Times anti-Trump propaganda reached a new low with an August 9 article, editorial and commentary
Its propaganda turned truth on its head, suggesting Trump wants “gun rights supporters…tak(ing) matters into their own hands” by assassinating Clinton if she prevails in November.
What prompted such outrageous rubbish? At an August 9 North Carolina rally, he said “Hillary wants to abolish the Second Amendment…If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks.”
Later on Fox News, he called gun owner rights “a strong powerful movement, the Second Amendment.”
Hillary wants to take your guns away. She wants to leave you unprotected in your home. This is a tremendous political movement. The NRA, as you know, endorsed me.
They’re terrific people…They agree 100% with what I said. And there can be no other interpretation. Even reporters have told me. I mean, give me a break.
In no way did his remarks suggest wanting Hillary assassinated – nothing indicating he wants her harmed in any way. Led by deplorable NYT reporting, the insinuation blasted across the media suggested otherwise.
Times editors disgraced themselves headlining “Further Into the Muck With Mr. Trump,” willfully lying, saying “Americans find themselves asking whether Donald Trump has called for the assassination of Hillary Clinton.”
Only easily manipulated ones, carpet-bombed by Times and similar rot insinuating it, blasting him round-the-clock on cable television, waging war by other means, willfully mischaracterizing everything he says, expressing one-sided support for Hillary.
Times editors ended their anti-Trump rant, calling on “Republicans…to repudiate Mr. Trump once and for all.”
Journalism Professor Robert Jensen once called Times columnist Tom Friedman “scary (featuring) underinflated insights, twisted metaphors, second-rate thinking, third-rate writing (and) hack journalis(m).”
On August 9, he disgracefully bashed Trump, calling him “illegitimate…a threat to the nation…the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal,” saying his “ambiguous wink wink to Second Amendment people” is the stuff that got former “Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin…assassinated.”
Jensen should have added he’s paid big bucks to lie, supporting war goddess Hillary while calling Trump “a disgusting human being…The likes of (him) should never come this way again.”
The disturbing irony of accusing Trump of wanting Hillary assassinated is unsupported by anything violent in his background. Whereas her orchestrated Libya and Syria wars, along with support for all other US ones since the 1990s slaughtered millions of defenseless human beings with the same right to life as herself.
Of all presidential aspirants in US history, she’s by far the most despicable, ruthless and dangerous, crucial to keep from succeeding Obama – politically, not violently.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said before about The Times. All the news it calls fit to print isn’t fit to read!!
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
As part of the anti-Trump offensive of Republican former national security officials working in conjunction with the presidential campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden has been playing a particularly aggressive role.
The Clinton campaign and its media propagandists, first and foremost the New York Times, have enthusiastically embraced this architect of the Bush administration’s CIA torture program and the mass spying on the American people exposed in 2013 by Edward Snowden. This in itself is an indisputable indicator of the right-wing, war-mongering character of a future Clinton administration.
On Wednesday, the Times published an op-ed piece by Hayden titled “Classified Briefings and Candidates,” which argued that giving a President Trump access to the secrets and conspiracies of the US intelligence agencies would be a high-risk proposition with potentially serious consequences for US imperialist enterprises around the world.
The column includes two extraordinary paragraphs. The first reflects the combination of arrogance and contempt with which the unelected “deep state,” of which the CIA is a part, looks upon those more ephemeral figures elected to high office by the voters. The second is a blunt account of Hayden’s first briefing in November 2008 of President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden.
Here are the paragraphs:
“The briefings themselves will be intense. The president-elect will be shown great deference personally, but his or her campaign positions could be treated more harshly. This is the chance for the intelligence professionals to set the record, as they see it, straight.
“I had my own experience. After Election Day in 2008, I was briefing Mr. Obama on CIA renditions when Joseph R. Biden Jr., the vice president-elect, interrupted to observe that the agency had conducted that program—which entailed sending suspected terrorists to third countries—simply to “rough them up.” I rejected the contention and advised him that he needed to stop saying that. I haven’t heard him say it again.”
In the latter paragraph, Hayden quite openly refers to the CIA program that included systematic torture at CIA “black sites” around the world. He makes no bones about the program or his role in it. He brags of having silenced the impudent Mr. Biden and put him in his place.
Among other things, this little tale demonstrates that Obama and Biden knew about the CIA program of abductions and torture from day one and kept their mouths shut, concealing the existence of this illegal and criminal program from the American people.
At the onset of his administration, Obama announced that he would not seek to prosecute Bush administration officials for criminal actions either abroad or at home. That may be the only promise he has kept.
There is a postscript. The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted an investigation of the CIA torture program and drafted a detailed and voluminous report documenting its sordid operation and its cover-up by CIA and Bush administration officials. The 6,000-page report was approved by the committee in December of 2012, but the CIA and the Obama administration blocked its release.
In March of 2014, Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the time the chair of the intelligence committee, made an extraordinary appearance in the well of the Senate chamber to denounce Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, for having hacked into the computers of intelligence committee investigators as part of his efforts to disrupt their work and block their report. This, she explained, was a violation of federal law and the constitutional separation of powers.
The White House sided with Brennan, who was never prosecuted or reprimanded, and finally, in December of 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 525-page declassified, redacted summary of its report. It is an official US government account of criminal activities at the highest levels of the state.
With the help of Feinstein and company, and a corrupt media, the report disappeared from the news and public view almost as soon as it was released.
It’s really 19th century behavior in the 21st century. You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests. (Secretary of State, John Kerry, “Meet the Press”, 2nd March 2014.)
Were it not so serious it would be hilarious. The British have voted to leave the European Union on the basis of the combination of a pack of lies by Government Ministers backing the “out” campaign and a whipped up xenophobia about all those “foreigners” taking jobs, homes, places on public transport etc. A truly shameful throwback to the era of hotels and boarding houses exhibiting signs saying: “No dogs, no blacks, no Irish.” Now they would add: “and no Europeans, no Arabs, no Muslims – only UK passport holders”, were the garbage in the media and spewed by the “Outers” to be believed.
Targets of especially vicious denigration are “illegal immigrants.” Never mind many have fled for their lives, risking their all, from regions the UK has enjoined in destroying, hardly in a position to garner the right paperwork, renew or apply for passport, thinking they will at least find a safe haven on entry. They are treated like criminals and sneered at by a swathe of politicians. They “threaten our way of life” is the political mantra. RIP humanity.
Actually our “way of life” is kept going by those who surmount the bureaucratic hurdles. Before their arrival there were no shops open from 6 a.m., to midnight, take-away food outlets of every culinary culture, ditto restaurants. High streets across the country where “immigrants” have staked their all to somehow buy a premises and gradually build it, working all hours to create a pharmacy, food store, appliance store with handymen on call to fit your choice of item and numerous creative enterprises.
Post Brexit the xenophobia has been targeted at all these, as indeed the surgeons, doctors and nurses who staff the hospitals with dedication twenty four hours a day from all over the world, now wondering if the life they have built from their dedication in and to the UK will survive.
We want our country back” is the political-led cry, by Minsters and politicians who are served by a waiter from another country, whose food is cooked by a chef from elsewhere, whose expensive hotel room is cleaned, sheets changed by another prepared to work hours, often for minimum wage, few Britons would even consider.
So contrast this with the UK government considering it has the absolute right to send illegal immigrants: “ … carrying an arsenal of equipment including sniper rifles, heavy machine guns and anti-tank missiles” (1) to another country approaching four thousand kilometres away to “threaten their way of life.
The illegals are UK Special Forces, in Syria to assist the “moderate” head chopping, hand chopping, child-decapitating “rebels.” This gang, known as the New Syrian Army (NSA) have reportedly been trained by the US and UK in Jordan and are fighting US and allied spawned and funded ISIL. Note the surely US inspired name, the: “The New Syrian Army” – the US-friendly terrorists formed by the US in 2015 – surely intended to replace the State’s national, multi-ethnic, Syrian Arab Army (SAA.)
Let it never be forgotten that the entire fake “uprising” was engineered by the US Embassy in Damascus in 2006. (2)
In June this year, according to The Telegraph (3) a presumably self-styled “First Lieutenant” Mahmoud al-Saleh, of the NSA told The Times that he was being assisted by Special Forces: “They helped us with logistics, like building defences to make the bunkers safe,” he said.
Back in May, when an ISIL “armoured vehicle packed with explosives” killed eleven NSA members and injured seventeen others: “The wounded were flown in American helicopters to Jordan. The suicide attack damaged the structure of the al-Tanf base, with British troops crossing from Jordan to help them to rebuild their defences.”
According to The Telegraph: ‘The New Syrian Army’s spokesman refused to comment on the pictures of the Special Forces but acknowledged that they are helping. He told the BBC: “We are receiving special forces training from our British and American partners. We’re also getting weapons and equipment from the Pentagon as well as complete air support.”
Note the “British and American partners.” Was perfidy ever more perfidious? If in doubt, note the following also from The Telegraph:
The NSA emerged from a $500 million Pentagon programme aimed to create a well-trained rebel force to take on ISIL. However the project was abandoned after the first trained unit sent into Syria was kidnapped by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. A second batch of trainees defected and gave their weapons away.
Yet another Pentagon own goal.
Interestingly, The Guardian (4) reminds that the BBC: “ … images depict British special forces sitting on Thalab long-range patrol vehicles as they move around the perimeter of a rebel base close to the Syria-Iraq border.
The Thalab (Fox) vehicles are essentially modified, militarised and upgraded Toyota 4x4s used for long distance reconnaissance and surveillance missions, which were developed jointly in the middle of the last decade by a state-backed defence company in Jordan and the UK company Jankel.
The vehicles are surely coincidentally, not unlike like the long convoys of 4x4s so memorably depicted being driven by ISIL/ISIS. (5)
US Captain Scott Rye denied that a number of the NSA, paid up to $400 a month by the Pentagon (6) had left for contractual reasons. “He said that, while U.S. officials had been clear the program was to train fighters to combat Islamic State, the only document participants had to sign was one committing them to promote respect for human rights and the rule of law, a mandate issued by the U.S. Congress.” (Emphasis added.) This from the military representative of a nation to whom human rights and the rule of law has become a distant memory.
Yet another from the: “you could not make this up” file. The UK with it’s State xenophobia against immigrants, especially “illegal”, whatever the circumstances, the US with it’s 930 kilometres (580 miles) of barriers blocking their Southern neighbours from entry – send illegal immigrants on official US-UK government business in to another country to murder and to train people to murder and to overthrow yet another sovereign government.
When someone invents better words than “criminal”, “hypocrisy”, “mass murder”, please let me know.
It’s an all too common tale of dirty deeds, shady deals and propaganda. Rosemary Mason’s recent open letter to journalists at The Guardian outlines how the media is failing the public by not properly reporting on the regulatory delinquency relating to GM food and the harmful chemicals being applied to crops. Much of the media is even (unwittingly) acting as a propaganda arm for big agritech companies.
An open ‘Letter from America’ was penned in November 2014 warning countries in Europe and EU regulators not to authorise (chemical-dependent) GM crops because of the devastating effects on human health and the environment. Mason notes that David Cameron ignored that advice. The European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority also ignored it and have continued to allow GM into food and feed in the EU and sanction the ongoing use of dangerous pesticides.
While there is undoubtedly good work being carried out by individual journalists in this area, Mason feels the media should be doing more to hold officials to account and should report more accurately on the consequences of the genetic modification of food as well as the effects of agrochemicals.
Instead, there seems to be an agenda to confuse the public or to push these issues to one side. From BBC Panorama’s pro-GM programme last year, which was full of falsehoods and misrepresentations, to messages about ‘lifestyle choices’ being the main determinant of poor health, Mason implies that too many journalists are reinforcing the pesticides industry’s assertion that cancers are caused by alcohol use and that the catalogue of diseases now affecting modern society comes down to individual choice.
Mason stresses that the media constantly link alcohol consumption with seven forms of cancer and this ‘fact’ is endlessly reinforced until people are brainwashed and believe it to be true. This, she argues, neatly diverts attention from the strong links between the increasing amounts of chemicals used in food and agriculture and serious diseases, including cancers.
She goes on to document how international and national health and food agencies have dismissed key studies and findings in their assessments of the herbicide glyphosate, and she provides much evidence that the chemical industry (not just the agritech sector) has created a toxic environment from which no one can escape. These agencies are guilty of regulatory delinquency due to (among other things, scientific fraud) conflicts of interest, which has enabled transnational agritech companies to dodge effective regulation by public institutions that, despite claims to the contrary, are anything but independent.
A combination of propaganda disseminated by industry front groups and conflicts of interest effectively allow dangerous chemicals and GMOs into the food chain and serve to keep the public in the dark about what is taking place and the impacts on their health.
Mason outlines how the industry set out to discredit the ‘Seralini study’ (highlighting adverse health impacts of glyphosate – the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup – and GMOs) and describes how the Science Media Centre (SMC) in the UK did its utmost to prevent the British public from hearing about negative reports and studies concerning Monsanto and GMO technology. The UK SMC was fulfilling its remit to prevent a repeat of incidents such as the uncritical reporting in 1998 of the claim made by Árpád Pusztai that rats fed on GM potatoes had stunted growth and a repressed immune system.
In France, Seralini’s study was front page news but, according to Mason, journalists in the UK were manipulated and given little time to develop a potentially negative commentary. After the research was published, Professor Séralini was attacked by a vehement campaign orchestrated from within the industry as well as the industry-financed SMC.
Mason also documents how scientific fraud and corruption have also helped to fuel pro-GMO propaganda and get big agitech companies off the hook for their dangerous products. These companies have effectively coopted key academics and officials to do their bidding.
To reinforce her point, Mason cites William Engdahl to highlight the levels of collusion between the EU and the agritech sector over the reassessment of glyphosate. This exposed to the general public, for the first time in such a clear manner, the degree of corruption in not only Brussels but also in the so-called scientific bodies that advise it on what is safe and what not.
As with many of her previous open letters to officials and agencies, Mason cites an impressive array of evidence and studies to support her arguments. Readers are urged to read her letter in full: Open Letter to The Guardian. The letter was originally addressed to the editor-in-chief but has since been sent to other journalists at The Guardian.
Mason has been a tireless campaigner against harmful pesticides and GMOs for many years and has placed all of her correspondence with governments and regulators on the Academia.edu site – a platform for academics to share research papers and preview papers. She has done this to provide open access to information that will help the public to hold agencies and individuals to account over their willingness to sacrifice human health by using flawed science and corrupt practices in order to boost corporate profits.
In a little over five years, Mason has written and sent 36 documents to various agencies urging them to act. She has however received few replies. She did get a reply from the President of the National Farmers Union who wrote to defend the right of farmers to use chemicals to protect their crops, even though she had informed him (citing relevant evidence) that they were damaging the brains of children in Britain.
She has occasionally received brief responses from other officials who have effectively implied ‘move on, nothing to discuss’, despite the strong (peer-reviewed) studies and evidence used to support her case.
What Mason describes in her open letter is not unique to the UK or Europe. The model of chemical-intensive industrialised food and agriculture she alludes to is being rolled out across the globe thanks to the capture and cooptation of various international agencies and decision-making bodies at the national level.
Although it may appear to be a case of ‘business as usual’ for industry and its well-funded lobbyists (whose ubiquitous presence in Brussels effectively puts paid to any credible notion of ‘democracy’) and scientists, the pressure from various groups and tireless individuals like Rosemary Mason to hold the agritech cartel to account is incessant.
Aside from accessing Mason’s reports and open letters on the Academia.edu site, readers can consult the stream of reports listed on the Corporate Europe Observatory website that document how industry is contaminating our food, destroying our health and adversely impacting the environment, while certain officials facilitate the process.
So much scandalous stuff about her is known, it’s just a matter of time before the next shoe drops.
Instead of exposing her as unfit to serve, media scoundrels express one-sided support, focusing instead on bashing Trump, the most irresponsible denunciation of a presidential aspirant in US history.
Judicial Watch (JW) is a conservative watchdog organization, “promot(ing) transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.”
On August 9 and 10, it released three new damning reports on Hillary Clinton. One involved 296 pages of State Department records – including “44 email exchanges…not previously” disclosed to the department, raising the number to 171 – besides tens of thousands of others deleted to avoid disclosure.
JW findings contradict Clinton saying “as far as she knew” all government emails from her home-based private server were given to the State Department. She lied, compounding earlier willful deception – showing she’s untrustworthy, unfit to serve and criminally indictable.
What’s known from her emails is damning, showing special favors afforded wealthy Clinton Foundation donors, concealed influence selling now exposed.
As secretary of state, she pledged “(for) the duration of (her) appointment…not to participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which the (Clinton Foundation or Clinton Global Initiative) is a party or represents a party.”
Damning emails showed she lied. According to JW president Tom Fitton, “(t)hey show the Clinton Foundation, Clinton donors, and operatives worked with Hillary Clinton in potential violation of the law.”
Earlier in March, May and June, JW released other newly discovered Clinton emails at the time, dating from January 2009 when she began her tenure as secretary of state.
They show she knew about the security risk of using her home server and personal BlackBerry for official government business. They include potentially indictable evidence relating to “the battle between security officials in the State Department, National Security Administration, Clinton and her staff,” said JW.
“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.’ “
Newly released emails proved she lied. Can an exposed liar under oath on matters of state, guilty of perjury, be trusted to serve as US president and commander-in-chief of its military? Humanity trembles at the prospect.
A second JW report was about her involvement in New York City corruption, saying she, mayor De Blasio and developer Bruce Ratner “are carving up the city.”
It cited a Brooklyn-based Atlantic Yards project worth $5 billion, speculating on whether it’s “a giant boondoggle, generating torrents of cash for well-connected insiders.”
A third JW report included documents, showing Clinton’s then chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was alerted in advance about the inquiry into her emails – giving her plenty of time to conceal what she didn’t want revealed.
“Earlier this year, the State Department Office of Inspector General concluded that (her response to its request) was ‘inaccurate and incomplete.’ “
JW’s Tom Fitton commented, saying
“(t)his is evidence that Cheryl Mills covered up Hillary Clinton’s email system. (She) allowed a response to go out that was a plain lie.”
“And you can bet if Cheryl Mills knew about this inquiry, then Hillary Clinton did, too. This is all the more reason for Mrs. Clinton to finally testify under oath about the key details of her email practices.”
Instead of a daily blizzard of irresponsible Trump bashing, damning JW-released information on Clinton, and plenty more like it from other sources, should be feature front page news daily – demanding she be held accountable.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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.
This year the World Social Forum is being held in Montreal, regrouping committed social activists, anti-war collectives and prominent intellectuals.
Most of the participants are unaware that the WSF is funded by corporate foundations including Ford, Rockefeller, Tides, et al. Much of this funding is channelled to the WSF organizers under the helm of the WSF International Council.
This is an issue which has been raised on numerous occasions with progressive organizations and WSF activists: you cannot effectively confront neoliberalism and the New World Order elites and expect them to finance your activities.
The World Social Forum operating under the banner of “Another World is Possible” was founded in 2001 at its inaugural venue of Porto Alegre. Brazil.
From the outset in 2001, the WSF has been upheld as an international umbrella representing grassroots people’s organizations, committed to reversing the tide of globalization. Its stated intent is to challenge corporate capitalism and its dominant neoliberal economic agenda.
The World Social Forum at its inaugural meeting defined itself as a counter-offensive to the World Economic Forum (WEF) of business leaders and politicians which meets annually in Davos, Switzerland. The 2001 Porto Alegre WSF was held simultaneously with that of the WEF in Davos.
While there have been many important accomplishments of the WSF, largely as a result of the commitment of grassroots activists, the core leadership of WSF –rather than effectively confronting the New World Order elites– serves (often unwittingly) their corporate interests. In this process, co-optation has been achieved through the corporate funding of the WSF.
Among the two major accomplishments are the participation of the WSF in the February 2003 Worldwide protest against the US led war on Iraq. The WSF has also supported progressive movements and governments, particularly in Latin America.
In contrast, at the Tunis 2013 WSF, the final declaration paid lip service to to the US sponsored “Syrian opposition”. Similarly the Al Qaeda affiliated Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which allegedly led the “Arab Spring” against the government of Muammar Gaddafi was tacitly upheld as a revolutionary force. Several workshops on Libya applauded Western military intervention. A session entitled “Libya’s transition to democracy” focused on “whether Libya was better off without Muammar Gaddafi.”
[Update] Similarly, a Montreal WSF 2016 event on Syria refers to a country “in ruins as a result of a multifaceted war between the dictatorship of Bashar al Assad and a host of opposition organizations,” echoing almost verbatim the narrative of the mainstream media. The central role of US-NATO in destroying Syria as a sovereign country is not mentioned.
Funding dissent
From the outset in 2001, the World Social Forum was funded by governments and corporate foundations, including the Ford Foundation which has ties to US intelligence.
The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Ford, Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Wall Street and Big Oil), etc. with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.
The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle co-optation of a small number of key individuals within “progressive organizations”, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement. Many leaders of these organizations have in a sense betrayed their grassroots.
The corporations are funding dissent with a view to controlling dissent.
The Ford Foundation (which has links to the CIA) provided funding under its “Strengthening Global Civil Society” program during the first three years of the WSF.
When the WSF was held in Mumbai in 2004, the Indian WSF host committee declined support from the Ford Foundation. This in itself did not modify the WSF’s relationship to the donors. While the Ford Foundation formally withdrew, other foundations positioned themselves.
The WSF (among several sources of funding is supported by a consortium of corporate foundations under the advisory umbrella of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE).
This organization, which previously went under the name of The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), has played a central role in the funding of successive WSF venues. From the outset in 2001, it had an observer status on the WSF International Council.
In 2013, the Rockefeller Brothers representative Tom Kruse co-chaired EDGE’s program committee. At the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kruse was responsible for “Global Governance” under the “Democratic Practice” program. Rockefeller Brothers grants to NGOs are approved under the “Strengthening Democracy in Global Governance” program, which is broadly similar to that put forth by the US State Department.
A representative of the Open Society Initiative for Europe currently sits on EDGE’s Board of directors. The Wallace Global Fund is also on its Board of Directors. The Wallace Global Fund is specialized in providing support to “mainstream” NGOs and “alternative media”, including Amnesty International, Democracy Now (which supports Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president of the US).
Several members of the EDGE BoD, however, are from non-corporative and family foundations with a social mandate. (see below).
“From the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (1994) to the Battle in Seattle (1999) to the creation of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001), the TINA years of Reagan and Thatcher (There Is No Alternative) have been replaced with the growing conviction that “another world is possible.” Counter-summits, global campaigns and social forums have been crucial spaces to articulate local struggles, share experiences and analyses, develop expertise, and build concrete forms of international solidarity among progressive movements for social, economic and ecological justice.”
But at the same time, there is an obvious contradiction: another world is not possible when the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by an alliance of corporate donors firmly committed to neoliberalism and the US-NATO military agenda.
The following is the EDGE Montreal WSF Communique. The donors not only fund the activities, they also influence the structure of the WSF venue, which was determined in Puerto Alegre in 2001, namely the decentralized and dispersed mosaic of “do it yourself” workshops.
With regard to the Montreal WSF, the Consortium of Donors (EDGE) intent is:
“…to develop an intersectional space for funders and various movement partners – organizers thought leaders and practitioners – to build alignment by cultivating a shared understanding of the visions, values, principles and pathways of a “just transition.” (See http://edgefunders.org/wsf-activities/)
“Just Transition” implies that social activism has to conform to a “shared vision” with the corporate foundations, i.e. nothing which in a meaningful way might upset the elite structures of global capitalism.
From the standpoint of the corporate donors “investing in the WSF” constitutes a profitable (tax deductible) undertaking. It ensures that activism remains within the confines of “constructive dialogue” and “critique” rather than confrontation. Any deviation immediately results in the curtailment of donor funding:
“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))
The limits of social dissent are thereby determined by the “governance structure” of the WSF, which was tacitly agreed upon with the funding agencies at the outset in 2001.
“No Leaders”
The WSF has no leaders. All the events are “self-organized”. The structure of debate and activism is part of an an “open space” (See y Francine Mestrum, The World Social Forum and its governance: a multi-headed monster, CADTM, 27 April 2013, http://cadtm.org/The-World-Social-Forum-and-its ).
This compartmentalized structure is an obstacle to the development of a meaningful and articulate mass movement.
How best to control grassroots dissent against global capitalism?
Make sure that their leaders can be easily co-opted and that the rank and file will not develop “forms of international solidarity among progressive movements” (to use EDGE’s own words), which in any meaningful way might undermine the interests of corporate capital.
The mosaic of separate WSF workshops, the relative absence of plenary sessions, the creation of divisions within and between social movements, not to mention the absence of a cohesive and unified platform against the Wall Street corporate elites, against the fake US sponsored “global war on terrorism”, which has been used to justify and US-NATO’s “humanitarian R2P interventions (Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, etc).
The corporate agenda is to “manufacture dissent”.“The limits of dissent” are established by the foundations and governments which ultimately finance this multimillion dollar venue. The financing is twofold:
1. Core financing of the WSF Secretariat and the Costs of the WSF venue.
2. Many of the constituent NGOs which participate in the venue are recipients of donor and/or government support.
3. The WSF venue in Montreal also receives funding from the Government of Canada as well as from the Quebec provincial government.
What ultimately prevails is a ritual of dissent which does not threaten the New World Order. Those who attend the WSF from the grassroots are often misled by their leaders. Activists who do not share the WSF consensus will ultimately be excluded:
“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )
“Another World is Possible” is nonetheless an important concept, which characterizes the struggle of the peoples movements against global capitalism as well as the commitment of thousands of committed activists who are currently participated in the Montreal 2016 WSF.
Activism is being manipulated: “Another World is Possible” cannot, however, be achieved under the auspices of the WSF which from the outset was funded by global capitalism and organized in close liaison with its corporate and government donors.
The important question for activists in Montreal:
Is it possible to build “an Alternative” to global capitalism, which challenges the hegemony of the Rockefellers et al and then asks the Rockefellers et al to foot the bill?
We call upon participants of the Montreal World Social Forum (WSF) to raise and debate these issues: the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by corporate foundations (and governments) which are firmly committed not only to the tenets of neoliberalism but also to the US-NATO led military agenda.
Why would they fund organizations which are actively campaigning against war and globalization? The answer is obvious. …
Unsuspecting citizens are paying for a nexus of interlocking agencies that conspire to create terror, war, and police-state legislation in a War of Deception that serves to devastate humanity. Without its arsenal of fabricated war pretexts, and its fabricated Fear apparatus, the warmongering oligarchy would be denuded and reveal itself as the mass-murdering terrorist entity that it is.
Trump and Clinton have come out with the obligatory “economic plans.” Neither them nor their advisors, have any idea about what really needs to be done, but this is of no concern to the media. The presstitutes operate according to “pay and say.” They say what they are paid to say and that is whatever serves the corporations and the government. This means that the presstitutes like Hitlery’s economic plan and do not like Trump’s.
“Electromagnetic pollution may be the most significant form of pollution human activity has produced this century, all the more dangerous because it is invisible and insensible.” — Andrew Weil, MD, bestselling author We live in the information age when we’re bombarded every single day with incoming data to process and interpret whether it’s true or not. Because the government and mainstream media have an agenda of false narratives and disinformation propaganda to willfully keep people confused in the dark, the American public is starved for the truth and in record numbers has sought it from alternative media outlets on the World Wide Web.
“Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested”. — James Clapper, US Director of Intelligence on Turkish Coup (Financial Times 8/3/16, p. 4) Washington has organized a systematic, global, no holds barred campaign to oust Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump from the electoral process. The virulent anti-Trump animus, the methods, goals and mass media resemble authoritarian regimes preparing to overthrow political adversaries.
“Do I have to kill myself to go to Australia?” — Asylum seeker, Nauru, March 2, 2015. Human sensibility has been given another sound beating with the leak of 2,116 incident reports from Australia’s remorseless detention camp on Nauru. The reports total some 8,000 pages covering the period of May 2013 to October 2015 and were published by the Guardian on Wednesday.[1] The newspaper notes that children are heavily, in fact “vastly over-represented in the reports” featuring in a total of 1,086 incidents despite making up only 18 percent of the detained population. Even the bureaucratic “ratings” of harm and risk given by the private security firm Wilson’s can’t varnish the brutalities.
There is a long history of anti-war and peace activism. Much of this activism has focused on ending a particular war. Some of this activism has been directed at ending a particular aspect of war, such as the use of a type of weapon. Some of it has aimed to prevent a type of war, such as ‘aggressive war’ or nuclear war. For those activists who regard war as the scourge of human existence, however, ‘the holy grail’ has always been much deeper: to end war.
Trump and Clinton have come out with the obligatory “economic plans.” Neither them nor their advisors, have any idea about what really needs to be done, but this is of no concern to the media.
The presstitutes operate according to “pay and say.” They say what they are paid to say and that is whatever serves the corporations and the government. This means that the presstitutes like Hitlery’s economic plan and do not like Trump’s.
Yesterday I listened to the NPR presstitutes say how Trump pretends to be in favor of free trade but really is against it, because he is against all the free trade agreements such as NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic partnerships. The presstitutes don’t know that these are not trade agreements. NAFTA is a “give away American jobs” agreement, and the so-called partnerships give away the sovereignty of countries in order to award global corporations immunity from laws.
As I have reported on many occasions, the Oligarchs’ government lies to us about everything, including economic statistics. For example, we are told that we have been enjoying an economic recovery since June, 2009, that we are more or less at full emploment with an unemployment rate of 5% or less, and that there is no inflation. We are told this despite the facts that the “recovery” is based on the under-reporting of the inflation rate, the unemployment rate is 23%, and inflation is high.
GDP is measured in current prices. If GDP rises 3% this year over last year, the output of real goods and services might have risen 3% or prices might have gone up by 3% or real output might have dropped but is masked by price increases. To know what really happened the nominal GDP number has to be deflated by the amount of inflation.
In times past we could get a reasonable idea of how the economy was doing, because the measure of inflation was reasonable. That is no longer the case. Various “reforms” have taken inflation out of the measures of inflation. For example, if the price of an item in the inflation index goes up, the item is taken out and a cheaper item put in its place. Alternatively, the price rise is called a “quality improvement” and not counted as a price rise.
In other words, by defining inflation away, price increases are transformed into an increase in real output.
The same thing happens to the measure of unemployment. Unemployment simply isn’t counted by the reported unemployment rate. No matter how long and hard an unemployed person has looked for a job, if that person hasn’t job hunted in the past four weeks the person is not considered to be unemployed. This is how the unemployment rate is said to be 5% when the labor-force participation rate has collapsed, half of American 25-year-olds live with their parents, and more Americans age 24-34 live with parents than independently.
Finanial reporters never inquire why government statistics are designed to provide an incorrect picture of the economy. Anyone who purchases food, clothing, visits a hardware store, and pays repair bills and utility bills knows that there is a lot of inflation. Consider prescription drugs. AARP reports that the annual cost of prescription drugs used by retirees has risen from $5,571 in 2006 to $11,341 in 2013, but their incomes have not kept up. Indeed, the main reason for “reforming” the measurement of inflation was to eliminate COLA adjustments to Social Security benefits.
Charles Hugh Smith has come up with a clever way of estimating the real rate of inflation—the Burrito Index. From 2001 to 2016 the cost of a burrito has risen 160 percent from $2.50 to $6.50. During these 15 years the officially measured rate of inflation is 35 percent.
And it is not only burritos. The cost of higher education has risen 137% since 2000. The Milliman Medical Index shows medical costs to have risen far above official inflation from 2005 to 2016. The costs of medical insurance, trash collection, you name it, are dramatically higher than the official rate of inflation.
Food, tuiton and medical costs are major outlays for households. Add zero interest on savings to the problem of coping with major cost increases when real incomes are stagnant and falling. For example, grandparents cannot help grandchildren with their student loan debt when zero interest rates force grandparents to draw down their savings in order to supplement essentially frozen Social Security benefits during a time of high inflation. Savings are being taken out of the economy. Many families exist by paying only the minimum payment on their credit card balance, which means that their debt grows monthly.
Real economists, if there were any, looking at the real economic picture would see an economy collapsing into widespread debt deflation and impoverishment. Debt deflation is when consumers after they service their debts have no discretionary income left with which to drive the economy with purchases.
The reason that Americans have no income from their savings is that public authorities put the welfare of a handful of “banks too big to fail” above the welfare of the American people. The enormous liquidity created by the Federal Reserve has gone into the financial system where it has driven up the prices of financial instruments. There has been a stock market recovery but not an economic recovery.
In the past liquidity implied economic growth. When the Federal Reserve loosened monetary policy, the increase in consumer demand caused an increase in the output of goods and services. Stock prices would rise anticipating higher profits. But in recent years financial markets have not been driven by fundamentals, which are adverse, but by the liquidity that the Federal Reserve has pumped into the banking system in order to save a handful of over-sized banks and insurance giant AIG, all of which should have been allowed to fail.
The liquidity had to go somewhere and it went into the prices of stocks and bonds, causing a tremendous asset inflation.
What sense does it make to have zero interest rates when high inflation is eating away the real value of money? What sense does it make to have high price/earnings ratios when the consumer market cannot expand? What sense does it make to have a stable dollar when the Federal Reserve has created far more dollars than the economy has created goods and services? What sense does it make to undermine the financial condition of pension funds and insurance companies with zero interest rates, leaving them with no fixed income hedge against the stock market?
It makes no sense. We are in a trap in which collapse seems the only way out. If interest rates reflected the real rate of inflation, the hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives would blow up, the stock market would collapse, unemployment could not be hidden with under-measurement, budget deficits would rise. What would public authorities do?
When crisis hits, what happens to corporations that used profits and borrowed money, that is, debt, to buy back their own stocks in order to keep the price high and, thereby, executive bonuses high and shareholders happy and disinclined to support takeovers? Chaos and its companion Fear take over from Contentment. Hell breaks loose.
Is more money printed? Does the money find its way into consumer prices? Do we experience simultaneously massive inflation and massive unemployment?
Don’t expect the presstitutes, the politicians, or Wall Street to confront any of these questions.
When the crisis occurs, it will be blamed on Russia or China.
“Electromagnetic pollution may be the most significant form of pollution human activity has produced this century, all the more dangerous because it is invisible and insensible.” —Andrew Weil, MD, bestselling author
We live in the information age when we’re bombarded every single day with incoming data to process and interpret whether it’s true or not. Because the government and mainstream media have an agenda of false narratives and disinformation propaganda to willfully keep people confused in the dark, the American public is starved for the truth and in record numbers has sought it from alternative media outlets on the World Wide Web.
To circumvent people from grasping the full implications of the ruling elite’s control agenda, hundreds of government shills and internet trolls have been deployed, saturating the net with the expressed purpose of muddying the waters, creating disinfo fog of war to obscure, bury and withhold vital information and knowledge from being accessed and fully grasped by the global masses. Additionally, the fast track pathway to global governance – the TPP and TTIP agreements – are geared to seal off internet flow of lifesaving information that could increase global awareness and coalesce into worldwide resistance and opposition to New World Order tyranny.
CIA invented labels from nearly a half century ago like “conspiracy theory” and its recent mutations like “tin foil hat” and fringe element fanatics have methodically conditioned the public to discard and categorically deny the negative truth that exposes government perpetrators’ treasonous betrayal of American citizens as well as Empire’s global transgressions – especially since 9/11.
In actuality a conspiracy theorist is one who questions the statements of known liars. Speaking of known liars, George W’s admonition to disregard conspiracy theories was just the post-9/11 beginning to squelch the truth that makes him a guilty murderous war criminal of his own people. The same cover-up followed the inside job of the JFK assassination that his daddy played a part in, just like his daddy’s daddy financed Hitler. Unfortunately there’s nothing new about the US government murdering presidents who threaten status quo corruption as well as exterminating national populations to gain oppressive authoritarian control. Democide is the killing of citizens by its own government. Six times more victims in the last century died from democide than fighting in all the century’s wars combined that include humanity’s two bloodiest ones on record. History repeats as the federal government’s currently waging a not so secret war against the American people.
Chief among its formidable lethal arsenal is the feds’ war to control our minds through propaganda, having been crafted and honed now for over a century. Shaping public opinion and perception of reality through any and all means necessary involves deceitful weapons of mass destruction manifesting 24/7 through insidious applications of social engineering, various CIA mind control techniques delivered by mass media propaganda, corporate controlled mass consumerism, and six oligarch owned and operated mega-media corporations controlling the outflow of news and information.
This centralized global spigot spews out materialistic values, warped, distorted messages, dogma and false truths spoon fed globally for mass consumption as the not so covert means to manipulate, brainwash and control the human population. Twenty-first century technology has shrunken our planet into a global village of mass consumers to be pliably manipulated and controlled. This presentation will outline how a sinister globalist agenda is using the incredibly powerful telecom industry as yet another WMD for mass mind control, soft kill eugenics and, when deemed most advantageous, a convenient fast kill, genocidal method for culling the human herd.
Over the last quarter century, cell phones have all but replaced the conventional landline telephone system. 91% of Americans from adolescent to adult ages utilize cellphones as their primary means of spoken word communication, often including texting and other online interactive options as well.
Much has been written about the paradoxical effect that wireless cellphones and tablets offer as convenient multimodal transmitters that both instantly expand our opportunity to interact with fellow humans within a readily accessible cyber-world while simultaneously alienating us from real time, face-to-face, eye-to-eye communication and real world human connection. Today a quick glance observation at any public setting – airports, libraries, doctors’ offices – and the vast majority of people are seen busily interacting with their push button machines far more frequently than direct live conversation with even accompanying friends and family. Like lab rats compulsively pushing levers, people habitually check their cellphones over a hundred times a day. Hi-tech toy gadgetry has become the singular, most addictive device known to modern man. IPhones and Wi-Fi devices control how we increasingly preoccupy our daily waking hours more so than any other modern invention since the radio-television era.
