Greg Guma is the author of The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution.

Once upon a time, when choosing a new president, a factor for many voters was the perennial question: “Whose finger do you want on the nuclear button?” Of all the responsibilities of America’s top executive, none may be more momentous than deciding whether, and under what circumstances, to activate the “nuclear codes” — the secret alphanumeric messages that would inform missile officers in silos and submarines that the fearful moment had finally arrived to launch their intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) toward a foreign adversary, igniting a thermonuclear war.

Did Russia invade Iraq and kill one million people? Does Russia have a greater percentage of its population behind bars than any other country in the world? Did Russia occupy Haiti after kidnapping its president? Are Russian police allowed to shoot children to death without fear of repercussion? Is Russia entering its 20^th year of a terror war against the people of Somalia? All of these crimes take place in or at the direction of the United States. Yet the full force of propaganda and influence on world opinion is directed against Russia, which whatever its shortcomings cannot hold a candle to America in violating human rights.

The dangers presented by a Hillary Clinton presidency cannot be overstated. She and the war party have been steadily working towards a goal that defies logic and risks all life on earth. Regime change is once again their modus operandi and they hope to make it a reality against Russia.

Nearly every claim of Russian evil doing is a lie, a ruse meant to put Americans in a fighting mood and lose their fear of nuclear conflagration. It isn’t clear if Clinton and the rest of the would-be warriors actually realize they are risking mushroom clouds. Perhaps they believe that Vladimir Putin will be easily pushed around when all evidence points to the contrary.

The unproven allegations of interference in the presidential election and casting blame on Russia as the sole cause of suffering in Syria are meant to desensitize the public. It is an age old ploy which makes war not just acceptable but deemed a necessity. The usual suspects are helping out eagerly. The corporate media, led by newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, are front and center in pushing tales of Russian villainy. Human Rights Watch and other organizations who care nothing about abuses committed by the United States and its allies are also playing their usual role of choosing the next regime change victim.

Russia lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council in part because of American pressure and public relations assistance from the human rights industrial complex. The UNHRC is now chaired by Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that funds the jihadist terrorist groups who caused 500,000 Syrian deaths. The Saudis are causing dislocation, death and starvation in Yemen, too, but they are American allies, so there is little opposition to their misdeeds.

The openly bigoted Donald Trump has been the perfect foil for Hillary Clinton. That is why she and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership preferred him as their rival. He made the case for the discredited lesser evilism argument and his sensible statements about avoiding enmity with Russia made him even more useful.

The United States and its allies are the cause of Syria’s destruction. Their effort to overthrow president Assad created a humanitarian disaster complete with ISIS and al Nusra fighters who love to chop off heads for entertainment. Far from being the cause of the catastrophe Russia left its ally to fight alone for four years. They even made overtures to negotiate Assad’s fate with the United States. All attempts to stop the fighting were rejected by the U.S. and NATO and sealed the fate of the Syrian people. The people of east Aleppo are being shelled by American allies but one wouldn’t know that by reading what passes for journalism in newspapers and on television. The American role in the slaughter is barely mentioned or is excused as an effort to protect the civilian population. The bloodshed was made in the U.S. and could end if this government wanted it to.

The anti-Russian propaganda effort has worked to perfection. NATO is massing troops on Russia’s borders in a clear provocation yet Putin is labeled the bad guy. He is said to be menacing the countries that join in threatening his nation. The United States makes phony claims of Russian war crimes despite having blood on its hands. The latest Human Rights Watch canards about prosecuting Assad come straight from the White House and State Department and have nothing to do with concern for Syrians living in their fifth year of hell.

There is no lesser evil between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. She is fully supported by the war party in her desire for a more “muscular” foreign policy. That bizarre term means death and starvation for millions more people if Clinton wins in a landslide. She must be denied a victory of that magnitude and any opportunity to claim a mandate. Peace loving people must give their votes to the Green Party ticket of Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka. They are alone in rejecting the premise of an imperialist country and its endless wars.

The United States is the most dangerous country in the world. If it has a reckless and war loving president the threat becomes existential. That is the prospect we face with a Hillary Clinton presidency. If the role of villain is cast on the world stage she is the star of the show.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

It was 1:30 a.m. and CBS still wasn’t ready to call Ohio’s 20 electoral votes, or the presidential election, for George W. Bush. In Washington, Karl Rove was already declaring victory. But unlike 2000, when Al Gore almost conceded before it was clear that Florida deserved a recount, the Democrats were not rolling over this time.

For a while in November 2004, it looked like the counting could go on for weeks. As expected, Bush had swept the southern and mountain states, while John Kerry carried most of the two coasts. The President was leading in the popular vote, but neither candidate could claim the required electoral college majority.

As it emerged that Ohio might be the new Florida, ABC’s Cokie Roberts complained, “This could be the worst of all possible worlds.” She meant the prospect of extended litigation. Bush was ahead, but the Democrat were challenging Republican tactics and holding out for the counting of provisional ballots, a process that could take at least a week. Republican operatives called the tactic “bizarre, absurd, and ludicrous.” This year they may copy it.

Commenting on the high 2004 turnout, George Will offered a disquieting Vietnam analogy. “When we have high turnout we tend to be an unhappy country,” he argued, then adding that 1968 “was one of the worst years in US history. It ran up turnout, but I don’t think we want to do that constantly.”

State ballot initiatives were also influential, mainly bringing out social conservatives who tended to back Bush. Items calling for the rejection of same-sex marriage passed convincingly in 11 states; of these, nine went for Bush. In this sense, 2016 will be very different. The marriage debate is basically over, but five states will vote on recreational marijuana; another four will choose whether to permit its medical use. Four states are also voting to raise the minimum wage, and three will decide on background checks for gun buyers.

Still, one dynamic has stayed very much the same. It remains a closely divided electorate. As Chris Matthews put it in 2004, “It’s an election between north and south that will be decided by the Midwest.”

Using CNN’s new high-tech wall of graphics, Jeff Greenfield posed various scenarios, including the possibility of a 269-269 tie. That prospect, an irresistible storyline that has emerged again this year, lingered into the night. Would the House of Representatives end up choosing the President? And if someone like that happened now, who would the GOP-dominated House choose?

As the night wore on, speculation began to pass for fact. Shortly after 1 a.m., MSNBC announced that Bush was only one electoral vote shy of victory, while Kerry would have to win every remaining state to reach a tie. Actually, Bush had substantially fewer electors tied up at that point. The desire for an exciting story had eclipsed pre-election promises of caution.

By dawn the next morning, Bush actually had 254 electoral votes to Kerry’s 252. That left Iowa and New Mexico, two states where Bush was clinging to a slim lead, and Ohio, where the likelihood of a Kerry victory looked slim. Kerry conceded by early afternoon. If something similar happens this time, no one expects either candidate to say uncle.

Whatever the outcome, there will be deep suspicions and lingering claims of fraud and manipulation. That certainly happened in 2004, when claims of cyber-warfare surfaced after the vote. The difference now is Trump, who will use any opening or legal option to block defeat and challenge the legitimacy of the election.

On the eve of arguably the most important election in US history, most Americans don’t understand the stakes involved.

One issue dwarfs all others in importance – possible humanity threatening nuclear war under Hillary v. Trump’s sense enough to shun the unthinkable. One or the other will become America’s 45th president.

Sadly, it won’t be Jill Stein, an anti-war, anti-corporate predation, ecosane true progressive, her agenda promising governance of, by and for everyone equitably.

She’s the only presidential candidate warning about the risk of Hillary starting nuclear war with Russia. She doesn’t sleep well at night, she said, thinking about the ominous possibility.

Hillary represents an unparalleled menace to world peace, stability and security. In the 1990s, she partnered with husband Bill in raping Yugoslavia, along with maintaining criminal sanctions on Iraq, responsible for killing 5,000 children under aged five monthly – genocide by any standard.

She supported all US post-9/11 wars of choice, entirely against countries threatening no one – as Secretary of State, orchestrating devastating aggression on Libya and Syria, both countries mired in endless violence, chaos and immiseration of their people.

Her anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Iran militancy risks thermonuclear war no one can win, threatening everyone everywhere.

Consider the enormous risk of a third Hillary and Bill Clinton co-presidency, she in the lead role with her finger on the nuclear trigger as US military commander-in-chief, an emotionally unstable neocon lunatic able to squeeze it at her discretion – unconstrained by Congress, public sentiment or international and constitutional law.

US voters on November 8 should focus on the most vital issue of our time. Should they trust a presidential aspirant assuring endless imperial wars, a possible thermonuclear one, threatening life on earth?

Trump believes partnering with Russia to defeat the scourge of ISIS makes sense – not waging war on a nuclear super-power like America, assuring losers, not winners and utter devastation on both countries.

Who do you prefer leading America – a lunatic fringe war goddess or a billionaire more interested in profits than mass destruction.

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.

 On the morning of November 4th, 2016, Brazilian military and civilian police used violent force to storm Brazil’s, Landless Workers Movement‘s (MST) Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF) in Guararema, outside of Sao Paulo in Brazil. According to several witnesses, the police stormed their way into the facility by forcing their way through the main gate shooting live bullets, and threatening people.

As a founding member of Via Campesina, the MST has worldwide recognition as an important peasant social movement, with a commitment to the protection of rural communities and workers and the struggle for land reform. The Florestan Fernandes school has been committed to building social consciousness and popular unity for over 10 years. Hundreds of students are currently studying at the ENFF which is administered by the MST to provide political and socioeconomic education to working class youth and adults from around the world.

Criminalization of Social Protest

The act is clearly a violent action taken by the current illegitimate government to intimidate the MST and their allies, who stand in clear opposition to the administration of Michel Temer, who led the parliamentary coup against elected president Dilma Rousseff and took control of the government in August of this year. The attack is part of a broader policy of criminalization of social protest and attacks against the MST.

The campaign of terror against the MST has already left its mark on two other states in Brazil: Parana and Mato Grosso do Sul, where civil police arrested members of the MST calling them members of criminal organizations, despite the Supreme Court of Brazil recognizing the MST as a legitimate organization.

We the undersigned organizations and social movements condemn this violent act against the ENFF and the MST, which stands in stark contrast to the democratic and constitutional rights Brazilians have fought to secure. To organize against an oppressive system is not a crime, it is a responsibility. We express our total solidarity with the MST and demand the appropriate investigations be launched to bring the responsible to justice. We also ask the international community to join us in solidarity with the largest social movement in the Americas. •

América Latina al Día
Circulo Bolivariano Louis Riel
Common Frontiers
DeColonize Now
Idle No More
Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network
Solidarity Halifax
Socialist Project
Students united in representation of Latin America
The Dawn News – International Newsletter of Popular Struggles

More news on this situation:

• “Live Fire Reported in Police Invasion of Movement of Landless Rural Workers Training School in Brazil,” Alternet.org.
• “Policia invade ENFF sem mandado de busca e apreensão,” MST.org.
• “The Crisis Will Be Profound and Prolonged…,” The Bullet.

Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST)

The Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, or MST) is one of the largest movements in Latin America with an estimated membership of 1.5 million members across 23 of Brazil’s 26 states. It has been at the centre of the international peasants’ movement, La Via Campesina. The MST’s aims are to fight for general access to the land for poor workers through land reform in Brazil, land occupations and through activism around social issues related to land possession. This is part of a wider agenda of addressing unequal income distribution, social inequalities related to race and gender. The MST has worked at a self-sustainable way of life for the poor in rural areas, linked to the wider struggle for new forms of socialism.

Russian forces operating in Syria upon Damascus’ request have met several close calls during military and humanitarian missions over the past two months. In late October, Syrian and Russian organised humanitarian corridors came under heavy fire in Aleppo in a brazen attempt by Western-backed militants to prevent civilians from crossing over into government-controlled western Aleppo.

Dan Rivers of UK-based ITV would say in an October 20 Tweet:

Buses ready to ‘evacuate’ civilians from east – so far no one has crossed. A rebel mortar just landed 50 ft from us. No injuries thank God.

Alex  Thomson of British Channel 4 would also Tweet:

Confirmed – rebels are firing mortars into the checkpoint areas making it extremely dangerous to attempt to leave E Aleppo…

It is important to cite Western journalists present at the corridors dodging incoming mortars particularly because the incoming fire went otherwise unreported by the Western media. The Washington Post would allude to it in an article strategically titled, “Russia says Aleppo escape corridors under fire,” in an attempt to make the claims appear to be baseless Russian propaganda.

Then early this month, Russian helicopters came under fire by designated foreign terrorist organisation, the Islamic State in western Syria with Newsweek in its article, “ISIS Claims to Have Shot Russian Helicopter,” claiming:

Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed militants hit one of its aircraft during a flight in Syria, but denied reports of any fatalities in the incident, Russian state news agency Itar-Tass reports. 

Extremist militant group Islamic State (ISIS) reported via their news agency Amaq they had destroyed a Russian attack helicopter in Syria’s Homs Governorate using guided missiles on Thursday, according to news website SITE Intelligence.

And again, strategically, Newsweek decides to conclude its article by stating:

The Russian government has come under heavy scrutiny for not upholding a ceasefire agreement and continuing military operations in Syria, in support of the Assad regime.

Could these serendipitous setbacks for Russia simply be a coincidence? Or are they the manifestation of Western desires to remove Russia from the Syrian conflict by targeting its forces by proxy?

US Has Openly Threatened to “Covertly” Kill Russians in Syria  

In 2015, former acting director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morell would openly declare his desire to see Iran and Russia “pay a little price“ amid the ongoing conflict in Syria. When interviewer Charlie Rose attempted to clarify Morell’s comments by asking if he meant, “by killing Russians, by killing Iranians,” Morell emphatically responded, “yes, covertly.”

Morell justified this by making the incomprehensible comparison between America’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and alleged Iranian support for militias fighting the US occupation, and the current conflict in Syria in which Russia and Iran are backing the legitimate government of Syria, upon Damascus’ request. It should be noted that Morell’s desire to “kill Russians” was never even so much as incomprehensibly linked to the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.

Since his comments, and similar sentiments made throughout the entirety of America’s foreign policy and media circles in 2015, there have been a string of incidents where designated terrorist organisations, either Jabhat Al Nusra or the Islamic State, have targeted Russian forces, particularly their aircraft and have done so using US and European missiles and rockets. In other words, Russians were being targeted and even killed, “covertly.”

Hating Russia Enough to Kill? 

The real question for observers worldwide is, why would the US find itself at such odds with Russia regarding Syria to want to begin targeting and killing Russians?

The United States’ official purpose for being involved in Syria is to fight the Islamic State.

Under the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF–OIR), the United States’ official mission according to US President Barack Obama is to:

…degrade, and ultimately destroy, [the Islamic State] through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.

With Russian forces suffering losses fighting the Islamic State in Syria, it would appear that the US and Russia should be natural allies, yet they clearly are not.

That is either because the US believes Russia isn’t truly fighting the Islamic State, despite losing one of their helicopters just this month while doing so, or because the US itself is not really in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The latter, is clearly the case, with US policy think tanks, American media op-eds and even US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton declaring that their collective intent is the overthrow of the Syrian government, which Russia most certainly is not a party to.

In essence, Russia’s mortal sin is not allowing Syria to be rendered a divided, destroyed and ultimately failed state by the United States and its allies just as has been done to Libya and Iraq before it. So determined to dismember Syria, the United States is willing to “covertly” target and destroy forces openly engaged in combat against alleged enemies of the United States, including Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State, enemies who just so happen to also be America’s best bet for ousting the government in Damascus.

Understanding and communicating to the public the fact that each and every “covert” attack on Russian forces carried out by Al Qaeda affiliates and the Islamic State not only proves Russia is actually in Syria to combat terrorism, but it also further proves how the United States has used the excuse of fighting terrorism to hide its true agenda behind, rather than uphold as its primary mission.

In a sane world, Syria would never have been set upon in the first place, and those nations seeking to use terrorism as a geopolitical tool would instead be isolated and neutralised by a coalition including both Russia and America. In reality, however, terrorism is but one of many tools of US power used against Damascus in a long-planned bid to overthrow it, and Russia has responded in an attempt to stop these dominoes of chaos from falling, started in 2011 under the cover of the Arab Spring, and aimed ultimately right at Moscow’s front door itself.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Dr Peter Clausing says the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have twisted scientific facts to give glyphosate a clean bill of health. 

The German toxicologist Dr Peter Clausing has accused the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of committing scientific fraud by twisting scientific facts and distorting the truth, with the aim of concluding that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. EFSA and BfR thereby accepted and reinforced the conclusion proposed by the Monsanto-led Glyphosate Task Force (GTF).  

Clausing made this accusation in front of five judges at the Monsanto Tribunal, held in The Hague from 14–16 October.

The background to this latest allegation of foul play by the EU authorities over glyphosate is the high-level dispute over whether or not the pesticide causes cancer.

Dr Peter Clausing at the Monsanto Tribunal

In March 2015 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency IARC concluded that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen.[1]

BfR did not agree, stating that a classification for carcinogenicity is not “warranted” for glyphosate.[2] EFSA sided with BfR, saying that “glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential”.[3]

But Clausing told the Monsanto Tribunal that BfR’s and EFSA’s statements are contradicted by evidence contained in BfR’s own reports on glyphosate and the draft report submitted to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) by the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.[4]

Authorities twisted and distorted the truth

Clausing, a former industry toxicologist who now works for Pesticide Action Network Germany, said there is “ample evidence” that “European authorities twisted or ignored scientific facts and distorted the truth to enable the conclusion that glyphosate is not to be considered a carcinogen. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) committed scientific fraud.”[4]

Clausing explained that the males of all five mouse carcinogenicity studies considered by these authorities to be of an acceptable quality showed a statistically significant increase in the incidence of one or several tumour types.

Three of the five mouse studies exhibited a significant increase in one specific type of cancer, malignant lymphoma, emphasizing the reproducibility of the finding.[4]

Clausing pointed out that these findings alone exceed the criterion for the classification of glyphosate as a 1B carcinogen (substances presumed to have carcinogenic potential for humans, largely based on animal evidence[5]) under European legislation.[6]

Europe’s pesticide regulation has a “hazard-based cut-off” clause regarding carcinogenicity,[7] meaning that a 1B carcinogen classification for glyphosate would lead to an automatic ban unless exposure was proven to be “negligible”. The law does not allow industry and regulators to argue that the doses we are exposed to are below permitted levels and therefore safe.

Human cancer results reflect animal findings

IARC’s verdict that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic was partly prompted by what it called “limited evidence” in epidemiological studies for a link between exposure to glyphosate herbicides and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) in humans.

Commenting on the epidemiological studies, Clausing told GMWatch: “NHL in humans reflects the findings of malignant lymphoma in animal studies.”

Further confirmation of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, Clausing said, comes from epidemiological studies and mechanistic evidence showing that glyphosate damages DNA and causes oxidative stress, mechanisms that can lead to cancer.[4]

Arguments used by authorities are false or distortions

In his evidence to the Tribunal, Clausing systematically demolished arguments that the EU authorities used to dismiss the significant findings of glyphosate-induced malignant lymphoma in mouse carcinogenicity studies.

For example, EFSA claimed, “No evidence of carcinogenicity was observed in rats and mice”.[3] But Clausing responded, “The incidence of malignant lymphoma was higher in males of all glyphosate-treated groups of all five mouse studies. In addition, a statistically significant increase occurred in three of the studies, with a clear dose-dependence in two of them.”

In another example, the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which based its arguments on BfR’s report, claimed that the evidence for glyphosate-induced malignant lymphoma in the animal studies was “equivocal” because of “of “lack of statistical significance in pair-wise comparison tests” or “partly contradictory study outcomes, depending on the statistical method applied”.[8]

But Clausing showed this argument to be invalid. In assessing cancer results in animal studies, the OECD, which sets guidelines for industry testing of chemicals, recommends the use of two methods of statistical analysis: trend tests and pair-wise comparisons. It prefers trend tests as the “more powerful” method. In addition, and most importantly, the OECD clearly states, “Significance in either kind of test is sufficient to reject the hypothesis that chance accounts for the result.”

Clausing showed that the Federal Institute abused OECD guidelines in two ways:
1. It attempted to play off one statistical method against another, dismissing the significant cancer increase revealed by one method on the grounds that the other method did not show a significant increase – even though the OECD says that a significant finding from either method is enough to rule out chance as the cause.
2. In an example of bias, it chose to believe the results of the weaker method, which did not find a significant cancer increase.

The Federal Institute appears to have done this in order to hide the finding that glyphosate caused increased cancer in the rats.

Why did IARC disagree with the German authorities?

Interestingly, the IARC reviewed the available animal studies and concluded, like Clausing, that they showed that glyphosate caused an increase in cancer. Why the difference of opinion between IARC and the German authorities?

The answer is given in BfR’s own report on IARC’s findings.[10] Unlike the German authorities, IARC applied the superior statistical analysis – the trend test. Also unlike the German authorities, IARC did not violate OECD guidelines by claiming that a second type of statistical analysis cancelled out the findings of the first.

BfR accused of intentionally falsifying science on German TV

The statistical dodge employed by the German authorities to defend glyphosate was the subject of an explosive in-depth news report that aired on German TV last October,[11] in the midst of deliberations by EU authorities on whether to re-authorize the chemical.

The news report was broadcast by MDR, which is part of ARD, the main public national TV network in Germany. The report says that BfR stands “accused of endangering the population” and shows BfR director Prof Andreas Hensel facing questions from experts before the German Parliamentary committee for food and agriculture.

One of the experts, Prof Dr Eberhard Greiser, a retired epidemiologist at the University of Bremen, says of BfR’s actions, “I’d say this is an intentional falsification of the content of scientific studies.”

The MDR film notes that BfR, in its initial report to the EU authorities, claimed that there were no signs of cancer in the animal studies: “They took the position that even though one of the five studies on mice did show a significant increase in malignant lymphoma, they dismissed it as irrelevant, because, the BfR asserted, the other four studies did not indicate any cancer risk.”

But then, says the film, the “bombshell” hit, in the form of IARC’s report stating that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen.

The IARC experts had seen something different from BfR in the animal studies they looked at. In one lifetime study in mice they saw significant increases in kidney tumours, and in another, increases in blood vessel cancer. They also noted increases in malignant lymphoma in glyphosate-treated animals in a further three studies in mice.

However, these three studies were only mentioned in the IARC report; they were not included in the final evaluation and classification of glyphosate because the IARC experts did not have access to the full dataset. That is because these were industry studies, the details of which are kept hidden from the public and independent scientists under commercial confidentiality agreements with regulators. It is a fundamental principle of IARC to confine its evaluations to evidence that is in the public domain and where it has access to the full dataset.

Under pressure from the IARC report, BfR produced an “Addendum”[2] to its initial report, in which it defended its conclusion against the IARC findings. BfR now admitted that all of the tumour findings mentioned by IARC – and in additional studies – were significant, but explained them away by using the statistical dodge described above, along with other scientifically questionable practices described by Clausing in his evidence to the Tribunal.

MDR’s report featured Green politician Harald Ebner expressing surprise that the BfR still stood by its overall conclusion that there is no cancer risk from glyphosate, despite the new evaluation of the studies.

Ebner says, “I’m kind of stunned. Yes the studies are not new, they are a few years old. Then I ask myself, ‘How can they overlook them until now? Why did the BfR previously conclude that they were not significant, no carcinogenic effects?’”

Shockingly, the MDR investigation revealed that BfR did not perform its own statistical analysis of the industry test results: “The BfR literally said that they relied on the manufacturers’ reports. Does this mean that they accepted those reports at face value?”

This is the conclusion of Peter Clausing, who was interviewed by the MDR film makers after a painstaking evaluation of the BfR reports. Clausing says in the film: “The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment has confirmed several times in writing that it performed an independent evaluation of the studies and materials it had. That should include the statistical evaluation of cancer studies. And the fact that the results of the industrial studies were so blindly trusted is scandalous.”

Taken together, Clausing’s evidence to the Tribunal and the MDR film raise serious questions about BfR’s and EFSA’s scientific integrity and competence. It’s no surprise that EU member states have so far failed to agree to re-authorize glyphosate. In response to the impasse, the Commission has granted a temporary 18-month re-licensing of glyphosate rather than the usual 15 years to give the “competent” agencies time to deliberate and pass a final judgment. It will be interesting to see how BfR’s growing credibility crisis affects the verdict.

Notes 

1. IARC (2015). IARC Monographs Volume 112: Evaluation of five organophosphate insecticides and herbicides. http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol112/
2. RMS Germany (2015): Renewal Assessment Report Glyphosate. Addendum 1 to RAR, Assessment of IARC Monographs Volume 112 (2015): Glyphosate, 31 August 2015. http://bit.ly/2eMJ8KG
3. EFSA (2015): Conclusion on the peer review of the pesticide risk assessment of the active substance glyphosate. EFSA Journal 2015;13(11):4302.
4. Clausing, P. Regulatory agencies (BfR, EFSA) used biased arguments to deny the carcinogenicity of glyphosate: Memorandum by Dr Peter Clausing, PAN Germany, as a witness to the Monsanto Tribunal. The Hague, Netherlands, 15-16 October 2016. http://www.pan-germany.org/download/Memo_Monsanto-Tribunal_Peter_Clausing_10_2016.pdf
5. CNRS Chemical Risk Prevention Unit (PRC) (2011). Carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxicants: European regulatory classification criteria, hazard communication elements. CNRS. http://www.prc.cnrs-gif.fr/IMG/pdf/cmr-criteria-clp.pdf
6. Regulation EC 1272/2008.
7. Regulation EC No 1107/2009.
8. German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (2016). Proposal for Harmonised Classification and Labelling. Based on Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 (CLP Regulation), Annex VI, Part 2. Substance Name: N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine; Glyphosate (ISO). ECHA. http://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/13626/clh_report_glyphosate_en.pdf 
9. OECD (2012). Guidance Document 116 on the Conduct and Design of Chronic Toxicity and Carcinogenicity Studies, Supporting Test Guidelines 451, 452 and 453, 2nd Edition Series on Testing and Assessment No. 116. ENV/JM/MONO(2011)47, Paris. http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocument/?cote=ENV/JM/MONO(2011)47&doclanguage=en 
10. RMS Germany (2015). Renewal Assessment Report Glyphosate. Addendum 1 to RAR, Assessment of IARC Monographs Volume 112 (2015): Glyphosate, 31 August 2015. p. 37. http://bit.ly/2eMJ8KG
11. Investigative reporter Andreas Rummel’s film was broadcast in Germany by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) in October 2015. The film (in German) is included in Rummel’s glyphosate herbicides dossier on MDR’s website: http://www.mdr.de/fakt/glyphosat156.html 
Direct link to the film: http://www.mdr.de/fakt/video-57628.html

Turkey’s President Erdogan used his mercenary Army to fight against the Syrian government military forces for the purpose of regime change.  This military project of regime change in Syria was devised, supported and established by the United States of America, who is a close ally of Turkey, and fellow NATO member.  

“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” General Wesley Clark, interview with “Democracy Now” dated 2007.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

Pres. Erdogan’s mercenary Army are all Chinese citizens of the far Western region in China, and home of the Uygur people, and are Sunni Muslims.  The Uygur people are an ethnic group of Muslims living near the far west frontier of China and they speak the ancient Turkic language, which is the root of the modern Turkish language now spoken in Turkey.  Their province is Xinjiang, and their capital city is Urumqi.

Google.com Map

For many years, Pres. Erdogan has supported the Uygur’s claims of oppression by the Chinese government.  Pres. Erdogan has made speeches in which he compared the Uygur people to the ancestors of the people of Turkey.  Pres. Erdogan feels there is a close historical and ethnical tie between modern Turkey and the Uygur people.  In a speech, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that “Eastern Turkestan is not only the home of the Turkic peoples, but it is also the cradle of Turkic history, civilization, and culture. The martyrs of Eastern Turkestan are our own martyrs.”  His designation of Eastern Turkestan is actually the Chinese province of Xinjiang, the home of the Uygur people.

Pres. Erdogan used his own mercenary Army of Chinese citizens: the Uygurs.   He had allowed them Turkish passports, which they used to pass legally through Central Asia to arrive in Turkey.  The immigration officials at the airport in Turkey recognized these special passports, and would confiscate them, but allow the Chinese to pass through legally and enter Turkey.  Pres. Erdogan had arranged for them to be transported from the airport in Turkey into Syria through the large and porous border area North of Idlib, which was once a mid-size town in North West Syria.   In the Zeytinburnu distict of Istanbul, Nurali T., a Uyghur Turk working to transport terrorists into Syria, with implicit allowance of the Turkish government, and especially the Turkish Intelligence Services, provides militants with passports worldwide.  According to Nurali T.’s office manager, “More than 50,000 Uyghur Turks came to Turkey with these fake passports from China via Thailand and Malaysia and entered Syria after staying a day in Istanbul”.  Militants who entered Turkey with these fake passports are hosted either in hotels or guesthouses for a day before they pass into Syria through the borders which are under terrorist control.

http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2015/07/turkey-plays-uyghur-card.html

Idlib was a hot-spot of violence and destruction from the early months of the Syrian crisis, which started in March 2011.  By late summer of 2011, Idlib was almost empty of residents, who either fled to Turkish refugee camps nearby, or fled to the refugee camps of Latakia.  Idlib transformed into a Free Syrian Army headquarters and base of operations.

When Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona made his famous illegal trip into Syria, to meet the FSA commanders, he was near Idlib.  Eventually, the FSA recruited and invited Al Qaeda from Libya, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and other Arab and Western countries, such as USA, UK, Europe and Australia. The majority of Syrian residents do not support armed revolution, or the armed opposition called FSA.  Because of this lack of support on the ground, the FSA chose to call in their Jihadi brothers globally, or face defeat.  The American CIA office in Adana, Turkey, who runs the FSA command and supplies headquarters, had no problem in allowing the Al Qaeda and their affiliates to bolster the ground forces of the FSA, who had been dwindling.  America used the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and Al Qaeda affiliates:  Jibhat al Nusra, Islamic Army, Nour al Deen al Zinki and Ahrar al Sham, to fight the Syrian government forces, thus avoiding American “boots on the ground”.  In fact, the FSA and all the other armed militias are acting as American “boots on the ground”: as mercenaries.

The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is the Radical Islamic political group made up of Uygur people.  Their leader is Emir Abd al-Ḥaqq al-Turkistānī.  Since 2001, TIP has been affiliated with Al Qaeda.  The ground battlefield leaders of TIP in Idlib province of Syria are Abu Rida al-Turkestani, and Ibrahim Mansour.  In 2013 TIP aligned itself with Jibhat al Nusra, a terrorist group in Syria which is on the US list of outlawed terrorist groups.   The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said,  “Chechens who defected to ISIS were replaced with the Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party allied with Al-Qaeda.”

 “Islam Awazi,” the TIP’s media center, publishes three to four videos monthly in the column, “A Call From the Front Lines of Jihad,” which report about the military “successes” of TIP fighters. Also, a monthly “Tourism of the Believers” video is produced which demonstrates the “peaceful” and “military” life of Uyghur fighters in Syria. In particular, on July 22, 2016 the Turkestan Islamic Party distributed a video titled “My Desire,” which highlighted photos of Uyghur fighters in Syria.”

http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/chinas-nightmare-xinjiang-jihadists-go-global/

Today ISIS-inspired radicals in Europe repeat the experience of TIP fighters, who massacred Han Chinese at stations in Kunming and Guangzhou using knives, axes, and machetes in 2014. The TIP has a long history of terrorist attacks inside China, targeting Chinese people who are not Muslim.  Now that TIP is in Syria in large numbers, they have become a serious contender in global Jihad.   In October 2013, five died when a car crashed into a group of pedestrians near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and TIP claimed responsibility for the attack in a video.  This act reminds us of the Nice, France truck attack which killed and injured a large number of pedestrians in summer 2016.

The TIP terrorists in Idlib took great pride in destroying the several Christian Churches of the area.  As in many parts of Syria, the Idlib area had been home to Muslims, Christians and minority sects.  The TIP made many videos of the destruction of Churches and placing their TIP flag on the steeple of the Churches.

The Uygurs are in general a poor and under educated group in China.   They have a strong sense of family ties, and some have felt a political alienation from the Chinese government and society.  Because of that, most of the Uygurs who migrated to Idlib, Syria brought their entire families with them.  The married males: their wife, their children and their elderly parents.  This is unlike most Jihadists, who are young males traveling alone.   Because these Jihadists of the TIP had arrived in Idlib, Syria as whole family units, they needed special living arrangements, unlike the male-only typical terrorist camps.  The TIP occupied a whole village in the Idlib province named Az-Zanbaqi, which is now home to 3,500 Uygurs of all ages and sexes.  There were so many children with them, that they established their own schools there.  The children are mainly taught the Koran and military training, like ‘Junior Jihadis’.  Their dream is to survive the Syrian Jihad, and grow up well trained in terrorist fighting, then make their way back to China and begin their attack on China, to transform China into an Islamic State.

The Saudi Arabian and Qatari petro-dollars are funding the regime change project in Syria, with the actual cash payroll distributed from Turkey by a Saudi official.   America is the source of the regime change policy towards Syria, with Turkey as the logistical base of operations, and Syria is the battlefield, with unarmed Syrian civilians amounting to the largest number of casualties.

Turkey is a modern democracy.  It has long prided itself on its secular form of government.   However, the AKP party, which is now the ruling party of Pres. Erdogan, is in fact an Islamist party.   Pres. Erdogan has continually been making substantial changes to the social and political fabric of Turkey, in order to shift it towards Radical Islam.  Radical Islam is not a religion, or sect, but a political ideology.  The Muslim Brotherhood is a global political party which is based on Radical Islam.  The Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in many countries, notably Egypt and Syria.  Pres. Erdogan is a supporter and defender of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Syrian armed opposition, FSA, has a political wing, Syrian National Coalition (SNC).  Pres. Erdogan hosted the SNC in Istanbul, Turkey.   America is also home to the Muslim Brotherhood, with offices and members in almost every big city across USA.  The US Congress once debated outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood; however, it did not pass.   Members of the Muslim Brotherhood hold high positions in Pres. Obama’s administration, and in key departments such as security and defense.  In the United Kingdom, the Muslim Brotherhood is also throughout the country, and has established itself with close ties to the UK government.  The same can be said of the Australian government scene.

Saudi Arabia is home to the Wahhabi brand of Radical Islam, while Qatar promotes the Salafi brand of Radical Islam, and Turkey, USA and UK are bases for the Muslim Brotherhood brand of Radical Islam.  These three brands are the three sides of the same coin.  However, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide reject Radical Islam, and according to Islamic scholars, they reject the “Death Cult “called ISIS, which was born out of the three brands just described.

Syria’s “Chinatown” is not a tourist spot, known for bright red paper lanterns and tasty noodle dishes.  For that you will have to go to San Francisco, or Seattle.   Syria’s “Chinatown” is a small village in the countryside, of rolling hills and olive orchards.   Syria’s Chinatown is a terrorist town, not a tourist town.  One day those Uygur ‘tourists’ to Syria will have out-stayed their VISA issued by Pres. Erdogan, and will face either death on the battlefield, or a slow walk Eastwards on the Old Silk Road their ancestors once made famous.

United States President Barack Obama has signed a bill into law that was written in part by the very billion-dollar corporation that will benefit directly from the legislation.

On Tuesday, Pres. Obama inked his name to H.R. 933, a continuing resolution spending bill approved in Congress days earlier. Buried 78 pages within the bill exists a provision that grossly protects biotech corporations such as the Missouri-based Monsanto Company from litigation.

With the president’s signature, agriculture giants that deal with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered (GE) seeds are given the go-ahead to continue to plant and sell man-made crops, even as questions remain largely unanswered about the health risks these types of products pose to consumers.

In light of approval from the House and Senate, more than 250,000 people signed a petition asking the president to veto the spending bill over the biotech rider tacked on, an item that has since been widely referred to as the “Monsanto Protection Act.”

But Obama ignored [the petition],”IB Times’ Connor Sheets writes, “instead choosing to sign a bill that effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO or GE crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future.

James Brumley, a reporter for Investor Place, explains a little more thoroughly just how dangerous the rider is now that biotech companies are allowed to bypass judicial scrutiny. Up until it was signed, he writes, “the USDA [US Department of Agriculture] oversaw and approved (or denied) the testing of genetically modified seeds, while the federal courts retained the authority to halt the testing or sale of these plants if it felt that public health was being jeopardized. With HR 933 now a law, however, the court system no longer has the right to step in and protect the consumer.”

It has been widely commented that the two main contenders in the US presidential race are both deeply flawed candidates, even that they are both unfit to hold high office. Whoever next takes up residence in the White House will become the most powerful person in the world at the conclusion of this coming week’s voting and the fate of all the peoples of the world will be in his or her hands. It’s a frightening prospect in itself that one individual can exercise so much power.

Hillary Clinton has a long record in office that is far from laudable. Everyone knows how she operates.

She uses politics to accumulate personal wealth; she is that modern type of politician who regards politics as a business for personal gain. “Public service” is but a cover. The UK has endured such politicians operating in Westminster too and the recent rise of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader was in part a demonstration that people had had quite enough of dishonest, self-serving politics.