For the last couple decades, countless scientific studies have been warning us of the serious damage being done to our brains and bodies as a consequence of our excessive cellphone habits. The radiation literally fries our neurons, alters our DNA with fractured strand breaks, and causes rising rates of brain cancer, tumors and associated other life threatening diseases. A new study from the British Medical Journal led by Dr. Enrique Navarro concludes that living near cell towers inhibits brain functioning, diminishes memory, disrupts the normal sleep cycle and causes widespread irritability. And an analytical review of all research conducted a half dozen years ago determined that 80% of all studies have determined that a direct correlation does exist between tower proximity and adverse symptoms, tumors and cancer.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the governmental agency that regulates the telecommunications industry, has purposely maintained dangerously high tolerance for the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) – 1.6 watts per kilogram, a radiation level standard that’s literally killing people. Paid off with bribes by the largest telecom giants, the FCC has refused to accurately readjust to lowering its hazardous threshold to save lives despite the preponderance of research showing that it would. Instead at a public meeting last month at the FCC headquarters, the federal agency that’s supposed to protect public safety showed its colors shutting down any dissenting voice. Likewise, Washington has chosen to protect the multibillion dollar industry by historically refusing to fund research that might otherwise decisively reveal the truth and thus hinder telecom growth. The FCC allows the industry to hire its own bogus pseudo-scientists to fudge its own inconclusive data to falsely claim cellphone use poses no serious threat to human health.
Just as the FDA is a bought and paid for Big Parma whore intentionally allowing damaging drugs on the market without adequate testing, and the EPA looks the other way when giant corps. like Monsanto spread deadly contaminants throughout our air, soil and water supply, corruption across all federal and state levels could care less about public health and safety, but instead blindly support transnational killers to ensure maximum profits are achieved at horrific human cost. These across the board policies are consistent with how the US government operates as a corrupt oligarchy acting on behalf of Fortune 500’s special interests – not the people’s, knowing a growing number of Americans are becoming sick, suffering and dying as a result of a government that’s turned its back on its citizens. The cold hard facts clearly show that Washington is a fascist crime cabal at war with its own people, now eliminating us through slow death, soft kill methods that only pad telecom/Monsanto/Big Pharma/health industry profits.
True to form, the co-opted FDA, EPA, World Health Organization (WHO) and American Cancer Society have all gone public claiming that radiofrequency (RF) radiation from cellphones and cell towers carry no determined health effects. That said, in 2011 even the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) conceded to classifying radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as “a possible carcinogen to humans.” Then last October another recent study coordinated by IARC examined over 300,000 nuclear workers from US, UK and France and found even low level radiation exposure over time increases the risk of cancer.
But from the American Cancer Institute’s own website, it states that non-ionized radiation from cell towers and cellphones “do not directly damage the DNA inside cells.” This is a blatant lie. Two decades ago pioneering scientist Dr. Narendra Pal Singh and Dr. Henry Lai empirically demonstrated that DNA single and double strand damage does occur at only 2.45 GHz radiation, a rate of one fifth the level producing previously known toxic biological effects and well below the so called FCC regulated “safe” levels that cellphones emit. Lai and Singh’s valuable research supports the widely accepted (amongst honest observers) the very logical conclusion that cumulative DNA damage occurs over time from prolonged use of cellphones. Two years ago a peer review of 80 studies found that 92% showed that non-ionized radiation from cellphones do damage DNA. Yet the Cancer Institute chooses to continue living the lie.
Megras and Xenos found that five generations of mice exposed to extremely low RF rates from .168 to 1.053 microwatts per square centimeter sustained irreversible sterility. These relative low exposure amounts are equivalent to living near a cellular tower. Thus humans living, attending school and working so close to towers are being dangerously radiated, yet the current FCC safe standard remains at 579 microwatts per square centimeter, a full 500 times higher than what causes sterilization in mice. In a related study, males who carry cellphones on belt clips or in their pants pocket have a measured sperm count 30% lower than men who don’t. The globalist overpopulation cheerleaders wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sweeping all this established hard evidence under the carpet just like the tobacco industry perpetrated for decades has been but a temporary fix strategy that buys more time to sell more wireless products and build thousands of more towers. But just over two months ago for the first time in history even a US federal study under the National Institutes of Health confirmed what the prevailing body of honest researchers have indicated all along – that radiation emitted from chronic use of cellphones does in fact lead to rising cancer rates. The former head of NIH’s National Toxicology Program (NTP) that performed the research study states that the findings between radiation exposure and rare forms of brain and heart cancers are definitely causally-connected. This NTP research is the most comprehensive and robust long term (2 years) investigation measuring varying exposure levels of radiofrequencies on rats ever conducted. But this study applies only to simulated radiation emitted from chronic cellphone use only, not exposure to the radiofrequency waves dangerously released from massive cell towers at close distance nor other wireless devices commonly found in both the home and workplace.
Cellphone and cell tower radiation also cause lowered immune systems and alter hormonal levels, adding further complications posing a serious detriment to human health. Still other recent studies from earlier this year for the first time are indicating that certain individuals experience physical pain accompanied by physiological bodily changes from tower signals at even low, regular levels. This finding validates the very real existence of a growing population of about 5% around the world who may be especially sensitive to wireless radiation. Their medical condition known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) typically afflicts them with physical pain, headaches, nosebleeds, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety. Previously many uninformed and/or biased medical practitioners automatically dismissed individuals suffering from EHS as hypochondriacs. Lawsuits have generally ruled against those claiming EHS, citing medical literature that concludes it’s merely a psychosomatic illness not caused by electromagnetic radiation. However, last August a French court ruled in favor of a victim complainant. EHS appears to be following the same path that Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome and Fibromyalgia Syndrome have undergone in their gradual acceptance within the medical community.
In order to provide service to millions of customers globally, cellphone companies have constructed cell towers and antenna towers across an entire overlapping region since the 360 degree radius of each tower only extends less than 25 miles. That’s why thousands into the millions of towers have been springing up around the globe, especially in densely populated areas where cell phones are at peak use. The trade industry website WirelessEstimator.com lists an updated total amongst the top 121 telecom companies of 118,173 towers in the US. However, the same site maintains that the tower count as of 2009 that includes rooftop antenna transmitters and cell towers number 247,081, further admitting that there is no accurate count. Yet another site antennaesearch.comhas an updated US tally of 612,477, and 2,456,899 with wireless rooftop antennas included. Thus, the guesstimated range is enormously wide and for all intents and purposes unknown, but rapidly growing daily around the world.
Meanwhile, a wireless news site article from a year ago stated that due to exponential consumer demand for mobile data, Cisco estimates that by 2019 US mobile traffic will soar to 7 times its 2015 rate. This foretells a far denser concentration of yet even more harmful towers erected in ever-closer proximity to America’s vast sprawling urban population, typically impacting and endangering America’s youth in schools, adults in office buildings and families living in multistory apartment complexes.
In view of thousands of towers built next to or even on school grounds, a growing body of research on children and pregnant mothers is also producing extremely alarming results. Many public schools and universities are also being given cash bribe incentives to permit towers on their premises. Though some local parent and community advocacy groups are beginning to fight back, many education officials are choosing money over their own young people’s health and well-being. Meanwhile, it’s been shown that children absorb twice as much cell phone and tower radiation in the brain, up to three times in the hypothalamus and hippocampus regions, and their blood brain barrier leaks at the smallest traces of radiation. And incredibly kids’ bone marrow takes in ten times the amount of harmful RF waves as adults.
Spiked rates of electromagnetic pollution and its devastatingly harmful effects on human health is a pandemic train wreck currently exploding across the USA and the entire world. And as a direct consequence of chronic, indiscriminate use over the last 25 years, rare forms of brain cancer are now beginning to skyrocket. Predatory telecom giants and bribed governments are exploiting the fact that this weapon of mass destruction cannot be felt as an odorless, tasteless, silent, invisible killer.
All of this is bad enough news, dumbing down citizens and making us ill at national levels, but it’s just now becoming more widely known that a far more diabolical plan is presently in place that is zapping Americans with deadlier levels of radiation from cell towers than before. The most appalling realization is these dangerously higher levels of radiation emanating from weaponized cell towers have absolutely nothing to do with cell phone transmission, but everything to do with democide. They prove that the US government has shifted its soft kill eugenics plan to a faster hard-boil roast of the American population.
A former senior scientist from DARPA, the US deep state black ops research lab that channels all advanced technologies into military WMD’s, recently went public alerting fellow Americans that the federal government is misusing lethal cell tower transmissions as an “act of terrorism” against the US population. With a PhD from Princeton in computational physics and nearly three years at the DARPA Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr. Paul Batcho is a more than credible source who knows what he’s talking about. When he first began noticing high powered radiation radiating from cell towers in his home in St. Petersburg and surrounding areas of central Florida and Tampa, he followed standard protocol contacting his previous employer DARPA along with DHS, informing them that he believes that the cell towers present a “terrorist” threat. After his repeated attempts to alert authorities drew no response, Batcho contacted longtime activist-writer Dave Hodges of The Common Sense Show. The scientist has written:
These transmissions will cause harmful health affects in the form of enhanced microwave radiation illness. It is imperative that these frequency bands be measured and verified by an official source. These frequency bands do not exist naturally, and there is a technology targeting individuals. The verified measurement and existence of these RF band transmissions constitutes a terrorist act.
The FCC officially limits cell towers to 400 watts of energy output for cell phone data transfer. However, it’s been reported that mammoth sized cables leading into a typical cell phone tower is capable of emitting far greater power, especially when equipped with amplifiers. This makes the enormous level of microwave radiation each tower can project a potential mega-death weapon. And this is the alarm that Paul Batcho is railing against. The death ray machine that each tower represents can generate enough juice to literally cook every human within its city limits. So if the elitist powerbrokers in control plant these WMD’s strategically and so densely across America happen to desire the US population dead, or perhaps under the guise of an invading foreign enemy on American soil, these tower transmitters could conceivably eliminate the entire living population with several million towers at full wattage throttle.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at: http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/.
Interviewed by Tass ahead of meeting with Putin, Erdogan was asked to explain his agenda. Restoring ruptured economic relations was very much on his mind.
He called his visit “a new landmark in bilateral relations, a clean slate from which to start anew.” He thanked Putin for being the first foreign leader to express support for his leadership by phone after the aborted events of July 15.
“Mr. Putin acted quickly and practically without delay,” he said. “I express my gratitude to him.” At the same time, his comments on resolving years of Syrian conflict were less than reassuring.
On the one hand, Erdogan said “Russia is fundamentally the key and most important player in establishing peace in Syria…(I)f necessary, we’ll also involve Iran…Qatar, Saudi Arabia and America.”
While adding “(w)e don’t want Syria’s disintegration,” he ignored his longtime aim to annex northern portions of its territory illegally. He supports “the departure of Bashar Assad,” irresponsibly calling him “guilty for the deaths of 600,000 people.”
“Syria’s unity cannot be kept with Assad. And we cannot support a murderer (sic) who has committed acts of state terror. Let the Syrian people themselves elect an individual they want to see in power.”
In June 2014, they overwhelmingly reelected Bashar Al Assad with an 89% majority – a process independent observers called open, free and fair. Syrians want no one else leading them.
Despite clear evidence proving it, Erdogan denied involvement in aiding ISIS and other terrorists in Syria – operating from Turkish territory, receiving heavy arms, munitions and medical care for its wounded.
Hard facts show Erdogan, his family members and other Turkish officials profit hugely from selling stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil. He denied all charges.
He said cold-blooded Jabhat al-Nusra (renamed Jabhat Fatah al Sham) killers “should not be considered as a terrorist organization…This is an incorrect approach,” he added.
He ducked responsibility for slaughtering Kurds domestically, in Syria and Iraq, calling them terrorists, saying “ensur(ing) peace (requires) destroying” them.
He lets CIA and other NATO elements operate from Turkish territory, supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups. He’s complicit in waging war on Assad, in slaughtering Syrian civilians, serving his own agenda while aiding Washington’s.
Arms, munitions and military equipment from America, Turkey and other nations pour into Syria through its border.
Nothing so far suggests Erdogan ended support for US-backed terrorists. On August 8, the day preceding his St. Petersburg visit, the Financial Times headlined “Outside help behind rebel advance in Aleppo,” saying:
“(T)he offensive against President Bashar al-Assad’s troops may have had more foreign help than it appears.” One unnamed source said “tens of trucks (were spotted) bringing in weapons” cross-border “daily for weeks…weapons, artillery – we’re not just talking about some bullets or guns.”
“(C)ash and supplies (have been) ferried in for weeks.” While meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg, Erdogan continued actively aiding terrorists slaughtering Syrian civilians.
Did their discussion change things? No evidence so far suggests it, but it’s too early to tell. Turkey is a NATO member with close ties to anti-Assad regimes.
He wants normalized relations with Russia restored while insisting Assad must go – showing he and Putin remain intractably apart on resolving Syria’s conflict diplomatically, at least so far.
Will he shift from being anti-Assad to allying with Russia in combating terrorism in Syria – or at least stop supporting it?
Will he close Turkey’s border with Syria to halt daily flows of weapons, munitions and terrorist fighters to replenish depleted ranks?
Will he change from anti-Syrian belligerent to supporting Russia’s peace initiative? The fullness of time will tell which way he goes. Count on nothing positive unless he proves it conclusively and sticks by any commitment he may make.
Given his complicity with Washington throughout years of conflict as a NATO member and for his own self-interest, it’s hard being optimistic for what lies ahead.
Despite strained relations with Washington, he may try playing the US and Russia card simultaneously, proving he can’t be trusted if that’s his intention.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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.
Headline: Ukraine claims Russian invasion possible ‘at any minute’
Of course this sensationalized claim is as true as it is empty. A possible invasion has been as true for decades as it is now, and it will be just as true as long as Russia and Ukraine share a border (currently almost 1,000 miles long). Since September 2014, Ukraine has been building “Project Wall” along about 110 miles of the Russian border, an admitted “jobs project” reminiscent of the Maginot Line of the 1930s between France and Germany. But a possible invasion is a far cry from an imminent invasion, and a farther cry from an actual invasion, neither of which is shouted among the current cries of wolf in the region.
More realistically, reports from Ukraine in early August suggest that the long-simmering, chronic near-crisis there, while perhaps warming a degree or two, remains a long-simmering, chronic near-crisis (or perhaps, as some optimists suggest, a “frozen conflict”). For now, the unstable stasis of Ukraine seems to suit the needs of the major players – Russia and the U.S./NATO – if not the people actually on the ground in Ukraine, slowly being ground up by the unbroken hostilities of a broken culture. Geopolitically, the structure of peace in Ukraine seems to have more fault lines than support members. This has been true for many years, so maybe the rickety construction will continue to hold, however shakily – until the parties find the will to settle their differences somewhat rationally, or until someone decides to kick out the jambs.
The only constant in the Ukrainian meta-construct is that the country is and remains a shaky buffer against direct confrontation between the world’s two most deadly nuclear-armed states.
The perimeter of Independence Square, known as Maidan in Kiev in 2014. (photo: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images) go to original article
The headline shown above is from the Irish Times, over a story quoting unnamed sources in the Kiev government, who in turn quote unnamed sources in Crimea. Nothing in the story, taken as a whole, supports the fearmongering headline. Even Kiev acknowledges that Russian troop movements are exercises, of unstated scale at an unstated distance from the border. Even less ominously, Kiev reported that the Russians closed several (not all) Ukraine-Crimea border crossings along the 114-mile border, then reopened them after several hours, for unstated reasons.
Reporting the same news, the American propaganda outlet Radio Free Europe (RFE) based its story on reports from unnamed “Crimean Tatar activists” who said some border crossings were closed and undefined but “unusually large concentrations of Russian hardware” were seen in the northern region. RFE also quoted Nariman Celal (or Dzhelalov) describing movement of equipment but not troops, also reported by the Crimean Human Rights Group. And RFE quoted a Tatar member of Ukraine’s parliament and member of the Poroshenko Solidarity Party, Refat Chubarov, a Crimean Tatar exile since 1968, as saying the Russian activities appeared to be a training exercise. In the past, Chubarov has described Crimea as a territory of fear for Tatars: “they are prosecuted, sentenced on fabricated charges, forced to leave their land.”
Luhansk assassination attempt 350 miles from Crimea
During the past year, in the breakaway provinces of eastern Ukraine, several rebel commanders have been killed in attacks similar to the August 6 roadside bombing that injured Igor Plotnitsky, the head of the Luhansk People’s Republic since 2014, and two guards riding in the same car. A third guard was killed. Plotnitsky was hospitalized with reportedly severe liver and spleen damage, but was reportedly in stable condition on the evening of the bombing. Luhansk authorities blamed the attack on Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies. Kiev denied involvement. Plotnitsky himself blamed the U.S. in an online audio:
I am alive and healthy. The war is not over, and behind the Ukrainian government are the intelligence services of the U.S., those who try to roil the situation in Ukraine and in the world in general.
Since declaring independence in 2014, Luhansk has reportedly had an internal power struggle among various factions. Nevertheless, Plotnitsky helped shape the 2015 Minsk peace agreement that achieved an erratic cease-fire and reduced fighting in the region. According to the Moscow correspondent of the Los Angeles Times:
Shortly after declaring independence [in 2014], Luhansk split into several warring enclaves that were controlled by Cossacks, far-right nationalists and other pro-Russia forces. Plotnitsky consolidated control by removing and exiling his opponents whose supporters accused him of trying to assassinate them. Two of Plotnitsky’s main rivals were killed last year [2015] in car explosions. Plotnitsky’s advisor was gunned down in April.
The attack on Plotnitsky comes in the midst of increased violence in the Donbas region, with reports of armed combat and increased shelling on both sides of the ceasefire line established by the Minsk agreement of February 2015. Reporting the highest level of civilian casualties in a year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, reported on August 3:
The escalation of hostilities and the accompanying civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine over the last two months are very worrying. Civilians are once again having to flee to improvised bomb shelters in their basements, sometimes overnight, with increasing frequency – the price of the ceasefire violations is too high for the women, men and children in eastern Ukraine….
The many casualties we have documented in recent weeks suggest that neither Ukrainian forces nor the armed groups are taking the necessary precautions to protect civilians. We urge all sides to respect the ceasefire provisions, to remove combatants and weapons from civilian areas, and to scrupulously implement the provisions of the Minsk Agreements.
The UN High Commissioner also called on the Kiev government to act on its promise to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Since the Rome Statute provides for personal, individual accountability for criminal actions, the commissioner argued, its adoption will increase incentive for all parties to act lawfully and protect civilians.
According to an Associated Press report on August 6, “the worst of the fighting in eastern Ukraine [is] now over,” having the effect of releasing a flood of weapons into the rest of Ukraine, creating a “supermarket” for millions of illegal weapons. Crimes committed with guns have more than doubled since 2014. Weapons are also reportedly being smuggled to Europe and to the Middle East. Ukraine has classified all information it has on illegal arms trade.
U.S. shadow war with Russia quietly escalates in smallish increments
After twenty years of stealth aggression, U.S./NATO efforts provoked the Ukrainian coup that drove Russian ally and Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych out of office and out of the country. Facing a hostile takeover of a country on the Russian border, Russian president Vladimir Putin took over Crimea and incorporated it into Russia, which a majority of Crimeans may have preferred, rather than remaining part of a hostile and chaotic Ukraine. If U.S./NATO apparatchiks saw that coming in the wake of their coup, they had no effective plan to head it off, and the ensuing “that’s-not-fair” tantrum by the stymied West is what we’ve had to live with ever since. Russia continues to integrate Crimea into Russia. The U.S./NATO forces continue to bring military threats to Russia’s European borders. This is a quiet cold war, but just as dangerous as the original Cold War.
Since 2014, the U.S. has spent more than $600 million in Ukraine just training the National Guard and the Armed Forces, according to U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Michael Carpenter. The U.S. is also the largest donor of military equipment to Ukraine, more than $117 million since 2014 (out of a total of $164.1 million from all donors combined). Affirming that these supplies and training are part of continuing Western pressure on Russia by bringing a neighboring state into the NATO military alliance, Carpenter also indicated the Ukrainian forces remain substandard:
They still have a lot of work ahead. Especially, if Ukraine wants to create a new army, compatible with NATO forces, by 2020. This requires a lot of efforts put into structural reorganization, logistics reform, military health system etc.
There are U.S. troops in Ukraine at any given moment, in the hundreds if not thousands, moving in and out with different missions, making any reliable count a transient fact. The Russians also have troops in Crimea, which they consider Russia. And there are likely Russian troops and/or irregulars in eastern Ukraine, present at the behest of the disputed current governments. (A year ago, Ukraine was citing Russian forces on both sides of the Ukraine border as evidence of imminent war, as reported by the Independent, like the Irish Times’ war “at any minute” this year.)
The U.S. commander of NATO frets about the Russians’ ability to move troops more quickly than NATO can, comparing recent training exercises (and assuming what the general says is true). This is designed to raise fear of the Russians. But in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of NATO stealth aggression, there is an unspoken assumption that Russian maneuvers within Russian borders are far more threatening than U.S. troop movements on Russia’s borders, some 5,000 miles from Washington. In this Washington wonderland, somehow it makes sense for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to continue its 15-year-long war in Afghanistan, which is not really that close to the North Atlantic.
What happens if the U.S./NATO forces just stop advancing?
So we have a presidential election underway, right? That means there’s a possibility of power shifting to saner heads than we’ve seen since 1992, at least in theory. So what have the candidates been saying?
Hillary Clinton has called Putin a bully and said she’s stood up to him in the past. She doesn’t talk much about her role as Secretary of State when she chose Dick Cheney puppet Victoria Nuland to stir up the catastrophic Ukraine coup that has brought us to the present unstable mess. Still to be sorted out are the donations Ukrainian oligarchs made to the Clinton Foundation before Mrs. Clinton helped destabilize the country. In an ironic prelude to recent hacking accusations in the current campaign, back in 2011 Secretary Clinton accused Putin of rigging his election and he accused her of meddling in Russian politics. In 2014, Clinton compared Putin’s annexation of Crimea to Adolf Hitler’s 1938 unopposed occupation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The comparison is as politically raw as it is historically distorted, but never mind, Hitler analogies are useful as a measure of the desperation of their users. Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, is concerned that Clinton sees war as “the first instrument of choice.” If Clinton has any plans to defuse the U.S.-Russian confrontation, she’s kept them well hidden.
Almost a year ago, Donald Trump told a conference on Ukraine that the Russians invaded Ukraine because “there is no respect for the United States…. Putin does not respect our President whatsoever.” He said it was Europe’s problem to clean up the mess, about which he has showed no comprehension, saying it didn’t matter to him whether or not Ukraine was in NATO. More recently Trump, apparently meaning something else, said that Putin is “not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going into Ukraine, all right, you can mark it down.” That makes sense if one assumes that Crimea is a fait accompli and that Putin has no desire to embrace the fractious chaos of the rest of Ukraine (beyond maintaining the irritant of Donbas independence).” Of course Trump did not explain it that way, or any other coherent way.
What’s interesting here is that the worse candidate, in his inchoate and apparently mindless way, is stumbling down a road that could lead to peace. The more experienced candidate appears to remain determinedly committed to a course that leads inevitably, sooner or later, to a nuclear confrontation. No wonder Russians are saying, according to USA Today, that Trump’s “rude jokes and fun is like a fresh breeze” and that Trump would be more likely than Clinton to improve U.S.-Russian relations.
And even less wonder that a former CIA director and deputy director is castigating Trump and endorsing Clinton. The CIA has such a wonderful record of alerting the President to bin Laden, affirming WMDs in Iraq, promising the success of the Ukrainian coup, and preventing the rise of the Islamic State, among its peak accomplishments. Michael Morrell, CIA 1980-2013, published an August 5 Op-Ed in The New York Times headlined: “I ran the C.I.A. Now I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton.” That’s a mixed notice well calculated to exacerbate cognitive dissonance, or in more colloquial terms: That’s a joke, right?
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.
Unsuspecting citizens are paying for a nexus of interlocking agencies that conspire to create terror, war, and police-state legislation in a War of Deception that serves to devastate humanity.
Without its arsenal of fabricated war pretexts, and its fabricated Fear apparatus, the warmongering oligarchy would be denuded and reveal itself as the mass-murdering terrorist entity that it is.
Most recently, in Canada, Justice Catherine Bruce disclosed the true nature of an RCMP terror plot when she overturned terror convictions against two patsies – John Nuttal and Amanda Korody – who were set up by police operatives to commit a terrorist act for which they would otherwise be totally incapable of performing.
Bruce stated the obvious when she observed that,
Simply put, the world has enough terrorists. We do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people who have neither the capacity nor sufficient motivation to do it themselves.
The “forbidden truth” is that agencies of Canada’s federal government created a false flag terror event with a view to:
create an atmosphere of fear (aimed at the general public as well as politicians),
create Islamophobia
create a false pretext for a War on Terror (translated: illegal imperial invasions using un-Islamic terrorists as proxy armies)
create a pretext for unconstitutional, fascist, police state legislation (C-51 legislation)
Unsuspecting, otherwise peace-loving citizens, are also being duped into paying for Private Intelligence Contractors (PICS) who receive lucrative government contracts to engage in a full spectrum of activities designed to create and sustain war crimes.
Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) is likely the largest (and least known) PIC, with a huge staff (about 40,000 in 2007, likely more now), and it is fully integrated into the War Machine.
Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele report in “Washington’s $ Billion Shadow, that
‘SAIC’s friends in Washington are everywhere, and play on all sides; the connections are tightly interlocked. To cite just one example: Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of defense, whose confirmation hearings lasted all of a day, is a former member of SAIC’s board of directors …’
The U.S. government, through its incestuous relationship with SAIC, effectively created false intelligence – with impunity —as a fabricated pretext to wage the illegal war of aggression against Iraq.
Fake intelligence reports were also used to pin the East Ghouta (false flag) terror event on the Assad government, and to provoke a direct U.S/Coalition military invasion to depose Syria’s democratically-elected President.
some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as ‘plausible denial.’
The CIA specializes in the commission of crimes beneath which the protective shield of “plausible deniability” can be invoked should suspicions of CIA complicity be aroused.
Professor Tim Anderson and others also demonstrate, with sustainable evidence, that the East Ghouta gas attack was false flag terrorism.
The Pentagon’s use of PICS to perpetrate war crimes is now becoming normalized. According to Kate Brannen in “Spies-for-Hire Now at War in Syria”, the Pentagon publicly disclosed the terms of a contract with a PIC called Six3 Intelligence Solutions to provide “intelligence analysis services” in a number of countries, but most notably, Syria. The public may not be aware that such an intervention in Syria is illegal, or that Six3 Intelligence Solutions has a proven track record as interrogators at the Abu Ghraib torture chambers, or that it will no doubt offer the CIA plenty of “plausible deniability” to perpetrate crimes with impunity.
Whereas the government and its agencies should be using our tax dollars to “create no harm”, and to further the cause of peace and prosperity, it is clear beyond any reasonable doubt that governing agencies are creating much harm, through stealth and deception, thanks to the steady flow of tax dollars streaming into its coffers.
There is a long history of anti-war and peace activism. Much of this activism has focused on ending a particular war. Some of this activism has been directed at ending a particular aspect of war, such as the use of a type of weapon. Some of it has aimed to prevent a type of war, such as ‘aggressive war’ or nuclear war. For those activists who regard war as the scourge of human existence, however, ‘the holy grail’ has always been much deeper: to end war.
There is an important reason why those of us in the last category have not, so far, succeeded. In essence, this is because, whatever their merits, the analyses and strategies we have been using have been inadequate. This is, of course, only a friendly criticism of our efforts, including my own. I am also not suggesting that the task will be easy, even with a sound analysis and comprehensive strategy. But it will be far more likely.
Given my own preoccupation with human violence, of which I see war as a primary subset, I have spent a great deal of time researching why violence occurs in the first place – see
Moreover, given that I like to succeed when I work for positive change in this world, I pay a great deal of attention to strategy. In fact, I have written extensively on this subject after researching the ideas of the greatest strategic theorists and strategists in history. If you are really keen, you can read about this in The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.
However, because I know that most people aren’t too interested in scholarly works and that nonviolent activists have plenty of worthwhile things to do with their time, I have recently been putting the essence of the information in the book onto two websites so that the strategic thinking is presented simply and is readily available.
One of the outcomes I would like to achieve through these websites is to involve interested peace and anti-war activists from around the world in finalizing the development of a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to end war and to then work with them to implement it.
Consequently, I have been developing this nonviolent strategy to end war and I invite you to check it out and to suggest improvements. You can see it on the Nonviolent Campaign Strategy website. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/
If you are interested in being involved in what will be a long and difficult campaign, I would love to hear from you.
You might also be interested in signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ where the names of many nonviolent activists who will work on this campaign are already listed.
Ending war is not impossible. But it is going to take a phenomenal amount of intelligent strategic effort, courage and time. Whether we have that time is the only variable beyond our control.
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com
As Hillary Clinton attempts to seal Henry Kissinger’s endorsement, documents reveal how he undermined Jimmy Carter’s human rights agenda in Argentina.
In a much-awaited step toward uncovering the historical truth of the U.S.-backed Dirty War in Argentina in the 1970’s and 80’s, the United States has delivered over 1,000 pages of classified documents to the South American country. But critics argue that there are major gaps in the files, including the exclusion of CIA documents, that keep in the dark important details of the extent of human rights violations and the U.S. role in such abuses.
The Argentine government delivered the newly-declassified documents to journalists and human rights organizations on Monday after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented the files to President Mauricio Macri during a state visit last week.
The 1,078 pages from 14 U.S. government agencies and departments are the first in a series of public releases over the next 18 months of declassified documents related to Argentina’s last military dictatorship, including Argentine Country Files, White House staff files, correspondence cables, and other archives, according to a statement from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The files include grisly descriptions of torture, rape, assassinations, and forced disappearances carried out by the military regime under General Jorge Rafael Videla, installed after the 1976 coup against left-wing President Isabel Peron.
The documents also detail Henry Kissinger’s applause of the Argentine dictatorship and its counterinsurgency strategy, including during a visit to General Videla during the 1978 World Cup. National Security staffer Robert Pastor wrote in 1978 that Kissinger’s “praise for the Argentine government in its campaign against terrorism was the music the Argentine government was longing to hear.”
Argentina’s so-called anti-terrorism policy was in reality a brutal crackdown on political dissidents, human rights defenders, academics, church leaders, students, and other opponents of the right-wing regime. It was also part of the regional U.S.-backed Operation Condor, a state terror operation that carried out assassinations and disappearances in support of Sout America’s right-wing dictatorships. In Argentina, up to 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the Dirty War.
The documents also detail how then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter raised concern over the human rights situation in Argentina, including in a letter to General Videla rather gently urging him to make progress with respect to human rights. At the time, Kissinger reportedly demonstrates a “desire to speak out against the Carter Administration’s human rights policy to Latin America,” according to a memo by National Security’s Pastor.
The further confirmation of Kissinger’s attrocious legacy in Latin America comes as U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton courts an endorsement from Kissinger, widely condemned as a war criminal by human rights groups.
However, despite the revealing details, the batch of documents is also lacking in key archives, the Argentine publication El Destape pointed out. The package does not include files from the CIA or the Defense Intelligence Agency, which specializes in military intelligence.
What’s more, although the documents were expected to cover the period of 1977 to 1982, the latest documents are dated 1981, which means that cables related to the 1982 Malvinas War between Argentina and Britain and the U.S. role in the conflict are not included.
The Macri administration hailed the release of the documents as the result of a “new foreign policy” that has steered the country to rekindle ties with the United States after former Presidents Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez championed anti-imperialist politics for 12 years. But the self-congratulatory government narrative ignores the fact that Argentine human rights organizations have demanded for years that the archives be released in a fight for historical truth that first bore fruit in 2002 with the release of over 4,500 U.S. documents.
Furthermore, Macri has come under fire for undermining investigations into dictatorship-era crimes after his sweeping austerity campaign scrapped departments charged with gathering historical evidence in certain public institutions. The Argentine president has also been criticized over his indirect ties to the military regime, which proved to hugely benefit his family business, the Macri Society, also known as Socma.
U.S. President Obama described the move as a response to the U.S. “responsibility to confront the past with honesty and transparency.” Obama announced plans to release documents related to the Dirty War during a visit with Macri in Argentina in March, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of the 1976 military coup.
Obama’s visit was widely criticized by human rights activists over the insensitivity of the timing. Although he announced plans for the United States to “do its part” with respect to uncovering historical truth about the dictatorship period, he did not apologize for the United States’ involvement in human rights abuses and widespread forced disappearance.
It seems like the whole universe opposes him with an unprecedented daily blizzard of anti-Trump articles, commentaries and editorials in US print media and what passes in America for television news – stuff no respectable independent news director would allow on air.
Make no mistake. He’s not above reproach, not by a long shot. He didn’t get to be a billionaire by being a good guy. He’s unaccountable for lots of unsavory baggage, what it takes to become a corporate tycoon. Maybe he’s not all bad.
His anti-establishment sounding rhetoric rattles bipartisan power brokers, especially Wall Street, war-profiteers and other corporate interests wanting no changes from current policies – not even around the edges, the most to be hoped for from a Trump presidency if elected.
Giving overwhelming opposition from powerful interests and media scoundrels, it’s hard imagining him having any chance to succeed Obama.
He calls things rigged against him. America’s sordid history of election rigging shows he’s right, today with electronic ease and other dirty tricks.
Clinton was chosen to succeed Obama last year before campaigning began. Trump’s nomination defied predictions. Long knives emerged to stop him straightaway after announcing he’d seek the GOP nomination last year. They continue their daily dirty work, especially after he got it.
Why? He says things on the stump other aspirants for high political office wouldn’t dare, virtually unique in US presidential races.
Some comments are outrageous like wanting a wall on Mexico’s border and “a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Others suggest important steps in the right direction if implemented – including a new role for NATO, rapprochement with Russia (the best hope for preventing WW III), perhaps better relations with China, Iran and other independent countries, opposition to TPP and other jobs-destroying trade deals, as well as hopefully less eagerness for war to be America’s top geopolitical strategy of choice.
Advocating these type policies even rhetorically mobilizes America’s bipartisan establishment militantly against anyone suggesting them – wanting Trump defeated in November by fair or foul means.
Electing Clinton assures continuity on steroids, accelerating America’s war on humanity at home and abroad.
If Trump emerged victorious, defying long odds against him, at least they’d be a chance for turning US policy modestly in the right direction.
Preventing WW III is the best reason for opposing Clinton. Trump would rather make money from planet earth than destroy 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: 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.
“Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested”. — James Clapper, US Director of Intelligence on Turkish Coup (Financial Times 8/3/16, p. 4)
Washington has organized a systematic, global, no holds barred campaign to oust Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump from the electoral process. The virulent anti-Trump animus, the methods, goals and mass media resemble authoritarian regimes preparing to overthrow political adversaries.
Comparable propaganda efforts led to political coups in Chile in 1973, Brazil 1964, ad Venezuela in 2002. The anti-Trump forces include both political parties, a Supreme Court judge, Wall Street bankers, journalists and editorialist of all the major media outlets and the leading military and intelligence spokespeople.
Washington’s forcible and illegal ouster of Trump is part and parcel of a world-wide campaign to overthrow leaders and regimes which raise questions about aspects of the imperial policies of the US and EU.
We will proceed to analyze the politics of the anti-Trump elite, the points of confrontation and propaganda, as a prelude to the drive to oust opposition in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The Anti-Trump Coup
Never in the history of the United States, has a President and Supreme Court Judge openlyadvocated the overthrow of a Presidential candidate. Never has the entire mass media engaged in a round-the-clock one-sided, propaganda war to discredit a Presidential candidate by systematically ignoring or distorting the central socio-economic issues of their opposition.
The call for the ouster of a freely elected candidate is nothing more or less than a coup d’état.
Leading television networks and columnists demand that the elections be annulled, following the lead of the President and prominent Republican and Democratic Congressional and Party leaders.
In other words, the political elite openly rejects democratic electoral processes in favor of authoritarian manipulation and deception. The authoritarian elite relies on magnifyingtertiary, questionable personal judgement calls to mobilize coup backers.
They systematically avoid the core economic and political issues which candidate Trump has raised – and attracted mass support – which challenge fundamental policies backed by the two Party elites.
The Roots of the Anti-Trump Coup
Trump has raised several key issues which challenge the Democratic and Republican elite.
Trump has drawn mass support and won elections and public opinion polls by:
(1) rejecting the free trade agreements which has led major multinationals to relocate abroad and disinvest in well-paying industrial jobs in the US
(2) calling for large scale public investment projects to rebuild the US industrial economy, challenging the primacy of financial capital.
(3) opposing the revival of a Cold War with Russia and China and promoting greater economic co-operation and negotiations.
(4) rejecting US support for NATO’s military build-up in Europe and intervention in Syria, North Africa and Afghanistan.
(5) questioning the importation of immigrant labor which lowers job opportunities and wages for local citizens.
The anti-Trump elite systematically avoid debating these issues; instead they distort the substance of the policies.
Instead of discussing the job benefits which will result from ending sanctions with Russia, the coupsters screech that ‘Trump supports Putin, the terrorist’.
Instead of discussing the need to redirect investment inward to create US jobs, the anti-Trump junta mouth clichés that claim his critique of globalization would ‘undermine’ the US economy.
To denigrate Trump, the Clinton/Obama junta resorts to political scandals to cover-up mass political crimes. To distract public attention, Clinton-Obama falsely claim that Trump is a ‘racist’, backed by David Duke, a racist advocate of “Islamophobia”. The anti-Trump junta promoted the US- Pakistani parents of a military war casualty as victims of Trump’s slanders even as they rooted for Hillary Clinton, promotor of wars against Muslim countries and author of military policies that sent thousands of US soldiers to their grave.
Obama and Clinton are the imperial racists who bombed Libya and Somalia and killed, wounded and displaced over 2 million sub-Saharan Black-Africans.
Obama and Clinton are the Islamaphobes who bombed and killed and evicted five million Muslims in Syria and one million Muslims in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
In other words, Trump’s mistaken policy to restrict Muslim immigration is a reaction to the hatred and hostility engendered by the Obama- Clinton million-person Muslim genocide.
Trump’s “America First” policy is a rejection of overseas imperial wars – seven wars under Obama-Clinton. Their militarist policies have inflated budget deficits and degraded US living standards.
Trump’s criticism of capital and job flight has threatened Wall Street’s billion-dollar profiteering – the most important reason behind the bi-partisan junta’s effort to oust Trump and the working class’s support for Trump.
By not following the bi-partisan Wall Street, war agenda, Trump has outlined another business agenda which is incompatible with the current structure of capitalism. In other words’ the US authoritarian elite does not tolerate the democratic rules of the game even when the opposition accepts the capitalist system.
Likewise, Washington’s quest for ‘mono-power’ extends across the globe. Capitalist governments which decide to pursue independent foreign policies are targeted for coups.
Obama-Clinton’s Junta Runs Amok
Washington’s proposed coup against Trump follows similar policies directed against political leaders in Russia, Turkey, China, Venezuela, Brazil and Syria.
Russian President Putin has been demonized by the US propaganda media on an hourly basis for the better part of a decade. The US has backed oligarchs and promoted economic sanctions; financed a coup in the Ukraine; established nuclear missiles on Russia’s frontier; and launched an arms race to undermine President Putin’s economic policies in order to provoke a coup.
The US backed its proxy Gulenist ‘invisible government’ in its failed coup to oust President Erdogan, for failing to totally embrace the US Middle East agenda.
Likewise, Obama-Clinton have backed successful coups in Latin America. Coups were orchestrated in Honduras, Paraguay and more recently in Brazil to undermine independent Presidents and to secure satellite neo-liberal regimes. Washington presses forward to forcibly oust the national-populist government of President Maduro in Venezuela.
Washington has escalated efforts to erode, undermine and overthrow the government of China’s President Xi-Jinping through several combined strategies. A military build-up of an air and sea armada in the South China Sea and military bases in Japan, Australia and the Philippines; separatist agitation in Hong Kong, Taiwan and among the Uyghurs; a US- Latin American- Asia free trade agreements which excludes China.
Conclusion
Washington’s strategy of illegal, violent coups to retain the delusion of empire stretches across the globe, ranging from Trump in the US to Putin in Russia, from Erdogan in Turkey to Maduro in Venezuela to Xi Jinping in China.
The conflict is between US-EU imperialism backed by their local clients against endogenous regimes rooted in nationalist alliances.
The struggle is ongoing and sustained and threatens to undermine the political and social fabric of the US and the European Union.
The top priority for the US Empire is to undermine and destroy Trumpby any means necessary. Trump already has raised the question of ‘rigged elections’. But each elite media attack of Trump seems to add to and strengthen his mass support and polarize the electorate.
As the elections approach, will the elite confine themselves to verbal hysteria or will they turn from verbal assassinations to the ‘other kind’?
Obama’s global coup strategy shows mixed results: they succeeded in Brazil but were defeated in Turkey; they seized power in the Ukraine but were defeated in Russia; they gained propaganda allies in Hong Kong and Taiwan but suffered severe strategic economic defeats in the region as China’s Asian trade policies advanced.
As the US elections approach, and Obama’s pursuit of his imperial legacy collapses, we can expect greater deception and manipulation and perhaps even frequent resort to elite-designed ‘terrorist’ assassinations.
“Do I have to kill myself to go to Australia?” — Asylum seeker, Nauru, March 2, 2015
Human sensibility has been given another sound beating with the leak of 2,116 incident reports from Australia’s remorseless detention camp on Nauru. The reports total some 8,000 pages covering the period of May 2013 to October 2015 and were published by the Guardian on Wednesday.[1]
The newspaper notes that children are heavily, in fact “vastly over-represented in the reports” featuring in a total of 1,086 incidents despite making up only 18 percent of the detained population. Even the bureaucratic “ratings” of harm and risk given by the private security firm Wilson’s can’t varnish the brutalities.
Interspersed in this horror story are the features that are meant to make such detention conditions modest. Such is the cynicism of refugee and asylum seeker management – part torment, part amelioration. Internet facilities are provided; children undertake classes, though the incident reports note instances of sobbing and depression within them.
Other features of a grotesque system have also been noted in the sordid pile, one that has been growing for some years now. A security guard in one incident report from January 2015 is noted as threatening a fleeing child after being “jokingly tapped”. After resettlement had been obtained, the guard issued a solemn promise to the fearful youth: “I will kill you in Nauru.”[2] Hardly cheerful banter.
There are numerous instances of self-harm, denoted in the leaked files as “actual self-harm”. One asylum seeker slashed his left wrist on March 29 last year, leaving “blood on the floor and drops of blood in the hallway leading to the room.”[3]
Others focus on instances of starvation or threatened starvation, that great weapon of anti-establishment disaffection. Described as a “major” incident, one case is reported as involving an asylum seeker who “had informed the staff that he will not eat or drink anything until he gets to Australia.”[4]
The incident reports also note the disturbed and disrupted world view of those in the facility. Hemmed in and closed, fearing indefinite detention, claustrophobia sets in, with desires to inflict self-harm. Accompanied by a mental health nurse and interpreter, one asylum seeker expresses her desire to perish. Asked whether she had been eating, the response is glum. “Eating? I don’t want to eat; I want to die.”
According to the report, she then “threw the top half of her body around and hit her head on the end of the bed metal railing.”[5] She was subsequently restrained by the security staff, held down to prevent attempts to “punch herself in the face.”
Then come fears of what will happen to those yet to be born. Another mother noted to a case worker in October 2015 about her refusal to have her baby in the complex. “If I am made to have my baby on Nauru, I will have a baby in my tent and kill myself and my baby.”[6]
The waters in light of this disclosure should still be warm after the revelations of persistent and brutal treatment of youths in Australia’s own Northern Territory juvenile detention system. What is good for Australia’s internal system of mistreatment of youths is evidently good for children who arrive under designated “illegal” conditions.
Both instances demonstrate the chronic hypocrisy in the approach of the Australian political and security establishment to those it designates as outside the legal frontiers of society. Beyond the contrived letter of the law, lawlessness on the part of security guards and brutal conditions within the facilities are permitted – even against children.
The difference, however, is that the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, enfeebled by the reactionary elements of his party, is unlikely to consider a Royal Commission or any such panacea regarding Nauru. Nor is the opposition Labor Party going to buck the trend.
Both major sides of politics have previously been inundated with reports of sexual abuse by guards, non-consensual sex within the community, instances of self-harm, and the dangers of the system to children.
In January this year, to take one example, Nauru’s police forces confirmed it was investigating the sexual molestation of an Iranian six-year-old girl, along with that of her father, by an individual in the camp complex.
The Nauru Police Forces, in an attempt to mollify any initial outrage, released a statement claiming that the alleged assaults had been inflicted “against a refugee by another refugee” and that it had taken place in the “community/workplace, not processing centre.”[7]
There is one heartening matter about this squalid affair: no legislative regime attempting to close off the borders of information has worked. The Australian Border Force Act passed last year in an effort to criminalise whistleblowing touching upon material connected with the camp, was a crude attempt at shutting off the flow of information and keeping discussion about Nauru down to a minimum.
For all that, the detention complex continues to leak evidence of abuse and mistreatment like the very sinking vessels the Australian government repels with corrupt determination. May it continue to spring more over time, eventually stunning an otherwise indifferent public to indignant reaction.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
It is rare for a historian to write a history of a significant issue and bring it into the present time; even rarer when the work coincides with the reemergence of that issue on the world stage. Paolo Sensini has done just that with Sowing Chaos: Libya in the Wake of Humanitarian Intervention (Clarity Press, 2016). It is a revelatory historical analysis of the exploitation and invasion of Libya by colonial and imperialistic powers for more than a century.
It is also timely since the western powers, led by the United States, have once again invaded Libya (2011), overthrown its government, and are in the process (2016) of creating further chaos and destruction by bombing the country for the benefit of western elites under the pretext of humanitarian concern.
As with the history of many countries off the radar of western consciousness, Libyan history is a tragic tale of what happens when a country dares assert its right to independence – it is destroyed by violent attack, financial subterfuge, or both.
Although an Italian and Italy has a long history of exploiting Libya, a close neighbor, Sensini stands with the victims of colonial and imperial savagery. Not an armchair historian, he traveled to Libya during the 2011 war to see for himself what was true. Despite his moral stand against western aggression, his historical accuracy is unerring and his sourcing impeccable. For 234 pages of text, he provides 481 endnotes, including such fine sources as Peter Dale Scott, Patrick Cockburn, Michel Chossudovsky, Pablo Escobar, and Robert Parry, to name but a few better known names.
His account begins with Italy’s 1911 war against Libya that “Francesco Saverio Nitti charmingly described …. as the taking of a ‘sandbox’.” The war was accompanied by a popular song, “Tripoli, bel suol d’amore” (Tripoli, beauteous land of love). Even in those days war and love were synonymous in the eyes of aggressors.
This war went on until 1932 when the Sanusis’s resistance was finally crushed by Mussolini. First Italy conquered the Ottoman Turks, who controlled western Libya (Tripolitania); then the Sanusis, a Sunni Islamic mystical militant brotherhood, who controlled eastern Libya (Cyrenaica). This Italian war of imperial aggression lasted 19 years, and, as Sensini writes, “was hardly noticed in Italy.”
I cannot help but think of the U.S. wars against Afghanistan and Iraq that are in their 15th and 13th years respectively, and counting; they are not making a ripple on the placid indifference of the American people.
Sensini presents this history clearly and succinctly. Most of the book is devoted to the period following the 1968 overthrow of King Idris by the Free Unionist Officers, led by the 27 year old captain Mu’ammar Gaddafi. This bloodless coup d’état by military officers, who had all risen from the poorer classes, was called “Operation Jerusalem” to honor the Palestinian liberation movement. The new government, The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), had “three key themes …. ‘freedom, socialism, and unity,’ to which we can add the struggle against western influences within the Arab world, and, in particular, the struggle against Israel (whose very existence was, according to Gaddafi, a confirmation of colonialization and subjugation).”
Sensini explains the Libyan government under Gaddafi, including his world theory that was encapsulated in his “Green Book” and the birth of what was called “Jamahiriyya” (State of the Masses). Gaddafi called Libya the “Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriyya.”
Under Gaddafi there was dialogue between Christians and Muslims, including the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and visits from Eastern Orthodox and Anglican religious leaders. Fundamentalist Islamic groups criticized Gaddafi as a heretic for these moves. Gaddafi described Islamists as “reactionaries in the name of Islam.” His animus toward Israel remained, however, due to the Palestinian issue. He promoted women’s rights, and in 1996 Libya “was the first country to issue an international arrest warrant with Osama bin Laden’s name on it.”
He had a lot of enemies: Israel, Islamists, al Qaeda, the western imperial countries, etc. But he had friends as well, especially among the developing countries.
A large portion of the book concerns the U.S./NATO 2011 attack on Libya and its aftermath. This attack was justified and sanctioned by UN Resolutions 1970 (2/26/11) and 1973 (3/17/11). These resolutions were prepared by the work of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) that in 2000-2001 produced a justification for powerful nations to intervene in the internal affairs of any nation they chose. Termed the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), it justified the illegal and immoral “humanitarian” attack on Libya in 2011. The ICISS, based in NYC, was founded by, among others, the Carnegie Corporation, the Simons, Rockefeller, William and Flora Hewitt, and John D. and Catherine MacArthur foundations, elite moneyed institutions devoted to American interventions throughout the world.
When the US/NATO attacked Libya, they did so despite the illegality of the intervention (an Orwellian term) under the UN Resolutions that prohibit arming of ‘rebels’ who do not represent the legal government of a country. On March 30, 2011 the Washington Post, a staunch supporter of US aggression, reported an anonymous government source as saying that “President Obama has issued a secret funding that would authorize the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and other support to Libyan opposition groups.” None of the mainstream media, including the Washington Post, noted the hypocrisy of reporting illegal activities as if they were legal. The law had become irrelevant.
The Obama administration had become the opposite of the Kennedy administration. Whereas JFK, together with Dag Hammarskjold the assassinated U.N. Secretary General, had used the UN to defend the growing third world independence movements throughout the world, Obama has chosen to use the UN to justify his wars of aggression against them. Libya is a prime example.
Sensini shows in great detail which groups were armed, where they operated, and who they represented. The US/NATO forces armed and supported all sorts of Islamist terrorists, including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), led by Abu al-Laith al Libby, a close Afghan associate of Osama bin Laden, and al Qaeda’s third in command.
“These fanatical criminals (acclaimed as liberators by the mainstream media worldwide) were to form Libya’s emerging ruling class. These were people tasked to ensure a democratic future for Libya. However, the ‘rebel’ council of Benghazi did what it does best – ensuring chaos for the country as a whole, under a phantom government and a system of local fiefdoms (each with a warlord or tribal chief). This appears to be the desired outcome all along, and not just in Libya.”
Sensini is especially strong in his critical analysis of the behavior of the corporate mass media worldwide in propagandizing public opinion for war. Outright lies – “aligning its actions with Goebbels’ famous principle of perception management” and the Big Lie (thanks to Edward Bernays, the American father of Public Relations) – were told by Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and repeated by the western media, about Gaddafi allegedly slaughtering and raping thousands of Libyans. Sensini argues persuasively that Libya was a game-changer in this regard.
Here, the mass media played the part of a military vanguard. The cart, as it were, had been put before the horse. Rather than obediently repackaging and relaying the news that had been spoon fed to them by military commanders and Secretaries of State, the media were called upon actually to provide legitimation for armed actors. The media’s function was military. The material aggression on the ground and in the sky was paralleled and anticipated by virtual and symbolic aggression. Worldwide, we have witnessed the affirmation of a Soviet approach to information, enhanced to the nth degree. It effectively produces a ‘deafening silence’ – an information deficit. The trade unions, the parties of the left and the ‘love-thy-neighbor’ pacifists did not rise to this challenge and demonstrate against the rape of Libya.
The US/NATO attack on Libya, involving tens of thousands of bombing raids and cruise missile, killed thousands of innocent civilians. This was, as usual, explained away as unfortunate “collateral damage,” when it was admitted at all. The media did their part to downplay it. Sensini rightly claims that the U.S./NATO and the UN are basically uninterested in the question of the human toll. “The most widely cited press report on the effects of the NATO sorties and missile attacks on the civilian population is most surely that of The New York Times. In ‘Strikes on Libya by NATO, an Unspoken Civilian Toll’, conveniently published after NATO’s direct intervention had ceased. The article is truly a fine example of ‘embeddedness’:”
While the overwhelming preponderance of strikes seemed to hit their targets without killing noncombatants, many factors contributed to a run of fatal mistakes. These included a technically faulty bomb, poor or dated intelligence and the near absence of experience military personnel on the ground who could direct air strikes. The alliances apparent presumption that residences thought to harbor pro Gaddafi forces were not occupied by civilians repeatedly proved mistaken, the evidence suggests, posing a reminder to advocates of air power that no war is cost or error free.
The use of words like “seemed” and “apparent,” together with the oft used technical excuse and the ex post facto reminder are classic stratagems of the New York Times’ misuse of the English language for propaganda purposes.
Justifying the killing, President Obama “explained the entire campaign away with a lie. Gaddafi, he said, was planning a massacre of his own people.”
Hilary Clinton, who was then Secretary of State, was aware from the start, as an FOIA document reveals, that the rebel militias the U.S. was arming and backing were summarily executing anyone they captured: “The State Department and Obama were fully aware that the U.S.-backed ‘rebel’ forces had no such regard for the lives of the innocent.”
Clinton also knew that France’s involvement was because of the threat Gaddafi’s single African currency plan posed to French financial interests in Francophone Africa. Her joyous ejaculation about Gaddafi’s brutal death – “We came, we saw, he died” – sick in human terms, was no doubt also an expression of relief that the interests of western elites, her backers, had been served.
It is true that Gaddafi did represent a threat to western financial interests. As Sensini writes, “Gaddafi had successfully achieved Libya’s economic independence, and was on the point of concluding agreements with the African Union that might have contributed decisively to the economic independence of the entire continent of Africa.”
Thus, following the NATO attack, Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank. Sensini references Ellen Brown, the astute founder of the Public Banking Institute in the U.S., who explains how a state owned Central Bank, as in Libya, contributes to the public’s well-being. Brown in turn refers to the comment of Erica Encina, posted on Market Oracle, which explains how Libya’s 100% state owned Central Bank allowed it to sustain its own economic destiny. Encina concludes, “Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy [and Clinton] but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.”
In five pages Sensini tells more truth about the infamous events in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American colleagues than the MSM has done in five years. After the overthrow of Gaddafi, in 2012 Stevens was sharing the American “Consulate” quarters with the CIA. Benghazi was the center of Sanusi jihadi fundamentalism, those who the US/NATO had armed to attack Gaddafi’s government. These terrorists were allied with the US. “Stevens’s task in Benghazi,” writes Sensini, “now was to oversee shipments of Gaddafi’s arms to Turkish ports. The arms were then transferred to jihadi forces engaged in terrorist actions against the government of Syria under Bashar al-Assad.” Contrary to the Western media, Sensini says that Stevens and the others were killed, not by the jihadi extremists supported by the US, but by Gaddafi loyalists who had tried to kill Stevens previously. These loyalists disappeared from the Libyan and international press afterwards. “The reports now focused on al-Qaida, Islamists, terrorists and protesters. No one was to mention either Gaddafi … or his ghosts.”
The stage for a long-term Western intervention against terrorists, who were armed by the US/NATO, was now set. The insoluble disorder of a vicious circle game meant to perpetuate chaos was set in motion. Sensini’s disgust manifests itself when he says, “Given its record of lavish distribution of arms to all and sundry in Syria, the USA’s warning that, in Libya, arms might reach ‘armed groups outside the government’s control’ is beneath contempt.”
Sowing Chaos: Libya in the Wake of Humanitarian Intervention is a superb book. If you wish to understand the ongoing Libyan tragedy, and learn where responsibility lies, read it. If the tale it tells doesn’t disgust you, I’d be surprised.
In closing, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a stalwart and courageous truth teller, has written a fine forward where she puts Libya and Sensini’s analysis into a larger global perspective. As usual, she pulls no punches.
I was privileged to visit Syria as part of the US Peace Council delegation. We spent six intense days in Syria at the end of July 2016. During this time we met with President Bashar Al Assad, the Grand Mufti Hassoun, many opposition leaders and dissidents, parliamentary speakers and members, Syrian NGOs, education ministers, university directors, health sector officials, lawyers, Chamber of Commerce and many more.
The experience was enriching, overwhelming and emboldening as we all realised to what extent our governments are attempting to destroy this noble country that is surviving through stubborn unity and resistance against the attempts to fracture their society along sectarian lines that never existed prior to the US allied illegal intervention.
The following is an interview Henry Lowendorf and I gave to Syria TV at the end of our trip. It was an emotional experience, the testimonies we had heard during our short time were compelling and moving. Meeting President Bashar Al Assad and listening to his wise and pertinent analysis of events in Syria and globally were a wake up call for us, living under true tyrants and oligarchs whose intent is mass murder, theft and rape of sovereign nations in order to feed their inhumane and ravenous hegemony. Henry and I both struggled to keep emotions under control during the interview.
Thank you Syria for welcoming us with such generosity and hospitality despite the ravages being inflicted upon you by our governments and their media/NGO propaganda operatives.
Six Tu-22M3 bombers took off from the Russian territory and carried out concentrated air strikes on ISIS targets near al-Sukhnah and Arak in the Syrian province of Homs. The bombers destroyed the terrorists’ control centres and concentrations, ammo storage, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 12 crossover utility vehicles with weapons were near Palmyra and Arak. A command and control centre and a large field camp located near al-Sukhnah were also destroyed by the air strikes.
The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces have been making major advances in northern Latakia after redeployment of significant jihadist forces to Aleppo city. Pro-government forces have already captured Shir al-Qaboo, al-Qantarah and the strategic town of Kinsibba.
The situation remains tense in southwestern Aleppo.
The Jaish al-Fatah operation room holds positions in the corridor to the militant-controlled areas in eastern Aleppo while clashes are reported at the Cement Plant and in the 1070 Apartment Project. The jihadists also shell the pro-government positions in the 3000 Apartment Project. However, they have not been able to launch a successful advance there. The Syrian army’s artillery and the Russian and Syrian air power have been striking on targets in the 1070 Apartment Project, the Ramouseh Artillery Base and the jihadists’ rear.
The both sides have difficulties with providing supplies to the besieged areas because the opened corridors through the Castello Highway and the Alramousa road don’t allow free passage of aid convoys. If the jihadists are able to widen the opened corridor and launch constant delivers to eastern Aleppo, it will be a major military, PR and diplomatic blow to the Assad government and its Russian and Iranian allies. Some believe that if this redline is passed, Moscow could be pushed to use ground forces in order to save its achievements of the operation in Syria that had already drawn significant human, organizational and financial resources.
In a damning judgment, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce ruled Friday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) broke the law and “manufactured” a terrorism plot as part of a months-long entrapment operation that ended in a Vancouver-area couple being arrested and ultimately sentenced to life in prison.
John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were arrested July 1, 2013 and accused of planting bombs on the grounds of the British Columbia legislature in Victoria.
But Justice Bruce found that the couple would never have taken any action had it not been for the active encouragement and coercion of undercover RCMP officers. “This was not a situation in which the police were attempting to disrupt an ongoing criminal enterprise,” declared Bruce in her 210-page judgment. “Rather, the offences committed by the defendants were brought about by the police and would not have occurred without their involvement. By any measure, this was a clear case of police-manufactured crime.”
Undercover officers posing as Islamist extremists, befriended the isolated couple, who were recent converts to Islam, and encouraged them to act on statements they had made decrying the killing of Muslims in US-led wars and threatening to wage jihad and die as martyrs for Islam. Subsequently, the police suggested and facilitated the legislature bomb plot, removing obstacles that the police themselves acknowledged Nuttall and Korody would not have been able to overcome alone, and going so far as threaten them when they appeared reluctant to proceed.
Justice Bruce found that “Operation Souvenir,” which involved over 240 RCMP officers and cost $900,000 in overtime hours alone, breached the Criminal Code and tarnished the administration of justice.
Calling police claims Nuttall and Korody constituted a grave threat to public safety “quite farcical,” Justice Bruce wrote, “I find that the RCMP knowingly facilitated a terrorist activity by providing money and other services to the defendants that helped and made easier the terrorist activities.”
The spectre of the defendants serving life sentences for a crime that the police manufactured, exploiting their vulnerabilities, by instilling fear that they would be killed if they backed out … is offensive to our concept of fundamental justice.
The Crown has announced it will appeal Justice Bruce’s ruling.
Despite Bruce issuing a stay on proceedings, with the life imprisonment sentences for both being quashed, Nuttall and Korody were brutally rearrested within a few hours. They appeared before a provincial court judge Friday afternoon and were compelled to sign peace bonds, a draconian power at the disposal of the state to restrict the activities of so-called terrorist suspects even if they have not been convicted of a crime. Nuttall and Korody will be restricted from certain areas, including the legislature grounds, synagogues and Jewish cultural centers, are not allowed to visit certain internet sites, and must regularly report to a bail officer.
In comments to the press, Crown lawyer Peter Eccles claimed Justice Bruce’s decision would undermine the police’s ability to pursue terrorism suspects and sought to link Nuttal and Korody to the recent horrific attacks carried out by lone perpetrators in Germany and France, even though the court had just ruled that there was no evidence to support the suggestion that the couple intended to carry out an attack. He declared, “As we’ve seen even in the last six weeks, lone participants are undeniably the greatest challenge law enforcement faces.” Such scare-mongering neglects to mention the fact that the individuals who have carried out such attacks have frequently been disorientated, alienated and sometimes radicalized by the aggressive policies of war abroad and repression of refugees and attacks on democratic rights at home.
The state’s power to use peace bonds was expanded dramatically under Bill C-51. This sweeping police-state law was rushed through parliament by the previous Conservative government with the backing of the then-opposition Liberals in the wake of attacks on armed forces personnel in Ottawa and St. Jean-sur-Richelieu in October 2014 that killed two people. In fulfillment of an election pledge, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has pledged to make cosmetic changes to the legislation, including implementing a parliamentary oversight committee, but intends to leave the peace-bond system untouched.
Nuttall and Korody’s conviction as “terrorists” was itself an important element in the right-wing, anti-democratic campaign whipped up by the political elite and media last year to justify ramming Bill C-51 through parliament without any serious public debate.
More broadly, the constant invocation of the threat of “terrorism” has been exploited to accustom the population to a drastic assault on their basic democratic rights, as well as to legitimize Canada’s expanded involvement in military operations in the Middle East in alliance with the United States.
The Liberal government upholds the key provisions of Bill C-51, including the right of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) to actively disrupt vaguely defined “threats” to public security, the right of the police to detain terrorist suspects for up to seven days without charge, a new criminal offence of promoting terrorism in general, and a catch-all ban on “terrorist propaganda” that could be used to clamp down on social and political opposition to the government.
The fate that befell Nuttall and Korody makes clear the dangers faced by working people from authorities wielding such unchecked powers.
The couple, who lived in a basement apartment in a Vancouver suburb, were extremely socially isolated and recovering drug addicts. They rarely left their home, and were described by the judge as “naive,” “childlike” and “gullible.” Even police briefing notes presented at the original trial acknowledged Nuttall was possibly “developmentally delayed.”
Marilyn Sandford, Nuttall’s attorney, pointed out that her client suggested a number of outlandish ideas for attacks, including hijacking a nuclear submarine and firing rockets across the border at Seattle.
When the couple showed signs of refusing to go through with the legislature attack, they confronted threats from the undercover officers, including warnings they would be killed. They were also induced with offers of jobs and help in an elaborate escape plan.
Finally, when a new primary investigator was appointed to the case a week before the alleged plot was to take place, he had the couple removed from their home to get rid of distractions. Vaz Kassam explained to the court that other officers were frustrated because the pair were not preparing for the attack as planned.
“The police decided they had to aggressively engineer the plan for Nuttall and Korody and make them think it was their own,” Bruce noted.
Maureen Smith, Nuttall’s mother, said the pair would require counseling to recover from the ordeal they had experienced over the past three years.
The media immediately sought to portray the vast undercover sting, which theNational Post admitted was ordered at “senior levels,” as simply an error or bungled operation. The Post commented in its article, “It took one clear-headed judge to see through the stupidity and explain to the public the true facts of this policing and prosecutorial affront.”
In reality, the methods employed against Nuttall and Korody are standard practice for the security and intelligence apparatus in Canada, which functions in close collaboration with its partner organizations in the United States.
In a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published in 2014, the organization noted a worrying trend in Canada of “discriminatory investigations, often targeting particularly vulnerable individuals (including people with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent), in which the government—often acting through informants— is actively involved in developing the plot, persuading and sometimes pressuring the target to participate, and providing the resources to carry it out.”
HRW also issued a specific warning related to the prosecution of Nuttall and Korody. Andrea Prasow, HRW’s deputy director in Washington, compared the proceedings in BC to the US government’s determined efforts to entrap vulnerable individuals in concocted “terrorism” plots in the aftermath of 9/11. “What we’ve seen allegations of [in BC] are at least similar practices to what we’ve seen in the US,” she commented last June following the original convictions.
In the so-called VIA Rail terror plot, an undercover FBI agent and other security officials used an elaborate entrapment scheme to implicate Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser in a plan to derail a passenger train traveling between Toronto and New York. The agent repeatedly refused to answer questions in court, citing the secrecy of his work, and the media was banned from the courtroom and prohibited from reporting his two weeks of testimony.
Even though two psychiatrists ruled that Esseghaier was mentally unfit for the sentencing process, declaring him potentially schizophrenic, the judge ignored pleas from his lawyers to consider delaying sentencing and placing him in a hospital for treatment. Esseghaier and Jaser were sentenced to life in prison last September.
“El grado de civilización de una sociedad se mide entrando a sus cárceles” , Fiódor Mijailovich Dostoyevski
Medios de prensa en Costa Rica han anunciado en estos recientes días la decisión del juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez de ordenar al Estado el cierre definitivo de la Unidad de San Sebastián, por tratarse de una verdadera “jaula humana” (ver nota de La Nación). En esta otra nota del medio digital CRHoy, se precisa que las autoridades de Costa Rica deberán reubicar a más de 1260 personas privadas de libertad.
El jurista Roy Murillo Rodríguez es un juez ejecutor de la pena: se trata de una figura legal que no necesariamente existe en todas las legislaciones penales, y que permite a quienes ostentan este cargo, proceder a visitas regulares a centros de detención, como parte de sus funciones.
Recordemos que hace tres años, se leyó por parte de otra entidad pública costarricense a cargo de visitas regulares a los centros de detención en Costa Rica (pero ajena al sistema judicial) que: “La Defensoría de los Habitantes consideró que las cárceles costarricenses “son depósitos de personas” que violan la dignidad humana tanto de reos, como del personal técnico y de seguridad. Así se consignó en el informe anual sobre la situación en el 2012, del sistema penitenciario, trabajo elaborado por el Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de la Tortura de la Defensoría” (ver nota de La Nación del 28 de mayo del 2013).
Políticas de “mano dura”, “mano firme”, y leyes altamente represivas en Costa Rica adoptadas hace algunos años, así como el uso abusivo de la detención preventiva ante la presión ejercida por los medios de comunicación, explican, al menos en parte, el problema de hacinamiento actual que sufre el sistema carcelario costarricense (y en particular la Unidad de San Sebastián), al igual que muchos otros en América Latina. Con relación a la detención preventiva, se lee en una reciente nota publicada en Perú en el sitio Ius360, algunas valoraciones que pueden aplicar a la situación de algunos jueces costarricenses: “Coyuntura y realidad nacional: En muchos casos, los magistrados de los juzgados de investigación preparatoria tiene un rol provisional en la jerarquía judicial; con lo cual, esperan cumplir con la exigencia social de aplicar “mano dura” contra la delincuencia y temor al escándalo mediático. Medios de Comunicación: Es común que los medios de comunicación ataquen tanto al propio Estado como a los operadores de justicia en su accionar; más aún si este accionar no es acorde con lo esperado por el común de las personas (no siempre lo legalmente correcto o debido)”.
Sobre las penas de cárcel, el mismo juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez, en una entrevista en el año 2014 concedida a la periodista Natalia Rodríguez Mata, recordaba que mientras la tenencia de droga se sanciona en España con 4 o 5 años, 3 años en Argentina, el mínimo impuesto en Costa Rica es de 8 años (ver entrevista en YT, del Programa Sobre la Mesa, Canal 15 UCR, emisión del 19/06/2014, “Política Carcelaria en Costa Rica”, Minuto 21:00).
La luz de una visita ante la oscuridad rampante
Como es bien sabido, tradicionalmente las cárceles de un Estado constituyen lugares sombríos, mantenidos voluntariamente en una suerte de oscuridad institucionalizada: la única ventana de esperanza para los que en ellos cohabitan a diario, es la luz que puede arrojar la visita de un ente fiscalizador externo al sistema carcelario como tal. Precisamente, entre 1991 y el 2002, Costa Rica lideró exitosamente duras negociaciones en el seno de las Naciones Unidas: estas culminaron con la adopción, el 18 de diciembre del 2002, en Nueva York, de un novedoso instrumento internacional, bajo la forma de un protocolo facultativo. El objetivo de este tratado arduamente negociado (y cuya adopción se dio mediante un inusual voto, con tan solo cuatro votos en contra: Estados Unidos, Islas Marshall, Nigeria y Palau) es el de prevenir significativamente los malos tratos y la tortura en los centros de privación de libertad con base en un sistema de visitas regulares a lugares en los que, por alguna razón, personas se encuentran privadas de su libertad (Nota 1)
El sistema establecido en el Protocolo Facultativo a la Convención contra la Tortura de Naciones Unidas consta de un mecanismo internacional (el Subcomité para la Prevención de la Tortura o SPT) y uno nacional, el Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención (MNP), que cada Estado Parte debe establecer en función de su marco normativo e institucional.
En el caso de Costa Rica, Estado que ratificó el Protocolo en el 2005, el MNP es un órgano adscrito directamente a la Defensoría de los Habitantes (u Ombudsman), creado mediante la ley 92014 adoptada en febrero del 2014 (ver sitio oficial del MNP). Anterior a esta ley, un Decreto Ejecutivo del 2005 designaba de manera provisional a la Defensoría de los Habitantes como MNP. La opción costarricense, no exenta de críticas, fue seguida por otros Estados, como México o la misma España (ver informe del MNP español adscrito al Defensor del Pueblo): en el caso de España, la discusión previa a la designación del MNP en el 2010 dio lugar a un intenso debate (Nota 2), al igual que en el caso de México, cuya designación de su MNP fue antecedida por una larga serie de consultas entre el 2004 y el 2007 auspiciadas por Naciones Unidas para intentar conciliar posiciones encontradas (Nota 3).
En su primer informe de labores del 2014 luego de su creación mediante ley (ver texto completo), el MNP de Costa Rica concluye recordando las serias limitaciones con las que desempeña sus labores: “Se reitera que el MNPT adolece de una infraestructura (oficina) adecuada y suficiente para desarrollar su trabajo, lo cual representa un problema, debido a que no se tiene espacio para alojar a los (as) dos funcionarios (as) nuevos (as), para lo cual se deberán tomar medidas emergentes. De tal manera, para el presupuesto del año 2016, se solicitarán los recursos correspondientes para la construcción de las oficinas del Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de la Tortura” (p. 59).
Al momento de redactar estas líneas, el Protocolo Facultativo cuenta con 81 Estados Partes (ver estado oficialde firmas y ratificaciones). Mientras que, con excepción de Belice, los demás Estados anglófonos del hemisferio americano (incluyendo a Canadá y a Estados Unidos) se mantienen distantes de dicho instrumento, en América Latina, faltan al llamado Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Haití y República Dominicana (Estados que, al igual que los precitados Estados anglófonos, no han considerado oportuno ni tan siquiera suscribirlo); así como Venezuela, que lo ha firmado más no ratificado.
Imagen extraía de portada de publicación sobre la implementación del Protocolo Facultativo a la Convención de Naciones Unidas contra la Tortura, (APT/Suiza).
De algunas iniciativas novedosas
Mencionemos que el tema de la privación de libertad ha generado desde varios años en Costa Rica valiosas iniciativas por parte de algunas entidades sociales y personas, en particular en el ámbito cultural y artístico: ver por ejemplo esta nota del 2014 sobre presentación en la Alianza Francesa de un poemario, así como esta nota sobre encuentro sobre danza y cárceles del 2011 y el artículo de la Revista Perfil “El arte, redescrubiendo a los privados de libertad” del 2011. En una reciente entrevista a una poeta costarricense galardonada en el 2016 en España, Paola Valverde Alier (ver nota), se lee que: “Me tocó trabajar durante cuatro años dando clase de poesía en una cárcel de hombres aquí en Costa Rica. Tenía 17 años y me acompañaba mi mamá al no tener cédula”. En esta nota del 2006 de La Nación sobre otro espacio para la poesía en varias cárceles de Costa Rica, se lee que: “Uno de los grupos, integrado por Espinoza, Marenco, Valverde, Ilama y Mora, llegó al centro penal de Cocorí, ubicado en Cocorí, a las 9:30 a. m. Lo jóvenes regalaron cuatro rondas de poemas a más de 40 internos que se reunieron en el gimnasio de la cárcel. Con el lema de que “la poesía salva”, Paola Valverde presentó a los invitados y, de inmediato, cada quien se lanzó con su artillería”. En una nota anterior, del año 2003, sobre los talleres de poesía de Paola Valverde Alier, se lee que: “Creo que es un espacio de formación muy importante porque amplía los horizontes de los privados de libertad. Ellos siempre están deseosos de aprender y muestran un gran interés en la materia, sus apreciaciones y sus comentarios son mucho más profundos que otros que he escuchado como profesor universitario”.
También merece mención la elaboración y venta de artesanías en exposiciones nacionales por parte de los privados de libertad (ver nota de CRHoy del 2013). Las posibilidades de trabajo de los privados de libertad fue objeto de una interesante tesis en el 2011 (ver texto completo ) de Licenciatura en Derecho en la Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), por parte de la entonces estudiante Maricel Gómez Murillo, en cuanto a su alcance real en la práctica y las mejoras requeridas. Según el autor de otra tesis universitaria (ver nota publicada en el Semanario Universidad del 2013) “para los privados de libertad, la oportunidad de participar en la expresión creativa puede convertirse en una experiencia exitosa en cuanto a su rehabilitación y sus procesos de reeducación, pues se ha demostrado que el disfrute y los logros alcanzados propician una reintroducción al sistema educativo de muchos de ellos“.
No obstante estas y muchas otras iniciativas que no dejan siempre rastro en medios de prensa, las condiciones de hacinamiento y el deterioro de la infraestructura están alcanzado niveles tan críticos en Costa Rica, que hacen a un lado estos esfuerzos, e interpelan al sistema carcelario costarricense y, más generalmente, a la sociedad costarricense como tal. La cárcel de San Sebastián no es la única en mantener altos índices de hacinamiento. Por ejemplo, en este artículo del juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez publicada en la Revista de la Maestría en Ciencias Penales en el 2014, leemos que: “en la cárcel de San José (San Sebastián) con espacio para 664 internos, hay 1191 –un 79,6% de hacinamiento, el más alto por centro penitenciario en estos momentos – y en San Carlos, con espacio para 442 personas tenemos a 763 sujetos – 72,6%. Peor aún, en este último recinto carcelario, en la unidad de indiciados, con espacio para 104 hay 236 personas, sea un hacinamiento del 126,9%” (p. 659).