There are legal cases involving Clinton from the Whitewater controversy – which concerned property and real estate – at the start of her political path to power right up until today with the questions surrounding the email releases; let’s be quite clear, the worry is not just about missing emails or abuse by Clinton of private email or her mobile phone; it concerns what the contents of these communications reveal about Clinton’s politics, her character, her true opinions and how they differ from her public statements. To sum it up in one sentence, the emails reveal her to be a scheming warmonger and duplicitous.

A Clinton presidency will mean more war. This much Trump is quite correct. Clinton wants a confrontation with Russia in Syria and in Europe over Ukraine and NATO’s relentless expansion eastwards.

Clinton has assisted ISIS to grow and enabled al Qaeda to flourish in order to a wage war on Iran and its allies in the region, such as Syria – which also happened to be a Russian ally.

She views jihadi terrorism as a tool to be manipulated to further US foreign policy in the Middle East, as Seymour Hersh and WikiLeaks have revealed. The Syria conflict will only worsen if Clinton is victorious.

Clinton will supply more sophisticated arms to the so-called rebels which are largely al Qaeda inspired although operating under a different name (al Nusra front or whatever their latest name change might be).

A “no-fly zone” which Clinton wants to impose over Syrian airspace will lead to a direct confrontation with Russia. US jets will be required to shoot down Russian planes and Russian helicopters. That could trigger no less than World War Three.

By contrast, Trump actually has a less aggressive foreign policy position. He wants to talk to Putin and has even called for talks with Assad to find a solution to the crisis over Syria. He wants America and Russia to join forces to combat the threat from Islamist terrorism. A new detente is therefore more likely if Trump were to triumph in the presidential race. A new détente would surely be a huge gain for the entire world. The new Cold War is totally ludicrous and to see the West behaving as if Russia is still the USSR is simply mind-boggling.

However, it is necessary to turn to Trump’s controversial domestic policy agenda; by talking about “building a wall” to keep Mexicans out of America, where they work in the “black economy”, Trump has exacerbated social tensions within the US, fuelling animosity between Americans and migrants, especially Hispanics, many of whom are American citizens too.

This aspect of the Trump phenomenon is obviously to be deplored. But this is virtually the only policy of the Trump campaign that has attracted media attention. The corporate media in the main has dwelt on it like an obsession. In reality, the anxieties about mass illegal migration are an expression of real public fears about the consequences of globalisation and the impact of free trade deals on their daily lives; this means job losses, working more for less and lower living standards. These concerns are not being addressed by mainstream politicians or by the media: hence the rise of the radical right in Europe and of Trump in the US. Trump has championed the “little man” and vowed to protect American jobs.

This has proved to be a popular policy. It is inevitably tainted with racism when the free movement of people has been deliberately engineered to create flexible labour markets and weaken organised labour by forcing it to compete with cheap imported labour and unregulated labour in the illegal economy. The politics of austerity insists that people must accept the inevitable dismantling of regulation and fiercer competition within the jobs market. The same harsh message from mainstream politicians has gone out to workers in the US and Europe:

“Unless you work that much harder your jobs will go to China, India or wherever”.

Trump has positioned himself as the candidate who will defend jobs and protect US industry. He has achieved success by addressing these concerns by proposing what many see as demagogic solutions. He has pledged to cancel free trade deals, impose higher taxes on foreign corporations which relocate jobs overseas and says he will bring jobs back home. This had a popular appeal.

During the race for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders also addressed similar public concerns from a socialist perspective and achieved enormous resonance among the public which surprised many commentators that an avowed left-wing message could attract so much supporters in capitalist America. Sanders is now campaigning for Hillary Clinton.

During her campaign, Clinton has not given much priority to the social agenda espoused by Sanders, however, preferring instead to dwell on undermining Trump’s personal character and stoking up anti-Russian sentiment in a manifestation of extreme red-baiting rhetoric the likes of which US politics has not seen since the McCarthy mania of the 1950s. It will interesting to see if the groundswell of popular support for Sanders will automatically transfer to voting for Clinton despite her obvious flaws and her close connections to corporate America and Wall Street.

She is clearly the candidate of the privileged elite and in this respect it is illuminating to see her take the stage with Hollywood luminaries, pop stars and TV personalities.

The big question will people continue to see Clinton as part of the problem or is she now part of the solution?

How many of the former Sanders supporters will hold their noses and vote for Donald J Trump?

How many of the first time voters and those long alienated from the system will come out and vote for Trump?

Which one of the two is perceived to be the candidate of change? These are some of the crucial deciding factors as Americans go to the polls and we will all soon see the outcome.

Former Chief of British Defence Staff calls for dialogue with the Russians, rejects idea of no fly zone in Syria as threatening war, says Jihadis should be told to leave Aleppo, and calls for alliance with the Russians against ISIS.

Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, who has been successively Commander in Chief, Land Forces of the British Army, Chief of the British Army’s General Staff, and from October 2010 to July 2013 Chief of the Defence Staff (ie. the professional head of the British armed forces), has broken ranks with the British political class’s antipathy to Russia, and has called for the US and Britain to agree to the Syrian government’s recapture of eastern Aleppo.

Lord Richards’s comments, made in a parliamentary debate in the House of Lords where he sits as an independent, could not be clearer.  Since they are so unusual I reproduce them in full as they have been provided by the Independent newspaper.

Firstly Lord Richards criticised the present ideological crusade against Russia, and spoke of Donald Trump as someone who as President might restore dialogue with Russia, thereby securing world peace.

In doing so Lord Richards also made the point that the greatest danger presently does not come from Russia but from groups like ISIS and that it is in everyone’s interest that the US and Russia come together to fight this common enemy

In the Cold War era states coalesced and they had this understanding and it worked – even though there was a massive amount at stake, communications and mutual understanding between Russia and America wasn’t too bad.

It’s non-state actors like Isis that are the biggest threat to our security. If countries and states could coalesce better to deal with these people – and I think Trump’s instinct is to go down that route – then I think there’s the case for saying that the world certainly won’t be any less safe.

It’s that lack of understanding and empathy with each other as big power players that is a risk to us all at the moment.

Therefore I think he would reinvigorate big power relationships, which might make the world ironically safer.

The comments, which correspond exactly to things said by us in The Duran, most eloquently by our contributor Adam Garrie, will cause great anger within the powerful neocon lobby in Britain.  What Lord Richards had to say about Syria, and about Aleppo in particular, will have made them more angry still.

Before discussing what Lord Richards had to say about Syria, it is important to remember that he is an exceptionally well-informed observer of the Syrian war.  As a top ranking military officer for many years, and as Chief of the Defence Staff from October 2010 to July 2013, Lord Richards was heavily involved in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and drew up plans to arm the Jihadis in Syria.  He is therefore highly experienced about the realities of the various Middle East wars – including the Syrian war – and he knows what he is talking about when he discusses them.

On the subject of Aleppo he was crystal clear: the only proper and humanitarian thing to do is to persuade the Jihadis to leave eastern Aleppo, as Putin has told them to do, and to agree to its recapture by the Syrian government

If the humanitarian situation in Syria is our major concern, which it should be – millions of lives have been ruined, hundreds of thousands have been killed – I believe there is a strong case for allowing Assad to get in there and take the city back.

We want the humanitarian horror of Aleppo to come to a rapid halt. The best and quickest way of doing that is to encourage the opposition groups to leave. The Russians are undoubtedly using their weapons indiscriminately. If they’re going to attack those groups then there is inevitably going to be civilian casualties.

(bold italics added)

If he made this point in the starkest and clearest possible way, Lord Richards also spoke the unvarnished truth about the total impracticality and utter foolishness of even discussing a no fly zone.  In doing so he spoke scathing about Hillary Clinton

Unless she (NB: Hillary Clinton – AM) is prepared to do this properly and go to war with Russia, she shouldn’t talk about no-fly zones and nor should we. We would have to shoot down Russian aircraft in order to impose it. Do we really want to go to a shooting war over Aleppo?

…….

The alternative is for the West to declare a no-fly zone and that means you’ve got to be prepared to go to war with Russia ultimately.

I see no appetite for that and nor, frankly, do I see much sense in it. It sticks in my throat to say it because I have no love for Assad.

The fact is, the only way to get it to stop now is to allow Assad to win and win quickly and then turn on Isis with the Russians.

(bold italics added)

Expressed with such brutal clarity these comments are guaranteed to provoke howls of outrage in Britain’s neocon/regime change circles, though because of the wide knowledge in political circles that the British public actually agrees with Lord Richards these are more likely to be expressed privately than in public.  What will make the anger especially great is that Lord Richards’s arguments are actually unarguable.

The big question is whether Lord Richards is speaking only for himself or whether his comments signal a wider discussion within the British government and the British army?

Obviously I do not know the answer to this question.  However, for what it’s worth, my opinion is that it is most unlikely that a former Chief of the Defence Staff would talk publicly in this way unless he was sure his views were widely shared within the British military.  Indeed I suspect that Lord Richards is speaking out on the British military’s behalf, knowing that as a retired officer he is free to say things that serving officers bound by military discipline can’t.  Most likely there has been a lengthy round of private conversations about the prospect of war in Syria within the British military, and Lord Richards’s speech is the way the British military is making its opinions public and known to the country’s political class.

If so then Lord Richards’s speech to the House of Lords should be seen for what it almost certainly is: the public expression of the grave doubts many serving British officers surely have about Boris Johnson’s crackpot scheme for a “no bombing” zone in Syria and for the various other equally harebrained schemes for military intervention in Syria that get all too frequently talked about in the British media and in the British parliament.

The US military has made it quite clear that it adamantly opposes military intervention in Syria given the sophisticated air defence system the Russians have set up there.  Judging from Lord Richards’s comments, that is the view of the British military as well.  As discussed previously, the opposition of the military means Western military intervention in Syria simply isn’t going to happen, whether Hillary Clinton is elected President or not.

Whether the Jihadis fighting in Aleppo or elsewhere in Syria understand this is another matter.  Whether they understand it or not, the fact however is that as the Syrian and Russian militaries close in on them, they are on their own.

 This is the continuation of the testimony I will present before the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission’s Administrative Law Court November 2 and 3, 2016.

A very similar scheme, I offer, currently is being used and foisted upon customers and consumers by vested interests and even the PA PUC I may add, which depend upon fifty-year-old or more, radar science heat-producing (thermal) studies to prove that microwave technologies RFs/EMFs do not harm human health, while specifically totally disregarding and discrediting scientifically documented Non-thermal health effects in order to cash in on federal grant monies that promote what’s being called “The Internet of Things” or the “Grid.”

Moreover, the U.S. military document in Exhibit L indicates that RF/EMF microwave safety is not cost effective and, therefore, always has been avoided and deliberately not pursued further.  That deliberate fact needs to be prosecuted as crimes of conspiracy, collusion and racketeering to maintain specific military vested interests, which have impacted industry, including controlling a one-sided inaccurate assessment of science and technology, detrimental to human health and the environment.

According to the study “Epidemiologic evidence relevant to radar (microwave) effects” published in 1997 online at Environmental Health Prospectives, PECO, Exelon, and the PA PUC must consider the following regarding cancer and EMFs, which are created by microwave functioning AMI Smart Meters, including the “dirty electricity” they create:

Public and occupational exposures to microwave (RF) are of two main types. The first type of exposures are [sic] those connected with military and industrial uses and, to some extent broadcast exposures. It is this type that most of the data cited in this study draw upon. The second type, cellular telephones and their associated broadcast requirements, [which AMI Smart Meters operate on] have raised concerns about current exposures because of their increasingly widespread use. Four types of effects were originally reported in multiple studies: increased spontaneous abortion, shifts in red and white blood cell counts, increased somatic mutation rates in lymphocytes,and increased childhood, testicular, and other cancers.  In addition, there is evidence of generalized increased disability rates from a variety of causes in one study and symptoms of sensitivity reactions and lenticular opacity in at least one other. These findings suggest that RF exposures are potentially carcinogenic and have other health effects. Therefore, prudent avoidance of unneeded exposures is recommended as a precautionary measure. [1] [CJF emphasis added]

Additionally, I introduce Exhibit R-2 Scientific-Medical Evidence on EMF Radiation, which further corroborates the medical science affirming non-thermal health effects from RF/EMF radiation.

Science promotes the recommendation for using precautionary measures or the Precautionary Principle[2], which, in the case of AMI Smart Meters, is the avoidance of RFs/EMFs.  Frompovich has proven in her answers to Attorney Smith’s interrogatories that she lives, as humanly possible, an electromagnetic-free lifestyle as possible since she has no RF/EMF-producing appliances, gadgets, or even a TV in her home.  And yet, Frompovich is being harassed and threatened with no electric power if she does not submit to scientific folly, corporate agendas, and ill-found administrative mandates that depend upon 1940s radar science when it is now 2016!

Talk about insanity surrounding AMI Smart Meters!  Duquesne Light had been harassing utility customers because of AMI Smart Meter malfunctions, which were explained away as “Smart Meters are like computers, and discrepancies and technical issues occur.”  However, no technical issues occurred for decades with safe, efficient, non-plastic parts, non-RF/EMF-producing analog meters.

I have a question for the PA PUC:  Are you aware of the inefficiencies of AMI Smart Meters; how they are causing all sorts of heartaches—literally and figuratively—for customers? And, pray tell, what are you doing about them, other than holding hearings like mine and allowing, and even enabling, consumer health and domestic problems?

Reporter Jon Delano of KDKA2 TV, a Pittsburgh CBS affiliate, reports   about one customer whose first bill, after the AMI Smart Meter was installed, went from previous monthly bills of $42 to $2,545.13!  Another customer reported receiving zero bills for electricity used, and then was harassed and threatened with service termination for non-payment!

It’s totally outrageous what goes on with AMI Smart Meters, their malfunctions, safety issues like fires and, most of all, their politics!  How can customers trust they are not getting ripped off by utility companies with the obvious blessing of the PA PUC when bills skyrocket for no apparent reasons?

Here’s what ought to be most perturbing information for the PA PUC and all entities involved in pushing RFs and EMFs AMI Smart Meters on to unsuspecting public consumers.  This is happening in Australia where a judge has allowed the case to proceed through that legal system:

Over the past few years, New Farm resident Louise Brosnan has lead [sic] the community charge in raising awareness regarding her findings relating to EMR (electromagnetic radiation) and to stop Telcos emitting harmful exposure. Her efforts and research have been an attempt to get people doing something about this menace – but also to provide awareness to unsuspecting residents. Louise suffers from microwave sickness or electro-hypersensitivity and claims that Telcos via their installation of a mobile phone tower emission have threatened to assault her with unseen electrical energy.  Increasingly, in many territories, wi-fi is being removed from schools and hospitals.[3]

That assault threat is deemed sufficiently legal to allow Ms. Brosnan’s case to proceed through Australia’s legal system.  We need such legal awareness, e.g., assault and battery from microwaves and their generation, in the USA, I offer.  Australian law recognizes the culpability involved from microwave-generated RFs/EMFs.  Furthermore, Frompovich stresses that microwave assault and battery legal actions probably soon will—and should—follow within the USA legal system.

Additionally, I feel morally obligated to mention that some researchers are noticing parallels between EMF effects and autism physiology.  Dr Martha R Herbert, PhD, MD (Harvard Medical School, MGH Neurology, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, TRANSCEND Research, Higher Synthesis Foundation & Higher Synthesis Health) gave a slide presentation titled “Parallels between EMF effects and Autism Findings,” accessible at the Pediatric Societies Conference in May of 2016.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByIQaPLaf3_PQUl0MFA1RXFlMGM/view?pref=2&pli=1

So what do EMFs do physiologically to impact autism physiology? According to Dr Herbert, there’s a page full of twelve (12) physiological issues, which I will not read but introduce as Exhibit P, “Parallels Between EMF Effects and Autism Findings.”  Additional information can be found at Footnote [4] of my written testimony.

Dr Herbert’s slide presentations Conclusions need to be taken seriously insofar as she says that “EMF is likely to make autism’s cellular, metabolic and nervous system physiological dysfunctions worse,” and that “Reducing EMF exposures could reduce severity and incidence of autism.”  If that be the case, AMI Smart Meters on every house may become the proverbial albatross around utilities necks when class action lawsuits, similar to those filed for prescription drug damages, start being filed by parents whose children are impacted by microwave RFs/EMFs and dirty electricity travelling on their homes’ wiring generated by AMI Smart Meters 24/7/365, as often as every 15 seconds, 9600 times a day!

Personally, I recommend the PA PUC look further into how RFs/EMFs, AMI Smart Meters and Wi-Fi in schools are adversely impacting children, who are the most vulnerable to RF/EMF radiation.

Moreover, I’d like to impress upon this court, the PA PUC, and all utility companies installing and operating AMI Smart Meters what the American Academy of Environmental Medicine states in its “Electromagnetic and Radiofrequency Fields Effect on Human Health” paper Exhibit I:

While it was practical to regulate thermal bioeffects, it was also stated that non-thermal effects are not well understood and no conclusive scientific evidence point to non-thermal based negative health effect.  Further arguments are made with respect to RF exposure from WiFi, cell towers and smart meters that due to distance, exposure to these wavelengths are negligible.  However, many in vitro, in vivo and epidemiological studies demonstrate that significant harmful biological effects occur from non-thermal RF exposure and satisfy Hill’s criteria of causality[5].  Genetic damage, productive defects, cancer, neurological degeneration and nervous system dysfunction, immune system dysfunction, cognitive effects, protein and peptide damage, kidney damage, and developmental effects have all been reported in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Pg. 2 [Printed copy provided]

And this from “Health Impacts of Radiofrequency Exposure from Smart Meters” April 2011, a 52-page report prepared by the California Council on Science and Technology:

Two Types of Radio Frequency Effects: Thermal and Non-Thermal

Household electronic devices, such as cellular and cordless telephones, microwave ovens, wireless routers, and wireless smart meters produce RF emissions.  Exposure to RF emissions may lead to thermal and non-thermal effects.  Thermal effects on human have been extensively studied and appear to be well understood.  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has established guidelines to protect public health from known hazards associated with thermal impacts of RF: tissue heating from absorbing energy associated with radiofrequency emissions.  Non-thermal effects, however, including cumulative or prolonged exposure to lower levels of RF emissions, are not well understood.  Some studies have suggested non-thermal effects may include fatigue, headache, irritability, or even cancer.

https://ccst.us/publications/2011/2011smart-final.pdf Pg. 4 [CJF emphasis added]

I’d be extremely lax if I did not address and question the “Cost Effectiveness” of AMI Smart Meters, which other states Attorneys General and Utility Commissioners have studied and feel do not support a mandated roll out, like Pennsylvanians are experiencing.

I introduce Exhibit Q Smart Meters Cost Effectiveness Questioned into the record along with the specific request that the PA PUC provide Frompovich the study regarding cost effectiveness or feasibility studies documenting AMI Smart Meters’ ability to effectuate consumer savings that was done before, and presented to the PA PUC prior to, the roll out in Pennsylvania.

Such a study certainly should have to have been required and done to comply with the PA PUC Title 66 §1501 Utilities Not Harm Customers, as part of a feasibility study regarding implementing a new product and/or type of service before deployment or roll out.  What is the date of that study, and may I please have a copy of it?

Furthermore, may I respectfully remind everyone that PECO had to stop installing, plus reinstall close to 200,000 AMI smart meters[6], due to the Sensus AMI smart meter fires [7] that were occurring in the metropolitan Philadelphia area.  One AMI smart meter fire, about which I reported internationally, has made the family destitute and no one at the PA PUC or PECO has stepped up to the plate to correct the damage caused by the installation of an AMI smart meter![8]

However, there is one last measure of unfinished business; it concerns Chairman Robert Godshall of the PA House Consumer Affairs Committee, who has sat on AMI Smart Meter opt-out bills for years and continues to this day to NOT call up, nor release, several bills currently in that committee.

Since PA state legislators have heard the plea from citizens for redress to government and introduced appropriate bills to deal with AMI Smart Meters, I allege that Chairman Godshall is depriving all Pennsylvanians of due process, plus redress from harmful health effects to citizens minds, bodies, and health by not allowing said opt-out bills to be released for a vote, which subsequently will pass that committee and the entire state legislature.

Representative Godshall knows that and is acting to prevent those bills from becoming law, I contend.  Therefore, I allege Chairman Godshall is acting in his own or industry’s best interests—not Pennsylvanians and either should recuse himself, since his son Grey works or worked for PECO/Exelon, which prompts conflict of interest claims, or there should be a recall of Representative Godshall who is preventing Pennsylvanians from having their grievances heard about AMI Smart Meters and NOT processing bills introduced into the legislative process to rectify AMI Smart Meter hardships.  Other states have enacted opt-out legislation for AMI Smart Meters, so what’s preventing Representative Godshall from releasing those bills?

May I respectfully remind the PA PUC, every PA state legislator, and all state government agency administrators, who actually function as fiduciaries in their relationships with taxpaying citizens, that you should be demanding Representative Godshall’s resignation for his blatant exercise for several years of what appears to be a pre-set and/or determined agenda, or course of action, that is not in the best interests of Pennsylvanians’ health and wellbeing, but smacks clearly of a conflict of interest and even possible collusion.

And finally, the following are my closing remarks.

Unfortunately and most dramatically, a classic example of government inefficiencies and governmental agencies’ questionable and inaccurate health information and/or advisories, or more accurately—the lack of correct and proper health information or science, plus  probable “vested-interest data propaganda,” input is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s totally inept and clearly ludicrous daily September 11, 2001 event air quality reports during the World Trade Center implosions that contended air quality was safe, along with insistent admonitions to go back to work in that area and get on with life as normal.

Such GROSSLY inaccurate information for all involved, especially first responders, EMS personnel, rescue and recovery crews, plus deconstruction and reconstruction crews later on, now has been proven scientifically false and apparently driven either by blatantly unqualified or deliberately bad scientific information, OR possibly, a deliberate “conspiracy” to keep important air quality health damaging information from those brave men and women who put their lives in danger to help their fellow human beings.  I, for one, remember that day and salute with the highest esteem I can muster those brave and selfless souls and their families who have suffered the consequences of government stupidity or malfeasance, deliberate or otherwise, I offer.

There were extremely high levels of toxic contaminants—chemicals, heavy metals and questionable particulates—and federal, City of New York and State of New York health officials knowingly did NOT protect the public’s health, only doggedly reassured and told obvious scientific lies, which leads Frompovich to question if similar modus operandi are employed with regard to electromagnetic frequencies non-thermal adverse health effects from microwave technology being forced upon Pennsylvanians via utility companies’ AMI Smart Meters and PA PUC’s regulations, despite what HB2200 stated:

(f) (2) (i) upon request from a customer that agrees to pay the cost of the smart meter at the time of the request.

Frompovich’s question to PECO and the PA PUC is this:  How many PECO customers requested an AMI Smart Meter?  May I please have the number of customer requests for a smart meter, plus the cost of each customer’s meter?  I’d be willing to wager neither of you have had such requests!

After all the scientific research, publications and documentation Frompovich has introduced into this hearing record, especially the Bioinitiative 2012 report with 1800 new studies that I introduce as Exhibit R-1, the PA PUC, PECO, all Pennsylvania utility companies, the media and federal government agencies surely now must know the current scientific facts about EMFs/RFs and electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) problems emanating from microwave technologies by which AMI Smart Meters operate.

What is the PA Public Utility Commission going to do about it now that you know?

Unfortunately, human nature is such that humans cannot understand, nor appreciate, the problems others are saddled with, which some even consider as ‘odd’ UNTIL—and here’s the key moment—one actually experiences those very same problems, but then it’s too late.  Have any of you walked in an EHS person’s shoes?  When you contract electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), you, too, I can almost guarantee, will become totally distraught and demand relief.

What is the PA PUC going to do to relieve the fear, mental and physical anguish and suffering of those who have forced retrofitted AMI Smart Meters on their homes, plus all the harassment Pennsylvania consumers who refuse(d) being damaged by AMI Smart Meter EMFs receive(d); are bullied about; and/or threatened with loss of service and/or fines?

Where is the PA PUC’s collective government conscience and fiduciary responsibility regarding the PA PUC’s safety mission?

Where is the current experimental—not epidemiological—science proving there are no EMF/RF non-thermal adverse health effects?  Frompovich requests that PECO please produce them to her and the PA PUC Administrative Law judges  before any decision is rendered by this court in the Frompovich case.

Lastly, where are the PA PUC members’ individual senses of integrity, honor and agency decency regarding implementation of Act 129 of 2008 as actually passed by the legislature as HB2200, not what PA PUC employees “believed” legislators had passed?

I rest my case, and thank you very much for the opportunity to present my testimony, which I respectfully ask be printed in its entirety as part of this hearing record, with no deletions and/or redactions.

Catherine J Frompovich
November 2, 2016

Notes:

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1469943/
[2] http://www.precautionaryprinciple.eu/
[3] https://app.box.com/s/svj3a4q7pi77dzrtxg3ekbn4dmp26ppm
[4] http://ehtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MarthaHerbertPAS-Handout-1.pdf Pp. 2-3
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteria
Criteria: Strength, Consistency, Specificity, Temporality, Biological gradient, Plausibility, Coherence, Experiment, Analogy
[6] http://marylandsmartmeterawareness.org/smart-meter-news/after-tests-peco-to-resume-smart-meter-installations-sensus-defends-their-meters/
[7] http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-16/news/33217445_1_smart-meters-smart-meter-installation-sensus
[8] http://www.activistpost.com/2015/06/smart-meters-fire-living-hell-and.html

Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.

Catherine’s latest book, published October 4, 2013, is Vaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccines, available on Amazon.com.

Her 2012 book A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments, is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook.

Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)

Catherine’s NEW book: Eat To Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities ©2016 Catherine J Frompovich is now available

A mass exodus of Ukrainians to Russia: The symbol of the new year in Ukraine may be a Cossack Vakula* that flies over precincts in St. Petersburg. Or a deserted farm near Little Russian Dikanka, a hut where the wind sings through the windows. Ukrainians are rushing to Russia not for overseas slippers, but for daily bread. They run from the country with their families, together with their farm neighbors, leaving forever.

1/4  WON’T RETURN

Members of the International human rights organization Human Rights Action (HRA) said that over the past year in Ukraine, where over the last 10 years the population has decreased from 48 to 42 million, more than three million people have left for Russia! And according to European researchers the depopulation going on in the Ukraine  is about to cause a social explosion.

“No need for Ukrainian youth in migrant-saturated Europe, but it’s easy to find earnings in Russia”

This is what the Prime Minister of Ukraine Vladimir Groisman acknowledged at one of the recent sessions of the government. In the session there was talk that Ukraine in the next year may be deprived of its last support – the agricultural sector. The land will soon have no one to work it, as it’s the elderly who remain in the villages.

Ukrainian youth are not needed in the Europe that is now supersaturated with migrants, but it is easy to find earnings in Russia.

Kiev media also are actively discussing the warning of Oleksandr Okhrimenko, President of the Ukrainian Analytical Center. He made the forecast  that in the next year the migratory flow from the Ukraine could grow by half, and a quarter of those who left would change citizenship, and will work in Russia.

20 MILLION LEAVE

The Russian Interior Ministry notes a sharp increase in the flow of migrants from Ukraine. It is expected that in the second half of October 25-30 thousand migrant workers more than usual will arrive in Russia from Ukraine. Already 80-85 thousand Ukrainian citizens arrive per week. Basically they come to us in search of work. At the same time, it is no longer about the residents of the Donbass, who fled from the war. It is very real ethnic Ukrainians, from the western regions.

In Ukraine, some experts are trying to support the version of this as a seasonal phenomenon: it is said, the potato harvest is done on the farms and now they have gone to earn some cash on Russian construction sites. But experts at “KP” argue that it’s not just that.

– The economic crisis has gotten worse in the Ukraine, as people are looking for any stable earnings and Poroshenko has once again shown that Ukrainians are not needed in Europe. They are not needed either as migrant workers or as visa-free visitors, Yuri Moskovski told the correspondent of “Komsomolskaya Pravda.” Moskovski is chairman of the National Affairs Council in the Government of Moscow, and the Foundation projects director, international relations for the Neighbourhood Foundation.

“They always find their niche on the Russian labor market. Our task is to receive them, place, and help them to adapt. The migration from the Ukraine will continue to grow.”** When the Zaporozhye army swore oaths to Russia, about 700 thousand people lived there. When Ukraine left the Soviet Union, there were more than 50 million citizens, and now in fact – 38. But Bandera said in his time time that for the Ukraine to establish a national state a population of 20 million would do. His successors have chosen his path. They are stubbornly headed to depopulation.

There are several reasons why the citizens of Ukraine began to recuse their nationality, and leave for Russia with their families. Though last year the Ukrainians were free to come to Russia and work, while remaining in the background with other migrants virtually invisible to law enforcement, the migration rules have become stricter this year.

Under the current legislation a migrant from Ukraine is obliged to register, acquire an INN (Taxpayer ID Number), health insurance, pass an exam on the Russian language, to acquire a work permit, is given a month to get a contract of employment, and has to pay 4000 rubles a month on the permit. Violators are fined, and forcibly expelled with a re-entry restriction for 5-10 years.

In addition, the Federal Migration Service of Russia, which was engaged in the control of illegal migration, has recently been abolished. The functions of this department were turned over to the Interior Ministry of Russia, a Ministry, which will not only supervise but also achieve results with forceful measures.

It is because the Ukrainians are in a rush to move to Russia, to obtain residence permits, and Russian citizenship, which gives the right to work without restrictions and additional fees.

Poroshenko recently added to this determination among his constituents. He put pressure on his people by means of prohibitions on Russian payment systems, and fears of an introduction of a visa regime with Russia. All within the format of the chosen policy: Team Poroshenko clearly is following the precepts of Bandera.

Notes

*Vakula the Smith: character from a Gogol story, common in porcelan; also an opera.

**The quotation marks are placed by the translator: The quoted passage is plainly from Moskovski, but the original writer has no quotation marks at all, so it is unclear where Moskovski leaves off and the writer tacks on — Tr.

Alexander Boyko, in Konsomolskaya Pravda, translated by Tom Winter

On November 3rd, Morning Consult’s Jon Reid bannered, “Poverty on the Rise in Nearly All House Districts” and he reported that, “A Brookings Institution study, released less than a week before the election, shows that the number of people living in poverty has increased in 96 percent of congressional districts between 2000 and 2010-2014.”

That finding fits along with others, such as that the economic ‘recovery’ after Barack Obama came into the White House in 2009, went virtually entirely to the very rich.

According to the top experts on wealth-inequality in the United States, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, American wealth-inequality soared faster during 2003-2013 than ever since the period 1923-1928, right before the Great Crash of 1929. Their study “Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913”, published in the May 2016 Quarterly Journal of Economics, reported that ever since the remilitarization of the U.S. from the 2003 invasion of Iraq onward (and continuing under Obama, with boosts to NATO, and invasions such as of Libya in 2011), the percentage of total wealth owned by the richest .1% of American families (those families whose net worth was $111 million or higher) rose from 15% of the total in 2003, to 22% of the total in 2013, and this means that the percentage going to the lower 99.9% declined from 85% down to 78% during that time.

America’s soaring inequality during the George W. Bush Presidency continued unaffected by the 2009 change of Presidential Administrations.

In fact: whereas Bush’s stock-market plunge in 2006-2008 hit the richest the hardest, Obama’s coming into office restored their lost wealth rapidly, while the wealth of the bottom 90% of the U.S. population flatlined throughout his Presidency. The Obama economic recovery was no recovery at all for the bottom 90% of Americans.

Not just wealth but personal income also soared for the super-rich under Obama. The “Share of income earned by top 0.1% wealth holders” soared throughout Obama’s Presidency, at least up through 2012, which is the latest figure shown there for that. So: at least the bottom 90% of U.S. families have experienced none of the Obama economic recovery; what ‘recovery’ from the ‘recession’ there is, went only to the very rich.

Findings such as those are consistent with, and might help to explain, the finding in the new Brookings study, that 96% of House districts have experienced increased poverty under Obama. The nation’s poor have gotten political rhetoric, but not much else, and the middle class also have received no net benefit, under Obama.

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

Russia expects Washington to provide an explanation after a report claimed that Pentagon cyber-offensive specialists have hacked into Russia’s power grids, telecommunications networks, and the Kremlin’s command systems for a possible sabotage.

There is no shortage of signs of impending environmental catastrophe, including the melting of the polar ice caps and the rise of atmospheric carbon to above 400 parts per million. The earth’s sixth mass extinction is underway. It is not taking place because of planetary forces. Homo sapiens is orchestrating it. Americans are at the same time bankrupting themselves by waging endless and unwinnable wars. We have allowed our elites to push more than half the U.S. population into poverty through deindustrialization.

We do nothing to halt the waves of nihilistic violence by enraged citizens who carry out periodic mass shootings in schools, malls, movie theaters and other public places. The political and financial elites flaunt their greed and corruption.

Donald Trump appears to pay no federal income taxes.

Hillary and Bill Clinton use their foundation as a tool for legalized bribery. Our largest corporations have orchestrated a legal tax boycott.

The judicial system is a subsidiary of the corporate state.

Militarized police conduct public executions of unarmed people of color.

Our infrastructure, including our schools, roads and bridges, along with our deindustrialized cities, are in ruins. Decay and rot—physical and moral—are pervasive. 

We are blinded to our depressing reality by the avalanche of images disseminated by mass media. Political, intellectual and cultural discourse has been replaced with spectacle. Emotionalism and sensationalism are prized over truth. Highly paid pundits who parrot back the official narrative, corporate advertisers, inane talk shows, violent or sexually explicit entertainment and gossip-fueled news have contaminated cultural life. “Reality” television, as contrived as every other form of mass entertainment, has produced a “reality” presidential candidate.

Mass culture, because it speaks to us in easily digestible clichés and stereotypes, reinforces ignorance, bigotry and racism. It promotes our individual and collective self-glorification. It sanctifies nonexistent national virtues. It takes from us the intellectual and linguistic tools needed to separate illusion from truth. It is all show business all the time.

The false values of reality TV have been carried over into the current presidential race. Shown here, Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.” (NBC)

There are millions of Americans who know that something is terribly wrong. A light has gone out. They see this in their own suffering and hopelessness and the suffering and hopelessness of their neighbors. But they lack, because of the contamination of our political, cultural and intellectual discourse, the words and ideas to make sense of what is happening around them. They are bereft of a vision. Austerity, globalization, unfettered capitalism, an expansion of the extraction of fossil fuels, and war are not the prices to be paid for progress and the advance of civilization. They are part of the savage and deadly exploitation by corporate capitalism and imperialism. They serve a neoliberal ideology. The elites dare not speak this truth. It is toxic. They peddle the seductive illusions that saturate the airwaves. We are left to strike out at shadows. We are led to succumb to the racism, allure of white supremacy and bigotry that always accompany a culture in dissolution.

We cannot, for this reason, discount the possibility that Trump will be elected president. The election outcome will be decided by whatever emotion Americans feel when they cast their ballots.

Celebrity narratives, manufactured pseudo-drama, sex scandals, natural disasters, insults and invective, mass shootings and war flash before us in a constant jumble of images on ubiquitous screens. The sensory assault obliterates reality. A former congressman who sends a picture of himself in underwear to a woman is a national news story. Sober examinations of our economic, foreign, judicial and environmental policies are dismissed as too complicated and boring. They do not produce engaging images. The electronic media’s sole goal is to attract viewers and advertising dollars. It has conditioned us to demand a nonstop vaudeville act.

Because of this mass indoctrination, we have become infected by what Daniel Boorstin in “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America” calls “social narcissism.” The bottomless narcissism of Trump and the Clintons caters to this social narcissism. They reflect back to us our desperate longing for, as well as celebration of, entertainment, celebrity, wealth, power and self-aggrandizement. It is not only advertising and public relations, as Boorstin pointed out, that carry out the incessant manufacturing of illusions that feed social narcissism.

Journalists, book publishers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, positive psychologists, self-help gurus, the Christian right and talk show hosts all feed the mania for illusion. They all chant the insane mantra that reality is never an impediment to what we desire. We can have anything we want if we work hard, get an education, believe in ourselves, grasp that we are exceptional and see the impossible as always possible. It is magical thinking. And magical thinking is the only real commodity the elites have left to offer us. Make American Great Again. Or American already is great. Take your pick of idiotic clichés.

“We tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by expecting more than the world can give us or than we can make of the world,” Boorstin wrote.

“We demand that everyone who talks to us, or writes for us, or takes pictures for us, or makes merchandise for us, should live in our world of extravagant expectations. We expect this even of the peoples of foreign countries. We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality. We demand them. And we demand that there be always more of them, bigger and better and more vivid.”

The incessant search for instant gratification and the most appealing image, including the image of ourselves we manufacture for others on social media, has robbed us of the ability to examine ourselves and our society. It has extinguished the truth. The terminal decline of the American empire, the utter inability our elites to manage anything important, the climate crisis, widespread poverty and despair do not fit with the illusion. So these realities are blotted from public consciousness. The poor are rendered invisible. The foreign policy debacles will be fixed with more bombs. Only the Soviet and fascist dictatorships, along with the medieval Catholic Church, controlled thought as effectively.

Candidates Trump and Clinton have no plans to halt our slide to oblivion. They are part of the circus. They, like all of the other elites, profit from the system that is destroying us. They lack the incentive and probably the capacity to challenge the structures and assumptions that define corporate capitalism. They function as high priests. They peddle the illusions. They laud our ingenuity and strength. They preach the inevitability of human progress and American exceptionalism. They tell us what we want to hear. They appeal to our emotions, as does all of mass culture. They do not acknowledge reality. That would spoil the show.