Las razones alegadas por el juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez en el caso de San Sebastián
Luego de repasar de forma muy detallada la gran cantidad de sentencias de la Sala Constitucional de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Costa Rica no acatadas por las entidades recurridas del Ministerio de Justicia a cargo de la Unidad de San Sebastián, y precisar, datos en mano, sus hallazgos en calidad de juez ejecutor de la pena, el juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez concluye que:
“En definitiva la cárcel de San Sebastián es hoy una jaula humana deteriorante, aplastante y humillante y esa situación no puede ser tolerada por esta autoridad. El hacinamiento unido a las pésimas condiciones de infraestructura y la gravísima limitación para el acceso a luz y ventilación natural –nótese que se trata de una estructura de tres niveles donde los pocos espacios para la luz y el aire se han ido limitando por razones de seguridad al techar esos accesos- han convertido ese espacio carcelario en un calabozo gigante. Nos encontramos ante un evidente ejercicio de terror de Estado que no es válido en una Democracia y que no puede prolongarse sino que por el contrario se hace necesario cesar con urgencia. Ya no se trata solamente de un problema de hacinamiento sino de una infraestructura y condiciones penitenciarias deterioradas y lesivas de la dignidad humana. Son más de veinte años que la autoridad judicial ordinaria y constitucional ha esperado soluciones y la degradación y trato inhumano que esa cárcel impone no puede tolerarse bajo ningún motivo o razón. Conforme el pacto fundacional de la sociedad democrática costarricense, ni un solo ciudadano puede ser expuesto a condiciones degradantes y humillantes como las que impone el Centro de Atención Institucional de San José. ”
(Véase “Medida correctiva de cierre definitivo del Centro de Atención Institucional de San José, N° 1023-2016” con fecha del 20 de julio del 2016, texto completoreproducido por DerechoalDia).
En la parte final y resolutiva de su resolución, se lee que:
“Por lo tanto, conforme los artículos 5 de la Convención Americana de Derechos Humanos, 33 de la Constitución Política, 51 del Código Penal, las Reglas Mínimas, los Principios y Buenas Prácticas para la Protección de las Personas Privadas de Libertad en las Américas y el Reglamento de Derechos y Deberes de los Privados y Privadas de Libertad, así como la Ley de Creación del Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de la Tortura, se ordena la clausura o cierre definitivo del Centro de Atención Institucional de San José, el que vencido el plazo de dieciocho meses a partir de la firmeza de esta resolución, no podrá funcionar más para la custodia de población penal institucionalizada, plazo que se otorga considerando los efectos y la crisis que generaría el cierre inmediato del centro penal, ordenándose a la autoridad penitenciaria que a partir de la notificación de esta resolución NO INGRESARÁ UN SOLO PRIVADO DE LIBERTAD MÁS a dicho Centro Penitenciario y en adelante, deberá asegurar el egreso –por resolución judicial que ordene libertad, por traslado a otros centros penitenciarios o a otros programas de atención- de al menos setenta privados de libertad cada mes, hasta su completo desalojo”.
Es menester indicar que una solicitud del mismo juez relacionada con la misma Unidad de San Sebastián, sólidamente respaldada desde el punto de vista técnico (ver nota de prensa publicada en La Extra), había ordenado en setiembre del 2013 que no se ingresará a más personas en San Sebastián (véase texto completo de las medidas correctivas del 24 de setiembre del 2013, reproducidas por DerechoalDia). Se leyó en aquel entonces por parte de la jurista Cecilia Sánchez Romero (quien ostenta desde el 2015 la cartera del Ministerio de Justicia en Costa Rica) que: “No permitamos hoy que la propia institución conspire contra esta garantía, pretendiendo someter a revisión la decisión de un juez de ejecución de la pena, que no ha hecho más que cumplir con sus obligaciones constitucionales y legales. Un juez que resuelve con fundamento jurídico, con apoyo en normativa procesal, con sólido respaldo de pronunciamientos de la Sala Constitucional en la materia y, por supuesto, con un elemental sentido de humanidad” (ver nota publicada en DerechoalDia).
Sistema penitenciario ante escrutinio internacional
Se podría pensar que un espacio que se sitúa en las mismas entrañas de un Estado, como lo son sus cárceles, no interesa mayormente la esfera internacional. Es posiblemente lo que algunas autoridades estatales desearían, dejando a manos de entidades fiscalizadoras adscritas al mismo aparato estatal represivo el examinar la situación que impera en ellas.
No obstante, la realidad es otra: la situación de los privados de libertad dentro de un Estado no escapa al ámbito del derecho internacional. Por ejemplo, cuando en materia de derechos humanos se menciona la lucha contra la tortura (o su prevención), se incluye también la lucha contra los tratos o penas crueles, inhumanos o degradantes que violentan los principios más básicos de la dignidad humana: los malos tratos que lleguen a calificarse como inhumanos, o crueles, o degradantes, son tan violatorios como la tortura, razón por la que ambas expresiones son indivisibles y así consta en los numerosos instrumentos internacionales de derechos humanos.
Los estándares internacionales, en particular los establecidos en el marco del sistema interamericano de derechos humanos, así como la jurisprudencia en materia de integridad personal y privación de libertad (ver estudio ) de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos constituyen a ese respecto una útil guía para todos los Estados del hemisferio americano. En uno de sus fallos (ver sentencia en el caso Montero Aranguren y otros versus Venezuela), la Corte Interamericana sentenció que:
“el espacio de aproximadamente 30 centímetros cuadrados por cada recluso es a todas luces inaceptable y constituye en sí mismo un trato cruel, inhumano y degradante, contrario a la dignidad inherente del ser humano y, por ende, violatorio del artículo 5.2 de la Convención” (párr. 89).
Para dar otro ejemplo en América Latina, el Procurador General en Colombia, en el año 2003, ya advertía en un pronunciamiento (ver texto completo ) que:
“De acuerdo con el parámetro internacional, cualquier sistema de reclusión o prisión que trabaje bajo condiciones de hacinamiento superiores a 20 por ciento (es decir, 120 personas recluidas por 100 plazas disponibles) se encuentra en estado de “sobrepoblación crítica”. Una situación de “sobrepoblación crítica” puede generar violaciones o desconocimiento de los derechos fundamentales de los internos” (p. 3).
Foto extraída de artículo de prensa del 2015 titulado “Hacinamiento en cárceles alcanza cifra récord de 51%”, La Nación (Costa Rica), 11 de marzo del 2015
Recientemente, en el mes de marzo del 2016, la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH), a raíz de la inspección in situ realizada por otro ente habilitado a realizar visitas, el Relator sobre Derechos de las Personas Privadas de Libertad, había hecho públicas sus recomendaciones al Estado costarricense sobre el deplorable estado en el que se encuentran sus cárceles. La Unidad de San Sebastián no escapó a dicho examen, al externar por parte del Relator de la CIDH que:
“Asimismo, la Relatoría observó con suma preocupación las precarias condiciones de infraestructura y salubridad. En particular, la Relatoría constató la falta de ventilación en los dormitorios y el calor que prevalece en los mismos. De igual forma, en los diferentes pabellones visitados en la Cárcel de San Sebastián, la delegación de la CIDH observó la falta de privacidad en el uso de servicios sanitarios, así como la total ausencia de espacios para guardar objetos de tipo personal. La Relatoría también recibió diversos testimonios de los internos respecto a las dilaciones en sus procesos judiciales respectivos. Asimismo, expresaron quejas relacionadas con la supuesta falta de atención médica, en particular, sobre la demora en recibir dicha atención y la falta de servicios dentales” (ver texto del informe detallado reproducido en esta nota de nuestro blog).
Con relación a la detención preventiva, el órgano interamericano señaló que en vez de ser usado de manera excepcional, es la regla a la que recurren los jueces costarricenses en muchos casos, de manera abusiva. En su informe de marzo del 2016 sobre Costa Rica, sobre este preciso punto, se lee que:
“… una persona privada de libertad en la cárcel de San Sebastián manifestó que “No nos investigan para detenernos. Nos detienen para investigarnos”. En la cárcel de San Sebastián, que alberga únicamente a internos en prisión preventiva, las autoridades penitenciarias informaron que el 34% de las personas salen de la cárcel a más tardar 15 días después de su ingreso, y que el 60% deja el penal en un periodo de 60 días; no obstante, refirieron también que en muchos casos la permanencia de los internos era “indefinida”, incluso personas que habían permanecido en el centro penitenciario por más de ocho años. De igual forma, las autoridades manifestaron su preocupación ante el “regular” uso de la prisión preventiva –que se reflejaría en que aproximadamente una tercera parte de personas en prisión preventiva permanece en la cárcel durante 15 días– y las consecuencias que su uso traería en el aumento del hacinamiento, el “desgaste económico” para el Estado, y el estigma en la vida de las personas. Por otra parte, una funcionaria judicial señaló que “la permanencia entre uno y tres meses de la mayoría de los reos demuestra que en realidad no se justifica la aplicación de [esta medida]””.
En el 2013, en su informe sobre el uso de la detención preventiva, la misma Comisión exhortaba en sus conclusiones a todos los Estados Miembros de la OEA a:
“1. …adoptar las medidas judiciales, legislativas, administrativas y de otra índole requeridas para corregir la excesiva aplicación de la prisión preventiva, garantizando que esta medida sea de carácter excepcional y se encuentre limitada por los principios de legalidad, presunción de inocencia, necesidad y proporcionalidad; evitando así su uso arbitrario, innecesario y desproporcionado. Estos principios deberán guiar siempre la actuación de las autoridades judiciales, con independencia del modelo de sistema penal adoptado por el Estado.
2. Intensificar esfuerzos y asumir la voluntad política necesaria para erradicar el uso de la prisión preventiva como herramienta de control social o como forma de pena anticipada; y para asegurar que su uso sea realmente excepcional. En este sentido, es esencial que se envíe desde los niveles más altos del Estado y la administración de justicia un mensaje institucional de respaldo al uso racional de la prisión preventiva y al respeto del derecho presunción de inocencia” (p. 121 del informe de la CIDH titulado “Informe sobre el uso de la prisión preventiva en las Américas”, 2013).
Gráfico publicado en el 2014 por el Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención (MNP) de Costa Rica, órgano técnico adscrito a la Defensoría de los Habitantes, sobre el aumento vertiginoso de la tasa de personas privadas de libertad por cada 100.000 habitantes en Costa Rica
Al analizar brevemente las recientes observaciones realizadas por otra entidad internacional, el Comité de Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas, al informe de Costa Rica, nos permitimos referir (ver nuestra modesta nota publicada en DerechoalDía del 10 de abril del 2016) a un aspecto que, según todo pareciera indicar, no despertó mayor interés por parte de la prensa nacional y mucho menos por parte de las autoridades costarricenses:
“Finalmente, entre muchos de los señalamientos realizados, quisiéramos incluir en estas muy breves referencias lo que se lee en el punto 25 por parte del Comité de Derechos Humanos, y que ameritaría una explicación detallada por parte de las autoridades: “25. Preocupa al Comité que el Estado parte no haya proporcionado información sobre investigaciones y sanciones por violaciones de derechos humanos cometidos por agentes del orden en centros de detención y por miembros de la Policía, especialmente relacionadas con tortura y malos tratos (art. 7 y 10) ”.
A modo de conclusión: el resultado de advertencias desoídas
Sin lugar a dudas, la situación de las personas privadas de libertad se ha convertido en Costa Rica en un verdadero lunar en materia de derechos humanos. Recomendaciones de unos y otros no parecieran encontrar eco alguno ante un parco aparato estatal. Una obra que lleva el sello de la Comisión Nacional para el Mejoramiento de la Administración de la Justicia (CONAMAJ) publicada en el 2003 concluía ya que:
“Mientras tanto, en lo que respecta a esta realidad tantas veces invisibilizada, todo indica que tras los muros de la prisión costarricense sigue prevaleciendo el “universo del no-derecho”, cimentado sobre la persistente devaluación de los derechos fundamentales de las personas privadas de libertad” (Nota 4).
Una zona de “no derecho” en un Estado de Derecho constituye un señalamiento que, en buena teoría, debiera ser inmediatamente objeto de atención por parte de sus autoridades: en efecto, el “no derecho” desatendido tiende, usualmente, a extenderse.
En esta breve nota de Informa-tico publicada el 25 de junio del 2014, titulada “Día Internacional de la lucha contra la Tortura y los malos tratos La lucha contra la tortura y los malos tratos en Costa Rica“, nos permitíamos concluir nuestras líneas con las palabras redactadas en el 2001 (es decir hace … 15 años) por el entonces Presidente de la Sala Constitucional de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Costa Rica:
“Nuevamente, ante reclamos desatendidos y advertencias desoídas, se recurre a entidades internacionales, con una leve diferencia con relación a otras experiencias recientes: no se trata de víctimas o de comunidades indignadas por la desatención del Estado a sus legítimos reclamos, sino que se trata esta vez del mismo Estado costarricense procediendo a hacer un llamado a estas entidades internacionales… para forzarlo (¿forzarse?) a cumplir con exigencias mínimas en cuanto a condiciones de detención se refiere. Las consecuencias para un sistema penitenciario (ya colapsado) de las políticas represivas de las últimas administraciones debería de constituir un primer ejercicio al que se proceda, en aras de encontrar vías y soluciones duraderas a un problema que, lejos de circunscribirse a las paredes de una cárcel, afecta a la sociedad costarricense como tal. Ya en el año 2001 el Presidente de la Sala Constitucional de Costa Rica, Luis Paulino Mora alertaba: “Con mucha razón se ha dicho que el grado de verdadera democracia y libertad de un país puede medirse por el tipo de cárceles que tenga. Si ello es así, vergüenza nos da a muchos vernos en el espejo de cárceles desgarradas” (Nota 5).
Pese a esta y otras innumerables advertencias hechas, sea desde fuera de Costa Rica o desde la misma Costa Rica, sea desde el mismo sistema judicial, sea desde fuera del mismo, la situación ha ido empeorando. Con relación a las diversas sentencias judiciales relacionadas a la Unidad de San Sebastián, sería interesante verificar si no estamos ante un caso en el que el Estado costarricense se muestra particularmente renuente a acatar lo que le ordenan… sus propios jueces.
Nicolas Boeglin
Nota 1: Remitimos a nuestro lector a la descripción detallada de dicho proceso de negociación internacional en el que Costa Rica puso a disposición de este instrumento lo que posiblemente haya sido el mejor equipo de su aparato diplomático en muchos años en IIDH – APT, EL Protocolo Facultativo a la Convención de las Naciones Unidas contra la Tortura y Otros Tratos o Penas Crueles, Inhumanos o Degradantes, San José- Ginebra, APT / IIDH, 2004, en particular páginas 50-73. Texto completo de la obra disponible aquí.
Nota 2: En el caso de España, además de fustigar la falta de transparencia en el diálogo durante el proceso de designación del MNP español (ver nota de la AEDIDH – Asociación Española para la Aplicación del Deerchop Internacional de los Derechos Humanos – del 2007), se criticó duramente la designación de la Defensoría del Pueblo como MNP. Se lee en uncomunicado de varias ONG españolasdel 2010 que: “al estar incluido dentro de la estructura de otra institución del Estado, no se garantiza su independencia funcional del Mecanismo, ni dispondrá de recursos y financiación propios y diferenciados; al estar dentro de la estructura del Defensor del Pueblo, la amplitud de su mandato podría hacer que pasara desaperciba la función de prevención del mecanismo, basado en las visitas periódicas y que requieren alto grado de especialización”. Se leyó, por parte de especialistas, que. “Sería recomendable, si se quiere potenciar el impacto del Protocolo, que en España se optase por la creación de un órgano mixto en el que tuviesen cabida el Defensor del Pueblo y las organizaciones de la sociedad civil, incluyendo no solo a las ONG, sino también al sector académico, las asociaciones de familiares de presos, asociaciones religiosas, etc…”: véase CEBADA ROMERO A., “El Protocolo Facultativo a la Convención de Naciones Unidas contra la tortura y los centros de internamiento de extranjeros en España”, in MARIÑO MENENDEZ F.M. & CEBADA ROMERO A. (Editores), La creación del mecanismo español de prevención de la tortura, Madrid, Iustel, 2009, pp. 195-221, p. 211.
Nota 3: El suscrito tuvo la oportunidad de asistir a tres de las cuatro rondas de consultas que se organizaron en México entre el 2005 y 2007 entre autoridades nacionales y organizaciones mexicanas de la sociedad civil, con presencia de observadores internacionales (León, Guanajuato, diciembre del 2005; Querétaro, mayo del 2006 y México DF, marzo del 2007). Perceptible, y pese a los ingentes esfuerzos de organismos internacionales invitados a participar y facilitar el diálogo, la desconfianza pareció imponerse ronda tras ronda y, al final, la designación inconsulta por parte de las autoridades de México de la Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH) como MNP en el 2007, evidenció que la desconfianza por parte de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil era fundamentada. El mismo miembro mexicano del Subcomité Internacional para la Prevención de la Tortura, el académico Miguel Sarre es enfático: “es inaceptable que la CNDH monopolice la función de MNP, cuando sólo debiera ser una parte, una pieza del mecanismo que ya constituye el sistema nacional no jurisdiccional de protección a los derechos humanos en México, formado por 32 comisiones públicas locales de derechos humanos y la CNDH”: véase SARRE M., “El Protocolo Facultativo de la Convención contra la tortura: un instrumento generador de cambios estructurales necesarios para prevenir la tortura”, in MARIÑO F.M. MENENDEZ & CEBADA ROMERO A. (Editores), La creación del mecanismo español de prevención de la tortura, Madrid, Iustel, 2009, pp. 99-116, p.113. Las conclusiones y recomendaciones de estas cuatro consultas en México están consignadas en, OACNUDH, Oficina de México, Aportes al debate sobre el diseño e implementación en México del Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de la Tortura y Otros Tratos o Penas Crueles, Inhumanos o Degradantes, México DF, 2008, pp. 323-345. Texto de esta publicación disponible aquí.
Nota 4: Véase CHAN MORA G. y GARCÍA AGUILAR R., Los derechos fundamentales tras los muros de la prisión, CONAMAJ, San José, 2003, p. 214.
Nota 5: Véase MORA L.P., “Sobrepoblación penitenciaria y derechos humanos: la experiencia constitucional ”, in CARRANZA E., (Coord.), Justicia Penal y sobrepoblación penitenciaria, San José, ILANUD, 2001, pp. 58-84, p. 84.
Nicolas Boeglin: Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, UCR
This election season has brought to the surface an issue that, until recently, seemed to have become a neoliberal sacred cow, the holy writ of the lords of capital: free trade. And while this cornerstone of US economic hegemony has come under fire from a deeply reactionary, and to varying degrees racist and xenophobic, perspective, as expressed by Donald Trump, it has nevertheless sparked a much needed conversation about free trade and its destructive impact on both the American working class, and the Global South as well.
African National Congress remains dominate party over two decades after democratic transformation Perhaps the most observed local elections in decades were held in the Republic of South Africa on August 3. In final results of this poll the ruling African National Congress (ANC) gained 54 percent of the vote to the opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA) 26 percent. In actual percentages the ANC won twice as many votes as the DA and many more times as the putative ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which garnered approximately eight percent.
On August 13 Fidel Castro Ruz, the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, turns 90. Progressive, anti-war and social justice forces across the world will join in the celebration of the life of one of the world’s most influential and significant leaders. It is especially worthwhile and necessary to mark and valorize the life and times of a man whose heart, without missing a beat, has withstood more than 600 assassination attempts by U.S imperialism.
Site C Dam is a proposed 60-metre high, 1,050m length dam on the Peace River on Treaty 8 territory in northeastern British Columbia (see image below), a project that if built, would create an 83km reservoir submerging 78 First Nations heritage sites in violation of the Constitution Act, but how does it connect to continental water diversion? To date, much has been said in the media regarding the issue of Site C Dam, but very little has touched on the matter of NAFTA and water.
When the 15-M movement broke out onto the streets across Spain in 2011, it didn’t coalesce into a series of political parties on either end of the political spectrum. In fact, there was a common declaration that stood out among all of the indignados: “They don’t represent us”. This referred to the “Regime of ‘78” and the dominant political actors that have been ruling Spain since the death of Franco, and have made the rupturing of the social contract possible over the last 30 years.
Former acting director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morell during a televised interview with American talk show host Charlie Rose, openly conspired to commit a raft of war crimes in Syria, suggesting that the US should take measures to “covertly” kill Russians and Iranians through armed proxies on the ground.
He also suggested targeting Syria’s senior leadership through a series of terrorist attacks in and around Damascus, according to CBS News.
I’d give them the things that they need to both go after the Assad government but also to have the Iranians and the Russians pay a little price. When we were in Iraq, the Iranians were giving weapons to the Shia’a militia who were killing American soldiers. The Iranians were making us pay a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price.
Charlie Rose would then interrupt Morell to clarify by stating:
You make them pay the price by killing Russians? And killing Iranians?
To which Morell replied emphatically:
Yes. Yes. Covertly. You don’t tell the world about it, right? You don’t stand up at the Pentagon and say we did this. Right? But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran.
And indeed, this appears to be precisely what the US has already been doing. At least two Russian helicopters have been shot down over Syria. The first near the Syrian city of Palmyra by terrorists from the self-proclaimed Islamic State using what Russian sources claimed was a US-made TOW anti-tank missile system, which is also capable of shooting down slow, low-flying aircraft.
Nursa forces are now leading a US-backed offensive on the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Both incidents appear to be the precise manifestation of Morell’s admitted conspiracy to kill Russians covertly, with Moscow apparently having gotten the message, and subsequently relaying it to the rest of the world by linking the incidents to US-armed terrorist organisations.
“Morell’s Plan” Could Never Work
Morell’s plan to kill Russians and Iranians, has not deterred Moscow or Tehran. Unlike the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, predicated on a premeditated lie as clearly exposed by the recent UK government-published Iraq Inquiry, Russia and Iran are engaged in Syria at the behest of the Syrian government.
Furthermore, their objective is not simply to project Russian and Iranian power beyond their borders, but to prevent the collapse of Syria into a NATO-induced Libya-style failed state that will serve as a staging ground for the spread of war back over their own borders. In other words, unlike the US’ intervention in Iraq seeking extraterritorial geopolitical gain, Russia and Iran’s intervention is based on very real and immediate existential concerns.
Thus, Morell’s plan to kill Russians and Iranians was an ill-conceived attempt to convince both nations to capitulate to US designs in Syria today, so that an even greater loss of Russian and Iranian lives could be embarked upon by wider proxy war in the near future.
In the process of organising this ill-conceived plan, the US has now further implicated itself as a state-sponsor of terrorism, further undermining its own pretext for intervention in Syria to allegedly “fight terrorism.”
With US-made TOW missiles conveniently, or very likely, covertly falling into the hands of designated terrorist organisations and being turned against Russian and Iranian forces, the US has also further undermined its own narrative revolving around its primacy as a stabilising force both within the region and globally.
TRANSCRIPT: SELECTED EXCERPTS ON TRUMP, PUTIN AND WAR ON SYRIA
Copyright Charlie Rose Inc.
HEADLINE: Conversation with Mike Morell
BYLINE: CHARLIE ROSE
August 8, 2016
Selected Excerpt (emphasis added)
The Republican presidential nominee delivered a major policy address today in Detroit, Michigan. He stressed his ability to create new jobs and bring prosperity to those who have the very least. Mike Morell is a former acting and deputy director of the CIA who is also a contributor to CBS News but recently resigned in order to publicly endorse Hillary Clinton. On Friday, he wrote a scathing op-ed said in “The New York Times” where he called Trump a poor and dangerous commander-in-chief. Donald Trump, Morell writes, is not only unqualified for the job but he may well pose a threat to our national security
CHARLIE ROSE: Mike Morell is here. He`s a former acting and deputy director of the CIA who is also a contributor to CBS News but recently resigned in order to publicly endorse Hillary Clinton. On Friday, he wrote a scathing op-ed said in “The New York Times” where he called Trump a poor and dangerous commander-in-chief. Donald Trump, Morell writes, is not only unqualified for the job but he may well pose a threat to our national security. I am pleased to welcome Mike Morell back to this table. Welcome.
….
MIKE MORELL: No. In fact, they say, they say that two of their biggest concerns, right, is his narcissism and the constant need to feed it, and two, that he doesn`t listen. He doesn`t listen to anybody. And when that, don`t listen to anybody scares the heck out of me. You are who you are, you`re not going to change when you become the president of the United States. I didn`t see the entire speech today.
What I did see were references to isolation, right, references to we got to take care of ourselves rather than the rest of our world. You know, references to trade, you know bad trade deals, that all concerns me. You know, here`s what I would like to see him do. I would like to see him stand up tomorrow and denounce Putin`s military incursion into Ukraine. I would like to see him denounce Putin`s annexation of Crimea.
I`d like to see him denounce Putin`s assistance to the rebels in eastern Ukraine that resulted in the shoot down of the Malaysian airliner. I`d like to see him renounce what Putin is doing in Syria supporting a butcher and a dictator, right. I`d like to see him just stand up and denounce Putin and I`ll tell you that at the end of the day Putin would have more respect for him than he does now.
CHARLIE ROSE: Why do you think he doesn`t do that? I mean, some of those things had come at different ways, for example why he doesn`t denounce Putin in Ukraine. Do you think it`s because he believed Putin did the right thing or he believes it`s okay?
MIKE MORELL: No.
ROE: Or he believes that it`s okay for them to take over Crimea?
MIKE MORELL: No, I think…
CHARLIE ROSE: Or because he just doesn`t understand the consequences of providing leadership of a country that is, you know, the world`s greatest power.
MIKE MORELL: You know, the single thing in my op-ed that got most attention was I said this guy has been recruited.
CHARLIE ROSE: So said he`s an agent of the Russian Federation.
MIKE MORELL: Unwitting.
CHARLIE ROSE: Unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.
MIKE MORELL: Unwitting agent of federation. He`s been recruited by Putin. That`s why he`s taking the positions he`s taken.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you suggest he`s recruited by the way that Putin played to his ego.
MIKE MORELL: Putin is a trained intelligence officer. He was a very talented KGB officer, right. He`s trained to look at an individual and play to them and to get them to do what he wants them to do, right. And that`s what an agent is.
CHARLIE ROSE: So, you really think that Vladimir Putin sat there, watched American politics and said, I`ll be better off from my objectives for Russia if in fact Donald Trump is elected, and therefore what I will do is do everything I can to make him an agent at my wishes. If I support him he`d become an agent of my wishes.
MIKE MORELL: So, I think there`s two things going on, right. One I wrote about and one I didn`t.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you got to say, OK, go ahead, because when you — you never talk about speculations you do not know.
MIKE MORELL: I do not know this.
CHARLIE ROSE: What Putin thinks and what he`s trying to do with respect to Trump.
MIKE MORELL: Look. I happen to know something about how you recruit people, OK. So, I`ve got a lot of experience with that. So, it`s kind of like my — it is my professional assessment, right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
MIKE MORELL: That this is what Putin has done.
CHARLIE ROSE: You`re riding on skills you learned at the CIA.
MIKE MORELL: Yes. But I think — I think — I think Putin was thinking two things. One, Putin does not like Secretary Clinton.
CHARLIE ROSE: People that I talked who know Putin say that it is more that than it is Donald Trump as an agent.
MIKE MORELL: I think it`s both, right. I think it`s both. You and I have had a conversations, have that many conversations around this table about Russia and Putin, right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
MIKE MORELL: And we sat around this table that there`s one thing above all else that Vladimir Putin fears, and that is a Arab spring green revolution- style uprising in the streets of Moscow, all right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly.
MIKE MORELL: And that`s what happened after the parliamentary elections during Barack Obama`s first term, right. People — the Russian middle class was in the streets. He blamed that on Secretary Clinton. He believes that Secretary Clinton was behind that. She wasn`t.
CHARLIE ROSE: It is part of an overall view he has about of chaos and the strong state and it`s necessary to have a strong state and you cannot allow people on the streets.
MIKE MORELL: Right. So, part of it he`s afraid of her, right. The other part of it is he wants…
CHARLIE ROSE: That is so much more than Secretary Clinton. I mean that doesn`t seem like a smart, wise intelligence agent to say that was all about Hillary Clinton.
MIKE MORELL: Look, there are a lot of things that he believes that aren`t true. A lot.
CHARLIE ROSE: But foreign policy comes from the White House more than it does from the state department. And she was the agent of — she was a representative and implementer of foreign policy of Barack Abama.
MIKE MORELL: There are a lot of things that he believes that simply aren`t true, right. He believes, he really believes, right, that the United States was behind the Democratic movement in Ukraine.
CHARLIE ROSE: He does. But he said it to me. (Inaudible) when I was there.
MIKE MORELL: He believes that. Deep in his heart. He`s not making it up, right. He believes this.
CHARLIE ROSE: I believe the CIA (inaudible).
MIKE MORELL: Where (ph) is the CIA, right. So that`s one thing. The other thing is I do believe absolutely that he looked at Trump and said this is the guy who I can play, right. All I have to do is compliment him, tell him how great it is and he`s going to come to my side of the fence.
CHARLIE ROSE: For me to — go ahead — but you got to prove, what`s your best exhibit of where he has done that and he`s once again doing it again?
MIKE MORELL: Here`s my best exhibit, OK. My best exhibit is, give me another reason why Donald Trump would have said all of the incredibly positive things he has said about Putin as a person and about Russian policy. That is at odds with the United States of America in a campaign where nobody`s really focused on Russia. Why would he have done that?
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, one example that`s Donald Trump being Donald Trump. In other words, Donald Trump, this guy sort of says certain things and so he responded to it by intuition, by instinct, all that kind of stuff without putting it in an international conflict context. You see what I mean.
MIKE MORELL: Which is — yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: I mean that`s who he is.
MIKE MORELL: Yes, but you`re making my point.
CHARLIE ROSE: He spends his time on tweets, he spends his time watching television as all — people oppose him a lot of time. It doesn`t mean he doesn`t get the job done on the campaign trail. He obviously won the Republican nomination.
MIKE MORELL: But you`re making my point, right. You`re absolutely making my point that his personality, right, gets him to react in these ways that are inconsistent with American interests.
CHARLIE ROSE: And because he — but to react is — I would argue, I`m now arguing the other side. I don`t want to use the term devil`s advocate but to react that way, does not make him — it makes him — it doesn`t make him a tool of the Russian Federation. It doesn`t make him an unwitting agent because he hasn`t done anything than offer some words up, responded to a guy who says some nice things about him, OK, but stay with me.
MIKE MORELL: Yeah, I disagree, but go ahead.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, you disagree, in what way?
MIKE MORELL: I disagree because…
ROSE What has he done other than said some things.
MIKE MORELL: He has undermined U.S. policy, western policy, with regard to Russia, right. He has told all of those people who follow him, right, the low 40 percent of the people who follow him and believe his every word that Putin is a good guy and Putin is a good leader, right. That undermines what the United States is trying to do.
Putin, you know, has his intelligence agencies, right, try to get that kind of propaganda. This has been free propaganda for Vladimir Putin in the United States of America. No doubt. And Charlie, Putin would never ever say this, of course, but I believe Putin sees Trump as a tool of his now and that`s why I said what I said.
CHARLIE ROSE: He thinks he can elect Trump.
MIKE MORELL: He wants Trump to be elected. And there is, you know, there is some evidence that he`s trying to help that along.
CHARLIE ROSE: But president Obama says I don`t trust Vladimir Putin. That`s an opinion about Vladimir Putin.
MIKE MORELL: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Donald Trump says whatever he says, he likes him or he said.
MIKE MORELL: He just saying he`s a great leader.
CHARLIE ROSE: He`s a great leader.
MIKE MORELL: He`s a great leader he`s a guy I can work with.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but hold on a second of great leader. I mean, is he — is he — take a look at what he has done with respect to Russia as president. Has he been a terrible leader? Has he been a good leader?
MIKE MORELL: Yes, terrible.
CHARLIE ROSE: Has he made Russia more of a player in the world than it was earlier.
MIKE MORELL: Yes, so this is a conversation you had with the vice president, right. So yes, he`s made Russia more of a player, but I will tell you that I believe at significant cost to Russia. Think about it this way — think about it this way, Charlie. Who is — just think about Ukraine for a second and we`ll come back to Syria.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK.
MIKE MORELL: OK. If you look at Syria — if you look at Ukraine and you ask who is the big loser, with Ukraine, right? Well, first of all, Ukrainian people, who had their aspirations crushed. Second, the United States and the west, which were shown to be unable to stop Putin, right. So we lost something. But the biggest loser in my view, the absolute biggest loser in my view was the Russian economy, the Russian middle class…
CHARLIE ROSE: What sanctions did…
MIKE MORELL: …and the future — not only sanctions, not only sanctions, right, which have crippled the economy. But Russia`s only future is to be integrated with the west. And because of what Putin did in Ukraine, he made sure that that`s not going to happen for at least a decade. So Russia`s the big loser. This guy is not a great leader, he`s a horrible leader. He`s undermining the future of his own country by trying to be seen as a greater power. He`s not benefiting — Russia`s not benefiting from being seen as a great power it`s actually being undermined.
CHARLIE ROSE: “The New York Times” today, today made the point, because I`m sure you read — I can`t see it on the front page but it made the point that what Putin had done in Syria had changed the dynamic.
MIKE MORELL: True.
CHARLIE ROSE: And was a net plus for Vladimir Putin. This is “The New York Times” reporting today.
MIKE MORELL: Yes, for Vladimir Putin.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, for Russia. You think it just Putin as a leader and is not for Russia.
MIKE MORELL: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because he represents Russia.
MIKE MORELL: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: He is the…
MIKE MORELL: So I agree, the vice president told you, right, that Putin, you know, Putin would like to get the hell out of there.
CHARLIE ROSE: And the president told me that too, both in interviews.
MIKE MORELL: Yes, right. And I think that`s right because he understands he`s paying a price. This is very expensive. This is extremely expensive for an economy that can`t pay for it. There are Russian soldiers, right, just like in Ukraine — there are Russians soldiers who are coming home dead. It`s a political cost to him as well. So, this is not as brilliant strategic stroke on Vladimir Putin`s part.
CHARLIE ROSE: When you look at Secretary Clinton, tell me how you think she is different in looking at the world from Barack Obama.
MIKE MORELL: Look, here`s the way — here`s the way that I think about her. And then maybe we can get to the differences, which is hard. You know —
CHARLIE ROSE: That it seems to be important if you want to know where he wants to take the country and it`s simply a third term for the Obama administration.
MIKE MORELL: A lot of time with her in the situation room, a lot of time with her.
CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, this is right where I want to go. So, you what?
MIKE MORELL: OK, a lot of time in the situation room, time with her at the State Department, time with her with foreign visitors visiting Washington, foreign leaders visiting Washington, time with her overseas meeting with foreign leaders — a lot of time with her. I`ll tell you the first thing that always struck me in the situation room, and this is going to sound small but it`s not.
It`s not small at all and we`ll compare it to Trump. She was always prepared, you know. There are big thick books, right, that people have to go through, you know. And I would spend hours going through these books for these meetings. It was absolutely clear to me that she had read through these books, she was prepared, she knew what she was talking about, right. That`s unusual for principles. I simply don`t see Donald Trump doing that. She asked really good questions.
She was not locked into her view. She would change her view if somebody made a compelling argument. She was — she was one of the few cabinet members who came into the situation room and didn`t automatically take the bureaucratic view of her department. I mean she was — Leon Panetta was this way, Bob Gates was this way, right. They went…
CHARLIE ROSE: They were different than the bureaucratic view of the institution they serve whether the state or defense or CIA.
MIKE MORELL: Yes, yes, yes, and incredibly impressed me, right, that they would go to what they thought was the best thing for their country even if it was at odds with the bureaucratic view of their own, you know, their own department. The other thing…
CHARLIE ROSE: Bob Gates said the other day that one of the central qualities of a president he respected was a, temperament and b, they listened. He said every good president he knew was a good listener.
MIKE MORELL: And I saw that over and over again, right, and I saw it in just the questions that she asked and how carefully she answered them and then how those answers were reflected in her views as the conversation moved forward, right. And she was calm and she was collected. And she was tough. I thought she was the toughest person in the room. In terms of…
CHARLIE ROSE: In terms of what she advocated?
MIKE MORELL: Yes, yes. Toughest in terms of — toughest in terms of —
CHARLIE ROSE: Her analysis of the…
MIKE MORELL: Toughest. No, no. Toughest in terms of understanding that — and I put this in the op-ed — toughest in terms of understanding that for diplomacy to be effective, that there had to be a belief on the part of the adversary that you were willing and able to use force if necessary, right? She understands that. She understands that diplomacy without that cannot be effective.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, let me just stop you there. Because I`m — we now talk about what it is to be president day to day and to be, you know, head of the CIA and recommend things to the president. It is the idea of when you use force. It is argued that that — that the president who will probably claim rightly so, that he uses force.
He used his force with drones. He used his force against Osama Bin Laden. He`s used force on a number of times. But often people make a sharp distinction between when she`s prepared to use force whether it`s Syria or whether it`s Libya or whether it`s somewhere else than the president is.
MIKE MORELL: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: So, that`s one way you try to understand where she stands and how she`s different from Barack Obama and you`ve been in the room with both of them. And you know how they talk, how they argue. And not — well to make the point, that what you argue is not necessarily what you believe. You can make an argument to try to understand the problem.
MIKE MORELL: So, you know, she was pushing aggressively, quite frankly along with Leon Panetta and Dave Petraeus for us to be more supportive of the moderate opposition in Syria, in late 2012, early 2013 when Assad was…
CHARLIE ROSE: On his heels.
MIKE MORELL: Was on heels, right. And there were many people who thought he was about ready to go. And not only to push him, right, but also to give diplomacy some leverage.
CHARLIE ROSE: True.
MIKE MORELL: Right. You can`t — you can`t…
CHARLIE ROSE: That`s what the 51 diplomats who made the letter argued. You need to have — diplomats need leverage from the military on the ground to be able to negotiate what is in the best interest the country they represent.
MIKE MORELL: Right. And I think based on the conversation in the sit room, that she thought that significant assistance to the moderate opposition, that you could do that without going down a slippery slope to U.S. military involvement.
CHARLIE ROSE: Which is what the president thought?
MIKE MORELL: Which is what the president feared, I think.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
MIKE MORELL: And I think that was the difference between the two at the end of the day, right. So, I believe that she — I believe she understands that you can — that you can go a certain distance, right, without having to go the rest of the way, that each step in the process can be a specific decision and just because you take one step doesn`t mean that you have to take all of them.
CHARLIE ROSE: This conversation is about why you wouldn`t trust Donald Trump but admired Hillary Clinton and believed she would be an effective force. Let`s go down the lines in terms of important points. How would she be different? What is her position on ISI and what is about it that recommends itself to you that has not been done?
MIKE MORELL: Yes. So, she`s very supportive of what the president`s done. She would go a little bit further is what she said, right. So she would, you know, show would — more Special Forces, consider no-fly zone.
CHARLIE ROSE: The president has been doing that gradually.
MIKE MORELL: Gradually, right. And so he`s been getting — moving down the line, right, and she would just do more of that. You said something really important earlier, Charlie, which was for this to end, right, there`s got to be — Russia and the United States and quite frankly the Iranians have seen a table for two.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right, absolutely.
MIKE MORELL: That there`s got to be an agreement on a transition to a new government, right. I think she understands that for us to have leverage in that conversation, that we got to have more skin in the game from a military perspective. Not U.S. troops — not U.S. boots on the ground but more skin on the game, right.
That`s why she`s talking about a no-fly zone, right. That`s why she`s talking about more Special Forces. She understands that that is necessary for the leverage you need in those political discussions.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is that possible because it looks like Russia`s moving away from that kind of agreement?
MIKE MORELL: I don`t know if it`s possible, right. I don`t know if it`s possible.
CHARLIE ROSE: Then maybe they`re waiting for the next president?
MIKE MORELL: Now we switch to Michael Morell`s view, and you said you wanted to touch on all these, right. I`d switch to Michael Morell`s view for a second. So, I think that given where we are — because I don`t think — I think it`s possible to squeeze ISI down to almost nothing in Iraq and Syria.
But I fear without a resolution to the Syrian civil war, that other jihadist groups are just going to pop up in its place. Al-Nusra, right, which is the Al-Qaeda group in Syria is already growing in strength, right, as a result of — for lack of resolution of the Syrian civil war.
CHARLIE ROSE: And is redefining itself.
MIKE MORELL: So that`s got to be resolved, right. That Syrian civil war has to be resolved and you have to be able to convince the Russians and the Iranians that it`s in their interest. Here`s quite frankly what I would recommend. I would recommend that we, that — let me back up a second.
So, the outcome we want is a transition from Assad to a government that can represent all the Syrian people, but we want to do it without destroying the institutions of the Syrian government.
CHARLIE ROSE: Which is what we did in Iraq?
MIKE MORELL: Which is what we did in Iraq and which is what happened on its own in Libya.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
MIKE MORELL: So we want to make our transition keeping the Syrian military, the Syrian Security Services, keeping them as intact as possible, right, as we want to do.
CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly what Putin says he wants to do.
MIKE MORELL: So you don`t want to destroy those things, right. You don`t want to destroy those things. So here`s what I think you want to do. I think you want to covertly, not openly but covertly, but you certainly want them to know, you want to covertly tell the moderate opposition that you`re supporting to go after — this is a big deal — to go after the Russians and the Iranians who are on the ground.
They got to pay a price for what they`re doing. Just like we made the Russians pay a price in Afghanistan for what they`re doing. We have to make them pay a price. We have to make them…
CHARLIE ROSE: By supporting the Mujahedin.
MIKE MORELL: Yes. We have to make them to want to go home. We have to make them want to have a deal, right, so that`s number one.
CHARLIE ROSE: Now, how do we do that?
MIKE MORELL: We ask the moderate opposition — we give the moderate opposition weapons.
CHARLIE ROSE: What is it they want that they don`t have?
MIKE MORELL: You know, Dave Petraeus could tell you exactly what they want. You know, I`m not a military guy.
CHARLIE ROSE: In Afghanistan we (inaudible).
MIKE MORELL: Right. But I`d give them the things that they need to both go after the Assad government,but also to have the Iranians and the Russians pay a little price. When we were in Iraq, the Iranians were giving weapons to the Shi`a militia who were killing American soldiers, right. The Iranians were making us pay a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price. The other thing we need to do…
CHARLIE ROSE: We make them pay the price by killing Russians?
MIKE MORELL: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And killing Iranians?
MIKE MORELL: Yes. Covertly. You don`t tell the world about it, right. You don`t stand up at the Pentagon and say we did this. Here`s the other thing I want to do, I want to go after — I want to go after those things that Assad sees as his personal power base, right. I want to scare Assad. So, I want to — I want to go after his presidential guard. I want to bomb his offices in the middle of the night.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, that happened about two years ago as you remember when his brother in law was…
MIKE MORELL: I want to destroy his presidential aircraft on the ground. I want to destroy his presidential helicopters. I want to make him think we`re coming after him, right. I`m not advocating assassinating him, I`m not advocating that. I`m advocating going after that what he thinks is his power base, right, and what he needs to survive.
I want him to think about this is not going to end well for me, right. I want to put pressure on him, I want to put pressure on the Iranians, I want to put pressure on the Russians to come to that diplomatic settlement.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because that`s the only thing that will achieve it if they feel like they`re hurting.
MIKE MORELL: Yes. This is me talking here.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, well do you think Hillary Clinton believes as you do —
MIKE MORELL: I don`t know, I have not talked to her about this.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK.
MIKE MORELL: I do believe she believes that we need more diplomatic leverage.
CHARLIE ROSE: Why did you come to this conclusion? Because there was a failure of everything else and it wasn`t happening? It was moving not towards that kind of agreement…
MIKE MORELL: We`re moving away from it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Away from it.
MIKE MORELL: We`re moving away from it. That`s what “The New York Times” article said. That`s what I believe.
CHARLIE ROSE: “The New York Times” article also said that we — that the Saudis had stopped supplying weapons to the opposition forces too.
MIKE MORELL: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: The Saudis.
MIKE MORELL: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me talk about people in the region.
MIKE MORELL: Yeah, this is a good one.
CHARLIE ROSE: What do we need to do?
MIKE MORELL: Our allies in the region — I`ll leave (ph) a couple things. They believe that the United States of America — they believe that the Obama administration is not listening to them, right. That they`ve got points of view they feel strongly about — another thing they believe is that the United States does not have their back, particularly with regard to Iran.
They believe that we don`t understand that they see Iran as their Soviet Union, right. So there are two things I`d say about Secretary Clinton here. One is, they do believe that Secretary Clinton listens and I think where Secretary Clinton is on Iran, based on what I`ve heard her say and based on what I`ve read is look, the nuclear deal, a really good thing, I think.
She thinks that — I think that too, but at the same time I think she believes that I know, based on what she said that she believes that we need to push back harder against Iranian malign behavior in the region, right.
CHARLIE ROSE: A support should we be doing.
MIKE MORELL: Let me give you an example and I think we`ve talked about this around the table. They provide money and assistance to terrorist groups, Hamas, Hezbollah, right. Hezbollah could not exist without the support it gets from Iran.
They supply money and weapons to Shi`a groups in the region who are trying to overthrow governments. Best example is Yemen, right, where they provided weapons and money to the Houthis who actually overthrew the government there.
CHARLIE ROSE: Where they`re competing with the Saudis.
MIKE MORELL: Where they`re competing with the Saudis, right. So, a very simple example, right, ships leave Iran filled with weapons for the Houthis, right. I believe the U.S. Navy should board those ships and if there are weapons on them, they should turn them around and send them back. That`s pushing back against Iranian bad behavior.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is that what Secretary Clinton believes needs to do? Be more aggressive in terms of the Iranian behavior.
MIKE MORELL: Yes. So, use the nuclear…
CHARLIE ROSE: Which is not part of the deal?
MIKE MORELL: So, use the nuclear agreement — use the nuclear agreement to try to forge a more positive relationship at the same time while you push back, right, against their bad behavior.
CHARLIE ROSE: North Korea, Secretary Clinton said it`s a real risk, North Korea. What should we do? What would Secretary Clinton do? We don`t what Donald Trump would do. I don`t.
MIKE MORELL: Donald Trump has said what he would do. He had said he`d sit down and talk to Kim Jong-un. He said he would invite Kim Jong-un to come to the United States of America for a conversation.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me stop you there. Forget that it came from Donald Trump. Is it a mistake to talk to Kim Jong-un?
MIKE MORELL: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: To talk to him?
MIKE MORELL: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because you give him credibility?
MIKE MORELL: Because what he wants more than anything else is for the United States of America to acknowledge that he is a nuclear power and that he will remain a nuclear power. And it is the policy of the United States of America and I don`t think Mr. Trump gets any of this — understands any of this, right. It is the policy of the United States of America for North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons. That is our policy.
CHARLIE ROSE: So, as a condition to talking, get rid of your weapons?
MIKE MORELL: As a condition, yes, yes. You have to — you have to get rid – -we`re not going to recognize you. We`re hot going to normalize relations with you until you agree to get rid of your weapons, right. And what Donald Trump said is come talk to me, right. And so he would give him incredible credibility.
CHARLIE ROSE: China and the South China Sea. What should we be doing with respect to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea potentially building bases there?
MIKE MORELL: Yeah, so, can I just back up a second and then take the 25,000 foot view and then come back to the South China Sea. And here I think — I think president Obama and Secretary Clinton understand this perfectly. The most important bilateral relationship for the future of East Asia, for the future of the world I think is the relationship between Washington and Beijing, and there are two things, as a strong statement but I believe it to be true.
There are two things that are pulling us together in a good way and two things that are pulling us apart. The two things pulling us together, Charlie, are one, we both have an interest, we both have an interest in the success of the Chinese economy particularly a reforming Chinese economy, right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because of its impact on the global economy.
MIKE MORELL: Because of its impact on the global economy.
CHARLIE ROSE: And the confidence it gives them as a state.
MIKE MORELL: Absolutely, absolutely. And the disincentive it gives them for messing around, right. Two is, and I base this, you know, on my own conversations with Chinese officials, you know, my counterparts, base this on conversation with my counterparts in China. I believe there are growing numbers of places in the world where our national security interests overlap than actually where they are in conflict. And I believe there`s potential for us to cooperate together.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do the Chinese believe that?
MIKE MORELL: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do they want to do that?
MIKE MORELL: Yes. I think they believe it and I think increasingly they`re coming to understand would be in their interest. So that is potentially pulling us together, right — two positive things. What are the two negative things? The two negative things are we both have large militaries on the same place on the planet, right. That means you have…
CHARLIE ROSE: The Pacific.
MIKE MORELL: The pacific. So, that means you have — what does that mean? It means you have to plan for war against each other, and we both do. It means you have to equip yourself in terms of weapons systems for war against each other, and both of us do. And it means you have to exercise those forces for war against each other and both of us do. Both sides see all three of those things. That leads to a national tension in the relationship that pulls you apart. And then you got…
CHARLIE ROSE: But they also — they are very upset about the fact, you know, that we seem to be increasing our relationship with India and Vietnam and Philippines and drawing a circle around them.
MIKE MORELL: Yes, and that comes to the final point that`s pulling us apart, and you`re absolutely right. So the final thing that`s pulling us apart is, you know, we are the power in East Asia and we`re established co- power. They are a rising power. They don`t have a lot of say. They want more say in the world around them as they gain strength, right. They want more say, we have it. How does that get resolved, right?
I think there`s an answer to that that president Obama understands and that Secretary Clinton understands, and that is that we will give China more room to exercise influence if they play by the rules of the international order. So, what does that mean, right? What does that mean? It means for example that I think it was a mistake for the United States of America to push back when China want to create a regional development bank.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right. Clearly, that looks like — because Europe broke ranks right away.
MIKE MORELL: The Brits broke rank immediately, right. So, you don`t push back on stuff like that where they`re actually trying to play by the rules, right. You push back on the South China Sea stuff where they are breaking the rules, right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Mr. Xi, tear down those islands.
MIKE MORELL: And I think that`s the right approach. I think president Obama understands that. I think that he`s taken us down the road towards a better solution to this relationship long term and I think she will continue in that direction.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is it fair to say — I`ve got to close this — Is it fair to say the two, since you were there although they were there at the time, Osama Bin Laden and all that, but the two changes that are so apparent to decision makers today, one is cyber and the other is in a sense the rise of non-state actors.
MIKE MORELL: I agree a hundred percent, agree a hundred percent. I`d still list, well, put it this way. I`d list terrorist attacks against the United States of America including the homeland as the number one threat, the non- state actor, right.
CHARLIE ROSE: And with that, the potential that they somehow might acquire or buy some weapon of mass destruction whatever it might be?
MIKE MORELL: Yes. That`s a serious issue, right. And then I think the second, the fastest growing threat, and number two on the list is cyber in all of its dimensions, from what nation states do, to criminal groups, to hacktivists, to all of this different people doing all these different things on cyber.
CHARLIE ROSE: And the political development that you`ve written about in which is apparent in much of this is not of that magnitude, is the rise of populism.
MIKE MORELL: And in the United States.
CHARLIE ROSE: In the United States.
MIKE MORELL: You know, I was asked — Charlie, I was asked by an Australian think tank — an Australian think tank came to me and they said, they said, you know you`ve analyzed the politics of other countries for 30 years. Would you analyze your own and write something for us. So I did, and in this piece I wrote, which was published a couple weeks ago, I said there are three big dynamics here in the United States. One is what I call income insecurity, right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
MIKE MORELL: There`s been a whole bunch of people that have been left behind by globalization and technology.
CHARLIE ROSE: Conventional wisdom is that they are attracted to the candidacy of Donald Trump.
MIKE MORELL: They were attracted to the candidacy of Bernie Sanders who said I will fix this with income redistribution and they are attracted to the candidacy of Donald Trump who simply says I`ll fix it.
CHARLIE ROSE: All about trade.
MIKE MORELL: I`ll fix it by tearing up trade deals and making better deals. I`ll fix it by telling Ford Motor Company you cannot move to Mexico, right. How do you do that? So that`s one, right. Second, right, is the belief — that first one is not a small percentage of the population because real incomes for American households, for the majority of American households that have been going down for the last generation, right. So this is real.
I think it`s a failure of our education system not to keep up with changes in globalization and technology but that`s a whole different issue. The second is the belief among a lot of people, right, that establishment candidates, establishment politicians can`t get anything done. A lot of people believe that.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because of gridlock in Washington.
MIKE MORELL: Yeah, and so those people who believe that went to — went to non-establishment candidates on both sides, right. Sixty-five percent of the vote cast during the primaries was from non-establishment candidates. And then the third is, and this is sad for me as an American to say, as I believe that there is some number of uneducated white Americans who fear the browning of America, who fear the growth and the number…
CHARLIE ROSE: Change in the demographics.
MIKE MORELL: And the influence of minorities in America manifested by the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. And they are attracted to Donald Trump`s xenophobia. And I think those are the three dynamics that launched him, right. And you know, the first one — all three of them need to be addressed, right. All three of those things need to be addressed. I happen to believe that she will do a much better job addressing those issues than he will and that`s why I did what I did.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for coming.
MIKE MORELL: Always great to be with you, Charlie.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
US-backed militias fighting against the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad have broken through the Russian and Syrian government encirclement of their positions inside the war-ravaged northern Syrian city of Aleppo, according to Western media.
During fierce battles over the weekend, the US-backed, Islamist-led militia coalition known as Jaysh al Fateh overran military bases in southwest Aleppo and secured an access road connecting the city to the rest of the country. Russian war planes and Syrian and Iranian ground forces counterattacked Sunday, targeting the anti-Assad forces with aerial bombardments and artillery.
According to Syrian opposition leader Anas al-Abdah, the Islamist offensive has achieved “almost a miracle,” leaving the anti-Assad forces poised to “break the siege and move into a stage where we are talking seriously about liberating the city.” The offensive has carved out a slim corridor linking Aleppo to rebel-held areas, raising the possibility of resupply operations for the desperately besieged Western-backed forces.
The encirclement of Washington’s extremist groups inside Aleppo, who have been reduced to a diminishing pocket in the city’s north and western sectors in the face of a redoubled Syrian offensive backed by Russian air power and Iranian ground forces, came as a humiliating reversal for US imperialism. Washington has orchestrated a relentless civil war in Syria since 2011, killing hundreds of thousands of Syrians, without achieving its aim of toppling the Damascus regime and installing a neocolonial puppet government.
During the opening phases of the US-NATO orchestrated war, the anti-Assad militias seized control of large areas of the city, which they sought to utilize as a base of operations and object of plunder. Prior to the outbreak of the war, Aleppo’s population numbered between 1 and 2.5 million, according to varying estimates. Today, some 50,000 civilians are estimated to eke out an existence amid the rubble. The city as a whole has been without electricity and running water for more than a year, and entire neighborhoods are completely razed to the ground.
In recent weeks, with the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withdrawing support for the rebels in retaliation for Washington’s involvement in the failed July military coup attempt, the American-backed militias have faced the imminent possibility of defeat.
It is not coincidental that the ferocious US-backed assault is unfolding on the eve of Turkish President Erdogan’s trip to St. Petersburg for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday. There are well-grounded fears in American ruling circles that Erdogan will reach a broad-based agreement with Putin, one that would close-off all remaining supply routes necessary for sustaining the war against Damascus.
The cause of the sudden reversal in the fortunes of the anti-government forces, who, if US media reports can be believed, have seized the initiative from the jaws of total defeat, was quietly acknowledged in reports published by the New York Times on Saturday and Monday, titled “Military Success in Syria Gives Putin Upper Hand in US Proxy War” and “Rebel Offensive in Syria Challenges Government Siege of Aleppo.”
As Saturday’s Times piece noted, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been supplying the Al Qaeda-linked militias with virtually unlimited supplies of sophisticated antitank missiles and other weaponry.
The US-backed rebel coalition, which has been dominated by the Al Nusra Front, “would receive new shipments of the antitank weapons as soon as the missiles were used,” according to comments from a rebel commander made in 2015, and quoted by the Times Saturday.
“We ask for ammunition and missiles, and we get more than we ask for,” the anti-Assad commander said.
The shipments of advanced Stinger missile systems, which are capable of destroying, among other things, commercial jetliners during takeoff and landing, as well as military-grade helicopters, have continued up to the present.
In contrast to the Obama administration’s assertions that the shipments were being curtailed and funneled exclusively to “moderate forces,” in reality the CIA has been surging support for the encircled anti-Assad militias in Aleppo, foremost among which are the Al Nusra fighters.
As the Times update on Monday forthrightly acknowledged: “A vital factor in the rebel advance over the weekend was cooperation between mainstream rebel groups, some of which have received covert arms support from the United States, and the jihadist organization formerly known as the Nusra Front, which was affiliated with Al Qaeda.”
The infinite mendacity and hypocrisy of both the Times and the American imperial policy it defends could hardly find sharper expression.
The newspaper presents the change in name and formal disaffiliation of Al Nusra from Al Qaeda as some distant memory, when it, in fact, was announced barely a week and a half earlier. It, like most of the Western media, now cheers on the supposed battlefield successes of the so-called “rebels,” who, until the end of July, swore allegiance to Al Qaeda, supposedly the main target of Washington’s 15-year-long “war on terrorism.”
Moreover, in recent weeks, as US intelligence outfitted the surrounded Al Qaeda “rebels” in preparation for a new bloody offensive, America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, has touted steps toward a US-Russian military cooperation pact in Syria, the centerpiece of which would supposedly have been joint strikes against Al Nusra. While Kerry was pledging military cooperation with Moscow, along with joint “counterterrorism” operations, the CIA was giving weapons hand over fist to the Al Qaeda-affiliated forces, dumping fuel on a simmering US-Russian proxy conflict with the potential to engulf broad areas of the Middle East and Europe in all-out war.
The downing of a Russian Mi-8 transport helicopter over Syria’s Idlib province Monday, which produced the largest single death toll for Russian forces operating in Syria since Moscow launched its intervention last year, grimly illustrated the lethal dynamics being unleashed by American imperialism’s ever more reckless pursuit of unchallenged hegemony over the strategic Levantine nation.
The US media celebrations of the “rebel” victory cannot be taken at face value, and must be weighed against reports from the Syrian government side, which have presented the scope of the rebel counteroffensive in more modest terms. Whatever the true extent of the rebel advances on the ground, it is already clear that the intensified fighting will serve as the political basis for a major military escalation by Washington.
In an interview with Fox News this weekend, Democratic presidential frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, issued bellicose threats against Russia, stating that “the facts raise serious issues about Russian interference in our elections, in our democracy.” Clinton has made clear her intention to pursue a massive escalation of the Syrian war and the broader US war drive against Russia if she wins the White House, saying during last year’s Democratic Party debate, “We have to stand up to his [Putin] bullying and specifically, in Syria.”
While the Obama White House prefers to delay a major escalation until after the elections, the weakness of the American position on the ground is forcing the administration to consider direct strikes against Damascus. Former Obama administration adviser, Dennis Ross, suggested last week that the White House should “begin speaking in a language that Mr. Assad and Mr. Putin can understand,” and employ direct cruise missile and drone strikes against Assad’s military infrastructure.
In the event that the government crushes the rebel attack, powerful factions within the US establishment can be counted on to press for the most aggressive measures against Assad, to be launched in the name of salvaging the American proxy forces, which have been built up at a cost of billions in CIA-supplied cash and weapons.
Even should the Al Qaeda-linked forces complete the breakout, and reassert control over Aleppo and the surrounding region, this will only set the stage for a massive government counterattack, and thus provide a suitable political pretext for further escalation by Washington. Beneath the fog of war in Syria, the only certainty is the constantly growing tendency toward a US-Russian clash that poses the gravest dangers for humanity.
“Turkey is slowly leaving the Atlantic system. That is the reason behind this coup. That is the reason why NATO is panicking. This is much broader and much bigger than Erdogan. This is a tectonic movement. This will affect Turkish-Syrian relations, Turkish-Chinese relations, Turkish-Russian relations and Turkish-Iranian relations. This will change the world.” — Yunus Soner, Deputy Chairman Turkish Patriotic Party
“It is becoming clear that the attempted putsch was not just the work of a small clique of dissatisfied officers inside the armed forces; it was rather the product of a vast conspiracy to take over the Turkish state that was decades in the making and might well have succeeded.” — Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch
On August 9, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg The two leaders will discuss political developments following the recent coup-attempt in Turkey, tourism, and the launching of Turkstream, the natural gas pipeline that will transform Turkey into southern Europe’s biggest energy hub.. They are also expected to explore options for ending the fighting in Syria. Putin will insist that Erdogan make a concerted effort to stop Islamic militants from crossing back-and-forth into Syria, while Erdogan will demand that Putin do everything in his power to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdish state on Turkey’s southern border. The meeting will end with the typical smiles and handshakes accompanied by a joint statement pledging to work together peacefully to resolve regional issues and to put an end to the proxy war that has left Syria in tatters.
All in all, the confab will seem like another public relations charade devoid of any larger meaning, but that’s certainly not the case. The fact is, the normalizing of relations between Russia and Turkey will foreshadow a bigger geopolitical shift that will link Ankara to Tehran, Damascus and other Russian allies across Eurasia. The alliance will alter the global chessboard in a way that eviscerates the imperial plan to control the flow of energy from Qatar to Europe, redraw the map of the Middle East and pivot to Asia. That strategy will either be decimated or suffer a severe setback. The reasons for this should be fairly obvious to anyone who can read a map. Turkey’s location makes it the indispensable state, the landbridge that connects the wealth and modernity of the EU with the vast resources and growing population of Asia. That vital connecting piece of the geopolitical puzzle is gradually slipping out of Washington’s orbit and into enemy territory. The July 15 coup is likely the final nail in the NWO coffin for reasons we will discuss later. Here’s a clip from Eric Draitser’s insightful piece titled “Erdogan’s Checkmate: CIA-Backed Coup in Turkey Fails, Upsets Global Chessboard” that summarizes what’s going on:
“Ultimately, the failed 2016 coup in Turkey will have lasting ramifications that will impact the years and decades ahead. With Turkey now clearly breaking with the US-NATO-EU axis, it is rather predictable that it will seek to not only mend fences with both Russia and China, but to place itself into the non-western camp typified by BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China’s One Belt One Road strategy, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, etc.” (“Erdogan’s Checkmate: CIA-Backed Coup in Turkey Fails, Upsets Global Chessboard“, Global Research)
In an earlier part of the article, Draitser correctly identifies the followers of Fethullah Gulen as the perpetrators of the coup. As he and others have pointed out, Gulen’s agents have penetrated all levels of the Turkish state and military acting as a shadow government (aka- “parallel state”) that poses a direct threat to Turkey’s national security.. Here’s journalist Patrick Cockburn making the same point in a recent article in CounterPunch:
“There is little question left that the followers of Fethullah Gulen were behind the coup attempt, despite his repeated denials. “I don’t have any doubt that the brain and backbone of the coup were the Gulenists,” says Kadri Gursel, usually a critic of the government. He adds that he is astonished by the degree to which the Gulenists were able to infiltrate and subvert the armed forces, judiciary and civil service. ….
…it is difficult to find anybody on the left or right who does not suspect that at some level the US was complicit in the coup attempt. Erdogan is probably convinced of this himself, despite US denials, and this will shape his foreign policy in future….
…if the coup had more successful, Turkey would have faced a full-blown military dictatorship or a civil war, or both. Erdogan said in an interview that foreign leaders who now counsel moderation would have danced for joy if he had been killed by the conspirators….” (“After the Coup, Turkey is Being Torn Apart“, Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch)
If the coup had succeeded, then it is quite likely that Erdogan would have been savagely murdered like Gadhafi while the state was plunged into a long-term civil war. This is why Erdogan has removed tens of thousands of Gulen sympathizers or operatives from their positions in the state, the media, the military and the universities. These prisoners will now be charged with supporting the coup (treason?) and could face the death penalty. Critics in the Obama administration and western media have lambasted Erdogan for violating civil liberties in his effort to rid the country of fifth columnists and traitors, but the Turkish President will have none of it. He has angrily responded saying that Washington was “taking the side of the coup leaders.”
“Now I ask”, said Erdogan, “does the West give support to terror or not? Is the West on the side of democracy or on the side of coups and terror? Unfortunately, the West gives support to terror and stands on the side of coups….We have not received the support we were expecting from our friends, neither during nor after the coup attempt.”
Erdoğan lamented that no Western leader had come to Turkey to express condolences and show solidarity with the Turkish people.” (Hurriyet, Turkish Daily)
He has a point, doesn’t he? While I am no fan of the autocratic and narcissistic Erdogan, it’s very suspicious that Washington is so eager to criticize and so reluctant to help. After all, the two countries are allies, right?
And what does Erdogan want?
He wants the US to extradite Gulen (who currently lives in exile in Pennsylvania) so he can face charges of treason in Turkey.. According to Erdogan, “Documents have been sent to the U.S.” establishing Gulen’s guilt. But the Obama administration remains unmoved, even though Turkey has handed over terrorists to the US in the past without evidence. Apparently, sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.
It’s worth repeating what Cockburn said in the excerpt above. He said: “it is difficult to find anybody on the left or right who does not suspect that at some level the US was complicit in the coup attempt.”
Why is that? Why does everyone in Turkey –regardless of their politics or ethnicity–think the US had a hand in the coup?
Take a look at this clip from an article at the World Socialist Web Site which helps to explain:
“US claims that Washington had no advance warning of the coup are simply not credible. Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base, which hosts more than 5,000 American soldiers and is the main base for the US-led bombing campaign against Syria and Iraq, was the organizing center of the putsch. Pro-coup fighter jets flew in and out of Incirlik as the coup unfolded. Shortly after the coup failed, the base commander, General Bekir Ercan Van, was arrested along with other pro-coup soldiers at the base.
Given that Incirlik is the site of dozens of US nuclear weapons, no credibility can be given to claims that US intelligence was unaware that a coup against Erdogan was being organized from there. Were that truly the case, it would represent a CIA intelligence breakdown of stunning proportions….
A pro-coup officer captured by the Turkish government, Lieutenant Colonel Murat Bolat, told the conservative Yeni Savak newspaper that his unit was designated to detain and possibly murder Erdogan after receiving precise information on Erdogan’s location from US sources.
“A person in the meeting, whom I guess was an officer from the Special Forces, said, ‘Nobody will be allowed to rescue the president from our hands,’” he said, indicating that this meant Erdogan was to be shot after he was captured if the forces who had arrested him faced any counterattack.” (“Erdogan accuses US of supporting failed coup in Turkey“, World Socialist Web Site)
While the information is not conclusive, it is suspicious. At the very least, Washington knew a coup was being planned and looked the other way. This except from a post by Harvard professor, Dani Rodrik seems like a very plausible explanation of US involvement to me. Here’s a brief clip:
“The U.S. government may not have had a direct hand in Gulen’s activities, but it is more difficult to dismiss the argument that it provided tacit support – or that some parts of the U.S. administration prevailed on other parts who were less keen on Gulen.
…As the Wikileaks cables I referred to above make clear, the State Department, at least, has been well aware of Gulenist infiltration of the Turkish military for quite some time. The Gulenists’s role in Sledgehammer, which led to the discharge of many of the most Kemalist/secularist officers in the military is equally clear. Beyond Sledgehammer, the Gulenists’ wide range of clandestine operations against opponents in Turkey must be well known to American intelligence…..
…the head of the Turkish military, who was held hostage by the putschists during the coup attempt, has said that one of his captors offered to put him in touch with Gulen directly. This, on its own, is prima facie evidence of Gulen’s involvement, and likely passes the “probable cause” test that is required for extradition. Incredibly, administration officials are still quoted as saying “there is no credible evidence of Mr. Gulen’s personal involvement.” In other words, these officials must think that the army chief of their NATO ally is lying.” (“Is the U.S. behind Fethullah Gulen?“, Dani Rodrik’s Blog)
The Obama administration’s support for the Kurds in Syria as well as its behavior following the coup of July 15, has led to a dramatic deterioration in US-Turkey relations. This will undoubtedly effect Erdogan’s willingness to allow the US to use its airbases for conducting bombing raids in Syria in the future. It’s also bound to accelerate the pace at which Turkey strengthens relations with Russia, Iran and others as it will need the protection of new allies to better defend itself against threats from the west.
The Obama administration is still uncertain of how to proceed mainly because no one had expected that Erdogan would break with Washington, purge his enemies, pursue rapprochement with Moscow, Tehran and Damascus, and throw a wrench in Uncle Sam’s plan for redrawing the map of the Middle East. At present, the administration is trying to ease tensions by dispatching one high-ranking official after the other to persuade Erdogan that the US was not involved in the coup. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford visited Ankara just this week while Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden are scheduled for later in the month. Eventually, even Obama will be asked to make the trek. No effort will be spared to bring Erdogan back into the fold.
If, however, the charm offensive fails, as I expect it will, Erdogan will be crucified in the western media (Hitler Erdogan) while covert operatives and NGOs try to foment political instability. At least, that’s the way things normally play out.
A new Clinton ad explains much about why America’s war party fears Trump.
He calls NATO “obsolete” and may try normalizing ties with Russia for the first time since an alliance of necessity against Nazi Germany during WW II – a disaster for US warmongers like Clinton, needing adversarial relations to further their global hegemonic objectives.
Her ad says “(w)e don’t know why Trump praises Putin.” He calls him “a very strong leader for Russia.” Earlier he said he’s “a very outstanding man, unquestionably talented.”
He favors a new role for NATO. He’s no peacenik, but unlikely to start WW III.
Compared to Clinton, he’s the lesser of two dark forces. Give him credit for wanting rapprochement, not confrontation with Russia, provided he’d follow through if elected president.
His potential geopolitical shift from longstanding US policy has opponents like former acting CIA director Michael Morell calling him an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” posing a threat to national security, he claimed.
Neocons like Morell, Clinton and numerous others infesting Washington believe peace initiatives gaining traction represent America’s greatest geopolitical threat – especially ending longstanding adversarial relations with Russia.
A statement signed by Michael Chertoff (former DHS secretary), Michael Hayden (former CIA director), Robert Zoellick (former World Bank president, NED board member), John Negroponte (former National Intelligence director) and 46 other former Republican national security officials said “(n)one of us will vote for Donald Trump.”
“From a foreign policy perspective, (he’s) not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”
“[He’d ] weaken US moral authority as the leader of the free world…(H)e has little understanding of America’s national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances, and the democratic values on which US foreign policy must be based. At the same time, he persistently compliments our adversaries and threatens our allies and friends.”
“…Donald Trump is not the answer to America’s daunting challenges and to this crucial election. We are convinced that in the Oval Office, he would be the most reckless President in American history.”
All this and more because he believes NATO is outdated and favors normalizing relations with Russia. Make no mistake. Trump is a deplorable choice for president – yet favoring two important steps in the right direction shows he’s not all bad.
Humanity’s top priority is avoiding another global war, likely with nuclear weapons if one erupts, threatening humanity’s survival.
Chances for the unthinkable are far too high to risk under Hillary if she succeeds Obama. Her deplorable record since the 1990s shows she’s a “war goddess”, extremely hostile to Russia, China and all other independent sovereign states.
Her geopolitical strategy of choice is war. She supports use of nuclear weapons and US-led NATO aggression “to preserve our way of life.”
Trump responded to the letter’s signatories, saying they’re “the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.”
They’re “nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power.” He’s right. Many are responsible for pre-and-post-9/11 wars of aggression – anti-peace extremists everyone should denounce.
Clinton is the establishment choice for president. She’ll likely succeed Obama by fair or foul means.
If Trump surprises and wins, he’ll likely not diverge much from longstanding US domestic and foreign policy. Candidates say anything to get elected. In office they continue dirty business as usual.
Yet unthinkable global war is much more likely under Clinton than him – why it’s crucial to oppose her candidacy for the nation’s highest office or any other public one.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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.
Site C Dam is a proposed 60-metre high, 1,050m length dam on the Peace River on Treaty 8 territory in northeastern British Columbia (see image below), a project that if built, would create an 83km reservoir submerging 78 First Nations heritage sites in violation of the Constitution Act, but how does it connect to continental water diversion?
To date, much has been said in the media regarding the issue of Site C Dam, but very little has touched on the matter of NAFTA and water.
Peace River BC
The spin behind the necessity of the project has largely concentrated on exaggerated claims of the energy needs of Vancouver, to the BC Liberals’ power requirements for the LNG and Fracking industry, to providing below-market value energy to Alberta in exchange for agreeing to their pipelines. Recently, the Justin Trudeau Government approved two additional permits for Site C Dam despite recommendations against the project by the Royal Society of Canada and 250 of Canada’s top scientists on the basis that Site C Dam is an ecological catastrophe and gross violation of rights under the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Rights and violates our own Constitution.
Little, however, has been noted by the media about the NAWAPA (North America Water Power Alliance) connection to Site C Dam, and that is something all Canadians should be seriously concerned about.
NAWAPA is a continental water diversion plan drafted by the US Army Corps of Engineers during the 1950s -1960s. Essentially the plan involved diverting (stealing) water from Canada via the Rocky Mountain Trench to Southern California. The rivers of Canada in British Columbia and the Yukon were an integral part of this plan.
In 1964 Parsons Company published a paper called NAWAPA: “North American Water and Power Alliance,” by Roland P. Kelly, Technical Program manager of “The Ralph M. Parsons Company”. Essentially the paper estimates that NAWAPA could provide water supply to the continent (i.e) The United States for 100 years. In the proposal, the project would divert approximately 69,000,000 acre-ft to the United States Annually. In Water and Free Trade: The Mulroney Government’s Agenda for Canada’s Most Precious Resource, agrologist Wendy Holm discusses the core aspects:
“ The NAWAPA plan proposed by Ralph Parsons Co. of Los Angeles envisaged building a large number of the worlds biggest dams to trap the Yukon, Peace and Liard Rivers into a reservoir that would flood one-tenth of British Columbia to create a canal from Alaska to Washington State that would supply water through existing canals and pipelines to most areas of the continent..”(31)
Roland P. Kelly argues
“Since the water resources of the continent were placed by nature without regard to political boundaries, it seems logical…to figure out a distribution system maximizing these resources without regard to these boundaries”(31).
Obviously, the implications of this project would have devastating environmental and human impacts, in addition the destruction of eco-systems and diversion of water would serve as an accelerant to climate change.
With regard to the Site C Dam, it is worth noting that the proposed dam site falls directly on the lines drawn in the original NAWAPA plans. Site C and the Columbia River Project are integral to the implementation of NAWAPA, thus calling into question the nature of the project in relationship to continental water diversion plans.
It is of the upmost importance to note that, once impounded behind the dam, the Peace River is subject to NAFTA as a water commodity, thus putting the people of Canada at risk of loosing water rights if privatization of BC Hydro occurs. One might reasonably question BC Hydro’s managed fiscal state of ‘$18.1 billion in approximate debt’ as being a primer for manufactured privatization to occur. The only potentially saving factor in the political manoeuvring behind Site C and Continental Water Sharing is the fact that the Province of British Columbia is located on un-ceded territory. The Governments’ title to water is, therefore, invalid and any quiet agreements made by our politicians with regard to NAWAPA would not be recognized under International Law despite corporate interests involved.
The law must be the personal concern of every citizen, to uphold for our neighbours as well as for ourselves. What does it say if the Government of Canada is found in violation of section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and recently the violation of the Wildlife Act? It is time for people to start asking questions, who is benefitting from this project and what is going on behind the scenes?
August 9th, 2016 by Juan Antonio Gil de los Santos
When the 15-M movement broke out onto the streets across Spain in 2011, it didn’t coalesce into a series of political parties on either end of the political spectrum. In fact, there was a common declaration that stood out among all of the indignados: “They don’t represent us”. This referred to the “Regime of ‘78” and the dominant political actors that have been ruling Spain since the death of Franco, and have made the rupturing of the social contract possible over the last 30 years.
Juan Antonio Gil de los Santos, Podemos MP
The 15-M movement saw people come together from diverse places, not just ideologically, but in terms of their perspectives and their understanding of reality. Yet if there was something that truly united them it was their common diagnosis of the current situation, namely an unsustainable disequilibrium between the establishment (an elite armed with political and economic power, ready to do anything to keep their position), and the outsiders (ordinary people that don’t participate in the decision making process), the widening gap between these two groups, and the forcing of the latter into an increasingly precarious position.
The establishment makes use of its power and its vast resources, they have ossified the institutions that were supposed to protect the rights of the outsiders, they have become increasingly out of touch with reality, and over time have completely broken the fragile balance created by the Constitution of ‘78, which brought democracy and social rights to the Spanish people after 40 years of dictatorship. The 1978 Constitution guaranteed – among other things – the right to decent housing, the right to healthcare, and the right to work. These promises have been greatly compromised by austerity, with major cuts to education and healthcare, labor reforms that increase the precariousness of the workers, and foreclosures that have left families homeless across the country.