We vote for slogans, manufactured personalities, perceived sincerity, personal attractiveness and the crafted personal narratives peddled by candidates. Office seekers create the illusion of intimacy established between celebrities and their audiences. We see ourselves in them; admirers of the “winner” Trump see themselves as becoming him. No politician succeeds without such artifice. Today’s politics is just one more product of a diseased culture. Our political leaders are much like the celebrities who, in Boorstin’s words, “are receptacles into which we pour our own purposelessness. They are nothing but ourselves seen in a magnifying mirror.”

The incoherent absurdities mouthed for our amusement induce a state of permanent amnesia. Life is lived in an eternal present. How we got here, where we came from, what shaped us as a society, in short the continuum of history that gives us an identity, are eradicated.

The quest for identity through mass culture is self-defeating. We can never achieve what these illusions tell us we can achieve. We can never be who we want to be. It is a ceaseless chase from one chimera to the next. And this is why at the end we fall into despair and rage. It is why huge parts of the country no longer hold genuine political ideas. It is why people vote according to how they feel. It is why hatred and fear are a potent political platform. It is why we are sleepwalking into oblivion.

Power brokers infesting America’s deep state decide who’ll hold all top government posts. Voters believing their say matters don’t understand how things work.

Elections are exercises in deception, especially for the nation’s highest office. Future incumbents are vetted well in advance to assure they’ll continue dirty business as usual.

Duopoly power runs things with two right wings, not a dime’s worth of difference between undemocratic Democrats and Republicans.

Trump isn’t anti-establishment. He just sounds that way. He didn’t get to be a billionaire by being a good guy, especially headquartered in New York, America’s financial capital, home to Wall Street, the epicenter of corrupt financial power, controlling the nation’s money, the lever controlling government and business.

Hillary was chosen last year to succeed Obama before announcing her candidacy. Throughout the campaign, things haven’t gone as planned. Trump surprisingly emerged last man standing among 17 Republican aspirants.

Sanders didn’t run to win – merely to create the appearance of a contest for the Democrat nomination, knowing Hillary would emerge triumphant, primaries rigged to assure it.

So what to expect on November 8? Are things rigged for Hillary – despite her baggage, most voters calling her a liar, dishonest and untrustworthy?

Pollster Doug Kaplan says “(e)very four years, there is a surge at the end by the Republican nominee, like muscle memory kicking in that in some years is enough and some is not.”

Pollster Pat Caddell said Trump has momentum. “The whole country is in motion, and states in play are going all together.” The election is up for grabs, he believes with up to 12% of the electorate “floating” between the two candidates.

Guccifer 2.0, responsible for hacking DNC emails for WikiLeaks, he claimed, “warn(ed) that the Democrats may rig the elections on November 8.”

“This may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies,” he said. “(T)heir software is of poor quality, with many holes and vulnerabilities.”

I have registered in the FEC electronic system as an independent election observer; so I will monitor that the elections are held honestly.

I also call on other hackers to join me, monitor the elections from inside and inform the US society about the facts of electoral fraud.

According to Black Box Voting, the GEMS election management system counts about 25% of all votes in US elections.

“(A) fractional vote feature is embedded in each GEMS application which can be used to invisibly, yet radically, alter election outcomes by pre-setting desired vote percentages to redistribute votes,” it explained.

This tampering is not visible to election observers, even if they are standing in the room and watching the computer. Use of the decimalized vote feature is unlikely to be detected by auditing or canvass procedures…

After polls close on November 8, we’ll know whether Hillary or Trump emerged triumphant. He could win if power brokers, at the 11th hour, decided Hillary’s baggage left her too tainted to serve, got Trump to assure he’ll support their agenda, and intend making him Obama’s successor by fair or foul means.

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.

Is election theft possible in the United States? And might the suspects live closer to home than the Kremlin?

Professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of numerous books and articles on computerized election fraud, explores the very real possibilities.

Donald Trump is right to say that the election could be stolen. 

All our elections are vulnerable as confirmed by a Harvard University Study. We have the worst voting system in the developed world.  The system is set to make honest elections virtually impossible.

Election theft involves two steps: shrinking the pool of eligible voters. Second stage: Computerized election fraud involving manipulation.

The system is both computerized and privatized. 

There is evidence that the Democratic primary was rigged as confirmed  by a Stanford University study. 

The process of “Stealing an Election” has several dimensions which go well beyond election fraud and vote rigging. 

Listen to Professor Mark Crispin Miller

.

This article which is of utmost relevance to US Elections 2016 was first published in April 2014. 

Many commentators – including both liberal and conservative  Supreme Court justices such as Sandra Day O’Connor –  believe that the Supreme Court wrongfully threw the election to Bush.  Many have called it the “worst Supreme Court decision in history”.

Liberals also believe that the “Brooks Brothers Riot” against the recount was a dirty trick by high-level Republican operatives (and see this):

But the elephant in the room which most Democrats refuse to consider is election fraud.  This is odd, given that there is substantial evidence that election fraud has been widespread in the U.S. in recent years.

Why won’t they admit that election fraud is widespread?

Perhaps because they benefit from the false appearance of free and fair elections. As Sonoma State University and Project Censored Director Peter Phillips noted in 2005:

There is little doubt key Democrats know that votes in 2004 and earlier elections were stolen. The fact that few in Congress are complaining about fraud is an indication of the totality to which both parties accept the status quo of a money based elections system. Neither party wants to further undermine public confidence in the American “democratic” process (over 80 millions eligible voters refused to vote in 2004)…. Future elections in the US will continue as an equal opportunity for both parties to maintain a national democratic charade in which money counts more than truth.

A more cynical view: the Democratic “leadership” may simply hope to be able to outspend the Republicans in the election fraud arm’s race.

Liberal and progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are doing their best to get us to hold our noses and vote for Hillary. I also said I’d never vote for a Republican again, after George Bush went in to destroy Iraq and Afghanistan. But life is not so simple. You can’t afford to give either side your unthinking support.

Hillary using a private email server was not the end of the world, but what about the contents of her emails? They showed her as the chief instigator of the Libya genocide that turned Africa’s most shining success story into a failed, jihadist warlord state.

And Hillary is utterly unrepentant. She wants still more! She wants to escalate the war of terror on Syria, seek confrontation with Russia and Iran, and run the risk of WW3 — to save terrorist groups like Al Nusra!

Short answer: If you don’t support terrorism, don’t support Hillary Clinton.

The crux of the problem is not that Hillary is an imperfect Democrat, it’s that she is a perfect NeoCon.

Mrs. Clinton is also a party hack who represents special interests. So even on domestic issues, we could well be better off with Trump. The Clintons made their millions from corrupt politics, while Trump is spending from his own self-made fortune to run for office. We can at least hope that he is doing this to serve his country.

In our book ISIS IS US: The Shocking Truth Behind the Army of Terror, we tell where Hillary’s Libyan terrorists went next: to Syria, to start the war there. Mercenaries, extremists and criminals from all over were paid to set up a barbaric “Islamic State” — to murder, rape, pillage — and make refugees out of millions of families.Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State when the calamities began, from Jan. 2009 through Jan. 2013. It’s true that ISIS in Iraq was fostered by the Bush regime starting in 2004. The Clinton-Obama project to destroy Libya and Syria was a direct outgrowth of that, as shown by Michel Chossudovsky in The Globalization of War.

It’s the same neo-con framework. So a vote for Hillary is like a vote for Bush. Of course, we accept imperfections when a candidate has redeeming qualities. I don’t see any such redemption with Hillary.

She has put a nuclear first strike against Russia on the table. For what? Total hegemony by the New World Order?

No thank you. We have seen enough of you, Mrs. Clinton.

John-Paul Leonard has a BA in Political Science from UCLA (1971) and an MBA from UC Berkeley (1980.) He began doing business as ProgressivePress.com in 2002, specializing in books on 9/11 and other false flag operations. He is co-author of ISIS IS US: The Shocking Truth Behind the Army of Terror with Washington’s Blog, Wayne Madsen and Syrian Girl Partisan.

The UN Security Council’s efforts to settle the Syrian crisis still haven’t led to any positive results. The permanent members of the meetings on Syria have lots of contradictions they don’t even try to hide but expose to receive their colleagues’ support. One may hardly talk of a constructive political dialogue as the US, Great Britain and France’s representatives to the UNSC leave the hall when the Syrian ambassador is speaking.

In such a tough situation, it’s high time the UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura took the initiative. However, the diplomat just can’t move beyond the statements full of ambiguous facts.

De Mistura accused Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin of exploiting the militants blocked in eastern Aleppo to justify casualties among civilians. But Russian Defense Ministry has published numerous satellite images and other documents proving that the Russian and Syrian AFs carry out airstrikes only at terrorists’ positions. The coordinates are thoroughly checked beforehand to avoid mistakes.

It would be great if with such a haste de Mistura passed from words to deeds. Up to now, the envoy has been just a dummy at the negotiations between Russian FM Sergei Lavrov and the US State Secretary John Kerry. Proposals and settlement mechanisms of the Syrian conflict for some reason are expressed not by the person who by virtue of his position must seek ways for peace in Syria but by third parties. De Mistura himself keeps criticizing Russia and the US and commenting upon their efforts on establishing the cooperation.

Sitting in safety in the UN office and not in the Syrian front line, de Mistura keeps claiming he would personally escort the militants of Jabhat al-Nusra if they decide to leave eastern Aleppo. Avoiding his obligations and shifting the responsibility for finding a way out on Lavrov and Kerry, the top-ranking UN official is not going to retire. “Any sign that I’m going, will be a signal that the international community is leaving Syria. The UN will never leave Syrians,” snobbishly noted de Mistura.

Despite the fact the negotiations in Geneva started almost a year ago, de Mistura still hasn’t been able to bring all sides of the conflict to the table. The opposition set some conditions and threatened to sabotage the talks, which happened eventually. Within this period, the UN envoy couldn’t reach a compromise with armed groups and incite them to hold a direct political dialogue in Geneva. Realizing the UN’s incapability to affect them, the opposition’s leaders keep deceiving de Mistura and terrorize Syria.

For quite a long period of time, the UNSC has achieved nothing in the settlement of the Syrian crisis. Isn’t it the evidence of the fact the international community and the UN envoy de Mistura’s actions are fruitless? The diplomat’s formal and indifferent attitude towards the negotiating process doesn’t contribute to the peaceful settlement and the improvement of the humanitarian crisis the UN is designed to solve. Mass casualties and the long Syrian war once again prove that de Mistura must stop evading his commitments or resign as a person incapable of accomplishing the tasks of putting an end to the bloodshed in Syria.

When I decided to become a cartographer, I didn’t just want to make pretty and useful maps. I became a cartographer to make maps that change the world for the better. Right now, no situation needs this kind of map more than the current drama unfolding around the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline’s crossing of the Missouri River.

Thousands of Native Americans and their allies have gathered on unceded Sioux land delimited by the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie to try and stand in the way of the “black snake” that could poison the Standing Rock Reservation’s water supply. Many have noted that the pipeline corridor was repositioned from its original route north of Bismarck after white citizens spoke up against the threat a spill would pose to their drinking water ― a threat duly recognized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Yet the Corps failed its federal mandate for meaningful consultationwith the Standing Rock Tribe before signing off on a route that moved the pipeline to their doorstep.

This is not to say that the good citizens of Bismarck and Mandan were wrong to protest. What’s wrong with the picture above isn’t the routing of the pipeline. What’s wrong is that the pipeline project exists to begin with. Some say it’s a good alternative to dangerous oil-by-rail shipments of Bakken crude. Those are bad too. We don’t need more fossil fuels making it to market to be burned and burn up the planet in turn (I am typing this in Wisconsin as the temperature nears 70 on the first of November). We do all need clean water. As the Sioux say, mni wiconi (”water is life”).

To keep to its construction schedule, the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, has met nonviolent water protectors with private security guards using attack dogs in a scene reminiscent of 1963 Birmingham. It has worked hand-in-glove with law enforcement and the National Guard to create a militarized response straight out of apartheid South Africa or occupied Ireland. It has locked up hundreds of protesters in wire cages like those used early on at Guantanamo Bay. Those on the ground fear something like another Kent State, yet they keep coming, and the worldwide solidarity has gone viral.

How Israel Is Gradually Privatising Its Occupation of Palestine

By Antony Loewenstein and Matt Kennard, November 01 2016

Private companies have been invest­­ing for years in the settlement project. But that involvement, as well as the amounts of money being made, have increased dramatically in the past decade. For Israelis, the West Bank has become a kind of special economic zone, where settlements often provide more profitable business conditions—low rents, favorable tax rates, government subsidies, and access to cheap Palestinian labor—than in Israel proper.

Aurora: Western “Culture” is Wrecking Entire Continents… “How the Empire Operates”

By Andre Vltchek, November 04 2016

You say “European cultural institutions”, and what should come immediately to mind are lavish concerts, avant-garde art exhibitions, high quality language courses and benevolent scholarships for talented cash-strapped local students. It is all so noble, so civilized! Or, is it really? Think twice!

Liberating Syria from Al Qaeda-ISIS: US-Supported Terrorists Admit Taking Heavy Casualties in Aleppo

By Stephen Lendman, November 04 2016

Liberating Syria depends on winning the battle for Aleppo. It continues raging, government forces inflicting heavy losses on US-supported terrorists. According to Fars News, citing RT International’s Arabic service, (s)ources close to the terrorist groups admitted” taking up to 2,500 casualties – dead or wounded fighters in the last six days alone.

China’s Economic Relations with Latin America

By Ulises Noyola Rodriguez, November 01 2016

The fall in commodity prices indicates the fragility of the economic relation between China and Latin America that at the present time registers an important deceleration in commercial transactions, a situation that the United States seeks to take advantage of in order to reposition itself in the region.

The 1833 Blackburn Rebellion in Detroit: African Resistance, Emigration and the Burgeoning Anti-slavery Struggle

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 03 2016

By the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries Africans in the newly-formed United States were in rebellion against slavery. Since 1619 under British rule there had been a rising stream of indentured servants and enslaved persons fueling the agricultural and industrial growth of the country.

Political Crisis in Montenegro: Changing the Montenegrin Leader does not change the Ideology

By Milko Pejovic, November 01 2016

The statement of the Prime Minister of Montenegro Milo Djukanovic concerning his resignation and the transfer of powers including the formation of a new parliament is actively discussed In Montenegro. Despite a positive outcome for the opposition forces the situation has not changed. Djukanovic explained his resignation by an anti-governmental conspiracy involving foreign intelligence services and the Serbian minority. Under the pretext of dealing with “conspirators” arrests of opposition leaders and activists are being continued in the country.

Parliamentary supremacy in British law and politics is akin to the fetish of the union in the United States. Challenge it at your peril; question it to your misfortune.  The point was tested, with rumbling consequences, by the May government in its latest Brexit stumble dealing with Britain’s painful and at times confused response to exiting the European Union.

The way Theresa May’s government has respected that referendum result so far is open to question. Behind closed doors, it has promised various versions of what it might do, when in truth, it may well not know what it is doing at all.  Terms such as “hard Brexit” and “soft Brexit” change hands with meal like regularity; positions are foggily unclear.  The only matter sovereign at this point is solid confusion.

This confusion was even more confounded by the antics of the High Court, which suggested in it judgment of November 3 that Prime Minister May’s approach to the nature of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty had demonstrated significant error.

Parliament, in other words, had to be involved in triggering the operative functions of Article 50, which involves a two-year process for departure.  The executive would have to duly comply with those wishes.

According to Lord Chief Justice John Thomas, “The most fundamental rule of the UK’s constitution is that parliament is sovereign and can make and unmake any law it chooses.”  Hardly heretical, given that the Brexiteer group had always insisted that UK sovereignty had been imperilled by the bureaucrats in Brussels.

The government statement was stubborn but in its own way an expression of frustration at what had been the most traditional of readings of Parliamentary supremacy.  “The country voted to leave the European Union in a referendum approved by Act of Parliament.  And the Government determined to respect the result of the referendum.”

Not that the government won’t – it will just have to do so through the very legislature it has decided to hoodwink. In bringing the Brexit process before Parliament, the May play book will be brought to light.The reaction from the Leavers was furious. The Daily Mail, in sinister fashion, suggested that the judges were, as its headline went, “Enemies of the people.” Photos of these touted criminals were also published, suggesting a near vigilante call to arms.

As ever, the paper’s editors decided to wade into the issue about what was meant by those good people of Britain when they decided leaving the EU was a good idea. The “people” had effectively lost out to a court which had sided “against [their] interests”.  Had the battle against the wicked court system within the European Union been for nothing?

An image here that emerges is that of nativism burning wildly before the cliquish designs of the elite.  Such a judgment, it was hyperbolically argued, stoked the flames of dissatisfaction “not just in Britain and Europe, but also among Donald Trump’s supporters in America – that western public life is becoming a conspiracy of tightly knit, self-serving Establishment elites against the public.”

The Daily Express event went so far as to urge the British public to rush to the barricades to “fight, fight, fight”. Those humble court darlings were misfits who had purposely engineered a roadblock to prevent Brexit by including Parliament in the whole rotten business.  An eccentric reading of the ruling if ever there was one.

The European authorities are not going to go easy on what is regarded as audacious mischief making by the British populists to damage the European project. But that populist voice took the form of a vote which must, in the annals of that country’s electoral history, be respected.

Suspicion, however, abounds as to how this timetable of exit is to be performed, and such Murdoch papers as the Sunsuspect foul play amongst the conservatives.  Everyone is in need of someone to crucify.

Yet the populists, ever the bullies in the playground, were the first ones to jump ship after the vote in the name of sovereignty. Nigel Farage, having done the damage, fled to the United States to enthusiastically embrace Donald Trump’s campaign to claim that Britain had reclaimed itself.  Only the often oafish Boris Johnson was brought, most probably by compulsion, into the ministry.

Perhaps the most useful aspect to this entire affair, apart from the predictable anger on the part of the government at the intrusive rulings of courts it would rather not listen to (even their own), is the understanding of the populists.  Behind the Brexit campaign – less than the vote itself – was a despotic snigger, a sense that unaccountable power might not be such a bad thing.

As Alex Massie noted with understandable derision, “People who shouted for months about the urgent need to restore parliamentary sovereignty now reacted in horror to the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty.”[1] The populists had effectively ambushed themselves.

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

Notes

[1] http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/unhinged-backlash-high-courts-brexit-ruling/

When the “end of history”, meaning the establishment of a permanent Western hegemony over the entire international system, was proclaimed in the early 1990s, it was not yet obvious how the pursuit of said hegemony would evolve over the succeeding decades. The “velvet” expansion of the 1990s into the post-Soviet vacuum gave way to the “iron fist” for which the 9/11 terror strikes provided the excuse and which meant invading whichever country Washington desired. However, the “iron fist” efforts in the post-9/11 world demonstrated West’s weakness , as sustaining operations in Iraq and Afghanistan proved too much for NATO.  This failure ushered the post-“post-9/11″ world, and the “Arab Spring” became the first, though far from the only, demonstration of the evolved Western strategy which fuses the earlier approaches.

The “velvet” aspect is still there: Western entities claim they are promoting “universal human values” which, evidently, is the end that justifies all means and which automatically means it is impossible to commit war crimes in its pursuit.

Also, by implication, anyone who stands in the West’s way operates under the presumption of guilt. In order to promote said “universal values”, the West identifies, creates, or even invents a political movement which, although it consists of corrupt opportunists and outright criminals, ostensibly stands for “universal values”. This entity then receives overwhelmingly positive media coverage, to the point of referring to any police or military response to the violence it perpetrates as “war crimes”, in order to shape the public opinion in favor of limited military intervention in the form of airstrikes and a small number of special operations troops. Then one merely needs an excuse, a small incident, an insignificant act of violence by the target country’s law enforcement of the kind that happen in the US in a daily basis, in order to start beating the war drums against the “blood-soaked regime.” This approach was pioneered in Bosnia and Kosovo, the early exceptions to the “velvet” policy, but was then shelved in the post-9/11 era when it seemed that West’s aims could be achieved through more direct–and brutal–means, only to be resurrected by the Obama Administration and applied in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine with only minor variations.

But the “universal values” rhetoric is only camouflage aimed at securing the support of the liberal wing of the elite and obscuring the real aim of the aggression, the seizure of key national assets, be it petroleum or, in the case of Ukraine, farmland to bolster the fortunes of dominant sectors of Western economies, including finance and energy, and to preserve the fading Western hegemony. It is also evident Western powers are in an informal but very close alliance with the highly repressive governments of Gulf Arab states, which also stood to gain from eliminating the political competition posed by Libya’s government and from building pipelines to Europe over the corpse of the Syrian state. This alignment was made necessary by the West’s need for “boots on the ground” which can accomplish that which airpower alone cannot, with ISIS, Al-Nusra, Free Syrian Army, and other such formations being a NATO-trained and NATO-equipped force which can be sent where NATO soldiers can’t go, due to the domestic opposition such a move would provoke.

The insights into the finances of the various Clinton “foundations” provided by Wikileaks clearly show the inner workings of this alliance.

The leaks also illustrate the key aspect of this alliance, namely the secretive and conspiratorial machinations of a small group of influential actors, as opposed to the broad elite consensus that existed during the Cold War. Nevertheless, this small group of conspirators on three continents now amounts to a de-facto Washington-Brussels-Riyadh axis. It is a relatively recent creation, dating to only the beginning of the Obama Administration. It did not exist during the George W. Bush Administration: Saudi Arabia was aghast at the idea of toppling the Sunni rule in Iraq, and the EU was mostly opposed to invading Iraq. Which made the EU’s embrace of regime change in Syria, Libya, and Ukraine all the more startling, though not entirely surprising.  Just as the US foreign policies are driven by the fear of being eclipsed by rising or recovering powers like China or Russia, the 2008 crisis bared the EU’s weakness and thus provided an incentive for EU hardliners engage in reckless policies in the hopes of staving off its collapse.

Is the game worth the candle? Considering the shrillness of the pro-war propaganda in both the US and the EU today, to the point of risking World War 3,  the imagined benefits of regime changes must have been enormous. Stamping out the last truly sovereign states of the Middle East would have strengthened the West’s claim on global hegemony. The failures Ukraine and in Syria, and ultimately also in Libya,  therefore place Western powers face-to-face with the prospect of historic decline.

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There is no doubt that the forthcoming US Presidential elections are perhaps the most controversial ones in the US history. This has nothing of course to do with the various personal ‘scandals’ supposedly marring the two candidates, i.e. the emails scandal vs. the sexual utterances that are incompatible with the political correctness imposed by the ideology of globalization. These are obvious diversions created by the system itself in order to disorient the American victims of globalization from the real issues of these elections.

In fact, if we talk about real politics rather than politicking, the personalities of the two candidates matter little, as both are ‘products of the system’ and in this sense one could argue that there is no real difference between them. Yet, there is a crucial difference between these two candidates, which was not present in previous post war candidates, who were simply ‘products of the system’ distinguished only by their differences as regards usually minor aspects of economic policies, i.e. more liberal/neoliberal or, alternatively, more state interventionist measures.

Yet, none of these candidates ever questioned the very fundamentals of a system, which eventually––helped by the post war US hegemony–– led to the emergence of a new phenomenon: the multinational corporations. This marked the rise of the New World Order (NWO) of neoliberal globalization, as well as the emergence of a Transnational Elite that informally runs it, with the help of the transnational economic and political-military institutions that the same elites created, such as the IMF, WB, WTO and NATO). These fundamentals may well be summarized by what is called euphemistically ‘the four “freedoms”’, i.e. the free movement of goods and services, as well as of capital and labor. This is what the US elections (and the Brexit referendum before that) is all about.

The real differences between Clinton and Trump

Hillary Clinton is in fact a typical ‘product of the system’, who was systematically promoted by it, exactly in order to carry out faithfully the demands of the elites in the implementation of these “freedoms” and what they imply both at the domestic but also the foreign and geopolitical levels. She is well known for her criminal role in the massacre of the Libyan people and her infamous exclamation “we came, we saw, he died”, referring to the brutal lynching of Muammar Gaddafi, the Nasserite leader of the Libyan national liberation movement, at the hands of the Libyan ‘revolutionaries.’ That is, at the hands of the barbaric terrorists, who were funded by the Transnational Elite and supported by the State Department, which she headed at the time. It is the same kind of ‘revolutionaries’ who today are employed in Syria (some of them moved from Libya to Syria immediately they finished the ‘job’ there), with the same aim for regime change.

On the other hand, Donald Trump, although a product of the same system himself, he is a self-made product of it, who managed to become a candidate for the highest post of the Transnational Elite without any direct or indirect  assistance by it and its institutions (mass media, economic, political, academic, and cultural institutions). No wonder he has been the target of an unprecedented attack by all of these elites and institutions. In other words, he was savagely attacked by them, not because he is a revolutionary of some kind, but simply because he is not as controllable by the elites, as all previous US presidents––not to mention the Clintons (husband and wife) who have been executive assistants of the elites, par excellence. Hillary is therefore the perfect candidate to carry out their criminal plans (the first woman candidate and a perfectly controllable ambitious politician), exactly as Obama was before a similar perfect candidate (the first black candidate––a privileged black of course––and a perfectly controllable ambitious politician).

So the main problem for the elites with Trump is that he is an ‘unknown quantity’ –the biggest, for the elites, crime. Particularly so as his professed policies firmly put him within the rising world movement against globalization, which already gave us Brexit, that is, a genuine revolution of the victims of globalization in the UK, and the consequent counter revolution. At the same time, in the USA, because of the much higher stakes involved, the counter revolution began even before any corresponding revolution there! This, despite the fact that Trump had drawn mass support and won elections and public opinion not just because he is a ‘populist demagogue’ (as they claim) but because, as even a prominent member of the globalist ‘Left’ admitted,^[1] he rejected the free trade agreements which allowed multinationals to exploit labor all over the world. Furthermore, domestically, he questioned the uncontrolled importation of cheap immigrant labor, called for large-scale public investment, opposed the new cold war with Russia and China, and rejected US support for NATO’s military build-up in Europe and intervention in Syria, North Africa and Afghanistan. Similarly, as even a columnist of the flagship of the globalist ‘Left’ recently stressed––after expressing first his dislike for Trump and Farage––the assumptions that globalists (he calls them ‘free traders’) make about the beneficial effects of free trade are wrong and as the latest transatlantic deal (CETA, the deal between Canada and EU) shows, globalisation is all about protecting big business – from the public. And then, he went on:

For decades, presidents and prime ministers, policymakers and pundits have told voters there is only one direction of travel: free trade. Now comes Brexit and Donald Trump – and the horrible suspicion that the public won’t buy it any more. And the elites don’t know what to do, apart from keep insisting the public listen.[2]

Globalization : the class issue of our era

As I am going to show here briefly, globalization is a class issue. In fact, the class issue of the globalization era. It is common knowledge nowadays that the globalization process has already led to an unprecedented concentration of income and wealth, which several studies have confirmed. Thus, as regards, first, the US concentration of income, according to Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz:

 Large segments of the population in advanced countries have not been doing well: in the US, the bottom 90% has endured income stagnation for a third of a century. Median income for full-time male workers is actually lower in real (inflation-adjusted) terms than it was 42 years ago. At the bottom, real wages are comparable to their level 60 years ago.^[3]

Also, as regards the concentration of wealth as a result of globalization, a recent study has shown that in the last five years or so, the wealth of a circle of billionaires consisting of 388 people has risen by 44 per cent, (or half a trillion dollars), while the wealth of the poorest fell by 41 per cent, (more than a trillion), the result being that the richest 62 people in the world are worth the same as half the world population! [4]

The social consequences of the huge inequality created by globalization, even in the USA, the country that played a leading role in promoting the opening and liberalization of markets throughout the post-war period, are well known. Thus, a very recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association implicitly showed that the more a country is integrated into the NWO the greater the negative impact on health and life expectancy. The result is that, as average life expectancy in developing nations continues to rise, life spans in parts of America are getting shorter. This has reached the point where the poorest American men, at the age of 40, have a life expectancy comparable to the average 40-year-old man in Pakistan and Sudan! Rightly, therefore, Dr Deaton, a professor of economics at Stanford University, noted that the “infamous 1 per cent is not only richer” they have also “ten to 15 more years to enjoy their richly funded lives,” with their life expectancy being better than the average for any nation on earth.^[5]

No wonder that, following the victory of Brexit and the fact that one of the two presidential candidates in the forthcoming US elections has adopted many of the demands of the victims of globalization, the Transnational elites have been terrified by this rapid rise of the anti-globalization movement. Particularly so as it is not anymore just the neo-nationalist movements in East Europe (such as those in Hungary and Poland) which challenge globalization. Thus, following Brexit, the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany party (AFD) came second, ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU, in regional elections held in September, while similar parties and movements in Italy, France, Austria and the Netherlands have also seen a huge rise in their popularity.

This could explain the recent concerted attack against the rising new anti-globalization movement by some of the prominent members of the Transnational elite, such as the head of the IMF, the president of the European Central Bank and the president of the European Council.^[6] All of them suddenly discovered the gross inequality in the distribution of income and wealth as a result of globalization and blamed the political elites for not taking enough measures on boosting support for low income workers and reducing inequality. Yet, they are fully aware of the fact that any such measures are impossible, in an environment of open and liberalized markets. This is because any such measures, if they are designed to be as effective as present circumstances demand, they are bound to affect negatively competitiveness––the foundation of globalization itself. Not surprisingly, the arch-gatekeeper of globalization, the EU Commission President, immediately came out to ‘restore order’ and declare that the recipe for combating growing discontent in Europe was “more union” including a military headquarters “to co-ordinate efforts towards creating a common military force”. No wonder Le Pen, the leader of the French neonationalist movement, was prompted to ask, in an obvious insinuation that the new EU army will in effect be used to smash any popular revolts against globalization and the EU: “What is the EU protecting us from — are you protecting us against prosperity?”^[7]

It is therefore clear that this binary strategy (i.e. the ‘good cop’ strategy of improving the image of globalization and the ‘bad cop’ strategy of force to impose ‘law and order’) are going to define the response of the Transnational Elite in the future to the emerging revolt of the victims of globalization. Yet, the disquiet of globalists cannot anymore be hidden, as it happened in their latest big family reunion in New York.^[8] Therefore, neo-nationalism is basically a movement that arose out of the effects of globalization, particularly the liberalization of labor markets, so that labor could become more competitive.

However, the globalization process has already had not only devastating economic and social consequences on the majority of the world population, but has also resulted in tremendous changes at the political and the cultural levels, in the past three decades or so. Furthermore, it has led to a series of major wars by the Transnational Elite in its attempt to integrate any country resisting integration into the New World Order (NWO) defined by neoliberal globalization (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria). In fact, an election victory for Hillary, the blindly obedient organ of the Transnational Elite, could well lead to a new and potentially more serious crisis than the 1962 missile crisis, given her support for the most dangerous policies on Syria, advocated by the same criminal elements of the same elite that led to the present catastrophe in the Middle East.

The bankruptcy of the globalist ‘Left” and the rise of neo-nationalism

In view of the above, It was almost farcical to see that a prominent role in the present front against the victims of globalization in the USA is played by its globalist ‘Left’, that is the Left which is integrated into the NWO and does not question globalization and its institutions. This, on top of course of the entire political establishment (from Obama to George W. Bush) and also the whole economic establishment, the press corps, and the social media,[9] (let alone the CIA!)[10]––all playing a vital role in this reactionary front. Thus, from Bernie Sanders, the ‘socialist’ candidate and Nation to the self-declared “anarchist” Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert’s Znet, as well as many others, all declared their (‘reluctant’) support for the criminal candidate of the Trasnational Elite. No wonder that even Slavoj Žižek, one of the protagonists of the world globalist ‘Left,’ seemed worried about this “Stalinist” image of the ‘Left,’ presenting a total consensus in favor of Clinton: “from Bernie Sanders supporters, to what remains of the Occupy movement, from big business to trade unions, from army veterans to LGBT+ and ecologists…something that even the worst kind of one-party systems have never achieved.[11] Clearly, for this politically and theoretically bankrupt American ‘Left’, the fact that the working class (for which supposedly they fight) fully supports Trump is irrelevant. Alternatively, for these ‘libertarians’, workers are ignorant enough, so that they have to be ‘educated’ by these enlightened people about whom to vote for! In fact, however, the blue collar ex workers of the American motor industry, for instance, who are determined to vote for Trump[12], know better than the Left intellectuals, academics and others who, mostly are beneficiaries of globalization.

Yet, there is little doubt anymore that it was the intellectual failure of the Left to grasp the real significance of a new systemic phenomenon, (i.e. the rise of the Transnational Corporation that has led to the emergence of the globalization era) and its consequent political bankruptcy, which were the ultimate causes of the rise of a neo-nationalist movement in Europe. This is a very different kind of movement than the old aggressive nationalist movement. It is a movement that is embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over the world, but particularly in Europe, mainly by the working class that used to support the Left, whilst the latter has effectively embraced not just economic globalization but also political, ideological and cultural globalization and has therefore been fully integrated into the New World Order. In fact, today, following the successful emasculation of the antisystemic movement against globalization, thanks mainly to the activities of the globalist ‘Left’, as well as of the World Social Forum[13] and the various Foundations funding it, the neo-nationalist movement is the only political force left to fight against globalization in general and the EU in particular.

It is therefore clear that the neo-nationalist parties, which are all under attack by the Transnational Elite, constitute cases of movements that simply filled the huge gap left by the globalist ‘Left’, which, instead of placing itself in the front line of all those peoples fighting globalization and the phasing out of their economic and national sovereignty,^[14] indirectly promoted globalization itself, using arguments based on an anachronistic internationalism, developed a hundred years ago or so. As a result, the neo-nationalist parties are embraced today by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working class which used to support the Left,^[15] whilst the latter has effectively embraced all aspects of globalization (economic, political, ideological and cultural) and has been fully integrated into the NWO––a defining moment in its present intellectual and political bankruptcy.  Similarly, in the USA, where it is Donald Trump’s campaign which expresses these neo-nationalist trends, we may see a new revolution similar to the Brexit revolution, albeit much more important given the hegemonic role that USA still plays in the world.

The Brexit revolution and Trump

Despite the obvious differences between the Brexit revolution and the movement for Trump, which arise also from the fact that the former was a referendum whereas the latter is an election, what matters most are the similarities between them, as both reflect different instances of the same world revolutionary phenomenon.

Thus, the Brexit revolution, far from being an isolated incident, related ––as some globalists argued in order to defame it–– to the ideological paraphernalia of old British imperialism, reflects, in fact, a world revolutionary phenomenon. In fact, it was the IMF itself that lately came out in recognizing the revolutionary character of Brexit –– of course, in order to express the Transnational Elite’s panic about it and draw the appropriate conclusions. Thus, as The Times described the statement by Maurice Obstfeld, the IMF’s chief economist on recent world economic developments:

Brexit may be the start of a growing revolt against globalization and technological advance in the developed world that threatens to depress living standards, the International Monetary Fund has warned. Persistently weak growth is unleashing “negative economic and political forces” that are fuelling protectionism in Britain, the rest of Europe and the US, according to the IMF, and governments need to respond before the problem gets worse.[16]

Furthermore, as I will try to show briefly here, Brexit was very much a popular ‘revolution’, as the entire movement was a movement ‘from below’, i.e. from the victims of globalization themselves. The main factor which created a movement ‘from below’ for Brexit was the growing realization by the British people that its national and economic sovereignty has been decisively eroded within the EU, forcing the elites, albeit reluctantly, to accept the demand for a referendum. This realization was inevitable if one takes into account that Britons, who used to live in one of the strongest nation-states in the world, have now been reduced to spectators, forced to watch, powerless, the effective destruction of their industrial base, in the very place where industrialization was born. In fact, this was a referendum in which an unprecedented number of voters took part, and in which well over a million more people voted for change than for the status quo on UK’s membership of the EU.

Two important characteristics of the referendum were usually minimized by the Transnational Elite’s media: first, the geographical pattern of the vote, which is particularly revealing as regards the class nature of Brexit and, second, the age pattern of the vote, which is very much related to the ideological and cultural aspects of globalization.

As regards first, the geographical pattern of the vote, the way in which people voted was a clear indication of the fact that this was a ‘revolution from below’ of the victims of globalization. Thus, the only region in England to vote for Remain was London, while the Brexit victory was overwhelming in the deprived areas of England, where the victims of globalization live, i.e. the victims of the criminal de-industrialization process imposed by the multinational corporations, which they moved en masse to the Chinese and Indian labor ‘paradises’––exactly as they have been doing in the USA in the last three decades or so.  That is, to the places offering multinationals not only a very disciplined work force that is paid survival wages, but also all the tax concessions possible, in order to induce them to invest and create a pseudo kind of development

Also, as far as the age distribution of the Brexit vote was concerned, the most significant exception to the voting pattern described above was among those under the age of 24, where the Remain vote was 75 percent in favor.[17] In fact, Bremain was supported by an apolitical youth — the perfect subject for manipulation by the elites and its media (including social media) — who are brainwashed by ideological and cultural globalization. Thus, it has been estimated that while there was a turnout of 82% among those aged 55 and over, barely a third of the 18-24 age group managed to cast their vote. But those youngsters who did bother to vote were fanatical opponents of Brexit, who as soon as the referendum result was announced, began demonstrating against it with the direct or indirect support of the local elites, as well as of the Transnational Elite (George Soros, the well-known ‘master of ceremonies’ of pink revolutions of every kind, played a leading role on this).[18] Yet, when these youngsters were asked to explain their fanatical support for the EU, they were usually at a loss to justify their stand![19] No wonder the Hillary camp has been very keen to persuade (usually a-political) youngsters to vote.

The counter revolution in Britain and the USA

As one could expect, the Brexit revolution has led to a fierce counter revolution in Britain by the globalist establishment (which now includes the Labor Party), that I described in The New World Order in Action. This counter revolution was manifested both at the economic and the political levels.

At the economic level, the Transnational economic elite and its institutions (IMF, OECD, the Bank of England etc.), as well as various think tanks, economists, academics, Nobelists and so on, came out before the referendum with a ‘Project Fear’ aiming to portray the doomsday that supposedly was going to follow a Brexit decision. Yet, the latest news give a very different economic picture than the doomsday predicted by the prophets of doom. Data from the Office for National Statistics for the third quarter, the first full quarter since the referendum in June, showed that the Treasury was wrong to suggest that the economy would collapse into recession after a vote to leave. Instead, Britain’s economy has defied expectations of an immediate post-Brexit crash, by growing 0.5 per cent in the three months to September, a stronger rate than the start of the year.[20] The only significant economic impact of Brexit so far was on the value of sterling––something that was to be expected given the role that speculators such as George Soros had played in the past, when he became multimillionaire by simply speculating against the British currency. Today, Soros’s role is to try to reverse at all cost Brexit. Thus, as soon as the result of the referendum was announced Soros declared: “Britain eventually may or may not be relatively better off than other countries by leaving the EU, but its economy and people stand to suffer significantly in the short-to medium term.”[21]

At the political level, the globalist establishment in Britain had used every possible means so far either to revert the result of the referendum, which politically is extremely difficult, given the massive participation and support for Brexit by the victims of globalization, or at least to water down the meaning of it to render it meaningless––what they call euphemistically, a “soft Brexit”. This counter revolution culminated today with the British High Court decision aiming, in effect, to water down any future Brexit decision, according to the elites’ wishes. So, Britain, the famous ‘mother of parliamentarianism’ has been reduced in the globalization era to the level where a few High Court Judges, with the help of parliamentarians under the control of the economic elites, are able to challenge the popular will which was expressed directly and massively.

Finally, one common characteristic of the British and US counter revolutions is the exploitation of the immigration issue in order to smear Brexiteers, as well as supporters of Trump, as anti-immigrants, if not racists. Although of course such elements may well exist within the neo-nationalist antiglobalization movement in Britain, Europe and the USA, yet the vast numbers of the victims of globalization who support this huge movement mostly consist of workers and ex-workers, who used to be supporters of the Left, before the latter was integrated into the NWO. It is therefore hard to believe that all these people have suddenly abandoned the ideals of the Left and moved to the Right. In fact it can be shown that it was the Left that moved to the Right, as far as the issue of entry into the EU clearly showed (see New World Order in Action).

The exploitation of the immigration issue was intensified  particularly in the last few years when the ideology of open borders was massively promoted by the media of the Transnational Elite, accompanied by a mass, supposedly humanist, campaign to save the refugees. That is, the mass of dislocated people who were of course created in the first place by the Transnational Elite itself, through its wars in the Middle East! Needless to add that ‘open borders’ –– the policy promoted by Soros, the Transnational Elite, Varoufakis and the likes –– in fact exploits an old libertarian ideal, completely distorting its essence in the process.

Open borders is meaningful only in a democratic world order where the peoples of the world are really self-determined, controlling themselves the productive resources at their disposal, including human resources. That is, a world with no exploitation and no inequality, where it is peoples themselves that determine how best to meet the needs they decide to satisfy, through social control of some sort (e.g. through an economic democracy as I described it elsewhere)[22] rather than through the anarchy of the markets. Clearly, the world we live in today is exactly the opposite of this kind of ideal world and those fighting for open borders are in fact the elites and their associates aiming to maximize their profits through the free movement between countries, not only of capital and commodities, but of cheap labor as well. The inevitable effect is the equalization ‘to the bottom’ of the real value of wages and salaries (their ‘cost of production’) all over the world.

This is therefore the essence of the economic side of immigration and not the pseudo-humanist black propaganda about helping the masses of refugees and the victims of globalization. Particularly so, when both the former and the latter are simply the byproducts of political and economic globalization respectively. Clearly, it was the unprecedented economic violence of the NWO (initiated by the opening and liberalization of markets) as well as the military violence (unleashed by the wars of the Transnational Elite in the globalization era) that created the billions of the victims of globalization and the millions of refugees respectively. In other words, the successful attempt by the Transnational Elite to convert an economic consequence of globalization, and the economic and military violence it implies, into a (supposedly) humanitarian refugee problem and an issue of satisfying the libertarian principle of ‘open borders’, is perhaps its greatest deception of humanity today and one of the great deceptions of all times. What is even worse is the general acceptability of this deception by almost every country in the world which has been integrated into the NWO.

It is the same deception which is used extensively by the elites, with the full support of the globalist “Left”, in order to smear the new antiglobalization movement (which at present is expressed almost solely by the neonationalist movement) as anti-immigrant , if not racist. Therefore, the need for the creation of a radical antiglobalization movement, which would unite the growing millions of the victims of globalization, irrespective of Left and Right labels, with the aim to fight for economic and national sovereignty, ––as the necessary (though not the sufficient) condition for a real systemic change––is more imperative today than ever.-

 This article is based on the author’s new book under the title The New World Order in Action: Globalization, The Brexit Revolution and the “Left”, (Progressive Press, November 2016) https://www.amazon.com/World-Order-Action-Vol-Globalization/dp/1615779353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478292192&sr=8-1&keywords=Takis+Fotopoulos

Takis Fotopoulos is a political philosopher and economist who founded the inclusive democracy movement. He is noted for his synthesis of the classical democracy with the libertarian socialism and the radical currents in the new social movements. He is the editor of The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (which succeeded Democracy & Nature). He was previously (1969 1989) Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of North London. In his seminal work Towards An Inclusive Democracy (London & New York: Cassell, 1997), which has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Chinese, the foundations of the inclusive democracy project were set. He is also the author of over 2,000 articles in British, American and Greek books, journals, magazines and newspapers, several of which have been translated into over twenty languages

 Notes

“Down here, a smaller version of this, $800,000 similar slush fund has landed a sitting Congressman, an African-American lady who has been in Congress for about twenty plus years, running for re-election this year, she faces 357 years in our federal prisons for $800,000, a smaller, shorter-lived set of fraud. This is a big scandal!“

-Charles Ortel on the Clinton Foundation’s misappropriation of funds. (From this week’s interview.)

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FBI Director James Comey’s 11^th hour bomb-shell announcing an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails seems to have compromised what was believed to be an easy victory for the former First Lady in the lead-up to Tuesday’s elections.

Wikileaks has disclosed evidence that while Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and aides like Huma Abedin. used unencrypted computers on a private server to conduct secret business and then did their best to cover up and destroy evidence of that activity.

There is considerable conjecture about what was in those emails that could have been so incriminating, or dangerous, that they would have forced Comey’s hand so close to election day.

Nevertheless, there is already plenty of documentation in the public record indicative of criminal behaviour proximate to Ms. Clinton that deserves scrutiny before Americans go to the ballot box. That record is the focus of this week’s installment of the Global Research News Hour.

Charles Ortel is a private financial investor, writer and former Wall Street banker. In 2007 he became a whistle-blower and was instrumental in bringing down General Electric after revealing GE’s fraudulently overvaluing its stock by many billions of dollars to mislead its investors. Ortel has been scrutinizing the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation since February of 2015. His research reveals a pattern of massive fraud through questionable and illegal practices which have enriched the Clintons at the expense of the good works that the Foundation was purportedly set up to perform. Ortel is our guest in the first half hour.

Debbie Lusignan, better known by her social media handle “Sane Progressive” started documenting evidence of election fraud during the race for the Democratic nomination. She has likewise monitored the race for President and is disclosing a lot of information ignored by the press, pertinent to the real political aspirations of the American people. Debbie makes her debut on the program to elaborate on what she’s discovered.

Finally, Glen Ford, commentator and executive editor of Black Agenda Report, joins us near the end of the hour to explain why the Clintons have been successful in appealing to Black Americans in spite of a record in office hostile to that population.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

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What is so remarkable and troubling about the presentation we’ve heard today is that what Russia really wants from the U.N. is credit. Congratulations, Russia, you’ve stopped, for a couple days, from using incendiary weapons. Thank you for not using cluster bombs in civilian areas. Thank you for staying the hand of brutality with regard to bunker buster weapons. You don’t get congratulations and get credit for not committing war crimes for a day or a week.Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, October 26, 2016

Samantha Power is the face of American diplomacy at the UN, where she gives ardent voice to American hypocrisy, deceit, intellectual dishonesty, and mockery of the rest of the world. Appalling as her performance has been, her portrayal is accurate, right down to her denial-laden confidence in American exceptionalism.

Samantha Power, the Grand HIgh Witch US ambassador to the UN

Power’s comment above came in the midst of a discussion of the carnage in Syria, a discussion without substance or pity, without a care for ending the killing. Her tone and content were in sharp, ugly contrast to the report of UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien addressing the Security Council about the layered wars in Syria that began with peaceful protests early in 2011:

Each month, I have come before you and presented an ever-worsening record of destruction and atrocity, grimly cataloguing the systematic destruction of a country and its people. While my job is to relay to you the facts, I cannot help but be incandescent with rage. Month after month, worse and worse, and nothing is actually happening to stop the war, stop the suffering.

Stephen O’Brien is “incandescent with rage” at the outrage that is Syria, and the perhaps greater outrage of inaction by the Security Council as a body as well as its individual states. O’Brien bears witness to destruction and atrocity that the council cannot stop and to which its member states contribute. They do not express rage, incandescent or otherwise; they express the snide posturing of politics and tactical advantage.

Vitaly Churkin, the Russian Federation’s ambassador to the UN, said O’Brien had delivered a sermon, not an objective report. Churkin said that the Russian Federation continued to negotiate with armed groups, continued to deliver humanitarian aid by the ton, and continued the eight-day-old bombing pause. Churkin said Aleppo was worse because the Al Nusra Front had not yet fulfilled its promise to separate from more moderate opposition forces. Churkin said that negotiation demands were constantly changing, that fighters used civilians as human shields, that a political solution should remain the first priority, and that New Zealand should be thanked for working to build a consensus among the members to end the fighting.

The American response is as heartbreaking as ever:

Samantha Power responded to the Russian assertion of facts not with rebuttal, but with sarcasm, mockery, and pettiness. Hers is an essentially ad hominem response that allows no credit for a bombing halt of any duration. And no wonder. Power speaks for a country that bombs others more or less at will for as long as it likes. The US has bombed Afghanistan without serious surcease since 2001, and Iraq almost as long. The US continues to participate in the Saudi Arabian coalition’s relentless bombing of Yemen’s hospitals, schools, and funerals, taking part in war crimes as part of a criminal war.

Mockingly, the ambassador from the country of military shock and awe acts as if her hands are clean from decades of devastation visited upon the region. Power acts as if the US aerial destruction brought to bear on defenseless tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan or defenseless urban civilians in Syria, Iraq and Yemen had never happened. Power has nothing to say about American use of depleted uranium weapons that leave their targets – both people and the land – as radioactive threats to human health for generations.

The US/Saudi assault on Yemen uses cluster bombs in civilian areas, but Samantha Power has no sarcastic objection to that. The US manufactures cluster bombs – banned by most of the rest of the world – to sell to the Saudis to use in civilian areas in Yemen. The US had no hesitation using bunker-busting bombs in laying waste to Iraq.

Beyond her heavy-handed mockery, Power offered nothing useful. She might have admitted the constant pattern of American war crimes, especially since 2001, whether torture, kidnapping, imprisonment at dark sites, drone strikes, or any of the other horrific acts of American policy throughout the Middle East since World War II. Being the United States means never having to say you’re sorry, no matter how sorry your human rights record, no matter how sorry your fidelity to international law, and worst of all in the world of power politics, no matter how sorry your actual accomplishments are. No matter how monstrous American behavior becomes, Samantha Power is paid to praise it as the necessary actions of the world’s indispensible nation.

In 2008, when Samantha Power was part of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, she famously called Hillary Clinton a “monster.” So does it take one to know one?

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

America’s privileged class never had things better. For the vast majority of others, hard times keep getting harder.

Commenting on Friday’s Labor Department jobs report, Trump was right calling the numbers “phony.”

America’s economy is weak, he said earlier, burdened by widespread poverty, high unemployment and underemployment, downward mobility and crushing national debt.

“Our country is in deep trouble.” Trump correctly explained millions of good, high-paying jobs disappeared, sent overseas to low-wage countries.

Most jobs created are rotten ones – part-time, low-pay, poor-or-no benefits ones. Most workers need two or three to survive. Half of the nation’s households are impoverished or bordering it – one missed paycheck from homelessness, hunger and despair.

According to economist John Williams, “Main Street USA is not happy.” Real unemployment is 23%, not the phony 4.9% reported, excluding millions unable to find work so they stopped looking, becoming nonpersons in the process as far as the Labor Department is concerned.

Real inflation is 9.1%. Phony numbers hide reality. Social Security recipients are cheated – this year no increase in benefits over 2015, next year the one announced is too minuscule to matter.

Insurers are raising Obamacare premiums by double-digits next year – on average 25%, in some states much higher, with fewer provider choices and reduced benefits in some cases, putting proper healthcare increasingly out-of-reach for millions without incurring onerous debt.

“Manufacturing never recovered from its pre-recession peak,” said Williams. “Third quarter GDP growth of 2.9% was not credible.”

“Underlying economic reality remains far from recovery and expansion. Headline GDP remained massively inconsistent with recession seen in freight traffic, petroleum usage, corporate revenues, construction, industrial production, broad employment indicators,” housing starts and other economic data.

Fed governors “redefin(ed) economic normalcy” to reflect non-recovery, America’s privileged benefitting, not most others, struggling through protracted Main Street Depression conditions likely to worsen.

Williams explained the incumbent party lost the race for the White House every time since 1932 when annual real disposable income growth was below 2.9%. In Q II 2016, it was 1.8%.

NYT reinvented reality ignored all of the above. On November 4, its editors bashed Trump for truth-telling about the dismal state of America’s economy, citing phony government figures, concealing the deplorable state of things for most people.

“Trump…presumably believes…his best shot at the White House is to insist that the economy is in terrible shape and that he alone can fix it,” said Times editors. When he disagrees with reported data, “he calls them ‘phony numbers.’ “

The Times is part of the state-sponsored conspiracy concealing dismal reality from the public. America’s economy was thirdworldized, increasingly resembling a banana republic, combining neoliberal harshness with police state repression.

With shameless understatement, Times editors said “economic recovery has not touched every American equally.” They failed to explain the vast majority was left out.

Costs of essentials to survive keep rising. Incomes fail to keep pace, so the standard of living for most Americans keeps falling.

Will Trump fix things? He’ll try unsuccessfully without majority congressional support. What about Hillary? She’s beholden to Wall Street, war profiteers and other corporate predators.

Harder than ever hard times are likely if she succeeds Obama. Her promises otherwise were Big Lies. Times editors conceal ugly truths in boosting her candidacy instead of responsibly opposing it.

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

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

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 reality, since even before Syria’s conflict began unfolding in 2011, the United States had been planning for the nation’s division and destruction through the use of militant proxies allied to Al Qaeda since as early as 2007. Like Libya, Syria was meant to be swiftly overwhelmed by covert terrorism and military operations backed by the West and its regional allies, as well as a torrent of psychological, economic, and even cyber warfare.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in a now prophetic 2007 article titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?,” would reveal (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

However, with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s stubborn defense against NATO-backed militants and direct NATO airstrikes in 2011, time was bought for the Syrian state to move past the initial shock and awe of American designs and strike an operational pace that has since allowed it to weather, even overcome the worst of this proxy conquest.

And since then, US policymakers have searched for “alternatives” to achieve their goals in Syria, without overtly revealing the fact that since even before “day 1,” the US has banked its entire strategy on the use of Al Qaeda and other designated terrorist organizations for the overthrow of the Syrian government and the division of the Syrian state.

Indeed, US Institute for Peace (USIP) vice president of Applied Research on Conflict Steven Heydemann in the New York Times would write in an article titled, “You Don’t Need a No-Fly Zone to Pressure Russia in Syria,” that:This includes the current US-designed, Turkish-led incursion into northern Syria to create what US policymakers have been calling a “buffer zone” since at least as early as 2012, as well as a plan to designate the northern Syrian city of Idlib the new, “internationally recognized” capital of Syria.

The most effective diplomatic means for the United States to regain leverage in Syria is for Washington to lead an international effort to undermine the Assad government’s claims and recognize a different government as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

The best candidate for recognition is the little-known Syrian Interim Government, or S.I.G. Unlike many other opposition groups, which are based in Turkey, the S.I.G. is based inside Syria, with offices in Idlib and scattered throughout opposition-held territory.

The problem with Heydemann’s proposal is the same problem that has plagued the entirety of US policy toward Syria, the essential but unobtainable requirement of covering up the opposition’s obvious ties to Al Qaeda.

Idlib is Al Qaeda Central  

It is in Idlib that the US itself admits it has been regularly targeting senior leaders of Al Qaeda. The most recent was revealed on November 2, with the US State Department’s own propaganda channel, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in an article titled, “Pentagon Says It Killed Senior Al-Qaeda Leader,” admitting:

A U.S. drone strike in Syria killed a senior Al-Qaeda leader who once had ties to Osama bin Laden, the Pentagon said on November 2. 

The October 17 strike near Idlib killed Haydar Kirkan, who “was intent on plotting and carrying out attacks against the West,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

And early last month, the US would admit that yet another terrorist leader was targeted and allegedly killed – also in Idlib, Syria. The Business Insider in an article titled, “Egyptian al Qaeda leader killed by US drone strike in Idlib, Syria,” would reveal:

Syria’s militant Jabhat Fateh al Sham, formerly the Nusra Front, said on Monday that Egyptian cleric Abu al Faraj al Masri, a prominent member of the militant group, had been killed in a strike by the U.S.-led coalition.

In addition to the Pentagon finding Idlib to be a seemingly “target rich environment” for Al Qaeda leaders, the Western media itself has – over the years – admitted that Idlib is perhaps second only to Al Raqqa in terms of serving as a nexus for Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

The Wall Street Journal in a 2015 article titled, “Assad Loses Final Idlib Stronghold to Al Qaeda-led Insurgents,” would report:

After a two-year siege, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and other insurgents on Wednesday captured the one remaining Syrian army air base in Idlib, a development that activists said effectively expelled the last of President Bashar al-Assad’s military from the northwestern province. 

The Wall Street Journal article also admits the similarities between Idlib and the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) controlled city of Al Raqqa, claiming:

This makes Idlib the second of Syria’s 14 provinces to slip completely from Syrian army control. Earlier this year, militant groups captured the provincial capital, also called Idlib, as well as other towns and villages. 

The province of Raqqa fell to Islamic State extremists last year, after IS militants captured its provincial capital, also called Raqqa, in January 2014. Islamic State group has since declared the city as the seat of its caliphate, which spans a third of both Syria and Iraq.

USIP’s Steven Heydemann in his NYT op-ed is essentially calling on the West to recognize a city in a region completely overrun by Al Qaeda as the new “capital” of Syria and recognize an obscure, irrelevant puppet as Syria’s legitimate leader despite not only his impotent “Syrian Interim Government” holding no control over any section of Syria, including Idlib itself, but the reality that even Al Qaeda and ISIS combined still control only a fraction of Syria’s population.

US to Make Al Qaeda Capital in Syria, Syria’s Capital?

Over 60% of the Syrian population lives in government controlled territory, with this number rising monthly as security operations to restore order across the country continue to garner success, particularly in Aleppo. This includes control over most of Syria’s largest cities, including Damascus itself, most of Aleppo, Homs, Latakia, Hama, Tartus, and Daraa.

Heydemann’s plan – like all US “plans” before it – at face value and amid its more intricate details contradict the US’ own rationale for becoming involved in Syria in the first place. Handing a nation over to an unpopular, illegitimate minority in no shape, form, or way constitutes “democracy” – even the strained definitions used by the West to describe it. With Heydemann’s “Syrian Interim Government” existing in the very center of Al Qaeda’s operations in Syria, no plan to date has so transparently attempted to protect and preserve designated terrorist organizations operating in Syria.Idlib, on the other hand, doesn’t rank even among Syria’s top ten most populated cities – making plans to designate it a de facto capital all the more transparently absurd.

Considering the second part of Heydemann’s plan includes a revised version of a US-initiated no-fly zone, US assets would literally be used in Syria to protect Al Qaeda’s de facto capital in Idlib from Syrian or Russian attacks.

To foil America’s “Plan C” in Syria – which in reality is simply a revised version of its original plan all along – media platforms operating beyond the influence of Western special interests much educate the public regarding the true nature of Idlib, who really runs it, and what the implications are of arbitrarily designating it and the terrorists that are occupying it the “legitimate government of Syria.”

By doing this, not only will the US continue to struggle to sell its floundering policies to the public, it will further reveal the truth about US intentions in Syria, stretching back to 2007 when journalists even then attempted to raise the alarm over the West’s use of Al Qaeda a proxy force to divide and destroy nations the world over.

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

HEBRON, OCCUPIED WEST BANK — Mofid Sharabati shifted uncomfortably on the edge of his bed, having offered all other available seats to the cadre of journalists sprawled across his tiny living room. He waited patiently while his company ate shawarma wraps, still warm after being hand-delivered from a local establishment up the road. He eyed his 10-year-old son Marwan paternally as he dashed back and forth, tiny hands diligently disposing of tin foil and used food wrappers as people finished their meals.

After a few moments, one of the journalists asked Sharabati to describe life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

We live in fear 24 hours a day.

“We live in fear 24 hours a day,” he immediately said, speaking through a translator. Marwan, now sitting next to him, nodded in agreement. He stared at his feet, fidgeting with the ends of his oversized basketball jersey.

The room of journalists sat quietly for a second, unsure of what to ask next.

Sharabati and his family live in Hebron, the largest city in the occupied West Bank and home to around 200,000 Palestinians. I visited Sharabati’s tiny second-story apartment in mid-October as part of a delegation of journalists traveling with the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a left-of-center organization based in Washington, D.C. that seeks a “just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” through advocacy and education efforts — including highlighting the Palestinian cause.

A journalist holds aloft a sound bomb, used to disperse demonstrators in Hebron. CREDIT: Jack jenkins

Our trip coincided with a rash of violence that has raged across Israel-Palestine over the past two months, resulting in the deaths of 11 Israelis and more than 58 Palestinians, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Much has been written about the various causes of the fighting, during which Palestinians are frequently shot dead, often after attacking Israeli soldiers and citizens, usually with knives. Some argue the attackers, many of whom are teenagers or even children, are inspired by anti-Israeli messages shared on social media, or religious militants such as ISIS who have endorsed the stabbings. Others — including many of the attackers themselves — say they are responding to perceived efforts by Jewish activistsand the Israeli government to erode Muslim control of the Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam.

But as analysts furiously debate the immediate catalyst for the attacks, there has been less focus on another factor that — while perhaps not the spark that lit the latest blaze — undoubtedly created the conditions for tension in the first place: Israel’s longstanding occupation of the West Bank territories, including the construction of settlements the United Nations deems illegal and whose legitimacy the United States government rejects.

Sharabati and his family offered me a glimpse into life under this occupation, detailing the trials endured by many Palestinians who are all too often literally caught in the crossfire. ThinkProgress could not independently verify all aspects of Sharabati’s story, but his account closely matches numerous reports of Palestinian life published by groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

The checkpoint

Even within the notoriously tense West Bank, Hebron is a uniquely combustible city. Located roughly 45 minutes south of Jerusalem, violence between Israelis and Palestinians has erupted numerous times over the years — even before the the establishment of the state of Israel. Locals say this is largely due to the presence of Israeli settlements, which are considered invasive by Palestinians but vociferously defended by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the settlers themselves, who insist they have every right to be there. Clashes between the two camps have been recurrent, including the horrific slaughter of 67 Jewish civilians in 1929, after which most Jews abandoned Hebron for several years. When settlers returned in 1967, nets were installedin the town’s Old City to keep Israeli settlers from tossing stones and garbage onto Palestinians as they passed below.

Things reached a breaking point in 1994, when an American-born Israeli settler massacred 29 Muslim worshippers at a shrine known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. The increasingly volatile situation was then addressed in 1997, when officials signed an agreement to partition the city into two sections: “H1,” to be controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA), and “H2,” to be controlled by Israel.

A checkpoint in Hebron. CREDIT: Jack jenkins

The imperfect results were on full display just down the street from Sharabati’s home, where a checkpoint divides a Palestinian-controlled section of the city from an Israeli-controlled area. Sharabati and his brother greeted me and other journalists on the Palestinian side of the heavily-armed barrier, surrounded by curiosity seekers who stopped to observe the arrival of yet another group of journalists. Hundreds of Hebron residents strolled past as we exited our vehicle, chattering in Arabic while shopping and eating in the heart of the thriving city.

Yet the crowds steered clear of the nearby concrete blocks that marked the entrance to the checkpoint. Israeli sound bombs and empty tear gas canisters littered the pavement in front of a looming, fence-covered military installation, the refuse of efforts by IDF soldiers to dispel various protests that have sprung up during the recent unrest.

At the direction of our guide, we passed through the checkpoint one at time, a standard procedure made all the more unsettling in the wake of recent stabbings. A trio of heavily armed IDF soldiers greeted us on the other side, weapons out, as a fourth watched us from above. After they let us pass, an eerily deserted street opened up before us, a far cry from the teaming masses we left behind a few moments before.

As our party walked down the empty Shuhada Street towards Sharabati’s abode — flanked all the while by two soldiers — the translator explained that the emptiness was due to the city’s bizarre system of subdivisions, where various roads and sections are restricted to Palestinians. Sharabati and his children, for instance, live on the Israeli side of the checkpoint, where only Palestinians with homes can enter if they have explicit permission from the Israeli army. Other areas ban Palestinian businesses, and some forbid them from even walking down the street.

A former IDF member — speaking as part of Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects testimonies of ex-soldiers — would later tell me that the military has a name for these roads: “sterile streets.”

CREDIT: Source: B’Tselem

The draconian measures are justified by the Israeli government as necessary to ensure security; Sharabati and other Palestinian Hebron residents have few, if any, options for protest. Although their land is occupied by the Israeli government, the Palestinians living in the West Bank are not citizens of Israel, and the residents living anywhere other than East Jerusalem are not afforded the ability to apply for citizenship — even if they marry an Israeli. Instead, they are subject to an entirely different legal system: Palestinians operate under military law, where many rights and privileges standard for an Israeli — such as seeing a judge within 24 hours of being arrested — are not guaranteed. Although they can vote for leaders of the PA, they cannot vote in elections for the Israeli government, which ultimately controls many facets of their daily life.

Most Palestinians who used to live on Sharabati’s street have abandoned their homes, citing harassment from Israeli settlers and soldiers. Sharabati made similar claims, noting that sometimes soldiers “throw rocks at us.”

Yet despite these difficulties, he refuses to move.

“This has been my family’s home for 150 years,” he said, defiantly.

Punished for bearing witness

The decision to stay in their ancestral home in Hebron has not made life easy for Sharabati, or the others who live in his house. Every member of his family could recount troubling run-ins with authorities and nearby settlers. Sharabati handed journalists x-rays of his back, showing a series of pins used to repair his broken spine after he reportedly tried to defend his home from an invasion of settlers and members of the IDF. His brother’s visibly injured eye, he said, was misshapen during the same altercation.

Even his son Marwan, who struggled to reach the hat rack to put away a scarf during our visit, was reportedly detained by police in October for several hours. His alleged crime: holding a stone.

A barrier pierced by bullets used to kill a Palestinian woman in late September. CREDIT: Jack Jenkins

When the family isn’t the victim of violence, it is often a witness to it.

At least three different Palestinians were gunned down near their home during the recent surge of knife attacks, all of which showcase longstanding tensions among area groups. One occurred in a neighboring section of the city on October 17, when an Israeli soldier opened fire after being stabbed by 18-year-old Palestinian Tarek Ziad Natsha. The local settler population reportedly blocked the ambulance tasked with carrying the wounded attacker to the hospital, but were eventually dispersed by police, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Natsha died in the hospital. The soldier survived.

Meanwhile, two other shooting incidents near Sharabati’s home are being investigated as examples of unnecessary use of force. The first occurred on September 22, when a woman named Hadeel al-Hashlamoun was shot and killed by soldiers for allegedly threatening them with a knife. At least two bystanders disputed this account, and many pointed out that she was behind a barricade when they opened fire. Bullet holes from the encounter — clearly piercing through the barrier — are still visible when passing through the checkpoint, raising questions as to whether she presented an imminent threat. A report from Amnesty International has since declared her death unnecessary, classifying it as an “extrajudicial execution.”

Fadel Mohammed al-Qawasameh’s blood still stains the street outside Sharabati’s home. CREDIT: Jack Jenkins 

It was the second shooting in less than a month, however, that left a lasting impression on the Sharabati family. On October 17, Fadel Mohammed al-Qawasameh, an 18-year-old resident of Hebron, was gunned down by an Israeli settler immediately outside the family’s house, again for allegedly trying to stab someone. But as the boy lay dying, a video was shot from Sharabati’s window that appears to show officials placing something next to the dying body. Local Palestinians cited this as proof that the soldiers planted evidence, and the clip quickly went viral.

The response from the IDF was swift. When the military learned of the tape, Sharabati said they raided his home, a common occurrence for Palestinians living under military rule. He said they then confiscated his camera and laptop, broke them, and arrested his brother — supposedly for emailing the video to others.

“This is the life we live every day,” he said. “We live in fear they could come back into our home at any time. There is always someone awake.”

Meanwhile, al-Qawasameh’s blood still stains the pavement just feet from the family’s doorstep. They walk by it every day.

Jack Jenkins

Senior Religion Reporter at ThinkProgress. Player of harmonica and ukulele. Tips: [email protected]

This interview was filmed in the Embassy of Ecuador in London – where Julian Assange is a political refugee –  and broadcast on November 5, 2016

(transcript)

John Pilger: 

What’s the significance of the FBI’s intervention in these last days of the U.S. election campaign, in the case against Hillary Clinton?

Julian Assange:

If you look at the history of the FBI, it has become effectively America’s political police. The FBI demonstrated this by taking down the former head of the CIA [General David Petraeus] over classified information given to his mistress. Almost no-one is untouchable.  The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that no-one can resist us.  But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI’s investigation, so there’s anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak.  We’ve published about 33,000 of Clinton’s emails when she was Secretary of State.  They come from a batch of just over 60,000 emails, [of which] Clinton has kept about half – 30,000 — to herself, and we’ve published about half.

Then there are the Podesta emails we’ve been publishing.  [John] Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign manager, so there’s a thread that runs through all these emails; there are quite a lot of pay-for-play, as they call it, giving access in exchange for money to states, individuals and corporations. [These emails are] combined with the cover up of the Hillary Clinton emails when she was Secretary of State, [which] has led to an environment where the pressure on the FBI increases.

John Pilger:

The Clinton campaign has said that Russia is behind all of this, that Russia has manipulated the campaign and is the source for WikiLeaks and its emails.

Julian Assange:

The Clinton camp has been able to project that kind of neo-McCarthy hysteria: that Russia is responsible for everything.  Hilary Clinton stated multiple times, falsely, that seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. That is false; we can say that the Russian government is not the source.

WikiLeaks has been publishing for ten years, and in those ten years, we have published ten million documents, several thousand individual publications, several thousand different sources, and we have never got it wrong.

 
John Pilger:

The emails that give evidence of access for money and how Hillary Clinton herself benefited from this and how she is benefitting politically, are quite extraordinary. I’m thinking of  when the Qatari representative was given five minutes with Bill Clinton for a million dollar cheque.

Julian Assange:

And twelve million dollars from Morocco …

John Pilger:

Twelve million from Morocco yeah.

Julian Assange:

For Hillary Clinton to attend [a party].

John Pilger:

In terms of the foreign policy of the United States, that’s where the emails are most revealing, where they show the direct connection between Hillary Clinton and the foundation of jihadism, of ISIL, in the Middle East.  Can you talk about how the emails demonstrate the connection between those who are meant to be fighting the jihadists of ISIL, are actually those who have helped create it.

Julian Assange:

There’s an early 2014 email from Hillary Clinton, not so long after she left the State Department, to her campaign manager John Podesta that states ISIL is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.  Now this is the most significant email in the whole collection, and perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the Clinton Foundation.  Even the U.S. government agrees that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIL, or ISIS. But the dodge has always been that, well it’s just some rogue Princes, using their cut of the oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves.

But that email says that no, it is the governments of Saudi and  Qatar that have been funding ISIS.

 John Pilger:

The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the Saudis and the Qataris, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation while Hilary Clinton is Secretary of State and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly to Saudi Arabia.

Julian Assange:

Under Hillary Clinton, the world’s largest ever arms deal was made with Saudi Arabia, [worth] more than $80 billion.  In fact, during her tenure as Secretary of State, total arms exports from the United States in terms of the dollar value, doubled.

John Pilger:

Of course the consequence of that is that the notorious terrorist group called ISIl or ISIS is created largely with money from the very people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation.

Julian Assange:

Yes.

 John Pilger:

That’s extraordinary.

Julian Assange:

I actually feel quite sorry for Hillary Clinton as a person because I see someone who is eaten alive by their ambitions,  tormented literally to the point where they become sick; they faint as a result of [the reaction] to their ambitions. She represents a whole network of people and a network of relationships with particular states.  The question is how does Hilary Clinton fit in this broader network?  She’s a centralising cog. You’ve got a lot of different gears in operation from the big banks like Goldman Sachs and major elements of Wall Street, and Intelligence and people in the State Department and the Saudis.

She’s the centraliser that inter-connects all these different cogs.  She’s the smooth central representation of all that, and ‘all that’ is more or less what is in power now in the United States. It’s what we call the establishment or the DC consensus. One of the more significant Podesta emails that we released was about how the Obama cabinet was formed and how half the Obama cabinet was basically nominated by a representative from City Bank. This is quite amazing.

John Pilger:

Didn’t Citybank supply a list …. ?

Julian Assange:

Yes.

John Pilger:

 … which turned out to be most of the Obama cabinet.

Julian Assange:

Yes.

John Pilger:

So Wall Street decides the cabinet of the President of the United States?

Julian Assange:

If you were following the Obama campaign back then, closely, you could see it had become very close to banking interests.

Julian Assange:

So I think you can’t properly understand Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy without understanding Saudi Arabia.  The connections with Saudi Arabia are so intimate.

John Pilger:

Why was she so demonstrably enthusiastic about the destruction of Libya?  Can you talk a little about just what the emails have told us, told you about what happened there, because Libya is such a source for so much of the mayhem now in Syria, the ISIL jihadism and so on, and it was almost Hillary Clinton’s invasion.  What do the emails tell us about that?

Julian Assange:

Libya, more than anyone else’s war, was Hillary Clinton’s war. Barak Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it?  Hillary Clinton.  That’s documented throughout her emails. She had put her favoured agent, Sidney Blumenthal, on to that; there’s more than 1700 emails out of the thirty three thousand Hillary Clinton emails that we’ve published, just about Libya. It’s not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state — something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President.

So in late 2011 there is an internal document called the Libya Tick Tock that was produced for Hillary Clinton, and it’s the chronological description of how she was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around 40,000 deaths within Libya; jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European refugee and migrant crisis.

Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilisation of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself err was no longer able to control the movement of people through it. Libya faces along to the Mediterranean and had been effectively the cork in the bottle of Africa. So all problems, economic problems and civil war in Africa — previously people fleeing those problems didn’t end up in Europe because Libya policed the Mediterranean. That was said explicitly at the time, back in early 2011 by Gaddafi:  ‘What do these Europeans think they’re doing, trying to bomb and destroy the Libyan State? There’s going to be floods of migrants out of Africa and jihadists into Europe, and this is exactly what happened.

John Pilger:

You get complaints from people saying, ‘What is WikiLeaks doing?  Are they trying to put Trump in the Whitehouse?’

Julian Assange:

My answer is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that?  Because he’s had every establishment off side; Trump doesn’t have one establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment, but banks, intelligence [agencies], arms companies… big foreign money … are all united behind Hillary Clinton, and the media as well, media owners and even journalists themselves.

John Pilger:

There is the accusation that WikiLeaks is in league with the Russians. Some people say, ‘Well, why doesn’t WikiLeaks investigate and publish emails on Russia?’

Julian Assange:

We have published about 800,000 documents of various kinds that relate to Russia. Most of those are critical; and a great many books have come out of our publications about Russia, most of which are critical. Our [Russia]documents have gone on to be used in quite a number of court cases: refugee cases of people fleeing some kind of claimed political persecution in Russia, which they use our documents to back up.