Pushed to the limit, and having discovered the establishment’s deception, popular movements took to the streets to get rid of those who put their own interests above the social majority.
They did this in an organized manner, without partisan support, going beyond the outdated left-right axis. The indignados, as opposed to those unaffected elites who refused to resign, stood for social justice, freedom, democracy and the common good, and demanded greater democracy in the economy. They demanded that the political class be empathetic to this view and to stop being the institutional continuation of the IBEX35 (the 35 most powerful businesses in Spain).
Time passed, general elections were held, the Troika and austerity continued, misery grew and spread, but the 15-M movement never disappeared. It matured, incubating within it a solution which it wasn’t going to find outside.
“Start a party and run in the elections”, someone said to those people in the streets with their assemblies and proposals, shared by an immense majority of society. Soon he would wish he had bitten his tongue.
This is how Podemos began, as the inheritor of the 15-M movement. Though it would be unjust not to mention the many years of struggle for common welfare and for more just social models, in the form of organizations or activists from parties that share our goals. In the first stage, many people came together in the same space – both veteran activists as well as those who hadn’t engaged in politics until then – some already organized and some yet to organize.
The double challenge then began: that of channeling popular power into a shared line of action and that of organizing a party as a sum of parts, but harmonized by diverse collectives. Podemos has transitioned from movement to party, with the objective of entering institutions, to transform them, to put them on the side of the people.
After the success in the 2014 EU Parliamentary elections, where Podemos won five seats, the party-movement attracted more people, who began to identify for the first time with a project that aimed at bringing down the barriers of outmoded politics, and recovering the hope of achieving its desired aims. Many people who abstained from voting in past elections became activists in the 15-M movement. The moment arrived when political organization opened the door to a series of electoral opportunities, which will prove to be crucial for the future of Spain.
Through assembly debates in local “circles” they discussed the political and organizational models with which they would face these different elections. In October 2014 the proposals with the most votes were discussed in the founding congress of Podemos in Vistalegre. Podemos was founded upon a transversal political model – meaning that it is committed to building a broad consensus among diverse groups of people for things like the defense of free, public and universal healthcare, the social right to housing, and regaining lost labour rights.
But what exactly do we mean by “a transversal political model”? Transversality can be understood as the act of building majorities. Not electoral majorities per se, but social majorities made up of identities based on common goals; building inclusive identities adapted to today’s society. An example is that of the identity of “working class”, which was a necessary identity when they were organizing to overcome their class conditions 50 years ago, but which is not appropriate to the modern world.
It is in this transversality that there is a clear reflection of citizens that came together in the streets in 15-M. It is this important subject which I would like to focus upon in this article. Because it is thanks to this transversality – this broad appeal – that we have been successful. It has resulted in governments having changed in cities such as Cadiz, Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Transversality has made it possible to take projects anchored in minority objectives and integrate them into major projects with real possibilities of reaching the government, and transforming institutions from within, the essential element to successfully carry out the projects.
Of course commonly identified goals and lines of action by the social majority is not sufficient. They must be ready to take institutions back from the privileged elite. It is their duty to join forces and provide tools of participation and action so that the social majority feel not only represented but have real resources to be heard. This is reflected in Podemos’ current organizational model which provides various channels for participation.
We must not forget that within the organization there may be many different levels of participation. On the one hand there is the core or “nucleus”, the people who are the most heavily involved, and on the other there are supporters that participate to varying degrees. The lines of action must be oriented towards the social majority to which it aspires, not the nucleus. Towards supporting communities in their struggles – whether or not they support Podemos – in an effort to construct a major identity that is conscious of the importance of change and that (contrary to what boredom and the media blitz has produced in them) it is in their hands to carry out. And so groups like public servants, healthcare professionals, teachers, the unemployed, regardless of ideology based on outdated left-right divides, are gradually adding to the construction of large consensuses such as the defense of free, universal public health, the social right to housing, the recovery of lost labour rights, the fight against corruption, etc.
It is true that many of us come from very progressive environments, some of us will cringe to recall the legend of the POUM, or are avowed Republicans, others feel a sense of pride when the Internationale is sung, others are anarchists, some consider themselves eco-socialists or feminists, others come from being active in big parties. Some are newcomers to politics, but are as concerned as those who have been in activism since they were born.
Therefore with this in mind it is essential that we always remember that activist spaces are a means and not an end in themselves, to reach the broad social majority that needs us. We must be prudent not to assimilate activist spaces one hundred percent with that hegemonic project that is being constructed around us everywhere, and we must escape the perverse dynamics of the old politics that lead nowhere. Our goal is not to proselytize the extreme left, but we need to look beyond our activist navel, to regain the hope of people who feel identified with, and involved in, the project, and to recover the momentum that occurred early in the movement.
Juan Antonio Gil de los Santos @juangilpodemos MP in Andalusia for Podemos
The Balfour Declaration is a letter from then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Walter Rothschild, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The critical part of this short letter said:
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
This was a prime example of colonial arrogance by which Britain, which was not then in occupation of Palestine, promised the Zionist Federation, which did not represent all Jews, without the consent of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, the Palestinians, to facilitate the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine. The letter was dated 2 November 1917.
Thus, November 2017 will mark the centenary of Balfour and rumours abound that the British government plans to mark it in some form. Israel’s recently arrived Ambassador Mark Regevclaimed: “It’s being taken very seriously at the highest levels. We’re hoping to do a public celebration together with the British government.” The former spokesman for Israel’s prime minister talked up the possible events, saying that “senior leadership from both sides [will be] uniting to celebrate Balfour.”
Former British Prime Minster David Cameron told leaders of the Jewish community, “I want to make sure we mark it together in the most appropriate way.” He said this without any consultation with British Palestinians about whether, and how, they would wish to see the Balfour centenary commemorated. This seems to be at best misguided and, at worst, a demonstration of Britain’s double standards when it comes to the Palestine-Israel issue. Israel was not established on empty land; it has been built on the homeland of the Palestinian people. How then can it be logical for the British government not to consult the Palestinians, either in Palestine or in the UK, about the Balfour centenary?
The notion that Britain should “celebrate” the Balfour Declaration is extremely offensive to every British Palestinian I have talked to and to the Palestinian leadership. Balfour gave the green light to the Zionist movement, which perpetuated the lie that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land”. The truth is that Jews, like Muslims and Christians, were citizens of many countries, including Syria and Iraq, and Palestine was inhabited by a people, the mainly Muslim but also Christian and Jewish, Palestinians. Had Israel not been created in Palestine, it is quite logical to assume that Palestine would have eventually gained independence and that Arab Jews, just like their Christian and Muslim brethren, would have continued to live in all the Arab countries in which they had thrived for centuries.
The Balfour Declaration and Britain’s League of Nations Mandate rule in Palestine were key reasons for the growth of Jewish migration to Palestine, which accelerated following the Second World War and the Holocaust. The creation of Israel as Britain rushed to abandon Palestine left the Palestinians at the mercy of murderous Zionist terror groups hell-bent on expelling as many if not all of them from their homeland. The injustice felt in the Middle East at the creation of Israel also contributed to the tensions that led to Arab Jews leaving their home countries for the nascent Zionist state.
The injustice of the lack of a viable Palestinian state and the continuing refugee catastrophe continues to this day. How can Britain celebrate this? Even if Britain claims that it is not “celebrating” Balfour, but simply “marking” the document’s centenary, that will also offend Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation in Palestine, and in the refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, as well as the diaspora.
If fair minded people read the text of the Balfour Declaration and then look at what happened subsequently, they will surely find it difficult to accept that the conditions implicit in the British government’s “favour” have been fulfilled. Israel brazenly flouts the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” on a daily basis, and has done since its creation in 1948. Its illegal occupation continues to oppress, humiliate and generate hatred. Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip — described by David Cameron as “a prison” — continues unabated. House demolitions in the first half of 2016 are already markedly up on 2015. Settler violence has escalated and Jewish terror has taken the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The fact is that Britain has not even recognised Palestine as a state following the October 2014 Parliamentary vote requesting the government to do so. Add to this that 2017 also marks the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and other Arab land and Israel’s refusal to end this, and it is obvious that any reasonable person would say that a “celebration” of the Balfour Declaration would be completely inappropriate. If you do something shameful, as Britain did, from a Palestinian perspective, then you would do far better to apologise for it than to mark or celebrate it.
The argument for a celebration of Balfour is that the Jewish community in Britain see the creation of Israel as a major achievement in which the declaration played a major part. However, not all British Jews share this view. Has the government consulted widely even within the Jewish community about possible Balfour events? There is no evidence that it has. If it does mark the centenary in some way then it should know that there will be many Jews in Britain siding with the oppressed Palestinians to mark the Catastrophe (Nakba) that the creation of the state of Israel represents to them. Discussions among Palestinian groups in Britain and supporters of justice for Palestine are ongoing in order to formulate a suitable response to the governments’ intentions.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian leadership has finally stirred itself and threatened to sue Britain for the Balfour Declaration. What that really means and to which court the Palestinians would make a case remains unknown. It may be yet prove to be another example of the Palestinian leadership making grandiose claims which lead to nothing and are then retracted. This, though, remains to be seen.
As we approach 2017 with Israel entrenching its military occupation of Palestine and senior politicians articulating their rejection of a Palestinian state, Britain should avoid inflaming the situation by marking Balfour in any way. A more helpful act would be to establish an inquiry into Britain’s role in the creation of Israel and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Its role would be to establish the facts and to assess how justice can be brought to the Holy Land as the Balfour centenary approaches. This would be far better than “celebrating” what is indeed a dark chapter of Britain’s colonial history.
This article was first published in 2013 focussing on the May 2013 Tunis World Social Forum.
This year the World Social Forum is being held in Montreal, regrouping committed social activists, anti-war collectives and prominent intellectuals.
Most of the participants are unaware that the WSF is funded by corporate foundations including Ford, Rockefeller, et al. Much of this funding is channelled to the WSF organizers under the helm of the WSF International Council.
This is an issue I have raised on numerous occasions with progressive organizations and WSF activists: you cannot effectively confront neoliberalism and the New World Order elites and expect them to finance your activities. The corporations are funding dissent with a view to controlling dissent.
The Ford Foundation (which has links to the CIA) provided funding under its “Strengthening Global Civil Society” program during the first three years of the WSF.
When the WSF was held in Mumbai in 2004, the Indian WSF host committee declined support from the Ford Foundation. This in itself did not modify the WSF’s relationship to the donors. While the Ford foundation formally withdrew, other foundations positioned themselves.
More recently, the WSF has been funded by a consortium of corporate foundations under the advisory umbrella of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE).
This organization, which previously went under the name of The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), has played a central role in the funding of successive WSF venues. From the outset in 2001 it had an observer status on the WSF International Council.
A member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is on EDGE’s board of directors. A representative of the Ford Foundation sits on its Conference Program Committee, which defines funding orientations. The Wallace Global Fund which has a working relationship to EDGE, is specialized in providing support to “mainstream” NGOs and “alternative media”, including Amnesty International, Democracy Now (which supports Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president of the US).
The following is the EDGe Communique. The donors not only fund the activities, they also determine the structure of the WSF venue. The decentralized and dispersed mosaic of do it yourself workshops.
We call upon participants of the Montreal WSF to raise these issues: the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by an alliance of donors which includes corporate foundations firmly committed not only to neoliberalism but also to the US-NATO led military agenda.
Why would they fund organizations which are actively campaigning against neoliberalism? The answer is obvious.
Michel Chossudovsky, August 9, 2016
* * *
The Anti-Globalization Movement and the World Social Forum. Is “Another World” Possible?
by Michel Chossudovsky
May 15, 20013
The World Social Forum operating under the banner of “Another World is Possible” was founded in 2001 at its inaugural venue of Porto Alegre. Brazil.
From the outset in 2001, the WSF has been upheld as an international umbrella representing grassroots people’s organizations, committed to reversing the tide of globalization. Its stated intent is to challenge corporate capitalism and its dominant neoliberal economic agenda.
The World Social Forum at its inaugural meeting defined itself as a counter-offensive to the World Economic Forum (WEF) of business leaders and politicians which meets annually in Davos, Switzerland. The 2001 Porto Alegre WSF was held simultaneously with that of the WEF in Davos.
Yet upon careful review, the WSF –rather than effectively confronting the economic and financial elites– actually serves their interests.
From the outset in 2001, the World Social Forum was funded by governments and corporate foundations, including the Ford Foundation which has ties to US intelligence.
The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Ford, Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Wall Street and Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.
The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle co-optation of a small number of key individuals within “progressive organizations”, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement. Many leaders of these organizations have in a sense betrayed their grassroots.
The Tunis 2013 World Social Forum
The World Social Forum gathered this year [2013] in Tunis. The March 26-30, 2013 venue included more than 50,000 participants from NGOs and people’s organizations from around the World. More than 4000 organizations from 127 countries were represented.
Members of the WSF International Council meets Tunisia’s interim Prime Minister Ali Larayedh
The International Council of the World Social Forum meets in downtown Tunis. (WNV/Marisa Holmes)
Many important issues were debated and discussed in separate workshops. The structure of the program –which included more than 1000 separate sessions– was that of a mosaic of different and separate initiatives. http://www.fsm2013.org/programme/27/1
impacts of austerity measures in the EU, environment, social justice, women’s rights, global warming, sustainable development, Palestine, the Arab Spring, among other themes
While the thrust invariably consisted in a critique of global capitalism and imperialism, the issue of US-led militarization was not addressed in a meaningful way. An aura of divisiveness prevailed, which was in part the result of the way the program was organized in a multitude of “do it yourself” workshops.
There was no united WSF position against US-NATO led wars, let alone Western intervention with a view to destabilizing sovereign countries. In fact quite the opposite: a session was held on how to overthrow the Syrian government, involving the participation of so-called Leftists:
…[W]hile four Syrian communist and two Kurd organizations discussed future action against the regime, supporters of al-Assad held a rally in the central square. The two groups did not cross paths, so no confrontation took place, but the tension was palpable.
Participants in the debate held by the Syrian communists and Kurds told IPS that they had agreed on a document recognizing the importance of the individual and collective rights of all ethnic groups in Syria, which is especially significant for the Kurds, the largest minority.
They also agreed to hold a day of solidarity with the Syrian uprising, in the first week of May. (See Common Dreams, March 30, 2013)
How US-NATO with the support of Israel, Qatar and Saudi Arabia was waging an undeclared war on Syria was not the object of a cohesive debate. Nor was the issue of Al Qaeda mercenaries funded covertly by Washington and Brussels.
While the “Arab Spring” was put forth as a revolutionary landmark, the US-NATO sponsored armed insurrections in Libya (2011) and Syria (2011-2013) were considered to be part of the “Arab Spring”:
“Now, we are at a crossroads where retrograde and conservative forces want to stop the processes initiated two years ago with the [Arab Spring] uprisings in the Maghreb-Mashreq region that helped to bring down dictatorships and to challenge the neoliberal system imposed on the peoples. These uprisings have spread to all continents of the world inspiring indignation and occupation of public places. (Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly, see full text below)
The uprisings in the “Mashreq” and “Maghreb” referred to in the Final Declaration essentially pertain to Syria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The text of declaration is vague. It does not take a position with regard to US-NATO intervention in Libya and Syria.
What the WSF document intimates (by default) is that the US sponsored “Syrian opposition” is “also” a genuine grassroots pro-democracy movement, comparable to that of Egypt. Similarly the Al Qaeda affiliated Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which led the “Arab Spring” against the government of Muammar Gaddafi is also considered to be a revolutionary force. It should be noted that Libya under Gadaffi was the only country in Africa which rejected the neoliberal economic agenda implemented under the helm of the IMF.
Several workshops on Libya tacitly applauded Western military intervention. A session entitled “Libya’s transition to democracy” focused on “whether Libya was better off without Muammar Gaddafi.” Several “progressive” NGOs and “alternative media” which had supported NATO’s humanitarian bombings against Libya were present in Tunis. No statement as to the criminal nature of NATO’s humanitarian bombing campaign against Libya was made by the WSF.
The Libyan NGOs in attendance were funded by their government and by Western foundations, with the approval of the Libyan Ministry of Culture and Civil Society established in 2011 in the wake of the NATO led military intervention.
Sessions were also held on “political Islam” as part of an anti-imperialist front without addressing the broader issue as to how “Political Islam” was used in the course of The Arab Spring to further the goals of the Imperialist powers. The result was the installation of Islamic governments in Egypt and Tunisia and the reinforcement rather than the repeal of the neoliberal economic policy agenda.
The legitimacy of the US “Global War on Terrorism” is not an object of debate under the auspices of the WSF. Nor is the fact that Washington covertly supported key leaders of the Arab Spring movement, as well as several civil society organizations. The April 6 Movement in Egypt had the support of the US embassy, Kefaya (Enough) was funded by US foundations. Both of these organizations were present at the WSF sessions in Tunis.
Aminata Traoré, the former minister of Culture of the deposed government of Mali, speaking at the World Social Forum in Tunis underscored how military intervention was used to enforce neoliberal economic policy.
Traore stated that: “The war that was imposed today in Mali is not a war of liberation of the Malian people, but a war of plunder of resources.” While addressing the WSF, she deplored that many WSF activists were supportive of France’s intervention.
Generally speaking, an understanding of imperialist wars in support of a neoliberal agenda has over the years not been a central component of the WSF debate. Moreover, many of the participant NGOs are in fact supportive of NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” Mandate.
The Funding of the World Social Forum
The WSF is funded by governments and foundations. The Ford Foundation under its “Strengthening Global Civil Society” program provided funding during the first three years of the WSF.
When the WSF was held in Mumbai in 2004, the Indian WSF host committee declined support from the Ford Foundation. This in itself did not modify the WSF’s relationship to the donors. While the Ford foundation formally withdrew, other foundations positioned themselves.
In addition to government support, the WSF has been funded by a consortium of corporate foundations under the advisory umbrella of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE). This organization, which previously went under the name of The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), has played a central role in the funding of successive WSF venues. From the outset in 2001 it has an observer status on the WSF International Council.
While channeling financial support to the WSF, it acts as a clearing house for major foundations. EDGE describes itself as “a unique and diverse community of donors, foundation officers and advisors across the international philanthropic landscape … with shared commitment to global social change.”
Shortly before the WSF venue in Tunis, EDGE Funders –together with the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le Progrès de l’Homme (FPH)– convened in Paris a consortium of some two dozen WSF grantmakers. EDGE is also facilitating the presence of these grantmakers at the Tunis venue. (See http://www.edgefunders.org/events/)
“From the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (1994) to the Battle in Seattle (1999) to the creation of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001), the TINA years of Reagan and Thatcher (There Is No Alternative) have been replaced with the growing conviction that “another world is possible.” Counter-summits, global campaigns and social forums have been crucial spaces to articulate local struggles, share experiences and analyses, develop expertise, and build concrete forms of international solidarity among progressive movements for social, economic and ecological justice.”
But at the same time, there is an obvious contradiction: the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by an alliance of donors which includes corporate foundations, firmly committed to the free-market and neoliberal economic policy under the helm of the IMF.
A member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is on EDGE’s board of directors. A representative of the Ford Foundation sits on its Conference Program Committee, which defines funding orientations. The Wallace Global Fund which has a working relationship to EDGE, is specialized in providing support to “mainstream” NGOs and “alternative media”, including Amnesty International, Democracy Now.
The Rockefeller Brothers representative –who co-chairs EDGE’s program committee– is Tom Kruse. At the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kruse is responsible for “Global Governance” under the “Democratic Practice” program. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kruse served as an adviser to the Bolivian government of Evo Morales on trade and investment policy, debt relief and macroeconomic reform. Rockefeller Brothers grants to NGOs are approved under the “Strengthening Democracy in Global Governance” program, which is broadly similar to that put forth by the US State Department.
From the standpoint of corporate donors including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, “investing in the WSF” constitutes a profitable undertaking. It ensures that activism remains within the confines of constructive dialogue and critique rather than confrontation. Any deviation immediately results in the curtailment of donor funding:
“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))
The limits of social dissent are thereby determined by the “governance structure” of the WSF, which was tacitly agreed upon with the funding agencies at the outset in 2001.
“No Leaders”
The WSF has no leaders. All the events are “self-organized”. The structure of debate and activism is part of an an “open space” (See y Francine Mestrum, The World Social Forum and its governance: a multi-headed monster, CADTM, 27 April 2013, http://cadtm.org/The-World-Social-Forum-and-its ).
This compartmentalized structure is an obstacle to the development of a meaningful and articulate mass movement. It indelibly serves the interests of those who fund the WSF including the tax free foundations and the governments.
How best to control grassroots dissent against global capitalism?
Make sure that their leaders can be easily co-opted and that the rank and file will not develop “forms of international solidarity among progressive movements” (to use EDGE’s own words), which in any meaningful way might undermine the interests of corporate capital.
The mosaic of separate workshops, the relative absence of plenary sessions, the creation of divisions within and between social movements, not to mention the absence of a cohesive platform against US-NATO humanitarian interventions, in Syria, Libya and Mali: all of these are part of a strategy to “manufacture dissent”
“The limits of dissent” are established by the foundations and governments which ultimately finance this multimillion dollar venue. The financing is twofold:
1. Core financing of the WSF Secretariat and the Costs of the WSF venue.
2. Many of the constituent NGOs which participate in the venue are recipients of donor and/or government support.
What ultimately prevails is a ritual of dissent which does not threaten the New World Order. Those who attend the WSF from the grassroots are often misled by their leaders. Activists who do not share the WSF consensus will ultimately be excluded:
“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )
“Another World is Possible” is nonetheless an important concept, which characterizes the struggle of the peoples movements against global capitalism as well as the commitment of thousands of activists who participated in the WSF.
It cannot, however, be achieved under the auspices of the WSF which from the outset was funded by global capitalism and organized in close liaison with its corporate and government donors.
The important question for activists:
Is it possible to build “an Alternative” to global capitalism, which challenges the hegemony of the Rockefellers et al and then ask the Rockefellers et al to foot the bill?
Appendix
Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly – World Social Forum 2013, 29 March 2013, Tunisia
As the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum of Tunisia, 2013, we are gathered here to affirm the fundamental contribution of peoples of Maghreb-Mashrek (from North Africa to the Middle East), in the construction of human civilization. We affirm that decolonization for oppressed peoples remains for us, the social movements of the world, a challenge of the greatest importance.
Through the WSF process, the Social Movements Assembly is the place where we come together through our diversity, in order to forge common struggles and a collective agenda to fight against capitalism, patriarchy, racism and all forms of discrimination and oppression. We have built a common history of work which led to some progress, particularly in Latin America, where we have been able to intervene in neoliberal alliances and to create several alternatives for just development that truly honors nature.
Together, the peoples of all the continents are fighting to oppose the domination of capital, hidden behind illusory promises of economic progress and the illusion of political stability. Now, we are at a crossroads where retrograde and conservative forces want to stop the processes initiated two years ago with the uprisings in the Maghreb-Mashreq region that helped to bring down dictatorships and to challenge the neoliberal system imposed on the peoples. These uprisings have spread to all continents of the world inspiring indignation and occupation of public places.
People all over the world are suffering the effects of the aggravation of a profound crisis of capitalism, in which its agents (banks, transnational corporations, media conglomerates, international institutions, and governments complicit with neoliberalism) aim at increasing their profits by applying interventionist and neocolonial policies.
War, military occupations, free-trade neoliberal treaties and “austerity measures” are expressed in economic packages that privatize the common good, and public services, cut wages and rights, increase unemployment, overload women´s care work and destroys nature. Such policies strike the richer countries of the North harder and are increasing migration, forced displacement, evictions, debt, and social inequalities such as in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and the Spanish State.
They re-enforce conservatism and the control over women´s bodies and lives. In addition, they seek to impose “green economy” as a solution to the environmental and food crisis, which not only exacerbates the problem, but leads to commodification, privatization and financialization of life and nature.
We denounce the intensification of repression to people´s rebellions, the assassination of the leadership of social movements, the criminalization of our struggles and our proposals.
We assert that people must not continue to pay for this systemic crisis and that there is no solution inside the capitalist system! Here, in Tunes, we reaffirm our committment to come together to forge a common strategy to guide our struggles against capitalism. This is why we, social movements, struggle:
*Against transnational corporations and the financial system (IMF, WB and WTO), who are the main agents of the capitalist system, privatizing life, public services and common goods such as water, air, land, seeds and mineral resources, promoting wars and violations of human rights. Transnational corporations reproduce extractionist practices endangering life and nature, grabbing our lands and developing genetically modified seeds and food, taking away the peoples’ right to food and destroying biodiversity.
We fight for the cancellation of illegitimate and odious debt which today is a global instrument of domination, repression and economic and financial strangulation of people. We reject free trade agreements that are imposed by States and transnational corporations and we affirm that it is possible to build another kind of globalization, made from and by the people, based on solidarity and on freedom of movement for all the human beings.
[We struggle] for climate justice and food sovereignty, because we know that global climate change is a product of the capitalist system of production, distribution and consumption. Transnational corporations, international financial institutions and governments serving them do not want to reduce greenhouse gases. We denounce “green economy” and refuse false solutions to the climate crisis such as biofuels, genetically modified organisms and mechanisms of the carbon market like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which ensnare impoverished peoples with false promises of progress while privatizing and commodifying the forests and territories where these peoples have been living for thousands of years.
We defend the food sovereignty and support sustainable peasant agriculture which is the true solution to the food and climate crises and includes access to land for all who work on it. Because of this, we call for a mass mobilisation to stop the landgrab and support local peasants struggles.
[We struggle] Against violence against women, often conducted in militarily occupied territories, but also violence affecting women who are criminalized for taking part in social struggles. We fight against domestic and sexual violence perpetrated on women because they are considered objects or goods, because the sovereignty of their bodies and minds is not acknowledged. We fight against the traffic of women, girls and boys.
We defend sexual diversity, the right to gender self-determination and we oppose all homophobia and sexist violence.
[We fight] For peace and against war, colonialism, occupations and the militarization of our lands.
We denounce the false discourse of human rights defense and fight against fundamentalism, that often justify these military occupations such as in Haiti, Libya, Mali and Syria. We defend the right to people’s sovereignty and self-determination such as in Palestine, Western Sahara and Kurdistan.
We denounce the installation of foreign military bases to instigate conflicts, to control and ransack natural resources, and to foster dictatorships in several countries.
We struggle for the freedom of organization in trade unions, social movements, associations and other forms of peaceful resistance. Let’s strengthen our tools of solidarity among peoples such as boycott, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel and the struggle against NATO and to ban all nuclear weapons.
*[We struggle] For democratization of mass media and building alternative media, that are fundamental to overthrow the capitalist logics.
Inspired by the history of our struggles and by the strength of people on the streets, the Social Movements Assembly call upon all people to mobilize and develop actions – coordinated at world level – in a global Day of mobilization on the XXXX (day to decide)
Social movements of the world, let us advance towards a global unity to shatter the capitalist system!
No more exploitation, no more patriarchy, racism and colonialism! Viva la revolution! Long live the people’s struggle.
This election season has brought to the surface an issue that, until recently, seemed to have become a neoliberal sacred cow, the holy writ of the lords of capital: free trade. And while this cornerstone of US economic hegemony has come under fire from a deeply reactionary, and to varying degrees racist and xenophobic, perspective, as expressed by Donald Trump, it has nevertheless sparked a much needed conversation about free trade and its destructive impact on both the American working class, and the Global South as well.
But free trade having become a campaign issue has also spotlighted for the umpteenth time the breathtaking hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton who I have previously referred to as the high priestess of the Church of Free Trade and Neoliberalism. For it is, in fact, Hillary Clinton who has for more than two decades been one of the loudest and most resolute voices championing neoliberalism and free trade. And still, despite her record, Clinton today presents herself as a friend of the working class. The same working class that has been all but eviscerated by the policies she herself has supported.
This is, of course, not to say that Trump is somehow the great defender of workers and the poor – his long track record as a predatory, racist real estate developer illustrates his complete lack of concern for oppressed communities and workers. Still, like a sadistic dentist, Trump has deliberately struck a nerve in the body politic of the US. For Trump has managed to eschew the typical right wing cultural wedge issues of gay marriage, abortion, and the like in favor of the core economic concerns of the working class.
Whatever one’s opinion of Trump, one can say with certainty that his reintroduction of the free trade into the national conversation has forced Hillary Clinton onto the back foot.
Hillary Clinton, NAFTA, and the Attack on American Workers
“I think that everybody is in favor of free and fair trade, and I think that NAFTA is proving its worth.” Or so Hillary Clinton said in 1996, more than two years after the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted under her husband’s administration. At the time one could still labor under the illusion – or perhaps it was delusion? – that NAFTA was going to benefit workers in the US, Canada, and Mexico by allowing for the free flow of goods (and capital) leading to decreased prices for many consumer goods. Indeed, that was precisely the mythology that was peddled at the time.
While it’s true that many experts and workers alike, especially those on the Left, were deeply suspicious about the inflated claims of the glorious benefits of the NAFTA utopia of the future, the concept was made into policy, and the policy translated into a grim reality for US workers. As the Economic Policy Institute noted in 2013:
By establishing the principle that U.S. corporations could relocate production elsewhere and sell back into the United States, NAFTA undercut the bargaining power of American workers, which had driven the expansion of the middle class since the end of World War II. The result has been 20 years of stagnant wages and the upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power.
Without question, NAFTA was a direct assault on the US working class. Its repercussions are still being felt today. As the Economic Policy Institute further explained, NAFTA had four major negative impacts:
The loss of at least 700,000 jobs due to production moving to Mexico. Some of the heaviest losses were felt in California, Texas, Michigan and other manufacturing-dependent states, particularly those in the Rust Belt.
Allowed employers to drive down wages, slash benefits, and undermine and destroy unions. Because capital could always threaten to simply close up shop and move to Mexico, workers had little recourse but to accept the assault on their standards of living.
It devastated the Mexican agricultural and small business sectors which led to the dislocation of millions of Mexican workers and small farmers, many of whom were forced to migrate to the US in search of work, thereby creating the immigration “problem” that Trump and his reactionary base have seized upon.
It was the model free trade agreement, the blueprint upon which others were based. It laid the foundation for the neoliberal trade model wherein capital reaps the benefits while labor shoulders the costs.
Obviously, one could point out myriad other negative effects of NAFTA. But perhaps even better than that, one could simply take a drive down Interstates 80 and 90 – crossing through New Jersey, upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, etc. – and get off almost anywhere and see the impacts for one’s self. Countless shuttered factories, depressed and often nearly abandoned towns and cities, and populations blighted by unemployment and the social breakdown that goes with it. The bleakness of the post-NAFTA industrial landscape is difficult to articulate, and is often completely hidden from view, especially for many working people in the population centers on the East and West coasts.
And this depression, both economic and psychological, is what Donald Trump has rather cynically exploited. The scapegoating of Mexican immigrants as economic parasites feasting on the blood of the American worker is a fairly predictable, though highly effective, means of marshaling support from the working class, in particular the white working class.
However, the political opportunism notwithstanding, it was not Donald Trump, but rather Hillary Clinton, who consistently was the unyielding supporter of NAFTA. As White House documents from the Clinton administration revealed, Hillary was one of the principal salespeople for NAFTA, going so far as to speak at a confidential White House briefing on NAFTA in November 1993, just a few days before it was approved by Congress. The documents also prove the fact that Hillary was, as John Nichols wrote in The Nation in 2008, “the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA.”
Clinton lobbied for NAFTA all throughout the halls of power in Washington, but also before the American people on television and in the major media. In short, NAFTA can be seen as one of Hillary’s crowning achievements; heavy is the head that wears such a crown.
Hillary the Hypocrite
Today Hillary Clinton shamelessly presents herself as a friend of working people. She trots out the elites of organized labor, concerned primarily with their own positions atop demoralized and fragmented unions, and trumpets their endorsements of her. And even these working class backstabbers have to grit their teeth and smile as they kneel before the high priestess herself in hopes of eight more years of privileged relations and fine dining.
But behind closed doors, everyone in America who even casually follows politics knows the truth: Hillary Clinton is a crusader for free trade and neoliberalism.
And that’s precisely why Hillary’s anti-free trade posture at election time is so deeply cynical, to say nothing of the insult to working people. In 2007-2008, in the midst of a hotly contested primary campaign against then Senator Barack Obama, Clinton repeatedly claimed that she was anti-free trade, and critical of NAFTA. In a debate in late 2007, Clinton admitted that NAFTA had been a mistake “to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would.”
Of course, these were just the populist sentiments that Clinton knew she needed to utilize in order to deceive organized labor, and the working class in general, that she was an ally, rather than a devout worshiper at the altar of the god of neoliberalism.
After Obama became president and appointed Clinton Secretary of State she immediately reverted to being the great champion of free trade. Indeed, in her position as America’s top diplomat Clinton traveled the world preaching the gospel of free trade. And by this point she had a new holy scripture to tout: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Clinton unabashedly lied during Democratic national debates on the issue of the TPP, saying that she now opposes it, despite having been in favor of it as late as 2012 when she said the TPP “sets the gold standard in trade agreements.” While she now masquerades as a protectionist opposing a deal that would be bad for working people, she has demonstrated her unflagging support for this type of so called free trade in the past.
To get a sense of just how insidious the TPP is for American workers, and in fact citizens of every country involved in the deal, consider the words of the Grand Poobah of the American Left, Noam Chomsky, who correctly explained that the TPP is “designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity.” In his characteristically soft-spoken manner, Chomsky manages to encapsulate the overarching danger that the TPP represents. And in so doing, he further implies that Hillary Clinton represents a serious threat to American workers.
Similarly, as Secretary of State, Clinton vocally backed the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), hailing it as an “economic NATO”. Leaving aside the terrifyingly ironic turn of phrase, Hillary’s support of TTIP represents support for yet another massive free trade deal that would have serious negative effects on workers, and indeed the majority of citizens, in the US and Europe. As Politico noted, “TTIP covers around a third of global trade. It would create an open market of 829 million consumers and expand a trade relationship that’s already worth €2 billion every day.”
And, just as with the TPP, TTIP is as much a political and geopolitical weapon as it is an economic arrangement. While TPP is aimed at economically isolating China (despite the raving lunacy of Donald Trump who argues just the opposite, that TPP will unfairly benefit China), TTIP is directed against Russia in hopes of depriving Moscow the chance at deepening economic ties with Europe.
And this is precisely why Clinton is the darling of both Wall Street and the neoconservative establishment. From the right wing financier Koch Brothers’ admission of support for Hillary, to the obvious backing of George Soros,Warren Buffett, and countless other liberal (and some conservative) Wall Street ghouls, Clinton has the near unanimous endorsements of the One Percent. It should be added that she is also being supported by arch-neocons such as Max Boot, who described Clinton as “vastly preferable,” Robert Kagan who sees Hillary as “saving the country,” and Eliot Cohen who described Clinton as “the lesser evil by a large margin.”
The reason for the near unanimous support is simple: Clinton will deliver all the economic policies, including TPP and free trade, that the Masters of Wall Street demand. And she’ll do it all while coldly smiling at every worker she meets on the campaign trail. She will also pursue just the sort of aggressive and belligerent foreign policy that makes neocons salivate at the prospect of more and bigger wars.
Ultimately, Clinton represents the very worst of the American political class – a cynical manipulator whose thirst for blood and war is matched only by her thirst for power. Lies flow from her mouth into the US political scene like water into a vast ocean. And, like water, she erodes the once sturdy rock of the working class in the United States.
African National Congress remains dominate party over two decades after democratic transformation
Perhaps the most observed local elections in decades were held in the Republic of South Africa on August 3.
In final results of this poll the ruling African National Congress (ANC) gained 54 percent of the vote to the opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA) 26 percent. In actual percentages the ANC won twice as many votes as the DA and many more times as the putative ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which garnered approximately eight percent.
With 100% of results transmitted, the official breakdown from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is follows:
Africa National Congress (ANC)
Councils won = 175
Seats = 5,124
Votes = over 16 million (53.91% support)
Democratic Alliance (DA)
Councils won = 23
Seats = 1,729
Votes = over 8 million (26.89% support)
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)
Councils won = 0
Seats = 731
Votes = over 2.4 million (8.2% support)
In a statement issued on August 5 with 94 percent of the vote already tallied, the ANC said “As results from municipal elections continue to come in to the IEC National Results Center in Pretoria, an unprecedented 14 million South Africans have cast their ballots in favor of the African National Congress (ANC) in this election. This translates to 54% of the national vote, and dramatically exceeds numbers recorded in the previous municipal election. In 2011, the ANC secured 8.1 million votes. Whilst we have received overwhelming support from our people, we will reflect and introspect where our support has dropped.”
The same statement goes on emphasizing “As results continue to come in, ANC votes are expected to increase even further. They are a ringing endorsement of the ANC’s service delivery program by the citizens of South Africa. These figures come at a time of intense speculation around voter apathy and citizen’s alleged lack of interest in political processes.”
Jackson Mthembu, the ANC Chief Whip in Parliament noted: “We are quite humbled and very happy that people of South Africa still trust the African National Congress. Of course we have had setbacks in areas like the Nelson Mandela Bay but we are magnanimous in victory and also magnanimous in defeat because we are democrats. At the national level, the people of South Africa have — in their majority — still voted for the African National Congress. As you can see, we are standing at over 50 percent. We are now at over 54 percent nationally and that amounts to over 13 million votes that people of South Africa have given to the ANC – out of the 26 million voters we have in the country.” (Aug. 5)
The Role of the Corporate and Bourgeois Governmental Media
Much speculation about the outcome was the pre-occupation of many corporate and governmental media outlets from South Africa itself to Europe and North America. Predictions that the African National Congress (ANC) would suffer catastrophic losses in its governing status in municipalities, townships and rural areas was much anticipated by opposition parties inside the country as well as others who have for years predicted that the non-racial democratic political system was unsustainable.
This same outlook has guided the reporting of the results and their significance for one of the world’s youngest nations which has been subjected to white minority-rule for centuries where during 1652 to 1994, the European population and ruling class sought to eradicate all forms of resistance by the African people. These elections in South Africa took place within the broader regional and international context of intensified warfare and destabilization campaigns against all states and parties which are considered part of the so-called “emerging economies.”