John Pilger:

Do you yourself take a view of the U.S. election?  Do you have a preference for Clinton or Trump?

Julian Assange:

[Let’s talk about] Donald Trump. What does he represent in the American mind and in the European mind?  He represents American white trash, [which Hillary Clinton called] ‘deplorable and irredeemable’.  It means from an establishment or educated cosmopolitan, urbane perspective, these people are like the red necks, and you can never deal with them.  Because he so clearly — through his words and actions and the type of people that turn up at his rallies — represents people who are not the middle, not the upper middle educated class, there is a fear of seeming to be associated in any way with them, a social fear that lowers the class status of anyone who can be accused of somehow assisting Trump in any way, including any criticism of Hillary Clinton. If you look at how the middle class gains its economic and social power, that makes absolute sense.

John Pilger:

I’d like to talk about Ecuador, the small country that has given you refuge and [political asylum] in this embassy in London.  Now Ecuador has cut off the internet from here where we’re doing this interview, in the Embassy, for the clearly obvious reason that they are concerned about appearing to intervene in the U.S. election campaign.  Can you talk about why they would take that action and your own views on Ecuador’s support for you?

Julian Assange:

Let’s let go back four years.  I made an asylum application to Ecuador in this embassy, because of the U.S. extradition case, and the result was that after a month, I was successful in my asylum application. The embassy since then has been surrounded by police: quite an expensive police operation which the British government admits to spending more than £12.6 million. They admitted that over a year ago.  Now there’s undercover police and there are robot surveillance cameras of various kinds — so that there has been quite a serious conflict right here in the heart of London between Ecuador, a country of sixteen million people, and the United Kingdom, and the Americans who have been helping on the side.  So that was a brave and principled thing for Ecuador to do. Now we have the U.S. election [campaign], the Ecuadorian election is in February next year, and you have the White House feeling the political heat as a result of the true information that we have been publishing.

WikiLeaks does not publish from the jurisdiction of Ecuador, from this embassy or in the territory of Ecuador; we publish from France, we publish from, from Germany, we publish from The Netherlands and from a number of other countries, so that the attempted squeeze on WikiLeaks is through my refugee status; and this is, this is really intolerable. [It means] that [they] are trying to get at a publishing organisation; [they] try and prevent it from publishing true information that is of intense interest to the American people and others about an election.

John Pilger:

Tell us what would happen if you walked out of this embassy.

Julian Assange:

I would be immediately arrested by the British police and I would then be extradited either immediately to the United States or to Sweden. In Sweden I am not charged, I have already been previously cleared [by the Senior Stockholm Prosecutor Eva Finne]. We were not certain exactly what would happen there, but then we know that the Swedish government has refused to say that they will not extradite me to the United States we know they have extradited 100 per cent of people whom the U.S. has requested since at least 2000.  So over the last fifteen years, every single person the U.S. has tried to extradite from Sweden has been extradited, and they refuse to provide a guarantee [that won’t happen].

John Pilger:

People often ask me how you cope with the isolation in here.

Julian Assange:

Look, one of the best attributes of human beings is that they’re adaptable; one of the worst attributes of human beings is they are adaptable.  They adapt and start to tolerate abuses, they adapt to being involved themselves in abuses, they adapt to adversity and they continue on. So in my situation, frankly, I’m a bit institutionalised — this [the embassy] is the world .. it’s visually the world [for me].

John Pilger:

It’s the world without sunlight, for one thing, isn’t it?

Julian Assange:

It’s the world without sunlight, but I haven’t seen sunlight in so long, I don’t remember it.

John Pilger:

Yes.

Julian Assange:

So , yes, you adapt.  The one real irritant is that my young children — they also adapt. They adapt to being without their father. That’s a hard, hard adaption which they didn’t ask for.

 John Pilger:

Do you worry about them?

Julian Assange:

Yes, I worry about them; I worry about their mother.

John Pilger:

Some people would say, ‘Well, why don’t you end it and simply walk out the door and allow yourself to be extradited to Sweden?’

Julian Assange:

The U.N. [the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention] has looked into this whole situation. They spent eighteen months in formal, adversarial litigation. [So it’s] me and the U.N. verses Sweden and the U.K.  Who’s right?  The U.N. made a conclusion that I am being arbitrarily detained illegally, deprived of my freedom and that what has occurred has not occurred within the laws that the United Kingdom and Sweden, and that [those countries] must obey. It is an illegal abuse.  It is the United Nations formally asking, ‘What’s going on here?  What is your legal explanation for this? [Assange] says that you should recognise his asylum.’ [And here is]

Sweden formally writing back to the United Nations to say, ‘No, we’re not going to [recognise the UN ruling], so leaving open their ability to extradite.

I just find it absolutely amazing that the narrative about this situation is not put out publically in the press, because it doesn’t suit the Western establishment narrative — that yes, the West has political prisoners, it’s a reality, it’s not just me, there’s a bunch of other people as well.  The West has political prisoners. Of course, no state accepts [that it should call] the people it is imprisoning or detaining for political reasons, political prisoners. They don’t call them political prisoners in China, they don’t call them political prisoners in Azerbaijan and they don’t call them political prisoners in the United States, U.K. or Sweden; it is absolutely intolerable to have that kind of self-perception.

Julian Assange:

Here we have a case, the Swedish case, where I have never been charged with a crime, where I have already been cleared [by the Stockholm prosecutor] and found to be innocent, where the woman herself said that the police made it up, where the United Nations formally said the whole thing is illegal, where the State of Ecuador also investigated and found that I should be given asylum.  Those are the facts, but what is the rhetoric?

John Pilger:

Yes, it’s different.

Julian Assange:

The rhetoric is pretending, constantly pretending that I have been charged with a crime, and never mentioning that I have been already previously cleared, never mentioning that the woman herself says that the police made it up.

[The rhetoric] is trying to avoid [the truth that ] the U.N. formally found that the whole thing is illegal, never even mentioning that Ecuador made a formal assessment through its formal processes and found that yes, I am subject to persecution by the United States. 

To support Julian Assange, go to: https://justice4assange.com/donate.html

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the State Department’s release of 74 additional emails recovered by the FBI in its investigation of former Secretary of State Clinton’s use of a non-state.gov email system. Included in the new documents was an email in which Clinton forwarded classified information to her daughter, Chelsea, at the unsecure email address [email protected]. Before releasing the heavily redacted email to Judicial Watch, the State Department marked it “B1.4(b)” and “B1.4(d),” indicating that it contained “Foreign Government Information’ and “Foreign relations or foreign activities of the US including confidential sources.” The State Department also misleadingly labeled the email with the term “near duplicate.”

No wonder Hillary Clinton deleted this email. Her sharing classified information with her daughter shows criminal disregard for national security.

The State Department has been producing documents in accordance with a September 23, 2016, court order issued by Judge Boasberg, who ordered the Department of State to begin processing at least 1,050 pages of Hillary Clinton emails recovered by the FBI and provide Judicial Watch all non-exempt documents before November 4.  State Department confirmed in September that the FBI had discovered nearly 15,000 new Clinton emails as a result of Judicial Watch’s litigation seeking all of Clinton’s work-related emails (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)).

Hillary Clinton has repeatedly stated that she believes that the 55,000 pages of documents she turned over to the State Department in December 2014 included all of her work-related emails.  In response to a court order in other Judicial Watch litigation, she declared under penalty of perjury that she had “directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or are potentially federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.”  This new email find is also at odds with her official campaign statement suggesting all “work or potentially work-related emails” were provided to the State Department.

A hearing will be held Monday, November 7, 2016, regarding Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking emails sent or received by Clinton in her official capacity during her tenure as Secretary of State. The timeframe for this request is February 2, 2009, to January 31, 2013.

“Hillary Clinton: Wall Street’s Losing Horse? Constitutional Crisis? What’s the End Game?” is discussed;

Who is behind Wikileaks;

FBI Director James Comey responding to a crisis;

WSJ reports Clinton bribery of number two man at the FBI; dissent within ruling powers including the armed forces and intelligence agencies;

Next US presidency will be a dysfunctional one which might lead eventually to a situation of martial law; 

Unfolding political impasse;  rising geopolitical tensions abroad;

The possibility of nuclear WWIII;

Potential suspension of constitutional governance; Hillary Clinton’s extensive criminal record will haunt her. 

The power above the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the US Attorney General, and, above that person, the US President.

That’s whom the FBI actually serves — not the US public.

This is the reason why the FBI is having such internal tensions and dissensions over the investigation of Hillary Clinton: Not only is she the current President’s ardently preferred and designated successor — and overwhelmingly supported also by America’s aristocracy and endorsed by the aristocracy’s press — but the top leadership of the FBI have terms-in-office that (unlike, for example, the term of the US Attorney General) do not end with the installation of the next President; and these people will therefore be serving, quite possibly, the very same person whom they are now ‘investigating’.

This is the reason why James Comey, the FBI’s Director, let Clinton totally off the hook on July 5th, when he declined to present the case to a grand jury: he and the rest of the FBI’s top management violated three basic principles of trying white-collar-crime cases when a prosecutor is serious about wanting to prosecute and obtain a conviction against a person — he (and they) wanted to keep their jobs, not be fighting their boss and their likely future boss.

If America were an authentic democracy, there would be a way for the FBI to serve the public even when the US President doesn’t want it to. According to the only scientific study that has ever been done of the matter, the US federal government is a dictatorship not a democracy. This was reluctantly reported by the researchers, whose own careers are dependent upon the aristocracy which they were finding actually controls that government. They found that the US, at the federal level, is not a democracy but an «oligarchy», by which the researchers were referring to an «economic elite», America’s billionaires and centi-millionaires who control America’s international corporations and the ‘charities’ (such as think tanks) that are dependent upon them — including many that directly affect US politics, such as the think tanks or other way-stations for former US government employees to become hired by private firms.

The authors of the only empirical scientific research-study that has been done of whether the United States is a democracy, or instead a dictatorship, excluded the very term «aristocracy» (or «collective dictatorship» such as an «economic elite» is if that «elite» actually is in control of the given nation’s government) from their article. They did this so as for the meaning not to be clear to the US public. In any country in the modern world where an aristocracy exists, aristocrats nowadays try to hide their power, not (like in former eras) display their power by crowns and other public symbols of ‘the nobility’. The closest the study’s authors came to using that term, «aristocracy», was their only sentence that employed the pejorative term for an aristocracy, «oligarchy». That obscure lone sentence was: «Jeffrey Winters has posited a comparative theory of ‘Oligarchy,’ in which the wealthiest citizens — even in a ‘civil oligarchy’ like the United States — dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth and income protection.11″

Their 11th footnote made clear that they were referring here to the book Oligarchy, by Jeffrey A. Winters, which stated the ‘theory’ that this article had actually just confirmed in the American case. Their article mentioned the book — and the «oligarchy» — only in this one footnote, so that the authors of the article (whose own careers are dependent upon America’s ‘oligarchs’) won’t be able to be accused by oligarchs (or in any way thought by their own financial benefactors — America’s aristocrats) to have called the US an «oligarchy» (a collective dictatorship by the few super-rich and their agents). To apply either term — «aristocracy» or «oligarchy» — to one’s own country, is now viewed as negative, an insult to the country’s controlling elite. Neither scholars nor scholarly publishers wish to insult the people who ultimately are their top funders.

This article was written in the standard unnecessarily obscurantist style of social ‘scientists’ who want to be comprehensible only to their peers and not to the general public. Doing it this way is safer for them, because it makes extremely unlikely that their own benefactors would retaliate, against them or else against the institutions that hire them, by withdrawing their continued financial and promotional support (such as by no longer having them invited onto CNN as an «expert»). (This type of fear prevents theory in the social ‘sciences’ from being strictly based upon the given field’s empirical findings: it’s not authentically scientific. The physical sciences are far less corrupt, far more scientific. The biological sciences are in-between.)

One particular reason why the authors never called the people who control the US government an «aristocracy», is that everyone knows that the Founders of the US were opposed to, and were engaged in overthrowing, the existing aristocracy, which happened to be British, and that they even banned forever in the US the use of aristocratic titles, such as «Lord» or «Sir.» Consequently, within the US, the only term that the aristocrats consider acceptable to refer to aristocrats, is «oligarchs», which always refers only to aristocrats in foreign countries, and so is considered safe by the aristocrats’ writers (including scholars and political pundits) to use.

Everyone knows: in accord with the clear intention of America’s Founders, the US should eliminate from its citizenry any aristocrat (any self-enclosed and legally immune group that holds power over the government), but Americans naturally accept the existence of «oligarchs» in other countries (and «good-riddance to them there»), typically the ones in countries US foreign policy opposes and often overthrows by means of coup or outright military invasion (any form of conquest, such as in 2003 Iraq, or 2011 Libya). It’s fine to refer to other countries’ aristocracies as ‘oligarchies’, because any such foreign aristocracy can therefore be declared to be bad and ‘deserving’ of overthrow.

Thus, any aristocracy that is opposed to America’s aristocracy (especially one that’s opposed to being controlled by the US aristocracy), and which wants to be controlling instead their own independent nation, can acceptably be overthrown by coup (such as Ukraine 2014 was) or invasion (such as Libya 2011 was). Thus, calling a foreign aristocracy an «oligarchy» is supportive of, not opposed to, the US aristocracy — and, so, «oligarchy» is the term the authors used (on that one occasion, and they never used the prohibited term «aristocracy»).

Nonetheless, despite the cultural ban on describing the US as an «aristocracy», the authors were — as obscurely as they were able — proving that the US is an aristocracy, no authentic democracy at all. Or, again, as they said it in their least-obscurantist phrasing of it:

Economic Elite Domination theories do rather well in our analysis, even though our findings probably understate the political influence of elites. Our measure of the preferences of wealthy or elite Americans — though useful, and the best we could generate for a large set of policy cases — is probably less consistent with the relevant preferences than are our measures of the views of ordinary citizens or the alignments of engaged interest groups. Yet we found substantial estimated effects even when using this imperfect measure. The real-world impact of elites upon public policy may be still greater.

‘Greater’ than what? They didn’t say. That’s because what they were saying (as obscurely as possible) is that it’s probably ‘greater’ than is shown in the data that was publicly available to them, and upon which data their clear finding is that the US is an aristocracy, no democracy at all. Or, as they also put it: “Economic Elite Domination theories do rather well in our analysis.» But, actually, «Economic Elite Domination theories» (virtually all of which come down to positing an aristocracy that consists of the billionaires — and centi-millionaires — and their corporations, and their think tanks, and their lobbyists, etc.) did phenomenally well, in their findings, not just ‘rather well’ — they simply can’t safely say this. Saying it is samizdat, in the US dictatorship.

They were allowed to prove it, but not to say it. So, that’s what they did. They didn’t want to «upset the applecart» from which they themselves are feeding.

The simplest (but no less accurate) way of stating their finding is: the US, at least during the period the researchers probed, which was 1981-2002, was an aristocracy, no democracy at all. The US, in other words, was (even prior to the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which is making the aristocracy even more concentrated among even fewer people) a country of men (and women — that’s to say, of individuals) not of laws; it’s a dictatorship, in short; it is not a country «of laws, not of men». America’s Founders have finally lost. The country has been taken over by an aristocracy.

And one of those «men» now, is actually Hillary Clinton, even though she is no longer officially holding governmental power. They know she soon might be. That’s why, the FBI cannot really, and seriously, investigate her.

It’s not for legal reasons at all. It’s because of whom she is. In fact, purely on the basis of US laws, she clearly ought to be in prison. Any honest lawyer, inside or outside the FBI, has long known this, because the actual case against her is ‘slam-dunk’, even though the FBI has refused to investigate it and has limited its ‘investigation’ only to peripheral ‘national security’ issues. (The #2 person at FBI, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, right below Director James Comey, specified this limitation to his ‘investigators’. They simply weren’t allowed to investigate her, except on the hardest-to-prove crimes that she probably but not definitely did also do. The slam-dunks were just off-limits to them. McCabe’s wife’s political campaign had received $675,000 from the PAC of Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons, who chaired Hillary’s 2008 Presidential campaign. And, even on the harder-to-prove matters, which FBI Director Comey declined on July 5th to pursue, they stood a strong chance of winning, if only Comey hadn’t prevented their moving forward to try — but those issues are tangential to the basic case against her, anyway.)

There are at least six federal criminal laws which accurately and unquestionably describe even what Ms. Clinton has now publicly admitted having done by her privatized email system, and intent isn’t even mentioned in most of them nor necessary in order for her to be convicted — the actions themselves convict her, and the only relevance that intent might have, regarding any of these laws, would be in determining how long her prison sentence would be.

I have already presented the texts of these six laws (and you can see the sentences for each one, right there), and any reader can easily recognize that each one of them describes, unambiguously without any doubt, what she now admits having done. Most of these crimes don’t require any intent in order to convict (and the ones that do require intent are only «knowingly … conceals», or else «with the intent to impair the object’s … use in an official proceeding», both of which «intents» would be easy to prove on the basis of what has already been made public — but others of these laws don’t require even that); and none of them requires any classified information to have been involved, at all. It’s just not an issue in these laws. Thus, conviction under them is far easier. If a prosecutor is really seeking to convict someone, he’ll be aiming to get indictments on the easiest-to-prove charges, first. That also presents for the prosecutor the strongest position in the event of an eventual plea-bargain. As Alan Dershowitz said, commenting on one famous prosecution: «They also wanted a slam-dunk case. They wanted the strongest possible case.» Comey simply didn’t; he wanted the hardest-to-convict case. His presentation was a brazen hoax. That’s all.

That’s the real scandal, and nobody (other than I) has been writing about it as what it is — a hoax. But what it shows is that maybe the only way that Clinton will be able to avoid going to prison is by her going to the White House. Either she gets a term in the White House, or else she gets a (much longer) term in prison — or else our government is so thoroughly corrupt that she remains free as a private citizen and still above the law, even though not serving as a federal official.

Even if she is convicted only on these six slam-dunk statutes (and on none other, including not on the ones that Comey was referring to when he said on July 5th that, «Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case»), she could be sentenced to a maximum of 73 years in prison (73 = 5 + 5 + 20 + 20 + 3 + 10 + 10). Adding on others she might also have committed (such as the ones that Comey was referring to, all of which pertain only to the handling of classified information), would mean that her term in prison might be lengthier still, but what’s important in the email case isn’t that; it’s to convict her on, essentially, theft and/or destruction of US government documents by means of transferring them into her private email and/or smashing hard drives. No one, not even a US federal official, can legally do that, and those six laws are specifically against it.

Motive is important in Ms. Clinton’s email case, because motive tells us why she was trying to hide from historians and from the public her operations as the US Secretary of State: was it because she didn’t want them to know that she was selling to the Sauds and her other friends the US State Department’s policies in return for their million-dollar-plus donations to the Clinton Foundation, and maybe even selling to them (and/or their cronies) US government contracts, or why? However, those are questions regarding other crimes that she might have been perpetrating while in public office, not the crimes of her privatized email operation itself; and those other crimes (whatever they might have been) would have been explored only after an indictment on the slam-dunks, and for further possible prosecutions, if President Obama’s people were serious about investigating her. They weren’t. Clearly, this is selective ‘justice’. That’s the type of ‘justice’ an aristocracy imposes.

Why, then, did Comey finally switch to re-open the Clinton case?

It wasn’t merely the discovery of some of her previously unknown emails on the computer of Anthony Wiener, husband to Hillary’s closest aide Huma Abedin. As Politico on October 28th reported, «Another former Justice official said Comey’s letter [announcing the re-opening of Hillary’s case] could be part of an effort on his part to quiet internal FBI critics who viewed him as burying the Clinton probe for political reasons. ‘He’s come under a lot of criticism from his own people for how he’s handled this. He’s trying to gain back some of their respect,’ former Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said. ‘His ability to do what he does largely depends on the respect within his own ranks.’»

Joachim Hagopian at Global Research headlined on October 30th, «The Real Reasons Why FBI Director James Comey Reopened the Hillary Email Investigation», and reported:

Former federal attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova spelled it all out in a WMAL radio interview last Friday just hours after the news was released that Comey had sent a letter informing Congress that the case is being reopened. DiGenova said that with an open revolt brewing inside the FBI, Comey was forced to go public on Friday with reopening the investigation. … Finally, diGenova dropped one more bombshell in Friday’s interview. An inside source has revealed to him that the laptops belonging to key Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, both wrongly granted immunity, were not destroyed after all as previously reported, but have been secretly kept intact by investigating FBI agents refusing to destroy incriminating evidence as part of the in-house whitewash.

In other words: Comey was between a rock (the resignation-letters piling up on his desk from subordinates who felt that no person should be above the law) and a hard place (his ability to stay on at the FBI and not have a scandal against himself bleed out to the public from down below). The US wasn’t yet that kind of dictatorship — one which could withstand such a public disclosure. In order for it to become one, the aristocracy’s control would have needed to be even stronger than it yet is.

Also on the 30th, Ed Klein in Britain’s Daily Mail bannered:

EXCLUSIVE: Resignation letters piling up from disaffected FBI agents, his wife urging him to admit he was wrong: Why Director Comey jumped at the chance to reopen Hillary investigation

James Comey revived the investigation of Clinton’s email server as he could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents, sources say

The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim [Comey] announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary

He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents.

So, does this now mean that, finally, the FBI will bring before a grand jury the evidence that Hillary Clinton blatantly violated those six federal criminal laws against stealing and/or trying to destroy federal documents?

There has never — at least since 1981 — been so severe a test of the extent to which this nation is (as those researches found it to have unquestionably been between 1981 and 2002) an «oligarchy». However, a serious criminal prosecution of Ms. Clinton would potentially start an unwinding of this dictatorship.

The present writer will make no prediction. However, obviously, the results of the election on November 8th will certainly have an enormous impact upon the outcome. Since I think that anyone but a complete fool can recognize this much, I’m confident enough to assert it — a conditional about the future.

This is an unabridged English version of an interview with author Arnold August with Punto Final (Chile) in Spanish.  

Let us talk about Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion (the most important aspects and/or conclusions of the book, and how did the idea emerge to write it, etc.).

THE GENESIS OF THE BOOK

The idea for this book arose from my previous experience writing Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections (1999), which concentrated on the electoral process in Cuba. The goal at the time was to respond to the disinformation that there are no elections on the island. In order to write the text, I carried out my research on the spot. I attended every step of the electoral process, from the municipalities to the national Parliament. For the most part of this more than one-and-a-half-year investigation, I lived in the family home of a municipal delegate to the People’s Power. Being embedded in this way vastly deepened my approach to understanding the process from within and, along with my photos, allowed me to provide readers with a lively narrative. This work in Havana and in a rural area took place from September 1997 to February 1998. I was only one of two non-Cubans to have had access to the entire electoral process. This unforgettable professional experience resulted in the first book, in 1999. It was published in English and subsequently very well received through my conferences in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. You can imagine that, especially in the U.S., it raised many eyebrows. In that country, the preconceived view that there are simply no elections in Cuba is very ingrained. Nonetheless, in general, the book developed a following while also providing me with crucial input to further evaluate my analysis. Today, people in the U.S. still comment to me about that publication. However, despite the positive reception, I did notice that the U.S.-centric notion of democracy and elections lingers on, even with some people on the left.

Thus, the idea to write another book began to emerge. In the following years, I further studied democracy and elections in other countries (especially in the U.S. and Venezuela). This was interrupted by the need to study what I call “democracy in motion from the bottom up” in the U.S. (the Occupy movement), the Egyptian Revolution against the U.S.-backed military regime and the Indignados (outraged) in Spain against the two-party system domination. With these unexpected, but welcomed, new events (despite their drawbacks and weaknesses) and with input from readers in the U.S. on the first book, I began to orient myself toward a new approach. It would include an analysis of democracy as a concept, taking into account the above-mentioned experiences, evaluated by critically analyzing U.S.-centrism, especially as it pertains to democracy. The goal was to strongly put forward the view that the U.S. approach to “democracy” is not the only one.

I am certain that Punto Final readers can appreciate a profound critique of U.S.-centric notions on democracy because of the bitter 1973 experience in Chile and other bloody U.S. interventions in the region in the name of, among other pretexts, “democracy.” Furthermore, there was a need to analyze in detail the real inner workings of elections and “democracy” in the U.S. based on an approach that is unique and therefore necessary. To deepen the concept, democracy is explored with a review of the participatory democracy experiences in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. In addition, there was a need for the Cuban approach to be illuminated through a more critical approach, in contrast to the previous book, so as not to idealize the Cuban political system. I also decided to investigate the actual functioning of the state in Cuba at the municipal and parliamentary levels after the elections, something that I did not do in the previous book.

To conclude my response to your question as to how the idea came about to write my latest book, I consider the publication to be a culmination of my active struggle and political thinking since my university days in Montreal in the 1960s. This involved a loathing of U.S. imperialism while fully supporting the peoples of the Third World against colonialism and imperialism. Thus, the plan for the book was emerging as my virtual political testament. It was published in English in 2013 and in Spanish in 2015.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: NEITHER THE MODEL NOR A “BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY”

“Not a bourgeois democracy?” readers may ask – and rightly so. Of course, it is a “bourgeois democracy”; however, the first important aspect of my book is the analysis of how democracy and elections in Cuba’s neighbour, the U.S., really works. Thus, I am not in favour of the popular yet superficial conception that dismisses American “democracy” as bourgeois and the election campaigns as being a farce or a show. It is the easy way out. This approach avoids scientifically and painstakingly analyzing the inner workings of the system. How the system really operates from the point of view of the grass roots, rather than the stifling straitjacketed vision delimited by the spectacular rivalry of two parties, is bypassed. As will be discussed below, some commentators who relieve their conscience by accusing the U.S. of being a “bourgeois democracy” and a “show” have ended up supporting Clinton against Trump while remaining, consciously or not, oblivious to what is actually happening at the base in the U.S.

My approach is based on an original case study of the Obama phenomenon as a natural outgrowth of the American political system since the seventeenth century. How can one analyze the political process? The role of money in U.S. politics is well known to the extent that this phenomenon has taken its place in the American international public domain. It is no secret to anyone. The same applies to the notorious corruption in the political system and the cut-throat unprincipled competition between the two main parties. To concentrate on these features is to fall victim to the U.S.’s very own concept of their process. Harping on the issues presents no real challenge to the status quo. The money, corruption and competition are not the main characteristics. Thus, to be attracted to these attributes is to fall into the trap of the U.S.-centric view of their elections as its concept remains within the box delimited by the U.S. establishment. In contrast, I examine the process from the point of view of the base, rather than from the top. The only real issue at this time is the dead end of the “lesser of two evils” option or, rather, the non-option of having to choose one of two evils.

CONCLUSION: POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM AND CO-OPTATION

The first aspect of the book that I want to highlight, “American democracy,” one conclusion reached through my Obama case study is that all presidential elections, including the current one, are based on two features.

First, there is the insatiable individual political opportunism of a presidential hopeful. Second, as a precondition to being nominated and eventually elected, this person must firmly have demonstrated the capacity to co-opt sections of the electorate. This talent, linked to being endowed with personal characteristics (e.g., being black or a woman) must be sufficiently evident to the ruling circles not only to win enough votes, but to also effectively co-opt after the elections. The overall goal of the establishment is to avoid a revolt against the system by the people, first and foremost by African-Americans, who are traditionally the most left-wing and revolutionary force in that country. During the course of the electoral campaign, based supposedly on the capitalist motto of the “invisible hand of the free market” as applied to politics, at a certain moment the majority of the U.S. ruling class makes their choice. Following this, the “invisible fist” interferes in the “invisible hand of the free market” by taking action to assure the victory of their preferred candidate. In the case of Obama, at the point when Obama fully reassured the ruling circles (as fully documented in my book) that he was their man, immense funds flowed into the Obama coffers from the military, health insurance corporations and pharmaceutical companies, not to mention Wall Street. This support was fully backed by the majority of the main printed news media (in reality, part of that same corporate elite) as well as university student publications endorsing Obama.

In the 2006–08 period, the U.S. ruling circles were facing a major credibility gap domestically in the face of African-American resentment and anger as well as internationally in the wake of the Bush era. In terms of foreign affairs, Latin America’s growing left-wing movement, fomented by the Bolivarian Revolution, was of particular concern to important political figures who supported Obama in the 2006–08 period. The concern about all of the domestic and international credibility gaps indicated that Obama came in handy. He was not an innocent bystander, since he consciously flashed the right signals to the ruling elite. The decision to support Obama was surely the correct decision carried out by the ruling circle, as one can easily imagine how woeful the situation would have been for U.S. interests if John McCain/Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan would have won.

CONCLUSION: REJECTION OF THE “LESSER OF TWO EVILS” IS ALWAYS THE MAIN ISSUE

This brings us to the second conclusion in this section. The corporate media and their two main parties use the election campaign to promote the two-party system as the only choice. This goal is sacred, since its objective is to suffocate any burgeoning struggle for a left-wing progressive alternative. As a corollary, the U.S. implicitly or explicitly promotes “lesser evilism,” as it is very well known in U.S. progressive circles. The logic is that even if electors hate both parties and their respective candidates, they should vote for the “lesser evil.” As I was writing my book, I came across an analysis by Black Agenda Report, a website based in the U.S. They wrote that Obama is not the “lesser of two evils,” but the more effective of two evils in administrating the program of the U.S. ruling circles.

Let us take foreign policy to elaborate how “lesser evilism” operates. In the text, I provide the example of Honduras: Obama, the new face of imperialism, successfully carried out the coup d’état in 2009 soon after being elected for his first term in 2008. He was directly involved with Hillary Clinton in executing it, profiting from the illusion being propagated about a new U.S. diplomatic foreign policy combined with Obama deftly using verbal subterfuge as no McCain/Palin team in the White House could have done. The Honduran resistance was, of course, in a very difficult position from the beginning. However, the White House bought valuable time for itself in the international arena. It drew out the suspense by falsely claiming that Washington opposed the coup. Some governments in Latin America were also infected by illusions about Obama, thus depriving the heroic Honduran resistance with the regional support it so badly needed. Then came the Paraguay parliamentary coup. The book also shows the hand of Obama immediately after the April 14, 2013 Venezuelan Presidential elections in order to destabilize the country. Obama was interfering in Venezuela right up to 2015, when the Spanish edition of the book was published. There was resistance in the region, but it perhaps would have been far stronger if it had not been contained to a certain extent by U.S. imperialism’s new Obama approach.

DOMESTIC SCENE: CO-OPTING AND PACIFYING AFRICAN-AMERICANS

The most important of Obama’s legacies has been his relative capacity to co-opt some sympathy from African-Americans, who were feeling assured with a black person in the White House. As documented in my publication, his overture to blacks was skilfully written into both of his books (2004 and 2006) and two important 2012 campaign speeches dedicated to the race issue. While feigning empathy for blacks, he also sent the appropriate buzzwords to assure the ruling elite what they wanted to hear: the U.S. is a “post-racial society,” that there is not a white America, a black America or a Latino America, but the United States of America. This startling illusion could only be uttered by the first African-American president as “proof” that the American Dream is more alive than ever. It is as if to say, “Look at me, I made it!” – conveniently overlooking the fact that his relatively privileged upbringing leaves the vast majority of African-Americans in the dust, to deal with poverty, discrimination and the racist violent state. Obama jumped into the White House on the trampoline of unbridled individual opportunism. His image, as documented in my book, was carefully groomed by a white Chicago political consultant who specialized in getting blacks elected to positions with already five victories to his credit at the time. Obama sat on the hairdresser’s chair gleefully allowing the master to shape and camouflage his image to satisfy the needs of the ruling circles. This came in handy, for example, at the very beginning of the second Obama mandate in 2012, when young Trayvon Martin was assassinated by an armed vigilante in Florida. Obama went on TV to openly use the race card to try and co-opt the outrage among blacks and pacify them and their many allies.

This approach was combined with the subtle pursuit of impunity. For example, since the publication of the book, Obama’s Department of Justice cleared the killer of Trayvon Martin and let him free. This de facto institutionalized impunity gave the green light to more police killings, as the world is aware. Obama is the worst phenomenon to ever happen to African-Americans. For example, he and Hillary Clinton used the outrage of black mothers whose sons or daughter were killed by police to speak at the July democratic convention in support of Obama’s heir Hillary Clinton rather than supporting the Black Lives Matter in the streets in front of the convention venue. One of the mothers was Trayvon Martin’s. We can thus ask the question: would this have happened if the president were a Republican? No. This seemingly paradoxical situation goes to the very heart of the dead-end nature of “lesser evilism.”

The U.S. oligarchy repeats the refrain of U.S. exceptionalism. Well, I agree with them on one aspect only: the U.S. is the only country in the West (i.e., North America and Europe) that is based today on a racist violent state as a vestige of slavery. Thus, the U.S. is indeed an exception in this sense. No analyst or political force in the U.S., or internationally, can ignore this historical fact. The Obama legacy of co-opting and pacifying African-Americans, combined with impunity to police violence, is now carrying on into the Clinton campaign. She will win the presidency for one of the same reasons that catapulted Obama into power: Obama was called upon by the majority in the ruling circles to co-opt – or at least neutralize – African-Americans.

Therefore, the most important repercussion of “lesser evilism” consists of feverishly delaying forever the struggle at the base by boxing people into the dead-end of voting for one of the lesser of two evils. This perpetual postponement thus blinds the people to the need for revolutionary struggle with the goal of people’s power combined with voting for an alternative on the left of the two-party system.

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN MUCH OF THE LATIN AMERICAN PRESS?

To answer this question, allow me to fast-forward to the current situation in the presidential election campaign, as I feel that readers should be aware of one regrettable phenomenon. As I work on this interview, I observe that in the U.S. there is very wide opposition from the left-wing and progressives. I am referring to the Green Party ticket, whichhas managed to take off after Bernie Sanders supported Clinton’s Democratic presidential nomination. The ticket is now composed of presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka for Vice President. The latter is a regular contributor to Black Agenda Report, mentioned above, as well as to Counter Punch, one of the most important alternative websites in the U.S. that stands against the two-party system. As recently as August 18, 2016, Baraka said in an interview that he aims to continue the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X, two of the most important historic revolutionaries among progressive Afro-Americans.

This growing coalition also includes the Black Lives Matter movement, which some commentators in the U.S. say is becoming increasingly socialist. The flow can be observed on the streets via the many thousands of Twitter accounts, hundreds of serious alternative websites in turn supported by thousands of journalists, and self-financed alternative TV and radio programs.

The argument that voting for the Green Party ticket is futile because it cannot win in 2016 does not take into the account the current movement at the base and its future. Once the 2016 elections are over, will the grass-roots motion continue in the streets to put forward its demands, expose the two-party system for what it is and elevate the slogan of People’s Power to a prominent position? Will this groundswell and the further imploding of the two-party system open the path for the left-wing alternative possible gaining more headway? These and other questions should be available to all peoples who are interested in what is unfolding in the U.S.

Unfortunately, in much of the progressive or left-wing press in Latin America and the Caribbean, there are virtually no reports or analysis from this point of view of progressive opposition at the grass roots to the lesser of two evils. It seems that the few exceptions consist of revolutionary blogs, such as in Cuba. I am familiar with these blogs on the island; however, there are surely other progressive blogs in other Latin American countries. Thus, an important part of the mainstream progressive press deals with the situation within the confines of the two competing parties. They more often than not provide a slightly modified version of the U.S. establishment’s views but rendered in Spanish or Portuguese. In this context, the balance is often tipped in favour of Clinton. However, this optic is also to the detriment of the opposition from the left and progressive forces in the U.S. I am in no way suggesting that the foreign press take a stand on the U.S. elections. However, the way the trend is presently developing is de facto taking a stand in favour of the two-party system status quo. Morphing into the U.S. narrative is detrimental to the opposition that is developing at this time as never before. Yet, this censorship is keeping much of the Latin American population in the dark.

The alternative reporting and analysis in the U.S. is almost exclusively in English, but this is no excuse. In contrast, in my case and that of others, in order to investigate the Cuban political system, I do so in Spanish, in Cuba at both the official local and national levels and especially at the grass-roots level. For those Latin American journalists who cannot go to the U.S., this is no reason for not capturing what is really happening in the U.S. beyond the superficial reports and analyses that censor opposition to the two-party system. I personally do not travel to the U.S. very often either, but the many thousands of daily tweets and hundreds of stories in the alternative media and TV at the base tell the whole story to anyone who masters the English language. There have been so many decades of opposing U.S. imperialism in the south. Encouragingly, for the first time in decades, there is presently an awakening in the U.S. itself against the interventionist American Eagle that coincides with the electoral process. While this just and burgeoning antithesis to U.S. official domestic and foreign policy is not as radical as some (myself included) might hope for, it is opposed to the deadly U.S. imperialist war machine, the absolute rule of the oligarchy, the racist state violence, Trans-Pacific Partnership (or TPP, whose opposition to which Hillary Clinton plays lip service while everyone knows that she will push it through) and the violation of the Palestinian people’s human rights – all of which both Clinton and Trump are part.

Many other examples highlight the contradiction between the status quo parties and the opposition. Allow me to provide you with one that could not be more vivid for the peoples south of the Rio Bravo. As all readers are aware, Obama and Hillary Clinton were responsible for the coup d’état in Honduras, the resulting regime and thus the assassination of activist Berta Cáceres. Berta was in the streets of Philadelphia in July in the company of the progressive opposition protesting the Democratic convention. In stark contrast, Obama, Clinton and their seemingly endless line of military spokespeople and sycophants were busy further consolidating the Democratic party of war and foreign interference. This was carried out through an almost unprecedented four-day spectacle, beating the war drums for stepped-up militarization, aggression, wars and international interference. This dangerous direction serves to pave the way for increased interference in Latin America. All this was staged live in almost 24 hours of TV coverage during four days on CNN to the frightening tune of American chauvinism, which paled in comparison to the Trump Republican convention the previous week. It seems to me that any effective progressive contention of this two-party oligarchy deserves the full attention of the left-wing media in the south.

*Arnold August, a Canadian journalist and lecturer, is the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections and, more recently, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion. Cuba’s neighbours under consideration are, on the one hand the U.S. and on the other hand, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Arnold can be followed on Twitter @Arnold_August and FaceBook

At first sight, compassion appears to loom large in ‘mainstream’ politics and media. When the American and British governments target countries like Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, ‘compassion’ is always at or near the top of the agenda.

Time and again, the cry from the political system is: ‘We Must Do Something!’ ‘We’ must save Afghan women from the ‘Medieval’ Taliban. ‘We’ must save Kuwaiti new-borns flung from their incubators by Iraqi stormtroopers. ‘We’ must save Iraqi civilians from Saddam’s shredding machines. ‘We’ must save civilians in Kosovo from Milosevic’s ‘final solution’.

As for the suffering civilians of Aleppo in Syria, hard-right MPs like Andrew Mitchell demand, not merely that ‘we’ save them, not merely that ‘we’ engage in war to save them, but that ‘we’ must confront Russia, shoot down their planes if necessary, and risk actual thermonuclear war – complete self-destruction – to save them:

‘If that means confronting Russian air power defensively, on behalf of the innocent people on the ground who we are trying to protect, then we should do that.’

State-corporate propaganda is full of ‘shoulds’, all rooted in ‘our’ alleged ‘responsibility to protect’. Why ‘us’? Why not Sweden or Iceland? Because ‘we’ care. ‘We’ just care more.

A key task of the corporate media is to pretend this is something more than a charade. The truth is hinted at in BBC political programmes that open with jovial, bombastic, comical music, as if introducing some kind of music hall farce. The cast is currently led by foreign secretary Boris Johnson, a P.G. Wodehouse character reimagined by Stephen King. After chuckling about how ‘There is no other country that comes close to [Britain’s] record of beligerence’ in invading or conquering 178 out of 200 countries existing today, Johnson opined:

‘As our American friends instinctively understand, it is the existence of strong and well-resourced British Armed Forces that gives this country the ability to express and affirm our values overseas: of freedom, democracy, tolerance, pluralism.’

As Johnson doubtless understands, this was a near-exact reversal of the truth. He noted in 2014 of the 2003 Iraq invasion:

‘It looks to me as though the Americans were motivated by a general strategic desire to control one of the biggest oil exporters in the world…’

If politicians are clearly bluffers, corporate journalists are selected because they powerfully echo and enhance the alleged need for compassionate ‘intervention’. The likes of David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, John Rentoul, Jonathan Freedland and Oliver Kamm earn their salaries by appearing to tear their hair out in outrage at the crimes of official enemies and at the ‘useful idiocy’ of the perennial, naysaying ‘leftists’. Aaronovitch of The Times has supported just about every opportunity to wage war, whether under Labour or the Tories, for decades. In March 1999, in an article titled, ‘It’s because we’re rich that we must impose peace for others,’ Aaronovitch commented:

‘Given a choice, do we really think that the suffering civilians of Sierra Leone would object to a military presence by the British?’ (Aaronovitch, The Independent, March 25, 1999)

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States, he wrote of Afghanistan:

‘For a fair-minded progressive the call should not be Stop the War. That slogan is now irrelevant and harmful. The requirement is surely to win the peace…

‘So on Sunday, instead of listening to the same old tired stuff about cowboys with rockets and selective horror stories from Mazar; instead of marching along with mouth open and ears closed (however comforting that can be); instead of indulging yourself in a cosmic whinge, why not do something that might help the people of Afghanistan?’ (Aaronovitch, ‘Stop trying to stop the war, Start trying to win the peace,’ The Independent, November 16, 2001)

The message is always the same: we understand you’re sincere, but sometimes you have to drop your reflexive ‘anti-Americanism’, drop your blinkered adherence to ‘principled opposition’ and live in the real world. You can’t just sit on your hands, you can’t just righteously preach – you have to act!

This is the shtick of the corporate warmonger and it is repeated over and over again. It appears to be the key function that determines whether a commentator is granted job-for-life privileges at newspapers like the Guardian, The Times and Telegraph.

But the point is that compassion – the kind rooted in an understanding that all suffering is equal, the kind that feels even more responsibility for suffering caused by our own government – is not partial, it does not defer to power. It doesn’t fall silent when ‘we’ are committing crimes. Quite the reverse.

The order also applies to a Trump adviser who has organized poll-watching activities.

In a surprise ruling, a US district judge in Ohio issued a restraining order against Donald Trump’s campaign to prevent anyone working on the campaign from harassing and intimidating voters at the polls on Tuesday.

The order came after a two-hour hearing in which the judge pressed Trump’s lawyer to justify the candidate’s inflammatory rhetoric about voter fraud. It also applies to close Trump adviser Roger Stone, who has organized poll-watching activities, and the “officers, agents, servants, and employees” of Trump and Stone.

Voter fraud has been a popular theme among Republicans this year, from Trump to state Republican leaders who cite fraud as a reason to make it more difficult to vote. But as Friday’s ruling shows, it’s a lot easier to warn about fraud on the campaign trail than in front of a judge.

The restraining order is the result of a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Democratic Party against Trump, Stone, and the Ohio Republican Party. The suit asked the court to declare it illegal to intimidate voters at the polls. Similar suits have been filed in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan. The Ohio complaintlaid out a long history of remarks by Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, encouraging supporters to watch the polls. (For example, Trump told a crowd in Akron, Ohio, “And when I say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about right? You know what I’m talking about.”) The order also covers Stone, after the complaint detailed efforts by his group, Stop the Steal, to recruit poll watchers and conduct exit polls on Election Day, among other activities. The complaint cited provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 that prohibit voter intimidation.

Here’s the order:

Civil rights lawyer Subodh Chandra was in the courtroom and tweeted throughout the hearing. Here’s what he observed:

 A few weeks ago, the US government agreed to give Israel $38 billion dollars, the largest military funding package the U.S. has given any nation.  This $38 billion in military and other type of Aid will be used to imprison the Palestinians of Gaza, and continue Israel’s military occupation, and imposition of an apartheid state, upon the Palestinian people.

This money will be used in the training fields of Israeli military, which are in Gaza, where military experiments are done, using US military weaponry, by the Israeli Occupation Forces.  The U.S. military and government is complicit in the crimes against the people of Gaza and the Palestinian occupied territory by the use of military hardware given by USA and by the training that Israelis give to Americans and USA gives to Israel.  It is also estimated that some 70% of European humanitarian aid to Palestine ends up in Israeli pockets.

Gaza continues to suffer from the continuing Israeli blockade, naval and land, and this 25-mile-long tiny strip, 5 miles wide, with l.9 million people, living in it, is a brutal blockade and Israel controls everything including electricity, food, etc.

Indeed, everything that comes into Gaza comes through Israeli hands.  Gaza’s only airport was completely destroyed in 2002 by Israeli jets and ground forces.  Egypt continues to be a part of this blockade as they have blocked Gaza’s southern border; and Egypt continues to receive USA military funding.  Medical authorities have reported that the time for operations in Gaza now goes up to 2025 as so many are awaiting health care, and the increasing issues around food, water, sewage, electricity, all of these mounting problems have led the U.N. to declare in their latest Report, that by the year 2020 Gaza will be uninhabitable.  What hope is there for the Palestinians of Gaza, the vast majority of whom are young people?

In order to give hope to the people of Gaza by showing solidarity and support the Women’s Boat to Gaza sailed in September 2016. Also we sailed in order to challenge this illegal and immoral blockade and occupation of Palestine by Israel, and draw international attention to the fact that under Geneva Conventions it is illegal to punish civilians, which is what Israeli government policies continues to do.

The Women’s Boat to Gaza set sail from the Spanish Port city of Barcelona (Barcelona is twinned with Gaza) in mid- September 2016.  The three legs of the trip were 1715 miles from Barcelona to Ajaccio, Corsica, France and then down to Messina in Sicily, Italy.  It was hoped to have two boats but when one developed engine trouble in Barcelona, the other 50’ sailing boat, Zaytouna-Oliva, continued alone.  At all Ports the women were greeted and hosted by mayors, officials, and supporters of the Free Palestine Movement.   Over 40 women from around the world flew to Messina in hopes of being able to sail to Gaza.

I joined the boat in Messina, and was grateful to be chosen as one of the 13 women from thirteen countries, being finally chosen to sail to Gaza.   It was sad for those of us sailing to leave behind so many wonderful women due to not enough boats to sail, but it is hoped the Palestinian Coalition will be able to get more sailings to accommodate those wishing to go on a future occasion.   The 13 chosen participants included Ann Wright, (boat leader) the captain and two crew, two Al Jazeera journalists, and women from USA, Ireland, Russia, UK, Spain, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden/Chile, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, and Algeria.

The third leg of the journey from Messina to Gaza was almost 1000 miles and a nine-day journey.  On 29^th September 2016, we set sail from Messina, Sicily, after a wonderful reception from the mayor, the Muslim community, and many Palestinian friends in Messina.

The first few days sailing the weather was rough and many of us were seasick, but several days into the journey we had got our sea-legs and busied ourselves helping with the tasks to be done such as cooking, reporting, night watches with the crew, etc.  We shared our stories and held nonviolence training.   It was a wonderful experience getting to know the women whose courage was inspiring. Their love for the Palestinian people and their freedom was very deep.  Unfortunately, some 400 miles from Messina, with some 600 miles to go, we had problems with the boats rigging.  An appeal to friends in Crete resulted in a boatful of people coming out to meet us, bringing many gifts of food, and four men to fix the rigging!  This was for me one of the most moving experiences of the journey, and it proved yet again, the magnificence of the human spirit. Around 20 men and women answered our call for help and came to our aid, and all for the people of Gaza.  After the men fixed our boat rigging, we passed greetings to our rescuers from Crete and sailed in a happy and hope filled mood towards Gaza.

On Wednesday 5^th October, we were contacted by the Israeli navy by phone.  A few hours earlier all communications via our own phones were cut off.  The Israeli navy communicator told Captain Madeleine that we were nearing the 20-mile military Israeli security zone and were breaking Israeli law.  They said if we did not turn back or agree to be escorted to Ashdod, they would confiscate our boat and take us to Israel.

However, we kept sailing towards Gaza.   We saw several Navy military ships on the horizon.  At 6 p.m., a Zodiac boat came alongside our boat.  There were 30 Israeli sailors including Israeli women sailors who were the first to come on board our boat.  They were not in combat gear.  They wore baseball caps, and long sleeved jerseys.  In 2010,   I had been on the Rachel Corrie Irish/Malaysian boat, which was part of the Freedom Flotilla and when we were boarded by Israeli sailors, they were in combat gear, with rifles, and sniffer dogs, and we were handcuffed and forcibly taken to Israel.  I was surprised when this different approach was used to confiscate our boat ,the Zaytouna.  In 2010, on the Mavi Marmara, the Israelis murdered nine people, and subsequently a 10th person died as 50 people were wounded.  Therefore, the treatment of our women’s boat to Gaza participants was very different from what happened on previous ones where I had travelled.

On the Zaytouna, when the Israeli navy sailors confiscated our boat, took us under protest against our will to Israel, arrested, held us for several days without contact with our families, and deported us for ten years, it was all completely illegal under international law. However, it is sad to report that no governments or international bodies have taken up our case for being hijacked, and again the Israeli government has been allowed to break international laws.

All the women were deeply saddened as we knew many people in Gaza were preparing for our visit, and yet again Israel was denying our entry into Gaza. So as we watched the coastline of Gaza in complete darkness and then the coastline of Israel fully lit up against the night sky, we were again witnessing the injustice and unfairness of the Israeli policies against the Palestinians.  With this experience, many of us committed in our hearts to continue our support for the Palestinian people’s ongoing work to break the blockade and end the occupation. We also saw just off the coast of Gaza two huge gas rigs fully lit up and whose gas is piped to Israel. Yet Gaza has only a few hours of light, as Israeli bombings have destroyed most of its electricity and sewage infrastructures.

When we reached Ashdod, Israel, after six hours sailing, we were processed by Israeli security and searched, taken to Prison and released two days later.   All the women on board the Zaytouna, now have a ten-year deportation order. As this is my 4^th time being given a 10-year deportation order, it will be 40 years before I can return to Israel or get into Palestine.  This thought reminds me that there are over 7 million Palestinian people who cannot return to their country, and this is why it is so important to campaign for the right to return for the Palestinian people.

I would like to thank the Freedom Flotilla Coalition who gave us the opportunity to participate on the journey to Gaza.  Their work of joining in solidarity with the people of Gaza is so important and I thank them for all they do.

To the Palestinian people of Gaza, please keep your hopes high and believe that freedom and peace will come. Thank you for your perseverance and ongoing inspiration to us all.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.

The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) advanced along the Aleppo-Hama highway and seized the two hills – Tell Bazam and Tell Masin – north of the recently liberated town of Souran. S

trategically, this offensive may allow the army and the NDF to flank the militant-controlled areas with the center in Latamanah.

This strategy could lead to a success if the government forces are able to advance further to the north and to take control of Morek.

The government forces continued military operations in Western Ghouta, targeting Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian al-Qaeda branch) and its allies in the town of Khan al-Sheih. Earlier this week, the government forces made an attempt to make an agreement with the militants to allow them to withdraw from the city to the province of Idlib. However, this idea resulted in a failure and led to further escalation in the area. Yesterday, the army and the NDF seized a key farms northeast of Khan al-Sheih and deployed in a striking distance from the militant stronghold.

The army’s Tiger Forces, the Desert Hawks Brigade and Hezbollah successfully repelled a fiercest attack by the al-Nusra-led militant alliance, Jaish al-Fatah, in western Aleppo on November 3. Both sides suffered some casualties and Jaish al-Fatah used at least 2 car bombs in an attepmt to break the government forces’ defenses. Pro-militant sources report that the ‘opposition’ has destroyed some 4 units of military equipment belonging to the army. At least 1 infantry fighting vehicle and 1 battle tank belonging to Jaish al-Fatah weredestroyed. On November 4, the humanitarian took place in the city. However, firefights are ongoing.

The ISIS-linked media outlet Amaq released a footage of an explosion of Russian Mi-35 multi-role combat helicopter near the village of Huwaysis, northwest of Palmyra. the Mi-35 was delivering a humanitarian aid in the area when it was downed because of a technical failure. ISIS militants targeted the landing site with an anti-tank guided missile. The incident took place on November 3. The Mi-35’s crew (2 men) survived the incident and returned safely to the Russian Khmeimim Airbase in the province of Latakia.

Russia’s state-of-the-art frigate Admiral Grigorovich, armed with Caliber missiles, set off to the Mediterranean Sea from the port of Sevastopol on November 3. The frigate will join the Russian naval task force off the coast of Syria.

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America hasn’t experienced a terrorist attack in modern memory. Innocent patsies were wrongfully blamed for officially announced ones, and others allegedly foiled – 9/11 the mother of all false flags.

Would Hillary or Trump benefit from a pre-election incident, proclaimed a terrorist attack? CBS News cited unnamed sources, saying “US intelligence has alerted joint terrorism task forces (about) al Qaeda (perhaps) planning attacks in three states (believed to be New York, Texas and Virginia) for” November 7 – the day before US elections.

According to an unnamed senior FBI official, “(t)he counterterrorism and homeland security communities remain vigilant and well-postured to defend against attacks here in the United States.”

The FBI, working with our federal, state and local counterparts, shares and assesses intelligence on a daily basis and will continue to work closely with law enforcement and intelligence community partners to identify and disrupt any potential threat to public safety.

Fact: Al Qaeda is a US creation, supported in Syria and other countries where its fighters are deployed – unlikely to bite the hand feeding it.

CBS reported phony scare-tactic information supplied by Washington sources. If an incident occurs, it’ll be state-sponsored, an American tradition.

In the wake of last June’s Orlando false flag, followed by incidents in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, Trump blamed Obama, saying:

“We’ve been weak. Our country’s been weak. We’re letting people in by the thousands, the tens of thousands. I’ve been saying we’ve gotta stop it. Hillary Clinton wants to increase” the refugee numbers Obama let in.

Hillary said

“I’m the only candidate in this race who’s been part of the hard decisions to take terrorists off the battlefield. The kinds of rhetoric and language that Mr. Trump has used is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries.”

So who’ll benefit or be disadvantaged by a pre-election false flag [alleged threat or actual event] hours before polls open?

Neither most likely, unless power brokers, at the 11th hour, decided they erred in choosing Hillary, cut a deal with Trump assuring he’ll support their agenda, and intend anointing him Obama’s successor by electoral-rigging if necessary.

It’s unlikely to go this way. But given America’s deplorable state, anything is possible with an important reminder. So-called US democracy serves its privileged few alone.

No matter who holds top executive, congressional and judicial posts, the dirty system continues – each administration and its supporting caste exceeding the ruthlessness of its predecessors since the neoliberal 90s during the two-term Bill and Hillary co-presidency, America’s most notorious crime family.

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.

A queen of chaos should not throw stones in a glass house

Hillary Clinton’s fears concerning her rival candidate appear to be justified. At present she seems to be the most likely future president, and there is good reason for asking the question – Is Mrs. Clinton throwing stones in a glass house when she viciously attacks Donald Trump? Her efforts as Secretary of State are among the most warmongering in America’s modern history. Should she become president, it seems highly unlikely that we would ever see the dawn of world peace.

Should Hillary Clinton become the next U.S. president, the possibility of continuing wars in the world appears to be dangerously real. We must closely examine the candidates’ willingness and ability to create a better world. Under which one of the two candidates does world peace seem to be the most likely outcome?

Last year, political analyst, Diana Johnstone, published her book “Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton”.  The purpose of the book was to warn the world of the consequences if Clinton were to be elected president.

Four months ago (June, 2016) Hillary Clinton gave an important speech on U.S. national security. In this speech, she warned us of Donald Trump as being – “the most dangerous candidate for US presidency ever seen”. She portrayed Trump as a liar with bizarre and dangerous ideas, a person who very easily (by mistake?) could start a nuclear war. Electing Trump for president would, according to Hillary Clinton, be like “playing roulette” with our future.

Hillary Clinton’s fears appear to be justified. As in the current situation she seems to be the most likely presidential candidate, the following question must be asked:  Is Clinton throwing stones in a glass house when she attacks Donald Trump as a warmonger? Judge for yourselves.

Her deals and efforts as Secretary of State of the US government have been among the most militaristic in U.S. modern history. During her term in office when Hillary Clinton was politically active, there was hardly a single war in which she was not eager to participate. During the past two decades she has actively supported all the U.S. war adventures – e.g. her husband’s bombing of Yugoslavia and Kosovo in the late 1990s, the illegal war against Iraq (2003) and supporting Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006.

During the 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton threatened Iran (80 million people) with a “total obliteration” should Iran attack Israel.

During Obama’s presidency, she unreservedly supported the U.S. bombing of seven mostly Muslim countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Mrs. Clinton managed to convince President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to enter into war with Libya – a war that ultimately led to the devastation of that country, including the cruel execution of Muammar Gaddafi after brutal torture. Hillary Clinton  commented on this occasion with a laugh – “We came, we saw, he died!”

Clinton fully supported the coup in Honduras (2009); she further supported Israel during the Gaza wars of 2009 and 2014 and the illegal coup in Ukraine in 2014.

Violation of the US Constitution:

Hillary Clinton always unreservedly supported Obama in the U.S. drone warfare.

Hillary Clinton has supported Obama’s policy of impunity for torturers during GW Bush’s presidency.

Hillary Clinton has used her own private emailer in her correspondence with foreign politicians and military and in exchange for services.

Hillary Clinton has used the family’s private foundation (the Clinton Foundation) for the Pay for Play scheme that rendered political favors to highly dubious dictators and business dealers in exchange for huge sums of money to the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton supports U.S. emergency legislation – such as “The Patriot Act”, which was rushed into law in the wake of 9/11.  It allows widespread indiscriminate eavesdropping and the support of military tribunals and indefinite detention of “terrorist” suspects, even for life.

Hillary Clinton has supported mass surveillance of ordinary people, including UN officials and politicians of friendly countries. This amounts to constitutional violations which were disclosed by Edward Snowden.

Questionable financial links and support:

Hillary Clinton is the prime Candidate for the military-industrial complex. She enjoys full support from the Republican Party’s most hawkish representatives – such as former Vice President Dick Cheney and Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Victoria Nuland.

Let us take a look at the Clinton Foundation. Where do the 2 billion $ emanate from? Contributions in abundance come from various corporate and financial sources, from “dictatorships” in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia. Henry Kissinger, who engineered the military coup in Chile on President Nixon’s direct orders, supported the military coup in Argentina and Indonesia’s invasion of Timor, now works as her close friend and mentor.

War creates chaos and chaos creates refugees. 

A large number of countries have been devastated. We are facing a refugee situation which the West can no longer handle. The risks of a major war between NATO countries and Russia have increased dramatically. The probability of Sweden becoming a primary target in such a conflict has also increased (by the host country agreement, etc.).

US  being armed to the teeth, especially in nuclear weapons, NATO military bases encircling Russia and repeatedly organizing coups d’état on Russia’s doorstep, provocative military exercises and the demonization of Putin – all this gives Russia a good reason to believe that US / NATO is preparing for war.

The fact that Russia resorts to counter measures should not be difficult to understand. The combination of US and NATO provocation and their non-stop propaganda makes for a small incident easily turning into a major disaster.

The situation today resembles the one which prevailed just before the outbreak of the First World War. The great powers were then too heavily armed and ready to attack following the slightest incident.

The thought of an American president provoking a nuclear war would be the ultimate nightmare. Which one of the presidential candidates do we hope will win – that is now the question!

Written by three Swedish MDs active in the peace movement.

Leif Elinder
Martin Gelin
Anders Romelsjö

Translation by Siv O’Neall

The most colonized and exploited continent in the history of the world is once more the center of global competition, albeit this time the form of rivalry between the Great Powers has taken on a much more nuanced, though no less intense, form.

The US, France, and their unipolar allies want to retain Africa as their exclusive labor, market, and resource reserve for the foreseeable future, both out of their own material self-interest and with the added strategic benefit of depriving China and others of its economic fruits. Contrarily, China wants to integrate the world’sfastest growing economies and populations into the unfolding multipolar world order and give them a fair chance at succeeding in the global system. The contrast between the West’s neo-colonialism and China’s liberating sovereignty couldn’t be more crisp, and it’s this opposition of diametrically opposed global strategies and development models that sets the stage for the grand proxy battle between the US and China over Africa.

Just as much as China needs Africa in order to maintain its steady growth rates into the foreseeable future and ensure its domestic stability, so too does the US want to ‘poach’ Africa from China in order to offset the structural sustainability of its number one rival’s global leadership. The nature of the African-wide proxy conflict is that China is ardently working to finance, construct, and connect various infrastructural projects to one another in order to create a supraregional web of intermodal transport corridors that could then perfectly complement the maritime portion of the One Belt One Road (“New Silk Road”) global vision, while the US is trying with equal fervor to seize control of key nodes along these transnational routes as well as strategically disrupt crucial portions in order to increase China’s dependence on the unipolar-influenced areas. As the ultimate last resort, however, the US, the “world island” in all the manners that it can be strategically understood as, will pull out all the stops and unleash a ‘scorched earth’ trail of Hybrid War destruction in its wake while it strategically retreats back to its self-sufficient “Fortress North America” as the final coup de grace in the African proxy war against China.

More than likely, it won’t ever get to that dramatic of an absolute point whereby the US fully retreats from Africa or totally destroys the continent with Hybrid War, but realistically speaking, there’ll likely be a blended development of scenarios that takes place in this heated theater of competition over the coming decades that integrates elements of both extremes. China will predictably succeed in spearheading several ultra-strategic New Silk Road development corridors in Africa, while the US will probably sabotage a few others and unleash a handful of Hybrid Wars to keep the existing ways indefinitely at bay from fully actualizing their envisioned geo-economic potential.

There’s no surefire way to know with absolutely certainty what the future will bring, but it’s possible to acquire an educated expectation about the structural and systemic manner in which the identified group of states will be targeted by US-provoked Hybrid Wars. Even accounting for the possibility that some of the forthcoming examined scenarios might be “naturally occurring” in that they require little if any external pressure to instigate, there’s still a strong likelihood that at least some of the investigated possibilities will eventually occur to varying extents and that the geopolitical repercussions will indisputably impact quite negatively on China and the larger multipolar world’s grand position in the New Cold War.

This section of the book is organized in such a manner that Part I will describe Africa’s overall geopolitical situation, highlighting the influence of hegemonic and institutional regionalism (sometimes overlapping, other times not) over the continent’s affairs in order to clearly illustrate the preexisting advantages and obstacles to China’s New Silk Road vision. The subsequent chapters of the African Hybrid War research will then comprehensively examine the five separate categories of states and their pertinent neighbors that the author has already identified as being relevantly incorporated into the immediate thesis. To remind the reader about what was described in Part III of the book’s Introduction and to expand upon the earlier presented paradigmatic map in a more structurally detailed manner, the following cartographic revision will be henceforth used as the point of reference in guiding the research beyond Part I:

Key

* Green – Horn of Africa

* Yellow – East Africa/East African Federation

* Blue – Central-Southern Africa

* Black – Failed State Belt

* Red – Lake Chad Region

* Hashed/Thatched Lines – countries that will inevitably become involved in the targeted category states’ Hybrid War destabilization, whether as an aggressive actor, a passive victim, or a blended mix thereof.

Schematic Observations

A few comments need to be stated about the above map before commencing Part I of the African Hybrid War research:

Southern African Cone:

Firstly, while it’s conceptually possible for all states in Africa (or anywhere in the world, for that matter) to be afflicted by Hybrid War, keeping in accordance with the axiom that this method of warfare is more often than not applied in disrupting multipolar transnational connective infrastructure projects and/or seizing control of them, it can be surmised that the ones which could most radically revolutionize the continent’s geopolitical and geo-economic would be most actively targeted and consequently receive the highest likelihood of some sort of Hybrid War destabilization in the coming future. All of this will be described in detail in Part I, but for now it’s enough to know that the identified states lay along the paths of China’s presently constructed Silk Road routes or most probable forthcoming projects that it could pursue in achieving its grand strategic ends.

It should be clarified at this point that the Southern African Cone was not included in the above model because its economic corridors are relatively well-established and have already been utilized for some time by all sorts of Great Powers, the West obviously included. Furthermore, concerning Namibia and Botswana’s global connectivity via South Africa, and to an extent, even Zimbabwe and Mozambique’s as well, this mostly deals with the one-way transport of natural resources and less so with each respective state’s labor and market potential. While each of these countries have a given role that they play vis-à-vis the Chinese economy, none of them except for South Africa (the hub through which most of their exports, barring Mozambique’s, pass) is integral enough to be targeted by their own Hybrid War.

Theoretically speaking, disruptions in the regional periphery around South Africa could have a strategic effect in putting pressure on the country’s multipolar leadership and pave the way for a regime change scenario, but given the rotten nature of corrupt South African politics, it’s more expected that traditional ‘soft coup’ means such as constitutional technicalities and simple Color Revolutions (i.e. the anti-Rousseff coup in Brazil) would be used in this instance. Additionally, the resources of the population-sparse countries of Namibia and Botswana and the general market and labor potential of South Africa are already pretty much integrated into the larger global economy, so there are many existing unipolar stakeholders that would also be adversely affected by a severe disruption in or around their common point of African access. The same can’t be said so much about Zimbabwe and Mozambique, the former rich in minerals such as diamonds and platinum while the latter is poised to become one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, so it’s entirely possible that they may be targeted sometime in the future. But even so, it would be less in connection with China’s multipolar transnational connective infrastructure projects than with their own individual standalone potentials in their respective fields, thus strategically differentiating them from the other countries included in the present study (although that is not to say that Hybrid War techniques would not be used – they probably would to a large extent).

Insular Importance:

In relation to the above, the insular countries of Africa were also not included in the continental overview, although they too play an important role in its evolving geopolitical paradigm. Nevertheless, because they’re island nations, they’re not directly connected to anything else besides the high seas, so although they may have valuable transit node status for China as an integral component of its Sea Lines of Communication, they’re not as directly affected by the region-stretching Hybrid War study that was commenced for the mainland. Nevertheless, because each of them could play a pivotal role in influencing continental affairs if properly utilized by a partnering Great Power, it’s worthwhile to very concisely comment on how they fit into the larger strategic equation that will be described throughout this work:

* Yellow – Canary Islands (Spain): This legacy holding allows Madrid to exert influence near the coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara, both thought to be rich with fish and possible energy resources.

* Green – Cabo Verde (formerly Cape Verde prior to late-2013): The former Portuguese colony connects the North and South Atlantic and offers a strategic position near the mouth of the Senegal River, as well as being positioned along an important oceanic route that the US and EU must take to access West Africa.

* Blue – São Tomé and Príncipe: Another former Portuguese colony, this one is crucially located in the hydrocarbon-rich waters of the Gulf of Guinea and in close proximity to the shoreline of Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria.

* Violet – Comoros and the French overseas department of Mayotte: These two locations are almost on top of northern Mozambique’s LNG-prospected Rovuma Basin and thus near what will likely become a major energy exporting area in the near future.

* Orange – Seychelles: The former UK-colonized island chain lies along the route of approach that India and China must take in accessing the burgeoning East African marketplace, and it’s for this strategically competitive reason that New Delhi has proactively sought to build a naval base and position some of its military units there in order to “contain” China.

* Unmarked – Mauritius and the French island of Reunion: These two insular areas are not directly relevant to Africa’s mainland geopolitical order, although they do acquire significance vis-à-vis Madagascar and the US-controlled Indian Ocean bastion of Diego Garcia.

Transregional Conflict Overspill:

One of the most striking aspects of the reference map is that it clearly delineates the geopolitical fault lines where Hybrid War conflicts could easily become transregional:

Out of all of the areas designated by the map, it’s most probable that the uncontrollably violent processes in the Failed State Belt of the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan would be the ones to spread to other parts of Africa, at least as regards the continent’s conflicts that are presently ongoing (and not accounting for those that have yet to possibly erupt). In particular, CAR’s chaos could result in a refugee and militant overspill to Cameroon and Chad, possibly leading to these respective Christian- and Muslim-led governments supporting their own confessional sides in the country’s unresolved civil war. The misleading “Clash of Civilizations” narrative that would assuredly be purposely pushed by the Western mainstream media will be discussed later on when addressing the Failed State Belt, but at this moment it’s useful just to be aware of the transregional “infection” potential that the CAR has in affecting  the Lake Chad region. Additionally, the country’s domestic difficulties could also spread southward into the northern reaches of the Central-Southern state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), representing a dual destabilization threat emanating from the CAR.

South Sudan can do something similar to the CAR in relation to the northern part of the DRC, but possibly even to the Horn of Africa state of Ethiopia and the East African state of Uganda as well. Tellingly, these latter two states are actively involved in the conflict resolution process in South Sudan and are jostling against one another for influence there in order to carve out defensive buffers (but also markets, of course) to protect themselves from this scenario. It should go without saying that South Sudan was only brought into existence because it was forcibly severed from Sudan proper over a three-decade-long civil war period, and the dynamic of anti-Khartoum action hasn’t stopped since Juba gained its independence in 2011. Therefore, South Sudan represents an even larger asymmetrical regional threat than CAR does, and their combined destabilization potential explains why they’re both categorized together as part of the Failed State Belt.

If their respective conflicts somehow merged into a transnational conflagration, then that would represent a large-scale Hybrid War threat in the geographic heart of Africa, but the closest this has henceforth come has been the over-exaggerated threat of Joseph Kony. With reference to the Failed State Belt’s Hybrid War vulnerabilities and the transregionalization that its internal conflicts pose, it’s little wonder then that the US exploited the mystique around this warlord in order to deploy a limited but very strategic contingent of its special forces to Uganda, South Sudan, DRC, and CAR. Almost as an afterthought but drawing on the tangent of transregional conflict overlap, it’s topically pertinent to recall the Darfur Conflict and how this essentially was a proxy competition between the Lake Chad regional state of Chad and the extended Failed State Belt and somewhat Gulf-influenced state of Sudan. It’s no longer as relevant of a geopolitical item as it once was during the mid-2000s, but it nevertheless still has the potential to re-erupt in the future, especially if the externally directed Sudanese dissolution process speeds up and makes headway in the states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan.

Lastly, there’s the realistic possibility that the US’ attempts to instigate a Hybrid War in Burundi could set off a chain reaction of destabilization in the eastern DRC, Rwanda (and by extent, possibly up to Uganda), and western Tanzania, thereby making this geographically tiny state a disproportionately large trigger in upsetting the regional balance. Although there’s not yet an active conflict in Burundi anywhere on par with the scale of what’s been raging in the CAR and South Sudan over the past couple of years, this doesn’t mean that one can’t quickly develop if the entire state collapses under Hybrid War pressure, and this disturbing scenario will certainly be explored more at length later on in the work.

Mapping out the expected transregional conflict overspill zones in Africa, one can unmistakably see that it’s the entire Upper-Central (Failed State Belt) and the eastern portion of the Central-Southern zones of Africa that are most at risk of this destructive process unfolding. Accordingly, this realization leads one to conclude that the DRC and the areas immediately abutting it provide the most fertile ground for the transnationalization of domestic conflicts, which somewhat (but not totally) explains why the Second Congo War eventually came to involve states located far away from the actual battlespace and be nicknamed “Africa’s World War”. To put it another way, the Hybrid War vulnerabilities of the identified area combined with its obvious geostrategic centrality to the African continent makes it doubly capable of sucking countless states into a literal Black Hole of Chaos that could easily become the ultimate proxy war climax between the US and China.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Hybrid Wars 5. Breaking the Balkans

Hybrid Wars 6. Trick To Containing China

Hybrid Wars 7. How The US Could Manufacture A Mess In Myanmar

The election was set up to be stolen from Trump. That was the purpose of the polls rigged by overweighting Hillary supporters in the samples. After weeks of hearing poll results that Hillary was in the lead, the public would discount a theft claim. Electronic voting makes elections easy to steal, and I have posted explanations by election fraud experts of how it is done.

Clearly the Oligarchy does not want Donald Trump in the White House as they are unsure that they could control him, and Hillary is their agent.

With the reopening of the FBI investigation of Hillary and related scandals exploding all around her, election theft is not only more risky but also less likely to serve the Oligarchy’s own interests.

Image as well as money is part of Oligarchic power. The image of America takes a big hit if the American people elect a president who is currently under felony investigation.

Moreover, a President Hillary would be under investigation for years. With so much spotlight on her, she would not be able to serve the Oligarchy’s interests. She would be worthless to them, and, indeed, investigations that unearthed various connections between Hillary and oligarchs could damage the oligarchs.

In other words, for the Oligarchy Hillary has moved from an asset to a liability.

A Hillary presidency could put our country into chaos.

I doubt the oligarchs are sufficiently stupid to think that once she is sworn in, Hillary can fire FBI Director Comey and shut down the investigation. The last president that tried that was Richard Nixon, and look where that got him.

Moreover, the Republicans in the House and Senate would not stand for it. House Committee on oversight and Government Reform chairman Jason Chaffetz has already declared Hillary to be “a target-rich environment. Even before we get to day one, we’ve got two years worth of material already lined up.” House Speaker Paul Ryan said investigation will follow the evidence.

If you were an oligarch, would you want your agent under this kind of scrutiny? If you were Hillary, would you want to be under this kind of pressure?

What happens if the FBI recommends the indictment of the president? Even insouciant Americans would see the cover-up if the attorney general refused to prosecute the case. Americans would lose all confidence in the government. Chaos would rule. Chaos can be revolutionary, and that is not good for oligarchs.

Moreover, if reports can be believed, salacious scandals appear to be waiting their time on stage. For example, last May Fox News reported:

“Former President Bill Clinton was a much more frequent flyer on a registered sex offender’s infamous jet than previously reported, with flight logs showing the former president taking at least 26 trips aboard the “Lolita Express” — even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights, according to records obtained by FoxNews.com.

“Clinton’s presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including “Tatiana.” The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls.”

Fox News reports that Epstein served time in prison for “solicitation and procurement of minors for prostitution. He allegedly had a team of traffickers who procured girls as young as 12 to service his friends on ‘Orgy Island,’ an estate on Epstein’s 72-acre island, called Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.”