South Africa along with the entire sub-continent has been suffering from an economic downturn due to several factors including a drought, the sharp decline in commodity prices, and its concomitant impact on the generation of foreign exchange needed to purchase industrial goods and services. The value of the South African national currency, the rand, has declined to nearly 15-1 against the U.S. dollar.
Since the ascendancy of the ANC government in 1994 there has been a systematic disinvestment of private capital from the nation with other countries such as Mexico and Ghana now ahead of South Africa in gold production. Even the price of the much-needed platinum resources has declined in the aftermath of the international slump in commodity values. The mine owners have steadfastly resisted the demands of labor unions both those allied with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and others such as AMCU which has challenged COSATU, a close ally of the ANC, for the membership of the workers.
Nonetheless, these issues are usually not taken into consideration by media agencies and commentators many of whom have never been favorable to the ANC. Since 2015, the ANC-dominated government has been at loggerheads with the United States administration of President Barack Obama over South African participation in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) as well as charges by the ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe who has accused the U.S. embassy of fostering a regime-change strategy inside the country.
Privately-owned media firms which constitute the overwhelming number of news outlets inside South Africa failed to account for the general trends prevailing internationally. The losses of the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay around Port Elizabeth and in the Municipality of Tshwane, encompassing the capital of Pretoria, were never attributed to the decline in foreign exchange revenues and the large-scale unemployment stemming from the downsizing in industrial employment and its peripheral effects in the commercial and service sectors.
Imperialism Seeks to Destabilize Independent and Anti-Imperialist States
South Africa and the Southern Africa region are not standing alone in the current international crisis of economic underdevelopment. Since the decline in oil and other commodities prices over the last two years, states such as Russia, China, Venezuela, Brazil, Zimbabwe, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, among others, have seen a precipitous drop in economic performance.
With specific reference to states such as South Africa which are governed by former national liberation movements turned political parties, the traditional opposition to such organizations have never ceased. This must be taken into consideration in light of the actual program of the Democratic Alliance in South Africa which encompasses a heavier reliance on international finance capital as part of its platform to ostensibly improve the economy.
The EFF says that it supports the nationalization of mining and land to the benefit of the African majority inside the country. Nevertheless, the strongest political rhetoric relayed by the EFF inside and outside of parliament where it holds over twenty seats in Cape Town, is directed not against the still white-dominated ruling class interests but the ANC. The EFF blocked with the DA in a failed impeachment resolution submitted to parliament earlier in the year saying the President Jacob Zuma had violated the constitution.
This is the same constitution that ANC and other revolutionary organizations and trade unions fought for over a period of decades. These struggles between the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the western-backed opposition groups will continue over the next three years when national elections are to be held for the presidency and the legislative structures.
Shawn and Ricardo film and serve process on Defendants DNC Services Corp. and Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz at DNC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the fraud class action Wilding et al. v. DNC Services Corp. et al.
It took two attempts, but the job got done! Thanks, guys.
To learn more about the DNC fraud class action (and to make a contribution to Jam PAC), please visit http://jampac.us/
The Class Action includes 121 Plaintiffs.
For details click: http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/1-CLASS-ACTION-COMPLAINT-6-28-16.pdf
Update: Since the filing of the lawsuit, Attorney Shawn Lucas who is featured in the video, dies under Mysterious Circumstances. A young Attorney, 38 years old with a firm commitment to Social Justice and Truth in Politics.
Shawn Lucas, who served the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz with election fraud papers in early July “has been found dead under suspicious circumstances”
“According to a police report dated August 2nd, Lucas’ girlfriend came home and found him unconscious on the bathroom floor. Paramedics responding to her 911 call found no signs of life. The cause of death has not been confirmed.
Shawn Lucas was known to many frustrated Democrats as the young man depicted in a viral video serving the DNC and Wasserman Schultz with election fraud lawsuit papers.
“The rumor spread on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, where many users were concerned that Lucas’ death may have been connected to his role as the process server for the DNC lawsuit. Some versions asserted Lucas was the “lead attorney” on the case, but we were unable to corroborate that claim.
Lucas was named in a motion [PDF] filed on 22 July 2016 by the DNC, seeking to dismiss the suit on partial grounds of improper service,” Snopes reports.
When Paul Tibbets was thirteen years old he flew a bi-plane over Florida’s Miami Beach dropping a promotional cargo of Babe Ruth Candy Bars directly on to the promotional target area. 30 years later: “I was told I was going to destroy one city with one bomb.
This year, it resembles militarization seen in war zones with tens of thousands of soldiers, police and other security operatives infesting Rio, the site of the games – hosted by an illegitimate US-supported coup d’etat regime. Mass street protests rocked opening night, continued on Saturday, perhaps remaining unrelenting through the August 21 closing ceremony – media downplaying or ignoring them.
The Democratic Party may have presented themselves as a unified force to go after Republican Donald Trump in November, but such unity was not evident in the streets of Philadelphia. Legions of people collected in the streets of Philadelphia to express their concerns as the Democratic National Convention got underway the week of July 25th.
Human Rights Watch stated during today’s UN Security Council meeting on Children and Armed Conflict: “Unlawful air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition have killed and maimed hundreds of children in Yemen and damaged dozens of schools, but the coalition strong-armed the Secretary-General in an attempt to escape scrutiny. The coalition should be returned to the Secretary-General’s list of shame until it stops its indiscriminate bombardment of Yemen’s civilians.”
For the past decade, the US intelligence agencies operating in Turkey have worked closely with the increasingly influential parallel government of Fethullah Gulen. Their approach to power was, until recently, a permeationist strategy, of covertly taking over political, economic, administrative, judicial, media, military and cultural positions gradually without resort to elections or military coups. They adopted flexible tactics, supporting and shedding different allies to eliminate rivals.
The reactive dimension of global politics – at least at the level of many states – is a broader statement about how far things have rotted. Nothing is more reactive than a State’s response to terrorism, actual or perceived. The pure evidentiary dimension is neglected in favour of procedural fluff and unmeasurable contingencies. The box-ticking bureaucrat takes precedence over the judicial officer.
Call it conspiracy theory, coincidence or just bad luck, but any time someone is in a position to bring down Hillary Clinton they wind up dead. In fact, as we noted previously, there’s a long history of Clinton-related body counts, with scores of people dying under mysterious circumstances. While Vince Foster remains the most infamous, the body count is starting to build ominously this election cycle – from the mysterious “crushing his own throat” death of a UN official to the latest death of an attorney who served the DNC with a fraud suit.
As GatewayPundit’s Jim Hoft reports, on July 3, 2016, Shawn Lucas and filmmaker Ricardo Villaba served the DNC Services Corp. and Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz at DNC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the fraud class action suit against the Democrat Party on behalf of Bernie Sanders supporters (this was before Wikileaks released documents proving the DNC was working against the Sanders campaign during the 2016 primary).
Shawn Lucas was thrilled about serving the papers to the DNC before Independence Day…
Shawn Lucas was found dead this week…
According to Snopes Lucas was found dead on his bathroom floor.
We contacted Lucas’ employer on 4 August 2016 to ask whether there was any truth to the rumor.
According to an individual with whom we spoke at that company, Shawn Lucas died on 2 August 2016. The audibly and understandably shaken employee stated that interest in the circumstances of Lucas’ death had prompted a number of phone calls and other queries, but the company had not yet ascertained any details about Lucas’ cause of death and were unable to confirm anything more than the fact he had passed away.
An unconfirmed report holds that Lucas was found lying on the bathroom floor by his girlfriend when she returned home on the evening of 2 August 2016. Paramedics responding to her 911 call found no signs of life.
Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a “lead” saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an “ongoing court case” possibly involving the Clinton family.
So, to summarize, courtesy of Janet Tavakoli, the Clinton related suspicious deaths so far this election cycle: Five in just under six weeks – four deaths plus one suicide…
1) Shawn Lucas, Sanders supporter who served papers to DNC on the Fraud Case (DOD August 2, 2016)
2) Victor Thorn, Clinton author shot himself in an apparent suicide. (DOD August, 2016)
3) Seth Conrad Rich, Democratic staffer, aged 27, apparently on his way to speak to the FBI about a case possibly involving the Clintons. The D.C. murder was not a robbery. (DOD July 8, 2016)
4) John Ashe, UN official who allegedly crushed his own throat while lifting weights, because he watched too many James Bond films and wanted to try the move where the bad guy tries to…oh, never mind. “He was scheduled to testify against the Clintons and the Democrat Party.” (DOD June 22, 2016)
If former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne is to be believed, this is business as usual for the Clintons. Excerpt via Zero Hedge:
BYRNE: I feel so strongly that people need to know the real Hillary Clinton and how dangerous she is in her behavior. She is not a leader. She is not a leader.
SEAN: She does not have the temperament?
BYRNE: She doesn’t have the temperament. She didn’t have the temperament to handle the social office when she was First Lady, she does not have the temperament.
SEAN: She’s dishonest.
BYRNE: She’s dishonest, she habitually lies, anybody that can separate themselves from their politics and review her behavior over the past 15 years…
On Friday, July 1, just ahead of the long Fourth of July weekend, a happy, exuberant process server, 38-year old Shawn Lucas of One Source Process, served a lawsuit at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters and named the DNC and its then Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as defendants. It leveled the following serious charges: fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence.
Shawn Lucas, Process Server for One Source Process, Who Delivered the Lawsuit Against the Democratic National Committee and Debbie Wasserman Schultz on July 1, 2016.
A video of the service of process (see embedded video below) shows Shawn Lucas saying he was “excited” and “thrilled” to be the process server on this lawsuit, later in the video equating it to his “birthday and Christmas” rolled into one. A month later, Lucas was found dead on his bathroom floor. A cause has yet to be announced.
As of this writing, we could find no mainstream newspaper or wire service that has reported on the troubling death of Shawn Lucas. The original YouTube video, however, has skyrocketed from 32,000 views to more than 350,000 views as of this morning. The flurry of angry comments below the video are suggesting there is some form of Hillary Clinton hit squad in operation.
According to the official report from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., officers Kathryn Fitzgerald and Adam Sotelo responded to a 911 call from the girlfriend of Lucas, Savannah King. The officers arrived “at 1913 hours,” or 7:13 p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, August 2. The report states that Lucas was “laying unconscious on the bathroom floor” and that “DCFD Engine 9 responded and found no signs consistent with life.”
Just hours before Lucas was found dead, there had been a major housecleaning of DNC officials implicated in the DNC emails leaked by Wikileaks, showing that key executives had secretly strategized on how to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders while bolstering the campaign for Hillary Clinton. (Those leaked emails provide important new evidence to buttress the class action lawsuit.) DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz had stepped down earlier as a result of the emails at the outset of the Democratic Convention but Politico reported on the afternoon of August 2 that “CEO Amy Dacey, communications director Luis Miranda and chief financial officer Brad Marshall” were leaving the DNC and that staffers had been told of the changes that very day. All three had been implicated by the leaked emails.
Marc Elias, Law Partner at Perkins Coie, the Law Firm Representing the DNC Against Fraud Charges
Also implicated in the emails leaked by Wikileaks was law partner Marc Elias of the politically-connected legal powerhouse, Perkins Coie, who chairs its Political Law practice. The name “Perkins Coie” appears 263 times in the Wikileaks emails. The law firm vetted essentially every media ad released by the DNC, as well as drafting responses to Senator Sanders’ campaign charges of serious irregularities taking place at the DNC to boost Clinton’s campaign. (Under DNC bylaws, it must conduct its activities in a fair, unbiased manner toward all Democratic candidates in the primaries.)
Following charges from the Sanders’ campaign that a joint fundraising account called the Hillary Victory Fund was being used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to “launder money” for Clinton, that is, to evade her fundraising caps from wealthy donors, Marc Elias sent an email to four DNC officials on May 3 of this year, advising them to “put out a statement saying that the accusations [from] the Sanders campaign are not true.” Elias doesn’t provide any specifics on why the charges are not true.
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With the Rio Olympics now underway and with the Western media still grumbling about the IOC’s refusal to impose a blanket ban on Team Russia, this is good moment to summarise briefly the key facts about the Russian Olympic Doping Scandal.
The Russian Olympic Doping scandal reproduces the pattern of other scandals involving Russia in that the version of the scandal provided to the Western public by the Western media is distorted because of the omission of key facts.
I thought it might help if I briefly set out the 4 key facts about the Russian Olympic Doping Scandal that the Western media are not reporting and which if they were reported would I am sure fundamentally change the way most people in the West perceive the scandal.
They are:
That since January test samples of Russian athletes are tested in Britain with British scientists and officials involved in their collection;
On August 6, the Jaish al-Fatah operation room seized the Ramouseh Artillery Base and the Ramouseh Neighborhood from the pro-government forces, de-facto, breaking the Aleppo siege and setting up a siege on the government-controlled areas of western Aleppo. However, the govt. forces are still able to supply the area via the Castello Highway. The first aid convoy arrived western Aleppo last night.
Thus far, the jihadists are in control of a major part of the Ramouseh Neighborhood. However, the Syrian army is still holding the Cement Plan there. The Jaish al-Fatah is also in full control of the Ramouseh Artillery Base after the Syrian army and Hezbollah have withdrawn from the base’s Airforce Technical College. Jaish al-Fatah is also in control of about 80% of the 1070 Apartment Project. On August 8, Jaish al-Fatah announced further operations in Aleppo in order to seize the whole city.
Recently, Liwa al-Quds units that had been deployed in the area between the Castello Highway and Handarat camp have arrived to southwestern Aleppo in order to assist the pro-government forces there. Reports say that the Syrian army’s Tiger Forces led by Col. Suheil al-Hassan are still in northern Aleppo. Maj. Gen. Zaid Saleh who led the Rep. Guard during Layramoun battle has reportedly replaced Maj. Gen. Adib Mohamad as head of Aleppo Security Committee.
Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HHN) has announced that it had sent some 2,000 fighters in order to assist the Syrian army in the battle for Aleppo. The HSN is an Iraqi Shia paramilitary that receives training, arms and assistance in military planning from Iran. Pro-militant sources disseminate reports that the Syrian army has deployed up to 100 battle tanks and 400 BMP vehicles for operations in Aleppo city. Jaish al-Fatah’s manpower is estimated as 10,000 including 2,500 fighters of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (former Jabhat Al Nusra).
There are reports that the jihadists have reopened the Alramousa road and set a supply line to eastern Aleppo and some photos of alleged food delivers to the area have appeared. However, the modern tactical situation does not allow them to deliver significant supplies there because the Syrian army is holding a fire control of the road. The siege has been lifted, partially. The Jaish al-Fatah will need to push the pro-government forces from the 3000 Apartment Project and even further in order to deliver supplies to eastern Aleppo.
Local sources report that the joint jihadi forces have concentrated a high number of experienced infantry in southwestern Aleppo. Furthermore, the urban fighting does not allow Syria and Russia to use their advantage in the air power. These facts indicate that the pro-government forces will not be able to take upper hand in the ongoing clashes, easily. The result of the battle will mostly depend on developments on the ground.
According to Tass, both leaders will discuss “views on how, at what pace and in what sequence” to restore normalized bilateral relations – ruptured after Turkey downed a Russian warplane in Syrian airspace last November.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said prior to last year’s incident, “(w)ork was underway on an entire range of issues related to trade, economic and investment cooperation…”
Both leaders will “exchange views on regional problems” – notably Syria. At stake for Turkey is restoration of trade. Billions of dollars were lost after Russia imposed sanctions in response to Ankara’s hostile act.
“This will be a historic visit, a new beginning,” Erdogan claimed.
“At the talks with my friend Vladimir, I believe a new page in bilateral relations will be opened. Our countries have a lot to do together.”
“Without Russia’s participation, it’s impossible to find a solution to the Syrian problem. Only in partnership with Russia will we be able to settle the crisis in Syria.”
Throughout the conflict, Turkey partnered with Obama’s war, serving as a safe haven and launching pad for ISIS and other terrorist fighters to cross freely into Syria, providing them with arms and munitions, profiting from selling stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil.
In return for normalizing ties, Putin demands Erdogan to reverse his current policies. He wants his support for terrorist fighters ravaging Syria ended.
He’s capitalizing on strained relations between Ankara and Washington over the disruptive July 15 events, Erdogan’s coup d’etat power grab blamed on cleric Fethullah Gulen living in America, a longtime CIA asset, Turkey suggesting possible US involvement in what happened.
Russia’s intervention in Syria last September at the behest of its government changed things dramatically on the ground. At the same time, Turkey’s support for terrorist fighters indispensably aids Washington’s regional imperial agenda.
Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel from occupied Golan, and Turkey border Syria – Turkish territory bordering its entire northern area, a key launching pad for conflict. Eliminating it would be a major step toward resolution. An opening exists.
Putin seeks to capitalize on it despite knowing the risk of dealing with an international outlaw at war with his own people, systematically eliminating opponents, consolidating hardline rule – his promises meaningless unless proved otherwise.
In the interest of hoped for restoration of regional peace and stability, it’s a gamble well worth taking.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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 Thursday I judged that the U.S. supported al-Qaeda attack in southwest Aleppo was failing. “Despite the failure of their main thrust, al-Qaeda and its allies launched a third phase attack towards Ramouseh district a few hundred meters further north. A tactical mistake as the attackers failed to build a decisive Schwerpunkt. … Local fighting still continues on the front lines but the government positions seem secured and the attacking force is slowly getting ground down.”
That judgement was premature.
The Jihadis retreated after their first three attacks but renewed their efforts with fresh troops on the next day. This time they concentrated on one focal point. Another frontal assault throughout Friday failed, but a fifth major strike followed in the darkness of Friday night.
A total of five vehicle borne suicide bombs broke the defense line of the Syrian government forces and Jihadi forces stormed into the wide area of the Artillery Academy. The compound is a hard to observe mixture of small open fields, garages, office and quarter buildings.
The sparsely manned defense lines were overwhelmed or circumvented. By Saturday night most of the academy was in the hand of the Jihadis. A small corridor to the Jihadi held east-Aleppo was opened but is not secured.
The Syrian government forces are bringing up reserves and additional forces. A counterattack is likely to follow soon. The battle for Aleppo is now the strategic Schwerpunkt, the focal point of the fight for north-Syria if not of the whole war.
According to earlier reports by the Guardian journalist Chulov, Vice News and Dutch TV, east-Aleppo is essentially empty. The population has long fled to government held areas. “Spookstad“, ghost-town, is the title of the Dutch TV documentary from there. “Western” media now laud the Islamists for lifting the siege the Syrian government held over the area. But the new Jihaid corridor in south-west Aleppo is cutting off 1.5 million people in government held west-Aleppo. Now these are under siege with the besieging forces having promised to slaughter many of them. This is somewhat recurrence of the situation in 2013 when west-Aleppo, to little attention of the media, was also cut off from all resupplies by “moderate rebel” forces.
The “western” think-tank and media fanboys of al-Qaeda are celebrating the breaking the siege of east-Aleppo while a much bigger siege is created against a much larger population. Their cheer-leading for al-Qaeda is literarily indistinguishable from al-Qaeda’s own propaganda.
The Russian air force was heavily engaged, but not very visible in the defense of the Artillery Academy. Its main focus are the supply lines of the Jihadists. But efforts in the logistic depth of the theater always take some time to show significant effects on the front lines. What was regrettably missing was direct helicopter support for the defenders. Russia has a number of excellent front line helicopters in Syria. But there was arguably reason not to use them. Last Monday a Russian helicopter was shot down some 40 kilometers south of Aleppo and all crew and passengers were killed. The Russians believe that the helicopter was taken down my a man portable air defense missile (MANPAD) delivered to Jihadis either by or with the knowledge of the U.S. They fear that the attackers of Aleppo have a significant number of these weapons.
The breaking of a corridor towards east-Aleppo was announced as only the first part of a plan to conquer and occupy all of Aleppo. More than 5,000 attackers took part in the first phase. There are rumors – unconfirmed – that an additional 10,000 attackers have been activated and are on the march towards the city.
The whole attack on Aleppo was planned since at least April. U.S. Secretary of State Kerry prevented Russian reactions against the preparations and build up by holding out a possible cessation of hostilities and a political solution of the conflict. At the same time the U.S. and its allies delivered new weapons and equipment to al-Qaeda in Syria and its aligned forces. Videos from the Jihadi front lines show every fighter in well kept uniforms and armored vests with plenty of weapons and ammunition available.
The current attack on Aleppo is only one part of a larger U.S. plan to bring Syria (as well as Russia and Iran) to its knees. We do not yet know all the plan’s phases, parameters and aims. We also do not know the responses the other side has prepared to counter them. All observers (including me) should keep that in mind when judging the day-to-day changes of the situation.
Although much discourse currently abounds about what constitutes threats to citizen security, there is a shortage of analysis about Euro-American colonialism as racist terrorism – for profit. It is remarkable too, that there are disclaimers in historical accounts that represent Danish colonialism as “mild” when there was nothing hesitant about the application of over two centuries of racist Danish colonial terrorism in the Virgin Islands.
Moreover, while the USA currently wages wars, ostensibly against terrorism [a nameless, faceless enemy] and claims to be deploying democracy as a foreign policy, this narrative is a cover-up. In reality, USA occupation and aggression entails extraordinary human rights violations, which are normalised as governance of places like the Virgin Islands.
Rothschild Francis, Civil Rights Activist, St. Thomas
There is no doubt that the cruel conspiracy of enslavement, enacted among Europeans, Arabs and Africans, unleashed raw, racist terrorism on over 40 million Africans, at home and in the Diaspora.
Denmark, the 7th largest European coloniser, maintained colonies for almost two centuries. The extent of injustice meted out to the majority class before and after the USA purchase of the Virgin Islands and its people – an illegal and immoral transaction with Denmark, propelled Rothschild Francis, icon from St. Thomas, to become a passionate social justice activist.
Despite the fact that Africans won their emancipation from Danish enslavement in 1848, the Danish and United States of American government authorities illegally entered into a transaction of sale of the Virgin Islands for the lucrative sum of $25 million in gold.
Today Virgin Islanders cynically say that this was the most expensive real estate transaction ever; the islands’ budget is still supported by the Federal government, nearly a century after Transfer. This ongoing investment demonstrates that the strategic value of the so-called Territory [a term that rattles peoples’ nerves] is even more important than the current settler colonials might care to admit. The terrorist dimension of this Transfer was that “Custody claims by both the United States and Denmark not only caused fragmentation of the records but denied Virgin Islanders access to their collective memory”
Having garnered immeasurable wealth and prestige from criminal colonial pursuits, it is scandalous that there has been a rigging of European history, a consensus of forgetting that facilitates the psychotic condition called colonial amnesia. This systematic suppression of colonial memory has disfigured the moral compass of the European Continent.
I have often pondered the contradiction that Europeans pride themselves on being the champions of Christianity yet justified their terrorist practices. Despite all the morality that they set out to bestow on colonised people of colour, it is amazing that no-one was tapping anyone on their enslaving shoulders to remind and restrain each other in the name of said moral responsibility.
What is even more profound was that after the cantankerous enslavement system was routed by rebellious African resistors and their European and mixed race free allies, von Bismark, then German Chancellor, hosted 14 European nations for six months (1884-85) to scramble for Africa. They all agreed to participate in the dastardly African underdevelopment (Rodney, 1973) with no one recorded as voicing any objection.
Since being employed as an International Fellow at the Flensburg Maritime Museum in Germany to curate an exhibition and write a paper on Danish Colonial Legacy in Flensburg, the Virgin Islands and Ghana from an African Caribbean perspective, I have had to do some serious critical reflection on this psychosis of forgetting, a sort of self-hypnosis, which enables Danes and Germans alike, who have to be considered together because of their entangled histories, to convince themselves to this day, that their Empire days was a project of noble civilisation of backward Africans. The political economy of the carving up of the African Continent is conveniently forgotten.
Even my consciousness that the European refusal to acknowledge the criminality of racist colonial terrorism is a ruse to refuse to recognise reparations responsibility had not prepared me for the bald double unconsciousness regarding colonial memory. This contrived amnesia is a pathology that demands a forensic audit. Such pervasive schizophrenia must mean of course, that there is collusion among all institutions of socialization – home, school, media, popular culture, church, musea, politics -in a word, society, to bury any evidence or remorse. As one participant from a research encounter observed, “They all put a blanket on the past.”
Describing this rationalisation as repression, Andersen (2013) elaborates that
The initial experiences of colonialism have been screened at different points in time rendering the past in versions very far from the actual historical events themselves. Recently, new claims for reparations for slavery and colonialism in the former Danish West Indies have challenged the existing notions of the colonial past in Denmark. These claims have not resulted in an official Danish politics of regret…as witnessed in other former colonial states. Whereas, a radical break away from the earlier conceptions of the colonial past is demanded, instead new figurations and renarrations have been used to try to incorporate the new challenges to the historical imaginary into the older layers of memory without radically breaking away from it, creating somewhat surprising results that questions (sic) the notions of a uniform global memory and understanding of historical injustices (Andersen, 2013: 1, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10767-013-9133-z#/page-1).
Problematic characterisation of the Virgin Islands, decontextualising the production of rum from enslavement
When I presented on these issues at the Flensburg World Cafe, held Thursday (July 28, 2016) at the Flensburger Schifffahrtsmuseum, it was fascinating to marshal the panoramic range of response to the revelations of multilayered colonial realities that I encountered when I visited the Virgin Islands of the United States from June 26-July 7, 2016. I went to find out what people thought about the Flensburg Maritime Museum creating this project as a contribution to the 2017 centennial commemoration of the sale of the Virgin Islands and its people to the United States of America. It was pointed out sharply that the Danes had no authority to have entered into that transaction, from which it earned $25million (in gold, mind you), and neither did the US – because the enslaved had won their freedom 69 years before that and the free were consigned to colonised status in one fell swoop. However, they were heartened that the project provided a poignant opportunity for critical reflection on Danish colonial terrorism, which has been practically overwhelmed by the paradoxes of USA occupation.
The twilight of Danish colonialism is still visible in the enduring ruins of the Whim Estate in St. Croix
This condition of USA settler colonialism is treated with utmost delicacy as critical analysts of this criminality have been psychosocially and socio-economically victimised for speaking out. I imagine this Big Brother response is seen as mandatory since revelations about this dilemma are not congruent with popular propaganda about the USA as the dispenser of development.
People in the VI were also unaware of the branding of Flensburg as Rum City and its enrichment from the resources of sugar and rum, produced from the unremunerated labour of enslaved Africans. Incredibly, those engaged in the rum trade rationalise that they were not as bad as their peers doing the human trafficking side of the transatlantic triangle. Like hello? What part of the Marxian theory of the surplus value of labour is not being addressed here? If you traded in rum and sugar, you were complicit in the terrorist system of dehumanisation and torturous production and reproduction that the system entailed. But it seems that for Euro-Americans, the jury is still out on the logic of this argument.
As was also discussed during the World Cafe presentation in Flensburg, the political economy of the annual family-day Rum Regattacelebration has not traditionally been questioned – people just never even wondered where the rum came from!
I called upon the wisdom of Paulo Freire to try to empathise with the wounding that both coloniser and colonised experienced in the Holocaust of Enslavement. Incidentally, I am deliberately reiterating this concept of Holocaust because the word is a catalyst for re-thinking and re-membering that resonates in Denmark-Germany. Besides, Jews did not have a monopoly on the experience of the concept.
Speaking to the liberation of the oppressed, Freire says,
At all stages of their liberation, the oppressed must see themselves as women and men engaged in the ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Reflection and action become imperative when one does not erroneously attempt to dichotomize the content of humanity from its historical forms (Freire, 1970: 66).
The embodiment of African Emancipation: Freedom!
Freire elaborated that
the dialogical character of education as the practice of freedom does not begin when the teacher-student meets with the students teachers in a pedagogical situation, but rather when the former first asks herself or himself what she or he will dialogue with the latter about. And preoccupation with the content of dialogue is really preoccupation with the program content of education (1970: 93).
Freire provides further illumination about the status of colonial amnesia embraced by Europeans who dominated Africans, a condition with which we have to become intimate in order to subvert its morbid persistence. His answer to his rhetorical question was for me the flashpoint for understanding what the process of repression consists of and the imperative of revolutionary thinking in order to transform the status quo:
Why do the dominant elites not become debilitated when they do not think with the people? Because the latter constitute their antithesis, their very reason for existence. If the elites were to think with the people, the contradiction would be superseded and they could no longer dominate. From the point of view of the dominators in any epoch, correct thinking presupposes the non-thinking of the people (ibid.: 131).
Liberation demands taking a third-eye view of terrorism, an ancient form of emotional intelligence.
Damn! This is not a walk in the park is it? But as my dad used to say back in the day, “A habit is a cable: you weave a thread of it every day and it soon becomes so strong that you cannot break it.” So this habit of colonial amnesia is deep. It must therefore be traumatic for the dominant class to experience someone like me prodding the skeletons in the closets of history to enflesh themselves and reveal that as Shakespeare declared in Hamlet, via a speech by Marcellus, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The playwright was, clearly, very intimate with the truth about the lies.
Instead of the protracted denials of culpability however, wouldn’t it make more sense, in the interest of healing the breach and providing the elusive moral responsibility with some space to flourish, to just admit wrongs and seek mechanisms of social transformation?
References
Andersen, A.N. “We Have Reconquered the Islands”: Figurations in Public Memories of Slavery and Colonialism in Denmark 1948–2012, Published online: 7 February 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013, (http://americanarchivist.org/doi/pdf/10.17723/aarc.64.1.h6k872252u2gr377).
The reactive dimension of global politics – at least at the level of many states – is a broader statement about how far things have rotted. Nothing is more reactive than a State’s response to terrorism, actual or perceived. The pure evidentiary dimension is neglected in favour of procedural fluff and unmeasurable contingencies. The box-ticking bureaucrat takes precedence over the judicial officer.
The Turnbull government has come down rather heavily in its response to a spate of attacks in France and Germany, deciding that it is time that something be done in the face of this supposed global madness. The prime minister Malcolm Turnbull decided to press the issue in a letter to state leaders urging for the creation of a national regime to indefinitely detain terrorists even after the point of serving their sentence.
Civil liberties lawyer Greg Barnes has made the point that such assessments are fundamentally specious. They lack coherence, dimension and remain presumptuous. The chances, therefore, of a person locked up for years on terrorist charges then engaging in acts of murderous mayhem on leaving, did not compute.
The point is an ominous one for at least 13 prisoners convicted over what has been said to be Australia’s largest terrorism plot in New South Wales and Victoria. After concluding their sentences, the individuals involved in the Pendennis network, led by Melbourne cleric Abdul Benbrika, would have little guarantee of release.
Buttering in the face of such extralegal nonsense is always deemed necessary. The Commonwealth Attorney-General George Brandis explained over the weekend that, “All of the attorneys, as the first law officers of our respective jurisdictions, understand the gravity of the threat that terrorism poses to Australia and its people.”[1]
What Brandis fails to mention is that such officers also owe it to the legal profession, its servants and the citizens of a country, to reassuringly ensure that liberties are not unduly tarnished, let alone entirely abandoned, as is being suggested by these measures. The insolence of office, one so gleefully embraced, comes to mind.
With that merry insolence, the views of such officers are indifferent to habeas corpus, and the notion that a person who does time has (and here is a novelty), actually discharged the burdens placed upon him for such offences. Terrorism is simply being rendered, rather nonsensically, exceptional, an offence that demands special treatment.
If detention were to be infinite, the hierarchy of punishment would have to be abandoned in favour of an arbitrary notion of convict and permanently incarcerate if you can. This would effectively eliminate the notion of sentencing as having any value bringing, instead, the fictional notion of a hypothetical terrorist attack to the fray.
Instead of expressing outrage at the heavy-handed, not to mention clumsy approach of the Commonwealth government, the NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton, congratulated Turnbull “on this initiative. The stakes are high for NSW: make no mistake. We have more people in our prisons than any other state that would be subject to these laws.”[2] All the more reason, one would have thought, for not endorsing such regulations.
Upton’s shoddy reasoning pivots on mere words: “terrorism” qualifies for blanket imprisonment and detention. Terrorism posed such a risk to the community it meant that no one could be “complacent”.
The situation becomes even more peculiar given the observations by such individuals a Greg Moriarty, national counter-terrorism coordinator and evidently self-proclaimed amateur penologist. All agencies in the business of “national counter-terrorism” were “committed to preventing people from becoming terrorists; to disrupting and diverting people who are heading down a path towards violent extremism; and to rehabilitating people who are convicted for terrorism offences.”
But for all such noble ventures, there would always be those eggs that would stay rotten, where it was “not possible, or where there are significant areas of doubt”. This mealy-mouthed assertion is a neat illustration about executive paranoia, enabling people to be detained at the pleasure of the sovereign.
In Australia’s legal soil, noxious precedents flower that enable the Attorney-Generals at all levels of government to push for an agenda hostile to the detainee. In mental health administration, there are those permanently kept away from trial (and hence a genuine testing of their cases) for reasons of psychic disturbance.
The High Court has also done its bit to add to the regulatory framework of indefinite detention by arguing that stateless individuals can be indefinitely kept at the discretion of the State, a sort of administrative purgatory where risk from the detainee might manifest. The case of Ahmed Al-Kateb remains something of a nightmare in that regard, an outcome premised on the shallow notion that non-judicial detention is entirely permissible provided it be for the purposes of removal.[3]
There was just one problem for Al-Kateb: his argument that any detention could not be lawful if it has ceased to have a valid basis for removal from Australia was dismissed with more than a bit of contempt.
There are also those deemed genuine refugees under the United Nations Refugee Convention who are not permitted out of Australia’s brutal detention regime because they have been assessed, courtesy of the domestic espionage network ASIO, as a security risk. All that, despite having no formal charges level. The proposed change by Turnbull, to that end, remains dangerously, and lamentably consistent with enlarged and unaccountable executive power.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
The current ongoing offensive in southwest Aleppo is admittedly being headed by designated terrorist organisation and Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra under which a milieu of militant groups are fighting. Just before the offensive was launched, and apparently specifically for the occasion, Nusra would announce that it was severing ties with Al Qaeda (with Al Qaeda’s blessing) so as to unite all the armed factions fighting in Syria under one banner.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. described the split from al-Qaeda as “a PR move.” Al-Nusra “would like to create the image of being more moderate,” Clapper said in an appearance at a security conference in Aspen, Colo. “I think they are concerned at being singled out as a target,” particularly by Russian strikes, he said.
Attempts of Jabhat al-Nusra to paint itself differently by changing its name are vain, the group remains an illegal terrorist organization, fight against it will continue until it is fully destroyed, a Russian Foreign Ministry commentary said on Friday.
Then clearly, regardless of whatever name Al Nusra is now attempting to call itself, it is still a terrorist organisation, making it illegal to provide it with any form of material support, let alone fight alongside it on the battlefield. Anyone doing so thus makes themselves a legitimate target of anti-terror operations including full-scale combat. It also makes anyone still aiding and abetting subsidiaries of this newly-unified terrorist front a state-sponsor of terror.
Thus, when Syria’s various armed factions, referred to by the US and its allies who provide them weapons, cash, training and sanctuary as “moderates,” organised themselves under Nusra’s banner, they immediately became Al Qaeda affiliates themselves.
What the ongoing Nusra-led assault on Aleppo then represents is the West’s final capitulation in betraying its own narrative regarding “moderate rebels” they are arming and backing amid the ongoing Syrian conflict. Aleppo Cannot Be Liberated by Those Who First Invaded It
Beyond the very nature of the admittedly terroristic elements assaulting Aleppo, the notion that this assault is an attempt to “liberate” the city is equally problematic to those attempting to promote it.
Aleppo, the largest city in Syria before the war broke out in 2011, had been spared the worst of the fighting until in 2012 large groups of militants began crossing the border between Turkey and Syria and quite literally invaded the city. Amid the see-sawing battles over the next four years, sections of the city would change hands between government defenders and militant invaders.
That was until several weeks ago the Syrian military encircled militants who had deeply entrenched themselves within the city and began preparing for operations to finally clear their presence from the city.
The current offensive then, represents a replay of the initial invasion that plunged the city into the current state of war, death, human misery and destruction it now suffers under in the first place.
While the Western media attempts to portray militant-held sections of the city as being “liberated,” the current breakthrough in southwest Aleppo has put much larger segments of the city’s population living within government-held areas of the city at increased risk of running out of essential supplies and suffering from violence incurred amid the ongoing fighting.
What the West is basically reduced to is openly cheering on the forces of Al Qaeda it had been attempting to covertly arm and support throughout the conflict under the misnomer of supporting “moderate rebels” all along. It is also reduced to attempting to portray the re-invasion of Aleppo by a designated terrorist organisation as a “liberation.”
As Syrian and Russian airpower work over the emerging militant corridor being established in southwest Aleppo, and as Syrian forces reorganise themselves along the peripheries of the breakthrough, the prospect of foiling this offensive by delivering a severe blow to the now highly concentrated militant forces partaking in the operation may lead to a general collapse of the militants’ fighting capacity across the rest of Idlib province.
But that is only if Turkey has finally begun to cut supply routes across their border with Syria, which is likely an essential ingredient to any genuine restoration of ties between Ankara and Moscow.
On July 28, Jabhat al-Nusra announced it was severing all ties with its parent organization, al-Qaeda, and changing its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (Conquest of Syria Front). Al-Qaeda gave its blessing to the move, reflecting an evolution by both organizations in their international strategies and a deep understanding of local Syrian dynamics.
Jordanian Salafist expert Hassan Abu Haniya, however, questions how much distance the secession will really put between the groups due to their complex ideological, historical and personal links.
Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani appeared on camera late last month declaring “the complete cancellation of all operations under the name of Jabhat al-Nusra.” He said the new organization has no affiliation with any external entity.
On July 28, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ahmed Hassan Abu al-Khayr, announced that Jabhat al-Nusra’s leadership had been instructed to “go ahead with what protects the interests of Islam and Muslims and what protects jihad.” Al-Qaeda’s No. 1 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, added, “The brotherhood of Islam … is stronger than any organizational links.”
Yet Abu Haniya noted that Golani’s announcement carried many references to al-Qaeda: Golani was dressed in military fatigues, like the late al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, and used Arabic expressions and references used by the infamous leader.