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/13/flight-logs-show-bill-clinton-flew-on-sex-offenders-jet-much-more-than-previously-known.html 

Some Internet sites, the credibility of which is unknown to me, have linked Hillary to these flights.

http://truepundit.com/breaking-bombshell-nypd-blows-whistle-on-new-hillary-emails-money-laundering-sex-crimes-with-children-child-exploitation-pay-to-play-perjury/

This kind of behavior seems reckless even for Bill and Hillary, who are accustomed to getting away with everything. Nevertheless, if you are an oligarch already worried about the reopened Hillary email case and additional FBI investigations, such as the one into the Clinton Foundation, and concerned about what else might emerge from the 650,000 emails on former US Rep. Weiner’s computer and the NYPD pedophile investigation, putting Hillary in the Oval Office doesn’t look like a good decision.

At this point, I would think that the Oligarchy would prefer to steal the election for Trump, instead of from him, rather than allow insouciant Americans to destroy America’s reputation by choosing a person under felony investigations for president of the United States.

Being the “exceptional nation” takes on new meaning when there is a criminal at the helm.

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.

U.S. Elections “November Chaos”: What You’re Not Being Told

By James Corbett and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 04 2016

Corrupt Clinton Crime Cartel Along with Hillary’s Presidential Hopes Are Crumbling…

By Joachim Hagopian, November 03 2016

Nearly four months after James Comey announced to the world back in early July that the FBI investigation was closed and that he would not seek an indictment against Hillary Clinton for violating any federal laws, now suddenly a tectonic shift has taken place and for the Clinton crime family, the dirt may finally be hitting the fan. As a result, humanity might be spared from a World War III project which was part of her election campaign, that would virtually be a done deal should Hillary become president.

U.S. Election 2016: No Matter Who Wins, Everyone Loses. “And Moving to Mars is not a Current Option”

By J. Michael Springmann, November 04 2016

The United States has one party, the Permanent Ruling Party.  Some call one branch the “Democrats”, some call the other branch the “Republicans”.  While there are surface differences, both wings of the Party support the same things:  permanent war; Israel; illegal migration; hatred of Arabs and Muslims.  Neither arm criticizes a huge military budget or the vast sums spent on the various intelligence services, whose main job seems to be spying on American citizens.

The Lethal Lie of Hillary Clinton: “Saving Lives” with “No-Fly Zone” in Syria. “Russian Roulette with the Planet”

By Luciana Bohne, November 04 2016

Why are they lying? Because the people don’t want war: they want jobs and bread. They will not agree to murder people who have done them no harm.  They will consent to war if told they are under attack or that the war will save other people from genocide, rape, or other gross violations of human rights. The people are not interested in world domination, but the elite are. The people are, therefore, the enemy within. They must be persuaded to support the elite’s plan by perverting their decency. They must be made to cringe in fear. They must be made to believe that war—any war—will be defensive. This is the tactic of terrorists: terrorizing the population to obtain political ends.

Al Qaeda will Vote for Hillary on November 8 ….

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 04 2016

Al Qaeda rebels, ISIS-Daesh, are unbending supporters of Hillary, because when she becomes President of the United States, “she’ll continue to support us, give us money and weapons, … “ “We’re voting for you, Hillary, on November 8. We’ll cast our absentee ballots from more than twenty countries where the CIA is helping us. We’re not terrorists, we’re the “Moderate Good Guys”. We’re supported by Hillary Clinton, and Hillary is not a terrorist. If she were a terrorist, we wouldn’t vote for her…  ”

President Al-Assad: America, Turkey, Saudi Arabia Support and Protect Al Qaeda-ISIS-Daesh Terrorists

By Bashar al Assad, November 04 2016

In an interview given to the Serbian newspaper Politika, President al-Assad said that Russia is very serious and very determined to continue fighting the terrorists, while the Americans base their politics on a different value as they use the terrorists as a card to play the political game to serve their own interests at the expense of the interests of other countries in the world.

Unprecedented Crisis, Collapse of the Clinton Apparatus? Hacker Whistleblowers, Trump, and the FBI Converge

By Larry Chin, November 01 2016

With one week left in the most chaotic and dangerous presidential contest in American history, the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign is damaged and sinking. Even the propaganda protection of the Clinton-controlled mainstream corporate media is starting to buckle.

Wall Street and the Pentagon: Pre-Mature Political and Military Ejaculations

By Prof. James Petras, November 03 2016

Brazil and Argentina, the most powerful and richest countries in South America and the Philippines, Washington’s most strategic military platform in Southeast Asia, were the objects of intense US political operations in the run-up to 2016. In each instance, Wall Street and the Pentagon secured smashing successes leading to premature ejaculations over the ‘new golden era’ of financial pillage and unfettered military adventures.  Unfortunately, the early ecstasy has turned to agony: Wall Street made easy entries and even faster departures once the ‘honeymoon’ gave way to reality.

Partners in Crime: Goldman Sachs, the Clintons and Wall Street

By Shawn Helton, November 04 2016

As the public and most of the mainstream media is still processing the political bombshell concerning the newly reopened FBI probe into the Hillary Clinton’s email server case – the global investment banking firm Goldman Sachs quietly endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate this past week.

Hillary and Bill Clinton: “Pay-to-Play Racketeering”, The “Bonnie and Clyde” of American Politics

By Wayne Madsen, November 04 2016

Whether the information originated from hacked e-mails and computer files or Freedom of Information Act requests, the revelations about the political and business activities of Hillary and Bill Clinton and their cronies hearken back to another era, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the crime spree of another unscrupulous couple: bank robbery desperados Bonnie and Clyde.

Video: Corruption, Cooptation, Cronyism: The Hillary Clinton “Takeover”, The “Counter-Coup”, Action of America’s Intelligence Community

By Steve Pieczenik, November 02 2016

The following video presentation is by Dr. Steve Pieczenik, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State who has served as foreign policy expert in several US administrations including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The analysis and focus presented below must be taken very seriously.  It sheds light on the ongoing political crisis in the US and the opposition which is developing from within the US intelligence community against the Clinton crime cabal.  Steve Piecznick is articulate and outspoken.

October 28, 2016 marks the official launch of Zerocash (“Zcash,” “ZEC”), a new cryptocurrency that has received tremendous attention from the Bitcoin community. The technology is named for its zero-identity function of shielding transactions on its blockchain, or digital ledger. “Zerocash is a new protocol that provides a privacy-preserving version of Bitcoin (or a similar currency),” its developers explain. “[I]n Zerocash, users may pay one another directly, via payment transactions that reveal neither the origin, destination, or amount of the payment.”

The enthusiasm surrounding the coin is demonstrated in the recent price for Zerocash futures contracts, representing one unit and valued against the price of one Bitcoin (BTC). Between September 15th and October 26th the price surged almost 1,300%—from a low of $18 (0.027 BTC) to a high of $261 (0.379 BTC).

Upon its October 28 debut the price of one Zcash briefly spiked above $1,000,000 (one million USD) on some exchanges, while eventually settling back to below $6,000 per coin.

The high valuation and scarcity is at least partly influenced by the novel way Zcash is being introduced. The cryptocurrency will not be initially available to investors for over-the-counter purchases and can only be obtained in gradually increasing increments over a month-long period through “mining,” or digital production by those with the necessary computer equipment and technological expertise.

An additional reason for the building excitement around Zcash is that its development team consists of notable computer scientists at University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Tel Aviv University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A lesser-acknowledged aspect of the Zerocash phenomenon, however, is how the currency’s development has been financially backed in part by some of the world’s most powerful corporate and government deep state actors, including Amazon, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research, and the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology. The entire list of funders is as follows:

*Amazon.com 

*Broadcom Foundation

*Tel Aviv University Authentication Initiative

*Center for Science of Information (CSoI), an NSF Science and Technology Center

*Check Point Institute for Information Security

*U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

*Air Force Research Laboratory

*European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme

*Israeli Centers of Research Excellence I-CORE program

*Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology

*The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust

*Office of Naval Research

*Simons Foundation

*Skolkovo Foundation 

Libertarians especially, with their philosophical antipathy toward state monopoly that central banking epitomizes have been among the most vigorous supporters of cryptocurrency development and use. This is accentuated by the fact that traditional markets for “hard money” investment such as precious metals are likewise subject to heavy manipulation by the same or allied central banking outlets.

Yet one would be hard-pressed to come up with a greater illustration of centralized state power than the array of interests listed above. Indeed, the involvement of such actors in developing the “next Bitcoin” should be recognized vis-a-vis the Western financial community’s continued advocacy for the drastic reduction of conventional central bank-issued currency from circulation (i.e. here, here, here, here and here).

In theory Zerocash differs from Bitcion in that it represents a bolstered technology for anonymous transactions veiled from third party scrutiny. According to the mechanics such transactions may be viewed and recorded by the specific parties who obtains proper authorization. What if a Trojan Horse capability could be engineered into the currency that might later be utilized by lettered agencies?

This is the greatest fear of those who rightly question the loss of tangible exchange. Further, such a development would defeat ZeroCash’s desirability and purpose. By dismissing the possibility of such a feature Zcash users implicitly rely on the integrity of the developers themselves, most of whom are junior faculty or graduate students whose research, as noted, is at least partly funded by such deep state actors.

Many Bitcoin enthusiasts regard cryptocurrencies as a sort of deus ex machina against the state. Along these lines, Zerocash’s institutional and scholarly veneer cloaks the more complex grant-generating interests lurking in the shadows.

Recently even strong advocates of Bitcoin have pondered if the financial medium may have been developed with direct or indirect participation of the intelligence community. In the case of Zcash there can be no doubt of such deep state interest and involvement, which is of no small concern as the world moves toward a seemingly inevitable “cashless society.”

As implicações do 11/9 possuem contradições e evidências de sobra que apontam para execução interna, isto é, que norte-americanos em posições de poder foram responsáveis pela realização dos ataques, o que, diante de inúmeras evidências, é o mais plausível enquanto Bush e Obama fizeram de tudo para impedir uma investigação independente instada por pesquisadores locais e familiares de vítimas. Para o atual ocupante da Casa Branca, “é contraproducente olhar para trás”, gerando profunda indignação a familiares de vítimas e pesquisadores da tragédia.A denominada Comissão do 11/9 foi, desde o início, programada para defender o governo de Washington. Sofreu diversas interferências de altos escalões da política conforme Ryan observa: “A Comissão do 11/9 não conseguiu responder 70% das perguntas colocadas pelas famílias do 11/9, responsáveis por dirigir a criação da Comissão. Também é importante perceber que um esboço do que viria a se tornar o Relatório da Comissão do 11/9 foi produzido antes do início da investigação. O esboço foi mantido em sigilo do pessoal da Comissão, e parece ter determinado o seu resultado. Além disso, a Comissão alegou repetidas vezes, 63 vezes para ser exato, que não encontrou nenhuma evidência relacionada a muitos dos aspectos mais importantes dos crimes. Esses fatos sugerem que a Comissão nunca teve nenhuma intenção de revelar a verdade sobre o 9/11”.Diversos físicos e arquitetos norte-americanos, reunidos na organização Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth(AE911Truth), observam que as Torres Gêmeas e o World Trade Center 7 (WTC7) ruíram à velocidade de queda livre, o que só seria possível através de implosão controlada. Embora a prefeitura de Nova Iorque, a mando de Bush, tenha removido imediatamente os resquícios dos edifícios que deveriam servir como investigação, alguns transeuntes conseguiram levaram consigo partes dos escombros que acabaram nas mãos dos AE911Truth. Através de minuciosa investigação, foram constatados componentes de explosivos, mais especificamente dinamites em partes dos edifícios destruídos supostamente pelo choque dos aviões, em tese sequestrados por muçulmanos radicais. “Quem colocou os explosivos nos edifícios do World Trade Center?”, questiona Ryan. “Quem foi convidado à reunião de eliminação de explosivos/terrorismo no World Trade Center 7 na manhã de 11 de setembro de 2001, e qual foi a ordem do dia? A segunda questão refere-se a uma reunião convocada por Larry Silverstein e pelo Serviço Secreto no edifício 7 do World Trade Center na manhã de 11/9. Unidades de eliminação de explosivos provenientes de instalações militares dos EUA haviam sido convidadas para a reunião. Foi apenas mais uma incrível coincidência? Precisamos saber mais sobre isso”.Especificamente sobre a queda do WTC7, há o fato surpreendente – para dizer o mínimo – que ele ruiu sem ter sido chocado por nenhum avião. “Foi ao chão por implosão controlada? Ou pelo fogo como o NIST [ National Institute of Standards and Technology] alega?”, questiona Ganser lembrando que mesmo o NIST admite nos dias de hoje que o WTC7 levou poucos alguns segundos para cair. “Isso significa que durante esses segundos,o edifício sofreu resistência zero, resistência absolutamente nenhuma. No entanto, havia 81 colunas sustentando o edifício. Desta maneira, isso é muito estranho”, observa Ganser.Outra pergunta entre as inúmeras sem resposta envolvendo os ataques do 11/9, diz respeito ao tempo que os aviões sobrevoaram o espaço norte-americano: por até uma hora. Especialmente um deles, em direção ao Pentágono, local considerado o mais seguro do mundo, sem ter sido interceptado pelo sistema de segurança aérea que, pela primeira e única vez na história do país, falhou inexplicavelmente diante de uma operação que levaria, no máximo, um minuto para que jatos interceptadores iniciassem o processo de detenção dos aviões. Houve diversos discursos oficiais desencontrados na tentativa de explicar o que realmente aconteceu com a defesa aérea norte-americana naquele dia, um substituindo o outro, todos impossíveis de serem sustentados. No caso particular da Standard Operating Procedures (Procedimentos Operacionais Padrão, responsáveis por garantir respostas de emergência através dos jatos) estavam simplesmente suspensos em 11 de setembro de 2001 – primeira e única vez na história dos Estados Unidos.

“Muitas vezes as pessoas entendem mal, pensando que os transpônderes dos aviões sequestrados foram todos desligados, e que os aviões não poderiam ter sido rastreados. Esta afirmação não reconhece que as autoridades haviam rastreado aviões que traficavam drogas via radar por muitos anos. Mais importante, o voo 175 não desligou o transponder. Este foi o segundo avião que atingiu o World Trade Center e seu transponder esteve ligado durante todo o tempo em que os defensores de ar o assistiam na tela. Por isso, eles sabiam que estava fora da rota. Voou sequestrado por 20 minutos após o primeiro avião ter atingido o World Trade Center, cerca de 45 minutos após o primeiro sequestro, fato sabido das lideranças da Administração Federal de Aviação”, precisa Ryan, quem também questiona: “Na medida em que o piloto automático avança, é interessante notar que, de acordo com o estudo oficial da trajetória de voo, o piloto automático do voo 77 [que atingiu o Pentágono] ficou ligado enquanto o avião era sequestrado, e ao longo de sua volta de 180 graus de volta para Washington. Parece que a volta a Washington foi parte do caminho do voo programado, ou o piloto automático foi comandado instantaneamente”.

Outra contradição diz respeito aos supostos sequestradores dos quatro aviões, que segundo a versão oficial eram 19: seis deles, denunciados no mesmo dia pelo Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, polícia federal e secreta dos Estados Unidos), apareceram dias depois vivos em diferentes partes do mundo, denunciando não serem terroristas, possuindo os mesmos dados e a mesma fisionomia das alegadas pelos oficiais norte-americanos. Sobre isso, Ryan lamenta a ausência de investigação por parte do FBI, quem até hoje mantém os seis na lista de sequestradores do 11/9. “Os relatórios de que os homens acusados ainda estavam vivos não foram investigados pelo FBI, nem pela Comissão do 11/9. Mesmo o novo diretor do FBI, Robert Mueller, expressou publicamente dúvidas sobre a identidade dos sequestradores.

Questionado sobre a hipótese de execução interna, Ryan afirma: “É difícil discordar considerando que as pessoas fora dos Estados Unidos não poderiam ter feito o que precisava ser feito [a fim de atingir e derrubar as Torres Gêmeas e o Pentágono]. Por exemplo, apenas norte-americanos poderiam ter levado a rede de comando dos país a falhar, e apenas norte-americanos poderiam ter desativado as defesas aéreas. Em outro sentido, o 11/9 continua sendo uma ‘execução interna’ pela qual muitos norte-americanos não vão sequer atentar à evidência dos crimes. As barreiras psicológicas são muito grandes”.

Para Kiriakou, “o 11 de Setembro foi, é claro, a pior falha de inteligência da história dos Estados Unidos. A CIA nunca poderá mudar isso”. Ryan mostra-se pessimista que a verdade seja encontrada, e que justiça seja feita: “Nenhum dos presidenciáveis [Clinton e Trump] vai fazer nada para desafiar a versão oficial do 11/9. Se o fizessem, nunca ouviríamos nada sobre eles na mídia corporativa”.

“Follow the money.” That telling phrase, which has come to summarize the Watergate scandal, has been a part of the lexicon since 1976. It’s shorthand for political corruption: At what point do “contributions” become bribes, “constituent services” turn into quid pro quos and “charities” become slush funds?

Ronald Reagan was severely criticized in 1989 when, after he left office, he was paid $2 million for a couple of speeches in Japan. “The founding fathers would have been stunned that an occupant of the highest office in this land turned it into bucks,” sniffed a Columbia professor. 

So what would Washington and Jefferson make of Hillary Rodham Clinton? Mandatory financial disclosures released this month show that, in just the two years from April 2013 to March 2015, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state collected $21,667,000 in “speaking fees,” not to mention the cool $5 mil she corralled as an advance for her 2014 flop book, “Hard Choices.”

Throw in the additional $26,630,000 her ex-president husband hoovered up in personal-appearance “honoraria,” and the nation can breathe a collective sigh of relief that the former first couple — who, according to Hillary, were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001 with some of the furniture in tow — can finally make ends meet.

No wonder Donald Trump calls her “crooked Hillary.”

A look at Mrs. Clinton’s speaking venues and the whopping sums she’s received since she left State gives us an indication who’s desperate for a place at the trough — and whom another Clinton administration might favor.

To Read the Full Article on the the New York Post click here 

Here’s how much Hillary Clinton was paid for her 2013-2015 speeches:

• 4/18/2013, Morgan Stanley, Washington, DC: $225,000
• 4/24/2013, Deutsche Bank, Washington, DC: $225,000
• 4/24/2013, National Multi Housing Council, Dallas, Texas: $225,000
• 4/30/2013, Fidelity Investments, Naples, Fla.: $225,000
• 5/8/2013, Gap Inc., San Francisco, Calif.: $225,000
• 5/14/2013, Apollo Management Holdings LP, New York, NY: $225,000
• 5/16/2013, Itau BBA USA Securities, New York, NY: $225,000
• 5/21/2013, Vexizon Communications Inc., Washington, DC: $225,000
• 5/29/2013, Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. LLC, New York, NY: $225,000
• 6/4/2013, The Goldman Sachs Group, Palmetto Bluffs, SC: $225,000
• 6/6/2013, Spencer Stuart, New York, NY: $225,000
• 6/16/2013, Society for Human Resource Management, Chicago, Ill.: $285,000
• 6/17/2013, Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids, Mich.: $225,000
• 6/20/2013, Boston Consulting Group Inc., Boston, Mass.: $225,000
• 6/20/2013, Let’s Talk Entertainment Inc., Toronto, Canada: $250,000
• 6/24/2013, American Jewish University, Universal City, Calif.: $225,000
• 6/24/2013, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Company LP, Palos Verdes, Calif.:$225,000
• 7/11/2013, UBS Wealth Management, New York, NY: $225,000
• 8/7/2013, Global Business Travel Association, San Diego, Calif.: $225,000
• 8/12/2013, National Association of Chain Drug Stores, Las Vegas, Nev.: $225,000
• 9/18/2013, American Society for Clinical Pathology, Chicago, Ill.: $225,000
• 9/19/2013, American Society of Travel Agents Inc., Miami, Fla.: $225,000
• 10/4/2013, Long Island Association, Long Island, NY: $225,000
• 10/15/2013, National Association of Convenience Stores, Atlanta, Ga.: $265,000
• 10/23/2013, SAP Global Marketing Inc., New York, NY: $225,000
• 10/24/2013, Accenture, New York, NY: $225,000
• 10/24/2013, The Goldman Sachs Group, New York, NY: $225,000
• 10/27/2013, Beth El Synagogue, Minneapolis, Minn.: $225,000
• 10/28/2013, Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, Chicago, Ill.: $400,000
• 10/29/2013, The Goldman Sachs Group, Tuscon, Ariz.: $225,000
• 11/4/2013, Mase Productions Inc., Orlando, Fla.: $225,000
• 11/4/2013, London Drugs Ltd., Mississauga, Canada: $225,000
• 11/6/2013, Beaumont Health System, Troy, Mich.: $305,000
• 11/7/2013, Golden Tree Asset Management, New York, NY: $275,000
• 11/9/2013, National Association of Realtors, San Francisco, Calif.: $225,000
• 11/13/2013, Mediacorp Canada Inc., Toronto, Canada: $225,000
• 11/13/2013, Bank of America, Bluffton, SC: $225,000
• 11/14/2013, CB Richard Ellis Inc., New York, NY: $250,000
• 11/18/2013, CIIE Group, Naples, Fla.: $225,000
• 11/18/2013, Press Ganey, Orlando, Fla.: $225,000
• 11/21/2013, U.S. Green Building Council, Philadelphia, Pa.: $225,000
• 01/06/2014, GE, Boca Raton, Fla.: $225,500
• 01/27/2014, National Automobile Dealers Association, New Orleans, La.:$325,500
• 01/27/2014, Premier Health Alliance, Miami, Fla.: $225,500
• 02/06/2014, Salesforce.com, Las Vegas, Nev.: $225,500
• 02/17/2014, Novo Nordisk A/S, Mexico City, Mexico: $125,000
• 02/26/2014, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Orlando, Fla.: $225,500
• 02/27/2014, A&E Television Networks, New York, NY: $280,000
• 03/04/2014, Association of Corporate Counsel – Southern California, Los Angeles, Calif.: $225,500
• 03/05/2014, The Vancouver Board of Trade, Vancouver, Canada: $275,500
• 03/06/2014, tinePublic Inc., Calgary, Canada: $225,500
• 03/13/2014, Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, Orlando, Fla.:$225,500
• 03/13/2014, Drug Chemical and Associated Technologies, New York, NY:$250,000
• 03/18/2014, Xerox Corporation, New York, NY: $225,000
• 03/18/2014, Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, Montreal, Canada:$275,000
• 03/24/2014, Academic Partnerships, Dallas, Texas: $225,500
• 04/08/2014, Market° Inc., San Francisco, Calif.: $225,500
• 04/08/2014, World Affairs Council, Portland, Ore.: $250,500
• 04/10/2014, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc., Las Vegas, Nev.:$225,500
• 04/10/2014, Lees Talk Entertainment, San Jose, Calif.: $265,000
• 04/11/2014, California Medical Association (via satellite), San Diego, Calif.:$100,000
• 05/06/2014, National Council for Behavioral Healthcare, Washington, DC:$225,500
• 06/02/2014, International Deli-Dairy-Bakery Association, Denver, Colo.: $225,500
• 06/02/2014, Lees Talk Entertainment, Denver, Colo.: $265,000
• 06/10/2014, United Fresh Produce Association, Chicago, Ill.: $225,000
• 06/16/2014, tinePublic Inc., Toronto, Canada: $150,000
• 06/18/2014, tinePublic Inc., Edmonton, Canada: $100,000
• 06/20/2014, Innovation Arts and Entertainment, Austin, Texas: $150,000
• 06/25/2014, Biotechnology Industry Organization, San Diego, Calif.: $335,000
• 06/25/2014, Innovation Arts and Entertainment, San Francisco, Calif.: $150,000
• 06/26/2014, GTCR, Chicago, Ill.: $280,000
• 07/22/2014, Knewton Inc., San Francisco, Calif.: $225,500
• 07/26/2014, Ameriprise, Boston, Mass.: $225,500
• 07/29/2014, Coming Inc., Coming, NY: $225,500
• 08/28/2014, Nexenta Systems Inc., San Francisco, Calif.: $300,000
• 08/28/2014, Cisco, Las Vegas, Nev.: $325,000
• 09/04/2014, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, San Diego, Calif.: $225,500
• 09/15/2014, Caridovascular Research Foundation, Washington, DC: $275,000
• 10/02/2014, Commercial Real Estate Women Network, Miami Beach, Fla.:$225,500
• 10/06/2014, Canada 2020, Ottawa, Canada: $215,500
• 10/07/2014, Deutsche Bank AG, New York, NY: $280,000
• 10/08/2014, Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), Chicago, Ill.:$265,000
• 10/13/2014, Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, Colorado Springs, Colo.:$225,500
• 10/14/2014, Salesforce.com, San Francisco, Calif.: $225,500
• 10/14/2014, Qualcomm Incorporated, San Diego, Calif.: $335,000
• 12/04/2014, Massachusetts Conference for Women, Boston, Mass.: $205,500
• 01/21/2015, tinePublic Inc., Winnipeg, Canada: $262,000
• 01/21/2015, tinePublic Inc., Saskatoon, Canada: $262,500
• 01/22/2015, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Whistler, Canada: $150,000
• 02/24/2015, Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women, Santa Clara, Calif.:$225,500
• 03/11/2015, eBay Inc., San Jose, Calif.: $315,000
• 03/19/2015, American Camping Association, Atlantic City, NJ: $260,000

Total: $21,667,000

Why are they lying? Everything is being done to convince the public that Russia wants war; that it has annexed Ukraine; that it will attack Western Europe; that it will crush the Baltic states and Poland in its advance; that it’s committing war crimes in Syria; that Assad is a dictator and a butcher; that he has met peaceful demands for reform with brutal repression; that those fighting Assad are moderate rebels; that he is dropping barrel bombs on civilians. 

Why are they lying?

Because the people don’t want war: they want jobs and bread.

They will not agree to murder people who have done them no harm.  They will consent to war if told they are under attack or that the war will save other people from genocide, rape, or other gross violations of human rights. The people are not interested in world domination, but the elite are. The people are, therefore, the enemy within. They must be persuaded to support the elite’s plan by perverting their decency. They must be made to cringe in fear. They must be made to believe that war—any war—will be defensive.

This is the tactic of terrorists: terrorizing the population to obtain political ends.

Hillary Clinton is lying: a no-fly zone in Syria will not “save lives.” 

In her last presidential debate, Clinton said that she wants a no-fly zone in Syria because it will “save lives”:

“I’m going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria, not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to, frankly, gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians.”

The “leverage” she is seeking is Russian roulette with the planet. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford (image right), noted in response that a no-fly zone in Syria might trigger a war with Russia, a nuclear power. Neither does she believe that a no-fly zone will save lives.  In a closed-door speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013, Clinton said:

“To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians.”

She knows what is at stake with a no-fly zone in Syria, and yet she tells us the opposite of what she knows will happen. In other words, she’s lying.

What has changed Clinton’s mind since 2013?

In 2013, there was no need to risk nuclear war over Syria. The so-called Free Syrian Army and assorted rebel groups were doing just fine in their offensive. In 2013, Syria stood alone, apart from some Iranian assistance. Until 2015, the Assad government was on its last breath, in retreat from the provinces of Raqqa, Aleppo, Hama, Idlib, and Latakia. By September 2015, the generous financial, military, and operational support by the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to the  “anti-Syrian coalition”– Islamic State, the Jabbat al-Nusra, the “Free Syrian Army”–was paying great dividends in advancing the destabilization of the Assad government. Soon, it could be expected that the symbolic head of Assad would sit on a silver platter in the White House, along with other colonial trophies.

The humanitarian consequences for Syrians, however, were catastrophic. Fleeing the terror of a Syria in the clutches of cutthroat mercenary armies, refugees flooded Turkey, Jordan, Greece, and other countries, becoming human barter between Turkey and the European Union.  The EU paid Turkey two billion euro to keep within its borders this human avalanche of “collateral damage.”

That was the situation in September of 2015, when Russia, invited by the legitimate Syrian government, legitimately intervened in Syria with aircraft, support personnel, military advisors and equipment.  In a year of Russian efforts to establish a premise for a peaceful solution in Syria by eliminating the militant rabble the Western chorus of “Assad must go” has mutated into a furious hiss of impotent rage. No one expects Assad to go now, unless the US comes up with a strategy to reverse the losses the Russian intervention has inflicted.

Enter Hillary’s reversal on the no-fly zone, which now, contrary to her judgment in 2013, will “save lives.”

What is a no-fly zone?

A no-fly zone is a coercive appropriation of the partial airspace of a sovereign country. It is the arbitrary creation of a demilitarized zone in the sky to prevent belligerent powers from flying in that air space. In Syria, the “belligerent power,” ironically, would be the internationally recognized legitimate Syrian government and its legitimate ally, Russia.

According to former UN Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali (image left), in an interview with John Pilger, a no-fly zone is illegal under international law.  No-fly zones are post-Soviet inventions. The measure was never proposed, used, or authorized to this day by the UN Security Council until the Soviet Union virtually dissolved. This restraint was exercised by the US for the excellent reason that no such aggression on a sovereign state would have been tolerated without massive fuss at the UN Security Council and a bad rap for the US. There have been only three instances of a no-fly zone so far, all in the wake of the disappearance of the USSR: Iraq (1991-2003), Bosnia (1993-95), and Libya (2011), all initiated on the hypocritical pretense of “saving lives.”

What is Plan B?

In one word: escalation. Apart from partitioning the air space of Syria, Plan B would provide for supplying, through Qatar or Saudi Arabia, man-portable air defense systems to the “moderate opposition,” including if it is acknowledged that the “moderate opposition” has allied itself openly with the al-Nusra front. Plan B has not been approved, but the media has floated a series of reports throughout October as being under consideration.

On October 28, the New York Times published an astonishing conclusion about an aspect of the Obama administration’s strategy in Syria, though gently and benevolently worded. The Times indicated that it was being felt that Obama had insufficiently armed the “moderate opposition,” so that in Aleppo it had “no choice” but to partner with al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra) to fight off Putin and Assad.  At the same time, Reuters noted that the Obama administration had formerly considered arming the “moderates” with anti-air missiles but was constrained by the fear that such weapons would fall in the hands of ”extremists.”

Such reports suggest, rather boldly, I think, that “former restraint” might have to give way to greater support for the “moderate” militants, including if they partner with “extremists.” Thus, we arrive at a point of utter bewilderment in which we verify the absurdity of launching a War on Terror to end up fighting a War with Terror.

Oppose US imperialism

It is good and proper that we should denounce Hillary Clinton for her vile record of regime change (in Honduras), crime of aggression (Libya), threats to Russia and China, corruption, illegality, and abuse of power. She’s clearly unfit to be president of any decent country that calls itself democratic.

However, fixating on her individual agency lets the policy off the hook. The US is not yet a banana republic, in which the patriarch of some rich landowning family becomes the patriarch-autocrat of a country. An intricate network of powerful interests, which determine the policy, rules the US, frantic to maintain global economic and military dominance. This ruling class selects the candidate who will best carry out the policy. Hillary Clinton will be the servant of the interests of the ruling class of which she is a member. She will be their president.

So it’s the policy that must be opposed, and this policy is imperialist.

We must develop a principled opposition to this policy, without prevarications. The task falls on the left, but it cannot be a left divided by relativist consideration of “evil” on all sides. However we may feel about the morality of governments in Russia, China, Syria, Iran, etc., one thing is clear: they did not launch a war on Iraq, opening the door to all the crimes that followed from that original crime. It is time to decide whether we want to live with things as they are or change them. And we must begin by changing them at home.

Cerca de 800 milhões de pessoas passam fome em todo o Mundo, a maioria delas nos países ditos «em desenvolvimento». Ora nesses países, todos os anos, 250 mil milhões de euros de receitas fiscais desaparecem nos paraísos fiscais, ou seja, 6 vezes a quantia anualmente necessária para vencer a fome daqui até 2025.1

«Calcula-se que 85 % a 90 % destes haveres [fundos privados colocados em paraísos fiscais] pertencem a menos de 10 milhões de pessoas – ou seja, 0,014 % da população mundial –, e que pelo menos um terço desses haveres pertencem às 100 000 famílias mais ricas do mundo, pesando cada uma delas pelo menos 30 milhões de dólares».2Não restam dúvidas: é aos mais afortunados que faz proveito a redução das receitas fiscais por fraude, as quais perpetuam e agravam as desigualdades.

A razão levaria a pensar que os mais ricos, que gozam dos benefícios das suas sociedades, deveriam contribuir para uma redistribuição em proveito dos mais pobres, por via dos impostos sobre os benefícios dessas sociedades. Ora a mais-valia extraída graças à exploração da força de trabalho evapora-se em territórios paradisíacos para a oligarquia que governa e legisla. Trata-se de um roubo organizado em grande escala – ilegítimo e não conforme à ideia de desenvolvimento humano – duma riqueza que pertence àquelas e àqueles que a criaram com o seu trabalho e que deveria financiar os serviços públicos. De facto, o imposto sobre os rendimentos que escapa ao fisco e por isso não é redistribuído para o bem comum permite ao capitalista optimizar a mais-valia extraída pelo trabalho e procurar meios de a privatizar na sua totalidade.

A fraude entrava o desenvolvimento

A fraude e a evasão fiscal, praticadas nomeadamente pelas multinacionais com a ajuda das grandes firmas de auditoria (os famosos «Big four»: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young, KPMG et Price Water House Coopers), são um verdadeiro flagelo que entrava o real desenvolvimento das populações empobrecidas por essas práticas. Esta hemorragia de capitais impede a construção de hospitais e a contratação de médicos com salários decentes; o equipamento de escolas na medida necessária e o recrutamento de professores, afim de diminuir o número de alunos por turma; a implantação de redes de água potável, etc.

Para o período de 2008-2012, a Global Financial Integrity calcula que, em 31 países em desenvolvimento, as saídas ilícitas de fundos foram superiores às despesas públicas de saúde e que, em 35 países em desenvolvimento, foram superiores às despesas públicas de ensino3. No seu relatório Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2004-2013, a mesma organização verificou que os países ditos em desenvolvimento e as economias emergentes perderam 7800 mil milhões de dólares (7 002 450 000 000 euros) nos fluxos financeiros ilícitos de 2004 a 2013, com saídas ilícitas progressivamente mais elevadas, aumentando a um ritmo médio de 6,5 % ao ano – quase duas vezes maior que o ritmo de crescimento do PIB mundial!

Crescimento das desigualdades

Grande parte das necessidades gritantes, indispensáveis ao avanço de um desenvolvimento real, foram abandonadas em proveito duma oligarquia que não pára de enriquecer. O programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento (PNUD) indica que 8 % da população mundial mais rica embolsa metade dos rendimentos totais, indo a outra metade para os restantes 92 %4. As riquezas concentradas nas mãos dos 1 % mais ricos passaram de 44 % das riquezas mundiais em 2010 para 48 % em 2014. No espaço de 20 anos, as desigualdades de rendimento aumentaram nos países em desenvolvimento.5

A fraude fiscal tem de ser levada a sério e merece uma justiça que castigue os culpados. É ela um dos factores que entrava o desenvolvimento dos países empobrecidos e agrava o «sistema da dívida». No seu relatório, o perito independente encarregado de estudar a dívida na ONU, M. Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, insiste na necessidade de combater os fluxos financeiros considerados ilícitos, que «contribuem para a acumulação de uma dívida insustentável, pois a insuficiência das receitas públicas pode levar os governos a recorrerem a empréstimos externos». Os fluxos ilícitos de capitais privam assim o Estado da possibilidade de financiar actividades indispensáveis à eliminação da pobreza e à satisfação dos direitos económicos, sociais, culturais, civis e políticos.

No seguimento deste relatório foi aprovada no Conselho dos Direitos Humanos da ONU uma resolução sobre a evasão fiscal e sobre a necessidade de devolver os haveres desviados dos países ditos «em desenvolvimento». Nesta votação, ocorrida a 24/03/2016, nem um só país europeu votou a seu favor. Bélgica, França, Alemanha, Holanda, Suíça, Reino Unido, Portugal, Albânia, Eslovénia, Letónia, Geórgia, República da Coreia, ex-República jugoslava da Macedónia, México e Panamá abstiveram-se.

Jerome Duval

1.«Ao todo, o montante das fugas de recursos para o desenvolvimento, que leva em conta, além das receitas fiscais perdidas, os ganhos que poderiam ser feitos por meio dos investimentos em falta, ronda entre os 250 mil milhões e os 300 mil milhões de dólares por ano.» Ver A. Cobham, «UNCTAD study on corporate tax in developing countries», Unacounted.org (2015). Ver também a petição em linha.

2.Ver Étude finale sur les flux financiers illicites da ONU, p. 6, disponível em francês no site da ONU.

3.Ver J. Spanjers e H. Foss, «Illicit financial flows and development indices: 2008-2012», Global Financial Integrity, p. 30-33 (2015).

4.Ver PNUD, «Humanity Divided: Confronting Inequality in Developing Countries», p. xi do texto inglês (New York, 2013).

5.Ver «Wealth: having it all and wanting more», relatório temático da Oxfam, p. 2, 3 e 7 (2015).

Fontes e referências:

Artigo de opinião publicado em 1/09/2016 em Politis.fr

L’évasion fiscale, délit de riches aux dépens des pauvres

Tradução: Rui Viana Pereira, cadpp.org

En los países en vías de desarrollo, al menos 250.000 millones de euros de ingresos fiscales desaparecen cada año en los paraísos fiscales, es decir, seis veces el importe anual necesario para luchar y vencer el hambre hasta 2025.

Son entonces los más adinerados los que se aprovechan de la reducción de ingresos fiscales por fraude, lo que perpetúa y empeora las desigualdades. Parece lógico que los más ricos, que se aprovechan de los beneficios de sus empresas, tendrían que contribuir con una redistribución a favor de los más pobres a través del impuesto sobre los beneficios de estas empresas. Sin embargo, la plusvalía generada por la explotación de la fuerza laboral se evapora en territorios paradisíacos para la oligarquía que gobierna y legisla.

Se trata de un robo organizado a gran escala –ilegítimo y no conforme a cualquier idea de desarrollo humano– de una riqueza que pertenece a aquellos y aquellas que la han creado con su trabajo, y que debería financiar los servicios públicos. De hecho, el impuesto sobre los beneficios, así no redistribuido para el bien común porque escapa al fisco, permite al capitalista optimizar la plusvalía obtenida del trabajo intentando, ilegalmente o no, privatizar su totalidad.

El fraude obstaculiza el desarrollo

El fraude y la evasión fiscal, que son practicados por las multinacionales ayudadas por grandes sociedades de auditoría, sobre todo (los famosos big four: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young, KPMG y Price Waterhouse Coopers), son una verdadera calamidad que entorpece el avance de un desarrollo real para las poblaciones empobrecidas por estas políticas.

Esta hemorragia de capitales impide la construcción de hospitales y el empleo de médicos con salarios dignos; el equipamiento de escuelas a la altura del reto acompañado de una contratación de profesores para reducir el número de alumnos por clase; la implantación de redes de suministro de agua potable, etc. Para el periodo 2008-2012, Global Financial Integrity estima que en 31 países en desarrollo las salidas de fondos ilícitos fueron superiores a los gastos públicos de salud, y que en 35 países en desarrollo fueron superiores a los gastos públicos de enseñanza.

En su informe Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2004-2013, la misma organización constata que los países calificados de “en desarrollo” y las economías emergentes perdieron 7,8 billones de dólares en los flujos financieros ilícitos desde 2004 hasta 2013, con salidas ilícitas cada vez más importantes, aumentando una media de un 6,5% al año, casi dos veces más rápido que el PIBmundial.

Crecimiento de las desigualdades

Tantas necesidades evidentes y, sin embargo, indispensables para el avance de un verdadero desarrollo se abandonan en favor de una clase oligárquica que no para de enriquecerse. El Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) ha indicado que el 8% de la población mundial más rica recibe la mitad de la totalidad de los ingresos, mientras que la otra mitad se reparte entre el 92% restante. La riqueza concentrada en manos del 1% más rico ha ascendido al 48% de la riqueza mundial en 2014 frente al 44% en 2010. Durante los últimos 20 años, las desigualdades de los ingresos han aumentado en los países en desarrollo.
El fraude fiscal merece un poco de seriedad, y sobre todo una justicia que sancione a los culpables. En ello va el desarrollo de países empobrecidos por el “sistema deuda”. En su informe, el experto independiente sobre la deuda de la ONU, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, insiste en la necesidad de combatir los flujos financieros considerados ilícitos, que “contribuyen a la acumulación de una deuda insostenible, porque la falta de ingresos públicos puede forzar a los gobiernos a acudir a los préstamos exteriores”.

En vez de endeudarse para hacer frente a esta hemorragia de capitales que constituye el fraude fiscal, dichos flujos ilícitos privan a los Estados de recursos que podrían financiar actividades indispensables para la eliminación de la pobreza y para la consecución de derechos económicos, sociales, culturales, civiles y políticos.

Al término de este informe, una resolución sobre la evasión fiscal y la necesidad de devolver los activos malversados a los países calificados de “en desarrollo” fue adoptada a nivel del Consejo de los Derechos Humanos de la ONU. El 24 de marzo de 2016, ningún Estado europeo votó a favor. Bélgica, Francia, Alemania, Países Bajos, Suiza, Reino Unido, Portugal, Albania, Eslovenia, Letonia, Georgia, la República de Corea, la Ex-República yugoslava de Macedonia, México y Panamá se abstuvieron.

Jérôme Duval

Artículo publicado en francés en Politis.fr

L’évasion fiscale, délit de riches aux dépens des pauvres

Traducido del francés por Sylia Amrarene y revisado por Fátima Martín. https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/global/31292-evasion-fiscal-delito-ricos-costa-pobres.html / CADTM

 Foto : CC – Flickr – 2014 – William Murphy

Jérôme Duval es miembro del CADTM, Comité para la abolición de las deudas ilegítimas (www.cadtm.org) y de la PACD, la Plataforma de Auditoría Ciudadana de la Deuda en el Estado español (http://auditoriaciudadana.net/). Es autor junto con Fátima Martín del libro Construcción europea al servicio de los mercados financieros, Icaria editorial 2016 y es también coautor del libro La Deuda o la vida, (Icaria, 2011), libro colectivo coordinado por Damien Millet y Eric Toussaint, que ha recibido el Premio al libro político en la Feria del libro político en Lieja, Bélgica, en 2011.

After reports emerged alleging that the US may be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over war crimes in Afghanistan, Radio Sputnik host Brian Becker discussed the possibility of such a scenario with international criminal lawyer Christopher Black.

Black, who is on the list of counsel at the ICC, told Loud & Clear that the initial report by Foreign Policy, suggesting Washington’s actions in Afghanistan may be investigated, appeared at a tough time for the organization. Prior to the publication three African nations — South Africa, Gambia and Burundi — withdrew from ICC over its alleged bias toward the continent.

Listen to Christopher Black:  “ICC Opens Afghanistan War Crimes Investigation: Could the U.S. Actually be Tried?” on Spreaker.

“It’s something to reestablish [ICC’s] prestige and credibility, because it’s in a state of collapse at the moment,” Black commented on the occasion, adding that there’s little evidence that the US will actually appear before court.

Citing the ICC report from the last year, Black stressed that potential inquiry into Afghanistan’s war crimes will be referred to every party involved in the conflict, including the Taliban, Afghan government and other forces. But it won’t concern the states that investigate the purported war crimes on their own, he added.

“[The report] says that the US has disciplinary procedures set up. People are being investigated [by US courts] and [ICC] may have to assess whether it is a serious investigation on that. Because the ICC won’t charge a country with war crimes if its own internal procedures are in place and they are pursuing people who commit crimes.”

In case of Afghanistan, Washington largely justifies its actions in the country, Black said.

“They said they made that attack, aggression against Afghanistan, in order to go after the Taliban government, which was ‘harboring Osama bin Laden’,” he said. “But remember the history, the Taliban said ‘we do have bin Laden here and will hand him over if you present evidence of his crimes.’ All they received was bombs.”

Moreover, Black highlighted, the US is not a member of ICC and has its federal protection act in place that prevents American personnel and officials from being charged by international courts, which means it’s unlikely the ICC will ever charge any American with war crimes.

“I don’t see them [US] accepting anything from the ICC, if it had an independent prosecutor,” Black said, adding that the ICC, under its two prosecutors, has done nothing to deal with war crimes committed by NATO forces in Libya or Yugoslavia.

The ICC ultimately is a tool for extension of American power worldwide Black explained, adding that Washington controls the prosecution staff in the ICC, “by placing its personnel in key positions or by persons that can control key positions.”

“The NATO tribunals have three purposes: to demonize governments that they want to crush, to cover-up their role in those wars and to make sure those people will never come back to governments. And the rest is propaganda.”

Since its establishment in 2003, it has opened 10 investigations and has found guilty 39 people, all from Africa.

“The US and its Western allies are using the ICC to go after who are standing their way, But they do not go for people [Uganda’s President Yoweri] Museveni who commit war crimes on the daily basis all over the Congo. Their client-leaders are left away and the rest are targeted,” he said.

The cozy relationship between Goldman Sachs and the Clintons has reached dizzying new heights in recent years, giving the Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton an immensely influential partner on Wall Street.

As the public and most of the mainstream media is still processing the political bombshell concerning the newly reopened FBI probe into the Hillary Clinton’s email server case – the global investment banking firm Goldman Sachs quietly endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate this past week.

The financial ties that bind the Clintons and Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs are nothing new, but never before have the connections been so exposed. Let’s take a trip down collusion lane to review some of the more questionable examples of their political and financial merger formed long ago…

‘MONEY CHANGERS’ – Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs are inextricably linked to the Clinton’s and The Clinton Foundation. (Photo illustration 21WIRE)

The Clintons & Goldman Sachs 

While campaigning for his first term in the White House, former president Bill Clinton received an enormous amount of support from Washington insider lobbyists and investment banking firms on Wall Street.

At the top of the pile sat Goldman Sachs…

In 1992, the LA Times reported that presidential nominee Bill Clinton,”received the largest share of his financial support–at least $2.6 million–from lawyers and lobbyists,” and that Clinton also received additional support from “…big securities firms such as Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York and Stephens Inc. in his hometown of Little Rock, Ark. In fact, Goldman Sachs employees and their family members were responsible for the biggest contributions from a single firm: $98,700.”

For decades the Clintons have remained close allies to the banking behemoth Goldman Sachs and in the process, a mutually beneficial relationship has taken hold, something that even the NY Times admits:

Over 20-plus years, Goldman provided the Clintons with some of their most influential advisers, millions of dollars in campaign contributions and speaking fees, and financial support for the family foundation’s charitable programs.

By now, there should be little doubt that the Clinton political machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Wall Street banking cartel. Their relationship was built over three decades.

The real watershed moment came here…

BLANK CHECK: Bill Clinton laughs with Wall Street elites after signing the Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999.

‘Key to the Kingdom’

In one of the most significant financial rulings in the modern era, the Clinton presidency gave big banks like Goldman Sachs the skeleton key to the kingdom by deregulating the investment banking system almost entirely.

The Clinton/Goldman Sachs/Wall Street partnership was fully forged after the removal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which banking luminaries cynically named the “Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999″ officially titled the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.  The original Glass-Steagall was a depression-age four-part provision under the Bank Act of 1933 that strictly prohibited securities activities that could be harmful to investors – the same sort of rogue speculating and paper fiat fraud which triggered the Great Depression (1929-1941). In fact, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed Glass-Steagall, opened the door for the ‘shadow banking’ realm outside of regulatory oversight which led to a much higher trading risk, as banks became more interlinked.

Simply put: Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagell removed the firewall between speculative investment banking and regular high street retail and consumer banking – which exposed everyone to toxic, subprime ponzi schemes and fake paper products being pushed around the globe by the banking elite – which ultimately causing the global economy to crash in 2008. All that can be laid at the feet of one William Jefferson Clinton. And Hillary still claims that, “My husband did so well with the economy.” Really?

In a cross-posted article featured at Huffington Post, Nomi Prins underscored the complicit nature of Wall Street and Washington after the removal of tighter bank regulations under the Clinton administration during the 1990’s:

To grasp the dangers that the Big Six banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) presently pose to the financial stability of our nation and the world, you need to understand their history in Washington, starting with the Clinton years of the 1990s. Alliances established then (not exclusively with Democrats, since bankers are bipartisan by nature) enabled these firms to become as politically powerful as they are today and to exert that power over an unprecedented amount of capital. Rest assured of one thing: their past and present CEOs will prove as critical in backing a Hillary Clinton presidency as they were in enabling her husband’s years in office.

Prins herself was a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, senior managing director at Bear Stearns, as well as having worked as a senior strategist at the now defunct investment banking firm Lehman Brothers. Following the financial crash in 2007-2008, Prins blew the whistle on the banking world in a book entitled “It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.”

Prins has become an advocate for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act since departing from the investment banking world.

The media outlet Common Dreams described the merger between Citicorp and Travelers Group (becoming Citigroup), which was dubbed the ‘Citi-Travelers Act’ on Capitol Hill. It was a conglomeration that went hand in hand with the Clinton administration’s influence on banking deregulation marked by the repeal of Glass-Steagall:

Then, in 1998, in an act of corporate civil disobedience, Citicorp and Travelers Groupannounced they were merging. Such a combination of banking and insurance companies was illegal under the Bank Holding Company Act, but was excused due to a loophole that provided a two-year review period of proposed mergers. The merger was premised on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Citigroup’s co-chairs Sandy Weill and John Reed led a swarm of industry executives and lobbyists who trammeled the halls of Congress to make sure a deal was cut.

At the time, it was the largest financial merger even though it was technically illegal, as stated by the former Bankers of America CEO Kenneth Guenther. In 1999, after “12 attempts in 25 years,”Congress passed the Financial Services Modernization Act, which led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall was pushed heavily by Citigroup’s co-CEO Sanford Weill and lobbyist Roger Levy and according to a report by The Nation:

They laid out more than $290 million for lobbying in 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and donated more than $150 million in the 1997–98 election cycle—a figure sure to be topped in 1999–2000.

How much of those contributions made their way to the Clinton family and what kind of impact did this have after they left the White House?

In 2005, Bill Clinton was paid over half a million for speaking at three private Goldman events.

In 2013, after stepping down from her position as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton gave a total of three paid speeches at Goldman Sachs events to the tune of $675,000 dollars, in which one attendee said “she sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director,” according to a quote obtained by Politico. Indeed, Clinton gave a glowing speech to the Goldman gang and in the process, as Wikileaks released in early October, the Democratic nominee believes in “both a public and a private position” on Wall Street reform and that it is an “oversimplification” to suggest that investment banking led to the most recent financial crisis.

That Clinton leak provided another window into the much protected alliance between finance and politics, but it’s only the tip of a much larger iceberg.

In 2015, the Washington Post reported that “Hillary Rodham Clinton and former president Bill Clinton earned in excess of $25 million for delivering 104 speeches since the beginning of 2014, a huge infusion to their net worth as she was readying for a presidential bid.”

‘ANOINTED’: Chelsea Clinton with Goldman Sachs-backed hedge funder Marc Mezvinsky.

The Clinton family is chock-full of banking connections, as Chelsea Clinton ‘joined’ the Avenue Capital Group, which according to reports is a “…$12 billion hedge fund whose founder has contributed to many Democratic Party campaigns.” Chelsea is married to Marc Mezvinsky, a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs. Chelsea’s tenure at Avenue Capital Group was from 2006-2008 just prior to Hillary Clinton’s run for president in 2008. Since then Chelsea has risen to vice chairman inside the Clinton Foundation.

Marc Mezvinsky was forced to close one of his hedge funds recently, Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity, after had the fund lost most of its initial investor funds of $25 million – after blowing the money on secondhand junk Greek bank stocks and toxic government debt.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…

As it turns out, Marc is the son of troubled former Congressman Ed Mezvinsky – another close friend of Team Clinton.

Politico reports on one of Ed Mezvinsky’s financial controversies in 1999:

In the waning days of Clinton’s presidency, federal prosecutors and the FBI were bearing down on former Rep. Ed Mezvinsky (D-Iowa), who had fallen for a series of Ponzi schemes and pulled in nearly $10 million money from other investors to cover his losses.

Continuing, Politico outlined new information concerning a pardon request sent by from Ed Mezvinsky’s wife to then President Bill Clinton:

…records released last week by the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock and obtained by POLITICO show Mezvinsky and his then-wife — ex-Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-Pa.) — pleaded with the former president for a presidential pardon to head off the looming federal case.

In 2016, the Daily Mail reported the following:

Chelsea Clinton’s husband and his partners have suffered a huge loss after trying to bet on the revival of the Greek economy, and are now being forced to shut down one of their hedge funds.

Marc Mezvinsky, 38, and his partners, former Goldman Sachs colleagues Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon, raised $25million from investors to buy up bank stocks and debt from the struggling nation.

That fund however has lost 90 percent of its value, investors with direct knowledge of the situation told The New York Times, and will now be closed.

‘THE INSIDERS’ – A ground-breaking ceremony at Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan in 2005. Hillary Clinton is joined by Michael Bloomberg, Lloyd Blankfein (current Goldman Sachs CEO), Former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Image Source: ilovemyfreedom)

The NY Times further outlined the long-held Clinton/Goldman connection just two years before the 2007-2008 financial crisis:

The Clintons’ relationships with Wall Street deepened in the 2000s, when Mr. Clinton set up his foundation in Harlem and Mrs. Clinton was elected to the Senate from New York. That brought her in close touch with the big Wall Street firms, a source of jobs and tax revenue for New York — and a leading source of campaign funds for Mrs. Clinton. During her years in Congress, employees of Goldman donated in excess of $234,000 to Mrs. Clinton, more than those of any other company except Citigroup, accordingto the Center for Responsive Politics.

Along with other New York politicians, Mrs. Clinton worked to obtain federal tax breaks to resuscitate Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and those breaks helped Goldman build its new, roughly $2 billion headquarters. When it broke ground in 2005, Mrs. Clinton and other New York officials were on-site.

‘HOW TO MONETIZE INFLUENCE’ – Lloyd Blankfein at a Clinton Global Initiative event with Hillary Clinton. (Image Source: sputniknews)

The Wall Street Racket

To understand who powers the Clinton Foundation’s billion dollar RICO influence-peddling slush fund, you need to understand how money is laundered between Wall Street and Washington DC.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup and many others were all ordered to pay millions for misleading investors after the 2008 crash, then in April of 2016, Goldman was ordered to settle a federal and state probe for $5 Billion dollars. CNBC reported the following:

Em um país com alicerces democráticos frágeis, para dizer o mínimo, um auto-denominado Observatório da Imprensa (OI) não poderia ser dirigido por ninguém mais senão ele, quen retrata perfeitamente a “democracia” tupiniquim: Alberto Dines, declarado sionista que promoveu o golpe cívico-militar-midiático-empresarial de 1964 no Brasil (fato não confessado pelo dito-cujo, mas documentado). E não poderia ser sustentado por outra organização senão a tal de Ford Foundation, bem-conhecida ONG de fachada da CIA.

Semanalmente publicando no sítio do OI de dezembro de 2012 a março de 2014, este autor praticava contra-informação em relação à mídia oligárquica e se diferenciava de Dines por apontar diversos desvios midiáticos como defesa dos interesses dos que a sustentam, isto é, dos políticos e do alto empresariado além do próprio imperialismo norte-americano, e não como meros “equívocos jornalísticos” por inaptidão ou afã de publicar, padrão mantido precariamente pelo “observador midiático do Brasil”, amigo íntimo e admirador de personagens como Roberto Civita, proprietário da famigerada editora Abril, já falecido.

Em meados de 2013 no OI, este autor ousou “observar o observador” alegando que ninguém estava acima do bem e do mal, e por isso mesmo nem da crítica: afinal, se observávamos semanalmente a tudo e a todos, por que não sermos igualmente observados? Pois a observação crítica deu-se quando Dines, tentando desviar a atenção da gravidade da espionagem globalmente descomedida do regime de Washington revelada por Edward Snowden, especialmente contra o Brasil (mais espionado do mundo então), alegou que a indignação de determinados setores nacionais (incluindo a deste autor) devia-se a ressentimento contra os Estados Unidos, “motor da política deste país há tantas décadas”, segundo o “crítico” de jornalismo.

Obviamente, a intolerância crônica contra demagogia e puxa-saquismo sofrida por este autor acabou gerando mal-estar naquele meio que não preza nem nunca prezou pela liberdade de expressão e pela verdade dos fatos. Alguns meses depois, acabou insustentável a permanência deste autor ali.

Leis de Imprensa, Pesadelo do Oligopólio Midiático e de Seus Financiadores

Plínio Lopes, estudante de Jornalismo, analisou (muito bem) a forma sensacionalista do “jornalismo” policial que, muitas vezes, fere gravemente a garantia constitucional da presunção da inocência, expõe inocentes ou suspeitos ainda não julgados, gerando assim mais ódio e violência.

Tudo isso é correto até que Lopes conclui que o “jornalismo” policial precisa se reinventar. O que as medíocres faculdades de Jornalismo – indústrias do diploma elitistas e formadoras de idiotas por excelência – e Dines jamais colocam em questão, seguidos pelo discípulo de turno, é que o jornalismo brasileiro em geral precisa, como em qualquer Estado democrático ao redor do mundo, de regulação, isto é, obedecer leis de Imprensa que no País inexistem, embora estejam previstas no artigo 220 da Constituição Federal.

No Brasil, as cinco principais emissoras de TV controlam, direta ou indiretamente, 274 redes (65% do total). Só a rede Globo controla 61,5% de TVs UHF; 40,7% dos jornais; 31,8% de TVs VHF; 30,1% das emissoras de rádio AM e 28% das FM.

A revista britânica The Economist, altamente conservadora, afirmou em 2014 que a concentração de audiência no Brasil é absurda, sugerindo que a então presidente Dilma deveria regular a Imprensa local, fazendo comparações com a mídia dos Estados Unidos – país fortemente liberal do ponto de vista econômico – a fi de constatar e quanto a mídia brasileira é anti-democrática.

Já em 2013, a ONG Repórteres Sem Fronteiras (RSF) pontuou que, no Brasil, “dez principais grupos econômicos, de origem familiar, continuam repartindo o mercado da comunicação de massa”, observando ainda que o monopólio midiático no País parece “pouco modificado, 30 anos após a ditadura militar (1964-1985)”, definindo-o como o “país dos 30 Bersluconis”, referindo-se ao magnata da mídia e ex-primeiro ministro italiano.

Porém, amedrontados com o fato de que seus lucros possam ser diminuídos, os proprietários dos grandes meios de comunicação tupiniquins, através de seus jornalistas-fantasia, vendem a ideia que Leis de Imprensa imporiam uma ditadura da informação ao País: mais uma completa inversão de papéis da mídia de manipulação e embaralhamento do entendimento coletivo.

Liberdade de Expressão e Direitos Humanos

O Pacto Internacional de Direitos Civis e Políticos, também em seu artigo 19, prevê: “Toda pessoa terá o direito à liberdade de expressão; esse direito incluirá a liberdade de procurar, receber e difundir informações e ideias de qualquer natureza, independentemente de considerações de fronteiras, verbalmente ou por escrito, de forma impressa ou artística, ou por qualquer meio de sua escolha”.

No âmbito das Américas, a Convenção Americana de Direitos Humanos, conhecida como Pacto de San José da Costa Rica e assinada pelos membros da Organização dos Estados Americanos (OEA), declara no artigo 13 que “toda pessoa tem o direito à liberdade de pensamento e de expressão. Esse direito inclui a liberdade de procurar, receber e difundir informações e ideias de qualquer natureza, sem considerações de fronteiras, verbalmente ou por escrito, ou em forma impressa ou artística, ou por qualquer meio de sua escolha”.

Mas não se deve ingenuamente esperar que, no sistema capitalista que visa o lucro, as empresas de mídia voluntária e altruisticamente esqueçam os índices de audiência e se reinventem, movidas pelo amor ao ofício e à vida.

A presidente Dilma foi derrubada do cargo não apenas inconstitucionalmente, como também de maneira muito baixa por seus encargados mais próximos (como Michel Temer), sem espaço para apresentar sua versão dos fatos no mesmo oligopólio midiático que sempre se recusou a regular, sob o pífio e oportunista argumento de que a sociedade possui controle remoto (como se houvesse pluralidade; tanto não há nem nunca houve, que ela caiu sem poder fazer sua voz chegar à maioria da sociedade), e o sítio que se intitula fiscal da Imprensa, jamais contraria os interesses mesquinhos, justamente, da grande mídia oligárquica de imbecilização em massa.

Sem democratização da mídia não haverá, jamais, jornalismo minimamente ético no Brasil, a liberdade de expressão continuará seriamente comprometida no Brasil e, consequentemente já que mídia é primordial na concepção de valores e ideias e na influência de comportamentos, a própria democracia e o senso cidadão seguirão da mesma maneira, paupérrimos no País. E sem essa discussão, as mais diversas análises terminarão, na essência, vazias, efêmeras, uma série de palavras jogadas ao vento.

Edu Montesanti

The United States has one party, the Permanent Ruling Party.  Some call one branch the “Democrats”, some call the other branch the “Republicans”.  While there are surface differences, both wings of the Party support the same things:  permanent war; Israel; illegal migration; hatred of Arabs and Muslims.  Neither arm criticizes a huge military budget or the vast sums spent on the various intelligence services, whose main job seems to be spying on American citizens. 

Indeed, political discourse in the US seems focused on politically immaterial, nonsensical things, such as homosexual marriage or use of “Transgender Toilet Wars”.  Race and Sex, of all possible kinds and variations, have great currency in this conversation.  As the Israeli musician, Gilad Atzmon, said, the American Left does not concentrate on significant matters like war, peace, or unemployment.

Whenever outsiders attempt to create a second party (or, even, a third), the “Lame-Stream” Media pillory them as extremists, “spoilers”, or crackpots.  The few corporations which control most of radio, television, and the national newspapers preach the stability of the “two” political parties and allege that additional groups would weaken the nation, just as they have done in other countries.  None ever examined the hard questions which Ross Perot and Ralph Nader had previously posed in their bids for president.

Today, less than a week before the US general election, the media (and the body politic) are obsessed with Hillary Clinton’s charges that Russia is supposedly manipulating the American voting system or that Donald Trump holds deplorable views on women, migrants, and Muslims.  Not one word is printed or spoken about voter claims that the politicians do not represent them but, rather, special interests.  People cling to their party beliefs:  Democrats are right and Republicans are wrong (or the reverse).

One contact in heavily-Democratic Montana noted that the working-class there does not ever question the national candidate’s credentials.  Others, elsewhere, believe that the straight Republican ticket is the path to salvation.

Reality, does not, apparently, intrude anywhere.

Hillary Clinton’s backers repeat the canard that Donald Trump is in league with Russia.  They assert they are right because the US intelligence services say so–without proof.  They claim that Donald Trump is unfit to be president because George Bush, pere et fils, say so, as do their administrations’ former officials.  But there’s never a thought as to what the Bush family and their appointees have done to South and Southwest Asia, the Balkans, North Africa, and Latin America.

There’s nary a word about the questionable activities of the Clinton Foundation, buying and selling favors and entrée to decision-makers.  No media outlet examines Hillary Clinton’s role in the destruction of Libya or Syria, or, her influence on her husband to bomb Yugoslavia. 

To the US media, the American-sponsored coup in the Ukraine, with input from Hillary and Clintonista Victoria Nuland, never happened. And we’ve all forgotten Hillary’s sway in the Waco, Texas massacre.  The continuing email scandal leads to the bigger story of the true role and function of the Clinton Foundation, now being outed as a money-laundering operation.  Credible rumors emanating from the FBI indicate a deep split within that agency.  Dedicated agents in many field offices have gathered evidence against the Clinton Foundation.  Yet, they are reputedly struggling with high-level officials seeking to protect that organization from any investigation.

The plot thickens with the addition of Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Director, receiving a campaign donation from the Clinton Foundation for his wife’s political campaign activities.  (This came just after his appointment in January 2016 when the FBI probe of Hillary Clinton he was heading heated up. This predated Bill Clinton’s peculiar meeting with Attorney General Lynch on her private plane about their grandchildren.)  The email case is back on track after new evidence emerged from the seizure of Huma Abedin’s former husband’s computer.  (He, Anthony Weiner, had been under investigation for online pedophilia.)  Some of the 650,000 emails found were related to the separate FBI search for Clinton’s missing emails.

Donald Trump does and says outrageous and often disgusting things.  His coarse, rude remarks about women and some opponents go beyond “locker room talk”.  He wants strict controls on Muslim immigrants, he thinks “open borders” encourage racism, and so on.  These enable his opponents to castigate him as a “loose cannon”. Trump doesn’t seem able to articulate a coherent plan to improve the American economy, end the “forever war”, or rein in military spending or the intelligence services.  He does not recognize that the United States is behind al-Qaeda, ISIL, ISIS, IS, or D’aish.  Yet, he wants to fight it/them ferociously.

Besides stories about underhanded business deals involving the Republican candidate,  there is also a separate lawsuit now filed against Trump.  He is seen as being connected to an investigation of  Jeffrey Epstein for pedophilia.  Epstein had been a procurer for the elites and engaged in blackmail in connection therewith.

But Trump is right about one thing:  election fraud in the United States.

More and more examples of the “traditional” form of ballot-box tampering are appearing.  In Harrisonburg, Virginia, students recently re-registered dead people as voters.  (In 1960, corpses in Chicago gave John F. Kennedy Illinois’ Electoral College ballots and the presidency.)  A former intelligence officer and State Department official stated that when he was voting early in Florida, a woman was caught at the polling place attempting to cast a second ballot.  In explanation, he heard her say that an “ethnic website” had urged her to do that.  (And, given the increasing outcry against US States attempting to require voter identification, there’s likely more electoral hanky-panky going on.  After all, you even need ID to get a book out of the library in America.)

But now, there’s a new form of election tampering.

In the past, when Ross Perot and Ralph Nader sought the presidency, the mass media tagged them as “spoilers”, out of step with the mainstream.  Now, there is a concerted attack on Donald Trump as an “outsider”, unbeholden to traditional interests.  The assault on Trump is far more intense and concentrated than the batterings given the other two as they campaigned outside the pale.  The D.C. newspaper, the Washington Post, has, likely, gone beyond its efforts to get Richard Nixon out of office.  Then, in the midst of Watergate, the paper had a negative article about  Nixon on the front page almost every day until his resignation.  Now, the Post devotes entire pages to virulently unfavorable pieces on Trump while sanitizing the dirt on Clinton.  TV and radio follow suit.

If the journal prints anything unfavorable about Clinton, it’s only because another organization had been carrying it.  “Conspiracy theorists” might term this brainwashing without using soap.  Certainly, as Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels said:  “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

And what does Herr Goebbels’ statement have to do with the future of the US?  And why will everyone lose, no matter who wins the election?

We’ll continue to get more of what we have now:  war, inflated military and intelligence service budgets, and renewed focus on irrelevant and immaterial things.  Clinton’s hostility towards Russia, Syria, and Iran, plus her blind support for and deference to Israel does not bode well for America’s future.  Trump’s lack of intellectual vigor, his tendency toward erratic behavior, and vow to smash ISIL mean no real change for the better.  Worse, the bureaucracy, which supports the status quo, will likely operate from the shadows as the de facto government of the United States.

Whatever happens, either candidate could well be indicted as part of an investigation or lawsuit already underway that would make Watergate and Iran-Contra pale by comparison.

And moving to Mars is not a current option.

Well, here we are: at the bottom of the barrel under forty feet of slag. In a few days’ time, we’ll know our fate: the five-alarm fire of Trump Rule (oh, how those police unions are chomping at the bit!) or the Clinton Age of Hyper-War (oh, how those neocons are chomping at the bit!). In either case, the entrenched coagulation of corporate interests and war profiteers that have strangled the peace, prosperity and prospects of the American people will not be budged an inch.

The change that people are so desperately hungry for — so hungry that that some of them might well elect an Establishment insider whose sinister clowning makes him appear to be a ‘rebel’ — will not come. Thus their bitterness will grow deeper, more sour, erupting more and more often in physical violence: from militarized police against protestors, from Trump-empowered racists (if he wins or loses), from extremist militias, from angry, maddened people on every side. And of course there will be more — much more — of the horrific, never-ending, globe-spanning violence of the bipartisan Terror War that churns on and on, no matter who is sitting temporarily in the White House.

There’s no use in pretending that’s not what we face. But there’s also no use in pretending that this situation is somehow sui generis, some terribly unlucky conflation of unforeseen circumstances coming together at this particular time. It is in fact the culmination and embodiment of the deliberate choices of the most powerful forces in society: the choices to enrich themselves beyond all reason and extend their military and economic dominance over the earth.

It doesn’t matter that many if not most of the practitioners and functionaries of this system “believe” in its rightness.

It doesn’t matter that brutal neoliberal nostrums and extremist imperial notions have become religious dogmas for those who see themselves as the “meritocracy.” It doesn’t matter if the leaders and factotums genuinely believe in the “exceptionalism” they preach or if they are cynical power-seekers. It doesn’t matter if they actually believe their rapacious financial machinations are reflections of the “natural law” of the “the market” that will eventually benefit all, or if they know themselves to be what they really are: ugly souls disfigured by greed. The end result has been the same: a long series of deliberate choices by a bipartisan elite that have hollowed out the lives and communities and futures of millions of Americans, and created a living hell of war, ruin and hatred over much of the earth.

This is a system that has delegitimized itself, a system that has undermined its own institutions. Through its own actions, it has rotted out the foundations of trust and reason which once upheld it.

Some might say, “Oh, but there’s been a decades-long, concentrated effort by right-wing billionaires and corporate forces to foment ideological and religious extremism to undermine the legitimacy of secular government, which might restrict their profiteering or let more people have a share in power.”

And that’s true.

But it’s been accompanied at every step by the collusion and cowardice of the putative opposition. The so-called New Democrats, exemplified by the Clintons, jettisoned concern for the common good to embrace “centrist” and “technocratic” policies: i.e., to adopt the neoliberal dogma that unbridled pursuit of private profit by a connected elites will somehow, someday, lead to general prosperity. The idea that the party should fight to improve the lives of ordinary people in the here and now, to fight for their quality of life in a genuine, substantive way, came to be seen as old-hat, a quaint and fusty notion of has-beens and dreamers who didn’t understand the way the world really worked. A true, savvy “moderate” knows you must compromise every ideal, show yourself to be a willing and avid servant of the monied interests and the militarists, in order to gain power so you can … make a few cosmetic changes around the edges, a few little social improvements here and there (but only — of course! — in “partnership” with private interests), but never, ever challenge the system at its core.

This is the only deal in town: outright, unvarnished right-wing rule, or simpering, cowardly “moderate” management of a violent, rapacious system. That’s been the choice on offer since 1976. That’s the choice on offer today. The only difference is that the system has metastasized to a monstrous degree over the years: lacking any genuine opposition, the system has grown more violent, more rapacious.

Establishment collusion — and Democratic cowardice — finally and completely degraded and delegitimized the American electoral process 16 years ago, when the Supreme Court — with two members who had direct family ties to the Bush campaign — stopped a recount that would have resulted in the actual winner of the election to take office. This outrageous action was accepted by every single organ and institution of the American system. (With the momentary exception of the Black Congressional Caucus, whose members tried, in vain, to get a single Democratic senator to challenge the result.) Instead, Americans were encouraged to applaud the fact that power had changed hands “without tanks in the street.” That is, we were to celebrate that an actual coup d’etat had taken place before our eyes without the slightest show of resistance.

Once in place, the coup regime — staffed at the highest levels by extremists who a year before had publicly called for a vast militarization of American policy and society, even if the public had to be “galvanized” by “a new Pearl Harbor” — led the nation into a disastrous war based on false pretenses, a vast crime that not only killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people but has led directly to unbridled turmoil, extremism, conflict and corruption around the world. The elite-supported coup regime instituted torture programs and death squads, and launched an orgy of war profiteering unprecedented in world history. The regime then presided over the worst economic collapse in generations.

Not a single member of the regime was ever tried — or even investigated, at even the most preliminary level — for a single crime committed during its time in power. There were no high-profile Congressional investigations into the hideous carnage and ruin and instability they wrought; not even a “Chilcot Commission” into the origins of the war, as the UK belatedly launched. Instead the regime’s leaders and top factotums were heaped with honors and wealth. Today their endorsement is eagerly sought — and gained — by the “progressive” Democratic candidate for president.

In 2008, the desperate electorate turned to a figure presented to them as an outsider who would at last bring real change. He had the trappings of difference — a black man with a Muslim name, who spoke eloquently of peace and social justice, who most people thought was far to the left but voted for him anyway. But Barack Obama was of course a meritocratic “centrist” to his core. Riding an enormous wave of popularity, and a strong Congressional majority, he proceeded to … bail out Wall Street fraudsters and finaglers with tax money and create a health care system based on the plan of a rightwing think-tank that prioritized corporate profit — and probably killed the chance for a genuinely public health care system for generations, if not for good.

He also doubled down on the Terror War, expanding it to more countries, extended Bush’s death squads, helped destroy nations like Libya and Yemen (thus spawning more chaos and terror), expanded illegal surveillance of the populace (and the world) to an extent beyond the wildest dreams of the Stasi or KGB. And after saving Big Money from itself and securing the guaranteed profits of the healthcare-insurance corporate complex, he spent most of his time on the domestic front trying to strike a “grand bargain” with Republicans to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Again, all hopes of any real change were thwarted. So now the nation swings from being ready to embrace a perceived leftist to the brink of voting in a bellicose rightist as it seeks the genuine change no one will give them. Of course, after the scorched-earth tactics of bipartisan neoliberalism and the inevitable moral degradation and brutalization that comes from year after year after year of vicious aggressive war, the choice for Trump is more nihilistic. It’s as if people believe positive change is no longer possible — so let’s tear everything down and see what happens. (This is the actual, open philosophy of the Breitbart gang, who are now directing Trump’s campaign.)

Even if Clinton wins, this nihilism will still be rampant. And given that she happily embodies the bipartisan Establishment now roundly despised on all sides for its many depredations, the nihilism will grow even worse — especially as she has given no indication whatsoever that she will even try to make substantive changes in the neoliberal-militarist system that is strangling us. Quite the contrary.

So yes, this has been a campaign like no other — but mostly because it has brought the systematic decay of the Republic into the sharpest possible relief, and has shown, more clearly than before, that the neoliberal-militarist ascendency offers no hope for a better life, a better world; indeed, that it offers nothing at all — except more violence, more bitterness, more ruin, more degradation for us all.

Chris Floyd is a columnist for CounterPunch Magazine. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at www.chris-floyd.com.