Besides the framing of the actual announcement, Abu Haniya explained, Jabhat al-Nusra’s decision was backed by major jihadi ideologues such as Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada. Maqdisi and Abu Qatada are two influential Jordanian Salafist jihadi clerics with close links to al-Qaeda.
The move also garnered the approval of Saudi Sheikh Abdallah al-Muhaysini, the cleric of Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest). Powerful Syrian rebel factions such as Ahrar al-Sham also applauded Jabhat al-Nusra’s decision, while figures such as Abu Hamza Hamawi, the head of the Salafist Ajnad al-Sham faction, said Jabhat al-Nusra’s decision could facilitate military unity.
In addition, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Abu al-Khayr, who blessed the secession, is currently in Syria with the consent of Jabhat al-Nusra. “What does this tell you of the supposed [split] in relations? If there was a real break of the pledge of allegiance between the two organizations, it is supposed to be [according to jihadi practices] condemned by death,” said Abu Haniya. He said the groups’ separation appears to be only tactical.
He added that the decoupling shows al-Qaeda prioritizes its affiliate’s survival. “Al-Qaeda has witnessed several phases since its inception as it went from a local organization [in Afghanistan] to a global organization after the September 2001 coordinated terror attacks on the United States, which was followed by a period of ‘indimaj,’ a period of mixed policies with a focus on both the far and close enemies. Now we are witnessing a return to the primacy of local dynamics,” Abu Haniya stressed.
The expert added that the transformation also indicates al-Qaeda’s move since the Arab Spring to an emphasis on Syria-centered politics.
That move to prioritizing local politics has translated into Jabhat al-Nusra adopting a pragmatic approach to external and internal pressures. On July 13, Russia and the United States discussed forming a Joint Implementation Group to share intelligence, to possibly direct operational cooperation against Jabhat al-Nusra and to keep Russia from targeting jointly designated, and presumably opposition-controlled, areas.
The new US-Russian partnership might have accelerated Jabhat al-Nusra’s departure from al-Qaeda. In his statement, Golani said the Syrian opposition to the regime has to “remove the pretext used by powers, including the US and Russia, to bomb Syrians.”
Internal pressures also might have influenced Jabhat al-Nusra’s leadership decision. In the past year, the group held various discussions toward that goal, with Jabhat al-Nusra member Abu Maria al-Qahtani of Iraq arguing for the “Syrianization” of Jabhat al-Nusra, according to Syrian Islamic sources. “Syrian members of Jabhat al-Nusra who represent the large majority were also in favor of severance of ties with al-Qaeda,” Sheikh Hassan Dgheim, a Syrian cleric who studies Islamic organizations, told Al-Monitor.
Aleppo-based journalist Ahmad Abi Zeid told Al-Monitor many Syrians within Jabhat al-Nusra do not necessarily espouse al-Qaeda’s ideology, but have joined the organization because of the power it projects.
However, Abu Haniya believes the break with al-Qaeda was the result of a simple opportunity-and-threat analysis. “Jabhat al-Nusra felt it was losing popularity, and it affected their relations with other groups. Since the break, the rebel coalition was given new impetus with the Aleppo offensive.” On July 31, rebel groups launched the “Great Battle” (malahem) on Aleppo, which is still underway.
Dynamics marking the fresh Aleppo offensive by a large rebel alliance, including Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, confirm Jabhat al-Nusra’s successful calculation to decouple from al-Qaeda. The separation allowed the new group to consolidate its presence on Syrian soil and form alliances with other rebel groups that previously were hesitant to join forces with them due to the al-Qaeda affiliation.
“The rebranding and fresh victories will add credibility to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. This will certainly have repercussions on factions that were previously afraid of being targeted by cooperating with [al-Qaeda]. Salafist and Islamic factions will definitely perceive this move positively,” Abi Zeid said.
Nonetheless, severing ties with the global jihad movement may also place the organization at a disadvantage. Dgheim underlines that in the past three months, several members of the group defected to join the Islamic State. This phenomenon may indicate a wider dissatisfaction among Jabhat al-Nusra’s hard-liners, specifically its foreign fighters. Abu Haniya, however, disagreed.
“The decision to break ties with al-Qaeda had the approval of foreign leaders within the organization. During the secession announcement, Golani surrounded himself with a Syrian national, Abu Abdullah al-Shami, and a foreign fighter, Ahmad Salama Mabruk, also known as Abu Faraj the Egyptian, which is highly symbolic and shows the prevalence of its foreign affiliation,” Abu Haniya explained, adding that the number of defections to this date has been limited.
Regardless of the repercussion of its name change on the Syrian scene, Jabhat al-Nusra’s decision to rebrand is a clear indicator of al-Qaeda’s repositioning in the Levant. Jabhat Fatah al-Sham’s new coalitions and its view of the Syrian political system and the peace process will reveal the extent of the organization’s pragmatism and whether it is really willing to evolve.
Building on an over five-year, almost entirely fictional narrative about a popular uprising in Syria, recent developments on the ground in Aleppo have triggered a new propaganda blitz complete with a new set of provable lies. The following are ten facts about Aleppo that must be accepted by any objective, informed and rational observer regardless of one’s political views and opinions regarding Syria.
1) Eastern Aleppo was overrun by a foreign-backed, Al-Qaeda-led terrorist alliance in 2012. At that time, approximately 600,000 Aleppans fled eastern Aleppo for the security and safety of western Aleppo where the Syrian government maintained control.
2) Estimates of how many civilians remained in eastern Aleppo vary widely, but official estimates place the number between 100 and 150 thousand. UN estimates of up to 300,000 are almost certainly inflated and politically motivated.
3) Eighty to eighty-five percent of the armed fighters in eastern Aleppo belong to the Jabhat Al-Nusra, the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that just underwent a rebranding, complete with a new name and logo (see image above, top row, second from the left). The remaining fighters belong to twenty-two (there are constant splits, mergers, and rebranding among them) terrorist groups that all share the same jihadi ideology, methods, and objectives as Al-Qaeda.
4) The overwhelming majority of Syrian fighters in eastern Aleppo are not from Aleppo itself, belying the notion that any part of the city rose up against the government.
5) The terrorist groups in Aleppo include a large number of foreign fighters from eighty-one different countries with significant contingents from Turkey, the Gulf Arab states, North Africa, and Russia’s Chechnya and North Caucasus region.
6) Armed groups in eastern Aleppo have been deliberately shelling civilians in western Aleppo. This has led to angry protests against the Syrian government demanding an end to the shelling and the complete extirpation of the terrorist presence in eastern Aleppo.
7) This past week eastern Aleppo was finally completely encircled by the Syrian Army, effectively cutting off the terrorist groups’ supply routes from Turkey.
8) The Syrian government has offered all Syrian fighters in eastern Aleppo amnesty in exchange for laying down their weapons and surrendering to the Syrian authorities.
9) The Syrian military has also established three humanitarian corridors for civilians to exit eastern Aleppo. The Syrian government had prepared 10,000 habitable apartment units in western Aleppo for civilians fleeing in anticipation of a possible final battle. As dozens of families started to exit armed groups immediately began preventing civilians from leaving, prompting speculation they intend to use them as human shields when and if the Syrian Army begins its final entry into the eastern part of the city.
10) After completing the encirclement of eastern Aleppo the Syrian government, in a joint mission with the Russian Air Force based at Hemeimeem Air Base, began a massive humanitarian airlift into eastern Aleppo. The tragic shoot down of the Russian helicopter this week took place as it was returning from a humanitarian aid delivery.
For the past decade, the US intelligence agencies operating in Turkey have worked closely with the increasingly influential parallel government of Fethullah Gulen. Their approach to power was, until recently, a permeationist strategy, of covertly taking over political, economic, administrative, judicial, media, military and cultural positions gradually without resort to elections or military coups. They adopted flexible tactics, supporting and shedding different allies to eliminate rivals.
In 2010 in support of Erdogan, they played a major role in arresting and purging 300 Kemalist – military officials. Subsequently the Gulenists moved to prosecute and weaken the Erdogan regime via revelations of family corruption uncovered by their intelligence officials and publicized by its mass media outlets.
The Gulenists shared several important policies with Washington which favored “the convergence” that led up to the July 15, 2016 coup.
The Gulenists backed US-Israeli policies in the Middle East; opposed the ‘independent’ and erratic power projections of Erdogan; favored pro-Western free market policies; accepted US relations with the Kurds; rejected any accommodation with the Russians.
In other words, the Gulenists were far more reliable, dependent and subject to the dictates of EU-NATO-US policy throughout the Middle East than the Erdogan regime.
Erdogan was aware of the growing power of the Gulenists and their growing links to Washington. Erdogan moved decisively and successfully, to pre-empt the Gulenist power grab by forcing a premature coup.
Erdogan Power Bloc Defeats Gulenist Presence
The Gulenists were a powerful force in the Turkish state and civil society. They had a strong presence in the civil bureaucracy; among sectors of the military, the mass media and educational installations; and among technocrats in the financial agencies. Yet they were defeated in less than twenty-four hours, because Erdogan had several undeniable strengths.
First and foremost, Erdogan was an unmatched political leader with a strategy to retain power and a powerful active mass popular base. The Gulenists had nothing comparable.
Erdogan had a superior intelligence and military command which infiltrated and undermined the Gulenists who were totally unprepared for a violent confrontation.
The Gulenists ‘permeationist’ strategy was unprepared and totally incapable of seizing power and mobilizing ‘the street’.
They lacked the cadres and organized grass roots support which Erdogan had built from the bottom-up over the previous two decades.
Erdogan’s insider and outside Islamic-Nationalist strategy was far superior to the Gulenist insider-pro-US liberal strategy.
US Miscalculations in the Coup
The Gulenists depended on US support, which totally miscalculated the relations of power and misread Erdogan’s capacity to preempt the coup.
The major flaw among the US advisers was their ignorance of the Turkish political equation: they underestimated Erdogan’s overwhelming party, electoral and mass support. The CIA overestimated the Gulenists support in their institutional elite structures and underestimated their political isolation in Turkish society.
Moreover, the US military had no sense of the specifications of Turkish political culture – the general popular opposition to a military-bureaucratic takeover. They failed to recognize that the anti-coup forces included political parties and social movements critical of Erdogan.
The US strategists based the coup on their misreading of the military coups in Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Yemen which ousted nationalist and Islamic civilian regimes.
Erdogan was not vulnerable in the same way as President Mohamed Morsi (June 30, 2012 – July 3, 2013) was in Egypt – he controlled intelligence, military and mass supporters.
The US-Gulenists military intelligence strategy was unplanned, uncoordinated and precipitous – Erdogan’s counter-coup forced their hand and struck decisive, sweeping blows that demoralized the entire Gulenist super-structure. Thousands of supporters fell like clay pigeons.
The US was put on the defensive – the rapid dissolution of their followers forced them to disown their allies and fall back on general, unconvincing ‘humanitarian’ and ‘security’ criticisms of Erdogan. Their claims that the Erdogan purge would weaken the fight against ISIS had no influence in Turkey. Washington’s charges that the arrests were ‘mistreating and abusing’ prisoners had no impact.
The key political fact is that the US backed an uprising which had taken up arms and killed Erdogan loyalist military personel and innocent unarmed civilians opposed to the coup undermined Washington’s feeble protests.
In the end the US even refused refugee status and abandoned their Gulenist General’s to Erdogan’s fate. Only Fethullah Gulen himself was protected from extradition by his State Department handlers.
Consequences of the US-Gulen Coup
Washington’s failure to bring down Erdogan could have enormous repercussions throughout the Middle East, Western Europe and the United States.
Erdogan ordered seven thousand troops to encircle the strategic NATO airbase in Incirlik, Turkey, an act of intimidation threatening to undermine NATO’s major nuclear facility and operational base against Syria, Iraq and Russia.
Turkish intelligence and cabinet officials have called into question ongoing political alliances, openly accusing the US military of treason for its role in the coup.
Erdogan has moved to reconcile relations with Russia and has distanced his ties with the European Union.
If Turkey downgrades its ties with NATO, the US would lose its strategic ally on the Southern flank of Russia and undermine its capacity to dominate Syria and Iraq.
Washington’s leverage in Turkey has been dramatically reduced with the decimation of the Gulenist power base in the civilian and military organizations.
Washington may have to rely on the anemic, unstable and servile Syriza – Tsipras regime in Greece to ‘anchor’ its policies in the region.
The failed coup means a major retreat for Washington in the region – and a possible advance for Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Russia.
There are two caveats to this proposition. After Erdogan ‘completes’ the purge of Gulenists’ and condemns Washington, will he be willing and able to pursue a new independent policy or will he simply tighten internal control and ‘renegotiate’ a NATO agreement?
Will Erdogan consolidate political control over the army or will the defeat of the Gulenists be a temporary outcome which will unleash new military factions which will destabilize the political regime?
Finally, Erdogan depends on Western finance and investment which is highly resistant to backing a regime critical of the US, the EU and NATO. If Erdogan faces economic pressures from the West can he turn elsewhere or will he, in the face of capitalist ‘realities’ retreat and submit?
Erdogan, temporarily may have defeated a US coup, but history teaches us that new military, political and economic interventions are on Washington’s agenda.
The famous (and misunderstood) aphorism of Karl von Clausewitz, the great German military theorist, that “war is a mere continuation of politics by other means” is meeting its absolute negation in some of the commentary that is starting to appear in the US in relation to the Syrian war.
What is really quite extraordinary about this article and many others like it is that whilst calling for bombing Syria it gives no coherent reason for doing it. The nearest it comes to is saying that the bombing would be “punishment” for the Syrian government’s alleged violation of the truce that was agreed in February by the US and Russia.
That wars should never be waged to exact “punishment” but only in self-defence or with the authorisation of the UN Security Council is mentioned nowhere in the article. Nor of course is there any recognition that waging war for such a reason is actually illegal. Nor does the article say what the US should do if it were the rebels as opposed to the Syrian government who were violating the truce. Is the US supposed in that case to bomb the rebels as well? I doubt there is a single human being on earth who thinks the authors of the article would support that.
More to the point however is that nowhere in the article is there any clear explanation of what the bombing is supposed to achieve. Its utter detachment from reality is shown by its fantastic suggestions that such bombing would force the Russians “to make Assad behave” and that the US should only bomb “the Syrian military’s airfields, bases and artillery positions where no Russian troops are present”.
That trying to force someone to force someone else to behave by bombing that other person is not a credible way to fight a war ought to be obvious. How do the authors suppose the American and European publics would react to a bombing campaign launched to achieve such a nebulous objective? Besides how do the authors know how the Russians would react?
What if “bombing Assad” does not “force” the Russians “to make Assad behave”? What if the Russians instead take steps to intercept the cruise missiles and drones which are carrying out the bombing – as it is fully within their technical competence to do, and as they are surely far more likely to do? What do the authors propose the US do in that case?
Do they propose the US escalate the bombing to overcome the Russian defences or do they say that in that case the bombing should be called off? What is to prevent the Russians from sending Russian military observers to all “the Syrian military’s airfields, bases and artillery positions” that the US is intending to bomb? Would the authors, following the line set out in their article, say that in that case the bombing should be called off? Or would they in fact be far more likely to say that in that case the US should bomb the Russian troops as well?
Reading articles like this it is impossible to avoid the feeling that for some people in the US bombing Syria has now become an overwhelming obsession and an end in itself, so much so that they no longer even bother to justify or explain it in any half-ways rational way, and that they are prepared to take the most appalling risks in order to do it.
In 2010, this column carried a piece written by the Venezuelan historian and writer Luis Britto Garcia, about the real intentions of Hillary Clinton and NATO, against the Russian Federation. Reading back over her messages released on Wikileaks, we can conclude that a vote for Clinton is a vote for the military-industrial complex and a world war.
The Princess of Darkness
Three years ago, Hillary Clinton was an ex-politician in retirement from the State Department. She didn’t create a lot of interest, she was rarely in the news. Six years ago, Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State of the United States of America, actively engaged in the illegal war against Libya, siding with terrorists on the west’s own lists of proscribed groups, rendering Libya a failed state crawling with terrorists, and today Islamic State. Islamic State, which grew up on Hillary Clinton’s watch. Hillary Clinton, the Princess of Darkness, masterminded the transformation of Libya from the African country with the highest human development index into the poorest on the continent, a prosperous country which descended into total chaos and a collapse of the res publica. Not a bad day’s work for a Secretary of State.
And then there was Syria, another country crawling with terrorists, some of them shipped over from Libya once the job was done. But behind the scenes something else far more sinister was brewing. Remember all the talk these days of the Baltic States and Poland and Romania, and a missile shield which is supposed to protect the USA and its allies from – Pluto was it? – but parked right along Russia’s western flank?
Well, let us re-read Britto Garcia’s work, six years on, and see what sort of person lies behind the character of Hillary Clinton, the candidate of the Democratic Party for President of the United States of America. Going back over history can help us put things into context, and it makes shocking reading, very worrying reading and a very telling warning sign over those who were thinking about voting for Hillary Clinton.
Secret NATO plans to destroy Russia
Among the Wikileaks documents released was a telegram including secret NATO plans for an attack against Russia. This is not speculation, it was printed by Britain’s The Guardian newspaper and included a massive NATO strike against Russia’s western flank dislocating nine military divisions from the United States of America, Poodle-in-Chief the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland. The attack was also to use German and Polish ports for a lightning naval attack to be staged by the USA and the UK.
One of the telegrams, claims Britto Garcia, was dated January 26, 2010, was signed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and states: “The United States believes strongly that this plan should not be discussed in public. They are classified as “the top secret level of NATO”. She adds: “Public discussion of contingency plans would undermine their military value, allowing them to expose NATO’s plans. This weakens all of our allies.”
The Queen of Liars
For those who today insinuate that Hillary Clinton is a serial liar, there is also evidence in the leaked documents that she, as head of the USA’s diplomacy, gave instructions to diplomats to lie in case of any leaks, suggesting evasive answers such as ” NATO does not discuss specific plans” and that “the plans of NATO, are not directed at any country”.
So NATO’s plans for the deployment of nine divisions are directed at what? The center of the Earth? Cloud cuckoo land?
Neither are we speaking about a single leaked telegram, we are speaking about many documents which at the time caused consternation among Russian diplomatic circles, then after the furore, Hillary Clinton disappeared. But the plans did not. The context of the plans was the defense of the Baltic States and the aim “to expand the plan that already exists for the defense of Poland”. And today we see the three Baltic States ratcheting up the anti-Russian hype daily, speak among NATO circles of an invasion of these states by Russia (groundless gossip and nothing more) and then this year a massive military exercise in Poland, coupled with plans to instal the nuclear defense shield in Poland and Romania, virtually controlling Russia’s air options along her western flank. This, after the failed attempt to seize Russia’s Crimean naval assets.
Once again, Britto Garcia’s work is not empty hearsay. It includes mention of a telegram dated October 2009 in which the United States’ ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, stated that both Hillary Clinton and President Obama expressed support for the development of the military plan against Russia.
“Daalder suggests to not to make it clear that Russia is a potential target, by the adoption of a “generic plan” for moving troops to the Baltic countries while not mentioning against whom these troops would be directed – in case of leak – not to cause or provoke constraints with Moscow”.
Conclusion: Clinton is the war candidate
The only conclusion we can draw is that Hillary Clinton represents the Establishment in the USA, staffed with people on both sides of the political divide, staffed by members of the lobbies which have long set their eyes on total hegemony and dominance of Russia’s huge resources. They have fooled themselves into thinking that Russia would buckle and collapse at the first hint of a serious threat of war from NATO.
This is the sort of pie-in-the-sky, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, incompetent, pig-headed, holier-than-thou approach one might expect from Hillary Clinton, who in so many years of public office, has achieved precisely what? The adoration of Israel and the Zionist Lobby, the destruction of Libya, the destruction of Syria, and when Russia solved the chemical weapons debacle after western-backed Syrian terrorists carried out false flag attacks and blamed them on Assad, Clinton said the Russian approach was, and I quote, “despicable”.
Hillary Clinton was out of her depth as Secretary of State. Imagine her as President and tool of the lobbies whose evil interests supercede any respect for the people of the United States of America and the citizens of the world. Hillary Clinton is a risk. Hillary Clinton is a wild card. Hillary Clinton is dangerous.
As for Russia, she stood against Hitler. She can stand against Hillary. A vote for Hillary is a vote for Hell on Earth.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is currently engaged in collective bargaining with Canada Post. Unlike in previous rounds, the contracts of both the Urban bargaining unit (covering about 42,000 workers) and the unit of some 8,000 Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers (RSMCs) are being negotiated simultaneously.
That’s not the only reason that this round of bargaining is unusual. This is a rare case of a public sector union not only trying to defend its past gains but also to change the nature of the work its members do. CUPW is backing a visionary plan to transform Canada Post called Delivering Community Power (DCP) and trying to win some of its elements at the bargaining table.
For its part, Canada Post management – led by CEO Deepak Chopra, who was reappointed to his position by Stephen Harper shortly before the last federal election and then refused the new Liberal government’s request to resign – is not proposing the status quo either.
Clash of Visions
The employer has proposed that all future regular employees in both bargaining units will have a defined contribution pension plan instead of joining Canada Post’s existing defined benefit pension plan. On top of weakening Urban workers’ vacation entitlements and health and safety training, Canada Post wants to shrink the number of full-time workers with open-ended contracts and increase the number of part-time and temporary staff. It also wants the right to close any or all of the close to 500 retail outlets it still runs. It wants to eliminate Appendix T of the Urban collective agreement, which deals with service expansion and innovation and provides for pilot projects. This is an attempt to kill discussion of the DCP plan.
These demands reflect management’s ongoing effort to make work at this federal crown corporation more like work in the private sector – above all, to make postal workers’ jobs less secure. They are consistent with a longer-term perspective of trying to privatize at least the most profitable part of the organization, parcel delivery (Canada Post has been profitable for 20 of the past 22 years, with first-quarter profits in 2016 amounting to $44-million – while letter mail volumes are shrinking, parcel deliveries rose 27 per cent between 2011 and 2015, thanks to online shopping).
CUPW is resisting the effort to roll back workers’ past gains. Its leaders have pledged to reject any “two-tier” proposals that would create worse jobs for future hires while not immediately affecting people currently working at Canada Post. As CUPW’s chief negotiators have written, “what about the next round of negotiations? … Once we open the door for two-tier pensions and benefits they will keep coming for more.” This stance is noteworthy because multi-tier arrangements – which deepen divisions between new (mostly younger) workers and existing workers – and other concessions by unions have become common.
Winnipeggers rally to support postal workers [photo: cupwwpg.ca].
The union is also fighting to improve members’ jobs and expand the services they deliver. One of its priority demands is pay equity for RSMCs, who are mostly women and make 28 per cent less than mostly-male Urban letter carriers. It has a set of proposals to improve health and safety at Canada Post (where disabling injury rates are higher than in any other segment of the portion of the workforce that is regulated by federal rather than provincial government rules). These include ergonomic studies on new equipment and work methods, stronger overtime limits and a return to allowing letter carriers to carry mail in one bundle rather than two.
CUPW proposes to expand services by extending hours at Canada Post’s retail outlets, restoring door-to-door delivery in the urban areas where it was cut under Harper (the employer’s plan to eliminate door-to-door has been frozen since the Liberals took office) and reintroducing postal banking.
In many other countries post offices offer banking services. Until 1968 Canada Post did too. One aspect of DCP – a multi-pronged plan backed by CUPW, the Leap Manifesto team and other organizations – is for Canada Post to again offer a selection of basic financial services through its over 6000 outlets. Postal banking would be particularly helpful for people living in rural areas and First Nations communities, few of which have bank branches, and for low-income people in cities, including the close to two million people per year who use payday lenders.
The aim of DCP is to make Canada Post “the hub for our Next Economy,” one that’s moving rapidly away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. In addition to postal banking, DCP’s wide-ranging proposals include replacing gas-burning Canada Post vehicles with electric vehicles, installing charging stations at Canada Post facilities to spur the use of electric vehicles in society, expanding door-to-door delivery, having postal workers help with community elder care, and making it possible for people to order fresh farm produce through the post office.
While DCP itself is not on the bargaining table, CUPW is pushing for postal banking and defending Appendix T, without which it would be harder to implement DCP.
Bigger Picture
What we have here is nothing less than a clash of visions for the public postal service. A strike or lockout in August seems increasingly likely.
What makes this set of negotiations even more important is that the federal government is now conducting a review of Canada Post. The report of the review task force could lead to major changes at the crown corporation. The strength of CUPW’s contracts will influence the impact of such changes and possibly their substance too.
If the outcome of this round is an employer victory, the ripple effect will be felt far beyond Canada Post. On the other hand, if postal workers are able to make gains or even just beat back demands for concessions, the expectations of other workers – steadily lowered by a decades-long employers’ offensive and the chorus of influential voices saying that working people shouldn’t hope for job security and good pensions – could be given a welcome boost. Success in achieving any element of the DCP plan could inspire activists in other unions to develop proposals for changing work in ways that both address climate change and improve society.
David Camfield teaches Labour Studies and Sociology at the University of Manitoba. This article first published on the CCPA website.
Since the first use of a nuclear weapon in Hiroshima 71 years ago today, on Aug. 6, 1945, the story of where the uranium for the bomb came from and the covert operation the U.S. employed to secure it has been little known.
That is until the publication next week in the United States of a new book, Spies in the Congo, by British researcher Susan Williams (Public Affairs Books, New York), which unveils for the first time the detailed story of the deep cover race between the Americans and the Nazis to get their hands on the deadliest metal on earth.
At the outset of World War II, when the U.S. launched the extraordinarily secret Manhattan Project, uranium from North America and most of the rest of the world was less than one percent enriched and considered inadequate to build the first atom bombs. But there was one mine in the world where, through a freak of nature, the ore contained up to an unheard of 75% enriched uranium: Shinkolobwe mine in the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo.
The link between Shinkolobwe and Hiroshima, where more than 200,000 people were killed, is still largely unknown in the West, in the Congo and even in Japan, among the few survivors still alive. Another ignored link is the disastrous health effect on Congolese miners who handled the uranium as virtual slaves of the Belgium mining giant Union Minière, owners of Shinkolobwe in the then Belgian Congo.
Though it turned out the Nazis had not got very far in their quest for the bomb (because of a lack of highly-enriched uranium), the Americans were unaware of that in 1939, and were fearful Hitler would get a nuclear weapon before they did. That would have almost certainly affected the outcome of the war. As early as that year, Albert Einstein wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt to advise him to keep the Nazis away from Shinkolowbe.
Williams’ meticulously-researched and masterfully written book tells the intricate tale of a special unit of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, that was set up to purchase and secretly remove all the uranium from Shinkolowbe that the U.S. could get its hands on.
The unit was headed in Washington by OSS Director William “Wild Bill” Donovan and Rud Boulton, head of the OSS’ Africa section. Donovan was obsessed with stopping the Nazis from getting the bomb and mistrustful of Britain’s role in the uranium operation. Britain on the other hand feared the U.S. was trying to take over its West African colonies. Williams tells us that Donovan trained his agents to not only target Nazism but colonialism as well.
The OSS agents used a number of covers, such as ornithologists, naturalists collecting live gorillas, silk importers, and posing as an executive for the Texaco oil company, such as agent Lanier Violett did. This became an issue after Texaco’s president, Torkild Rieber, was forced to resign in 1940 after being exposed as an oil smuggler to the Nazis. Williams also tells us that the American spies had difficulties operating in French Congo and other colonies under General Charles De Gaulle’s Free French control because the U.S. recognized the Vichy government until the Normandy invasion.
Williams’ real-life spy thriller focuses on a number of OSS agents involved in securing the uranium and stopping the Nazis from accessing the unique mine in Katanga province, a mission so secretive most of the agents involved thought they were preventing diamond smuggling. The few OSS agents who knew it was uranium that the US was after, didn’t know what the ore was for.
Once such agent, Wilbur ‘Dock’ Hogue, the protagonist of the story, only found out after August 6, 1945 why he had helped uncover Nazi smuggling routes from the Congo and helped spirit uranium out of the country. It was brought by train to Port-Francqui, then on barges down the Kasai to the Congo River to Leopoldville (Kinshasa), where it was reloaded on a train to the port of Matadi.
There the uranium was put on Pan American airplanes or on ships, both bound for New York, where it was unloaded and stored on the New York City borough of Staten Island. There the uranium remained until it was ready to be used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (The New York site under the Bayonne Bridge still registers radiation levels today high enough for the US government to order a clean-up.)
Williams also reveals that the U.S. mission was complicated by some Belgian officials in the Congo, as well as Union Minière, who cooperated at times with the Nazis to smuggle out some of the lethal ore. As Williams explains, after the Germans surrendered, the U.S. learned how far from a bomb the Nazis actually were, and after Japan was defeated, learned for the first time that Tokyo also had had a rudimentary nuclear weapons program.
After VE Day, Einstein tried to convince Truman to shut down the Manhattan Project. But it was too late. Though Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and three other senior American military commanders were opposed to using the bomb, Truman dropped it anyway, not to end the war and save lives, as most historians now agree, but to test the weapon and send a message to the world, and especially the Soviets, about America’s coming dominance.
“The Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” Eisenhower said.
Though OSS agent Hogue did not know what the uranium was for, he knew he was on a highly dangerous mission. Nazi agents three times tried to kill him, with a bomb, a knife and a gun. He survived the war only to succumb to stomach cancer at the age of 42. As Williams points out: “Risk factors for this disease include exposure to radiation, which explains why atomic bomb survivors in the Second World War were more likely than most people to get stomach cancer.”
Two other of Hogue’s OSS colleagues from the Congo mission also died at very young ages. But Williams’ concern also extends to the Congolese mine workers who handled the stuff for days on end and about which neither Belgium, Union Minière nor the Americans seemed to have the slightest concern.
“Astonishingly, hardly any attention has been paid to the Congolese, not one of whom was consulted about plans to make atomic bombs with Shinkolobwe’s uranium,” Williams writes. “What would have been their reaction, on a moral basis, to the building of such a destructive and terrible weapon with a mineral from their own land?”
“What would be their reaction today, if the disinformation, shadows and mirrors were swept aside and the full history was set out?,” she asks. “Nor were the Congolese informed about the terrible health and safety hazards to which they were exposed; they were simply used as workers, as if they had no rights as equal human beings. This was a process for which the US, the UK and Belgium bear a heavy responsibility.”
Joe Lauria is a freelance journalist who has been published extensively in some the top media outlets over the past 25 years.
The political chaos that dominated the scene in the Middle East is expressed among other ways by the violent rise of the Kurdish question. How can we analyse, in these new conditions, the scope of the claim of the Kurds (autonomy? independence? unity?)? And can we deduce from analysis that this claim must be supported by all democratic and progressive forces, in the region and in the world?
Debates on the subject entertain great confusion. The reason is, in my opinion, the rallying of most contemporary actors and observers around a non-historical vision of this issue as well as others. The right of peoples to self-determination was made into an absolute right, which one would like to be upheld for all people at all present and future times, and even past times.
This right is considered one of the most fundamental collective rights, which is often given greater prominence than other collective rights of social scope (the right to work, to education, to health, political participation etc.). Besides, the subjects of this absolute right are not defined in a precise manner; the subject of this right may then be any “community”, majority or minority within the boundaries of a state or a province; this community defining itself as “special” due to language or religion, for example; and claiming, rightly or wrongly, itself to be a victim of discrimination or oppression. My analyses and positions act as a counterpoint of this transhistorical vision of social issues and “rights” through which to social movements of the past and present express their demands. In particular I attribute paramount importance to the divide which separates the thriving of the modern capitalist world from past worlds.
The political organisation of those previous worlds has taken incredibly diverse forms, from the construction of power exercised over vast areas, thus qualified as “Empires” to that of smaller more or less centralised monarchies, not excluding the extreme fragmentation of powers barely exceeding the village horizon in certain circumstances. The review of this patchwork of political forms preceding capitalist modernity is obviously not the subject of this article. I will refer here to only a few of the regions imperial constructions: the Roman and Byzantine Empires, the Arab-Persian Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire.
The common qualification of these constructions – Empires – is more misleading than helpful, although they all share two characteristics: (i) they collect necessarily by their geographic scope, peoples and different communities by language, religion and modes of production and social life; (Ii) the logics that control the reproduction of social and economic life are not those of capitalism, but within what I called a family of tributary modes of production (commonly called “feudal”). For this reason I consider as absurd the assimilation of all these former Empires (those considered here for the region and others, such as China) on the one hand and on the other empires built by the major capitalist powers, whether they be the colonial empires like those of Britain and France or modern empires without formal colonies such as the Empire of the USA, to be a unique form called an Empire. Paul Kennedy’s well-known thesis on the “fall of empires”* belongs to the realm of such transhistoric speculative philosophies.
The Ottoman Empire around 1900
I return to the Empire that directly concerns our subject: the Ottoman Empire, built when Europe began its break with its past and entered into capitalist modernity. The Ottoman Empire was itself, pre-capitalist. Its qualification as a Turkish Empire is in itself inaccurate and misleading. Probably the wars of conquest of the Turkoman semi-nomadic tribes from Central Asia had been instrumental in the double destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the Caliphate of Baghdad, and the most part of the settlement of Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. But the power of the Sultan of the Empire extended well beyond the territories of Armenians, Kurds, Arabs, Greeks and Balkan Slavs. To qualify this Empire as multinational leads to an incorrect projection of a future reality onto the past, as Balkan and Arab (anti-Ottoman) nationalisms are in their modern form products of the penetration of capitalism into the Empire.
All the peoples of the Empire – Turks and others – were exploited and oppressed in the same way; in the sense that peasant majorities were all subject to the same principle of a heavy tax levy. They were all also oppressed by the same autocratic power. Certainly Christians were additionally subject to specific discriminations. But we should not see here forms of “national” oppression, not against Christian people, nor against non-Turkish Muslims (the Kurds and Arabs). The ruling class associated with the Sultans power had in its ranks civilian, military and religious notables from all parts of the empire, including the embryo of comprador bourgeoisies, in particular Greek and Armenian, produced by capitalist penetration.
The specific characters of the Ottoman system mentioned here are not unique to this Eastern Empire. One finds similar expressions in other ancient empires, as in the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Or even in the Ethiopia of Menelik and Haile Selassie. The King of Kings’ power was not associated with an Amhara domination; Amhara peasants were not treated better than the others; the ruling class was recruited from all regions of the Empire (it included for example a good number of native Eritreans!).
There has been nothing like it in modern imperialist systems. The colonial empires (of Great Britain and France) like the informal US Empire were built systematically on the basis of the sharp distinction between the people of the metropolis and those of the colonies and dependencies, which were denied the basic rights granted to the first. Therefore the struggle of peoples dominated by imperialist capitalism became a struggle for national liberation, necessarily anti-imperialist by nature. We must not confuse this modern nationalism that is anti-imperialist- and therefore progressive – with all other expressions of non anti-imperialist nationalist movements, whether it be nationalism inspired by the ruling classes of the imperialist nations or non anti-imperialist nationalist movements – such as those of the Balkan peoples to which I will return later. To assimilate the structures of ancient empires and those specific to the imperialist capitalist empires, to confuse them in a general pseudo-concept of “Empire” is counterpoint to the basic requirements of a scientific analysis of historical societies.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire withs its provinces, 1911
The emergence of ideologies of nationalism was subsequent to that. They were formed only in the nineteenth century, in the Balkans, Syria, among the Armenians, and later among the Rumelia Turks in reaction to others. There is not then the slightest hint of emergence of a Kurdish nationalism. The emergence of these nationalisms is closely associated with the new urbanisation and modernisation of administrations. The peasants themselves could continue to talk in their language, and ignore that of the Ottoman administration which appeared on the countryside only to collect taxes and to recruit soldiers. But in the new cities, and particularly in the new educated middle classes, mastery of a written language became a daily necessity. And it is from these new classes that the first generation of nationalists in the modern sense would be recruited. The rural character of the Kurdish populated areas, such as the Turkish Central Anatolia, explains the late formation of Turkish (Kemalist) nationalism and the even later formation of Kurdish nationalism.
A parallel with the Austro-Hungarian Empire will help to explain the nature of the process that will eventually destroy these two Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was formed before the emergence of European capitalism; but it was its closest neighbour, and some of its regions (Austria, Bohemia) were rebuilt on the new foundations of capitalism. The new national issue thus emerged here in the nineteenth century. We owe to the Austro-Marxists (Otto Bauer and others) a good analysis of this dimension of the socialist challenge, and policy proposals that I consider to have been the most progressive possible under the conditions of the time: safeguarding the benefits of the great State but accelerating its transformation by socialist (radical or even social-democratic) advances, creating an internationalism of peoples based on a rigorous policy of fair treatment for all, combined with a genuine policy of cultural autonomy. The sequence of events has not allowed the success of the project, for the benefit of a mediocre bourgeois nationalism.
Balkan and Syrian-Arab nationalisms, which appeared later in mediocre forms associated with peripheral capitalism in the regions, triumphed and helped remove the Ottoman Empire. But the weaknesses specific to these nationalisms have constrained their promoters to seek the support of outside powers – Great Britain and / or Russia in particular – against Ottoman rule. They paid the price: the new states created by them remained in the lap of the dominant imperialist powers, Britain and France for the Arabs, Britain and Germany for the Balkans.
In Armenia national renewal (since Armenia had experienced a beautiful independent civilization before being incorporated into the Ottoman Empire) was defeated by the 1915 genocide. It was a nationalism torn between that of the new Armenian emigrant bourgeoisie in the cities of Rumelia (Constantinople, Smyrna and others), who held positions of choice in the new business and financial world and that of the notables and peasants of Armenian lands. Incorporating a small part of these lands into the Russian Empire (the territory of the Soviet and independent Armenia) further complicated things because it could cause fear of manipulation from Saint Petersburg, especially during the First World War. The Ottoman authorities then chose the route of genocide. I note here that the Kurds behaved here as agents of the massacre and the main beneficiaries: they more than doubled the size of their territory by seizing the destroyed Armenian villages.
Modern Turkish nationalism is even more recent. It was formed first with those of relatively educated military backgrounds and the Ottoman administration of the cities of Rumelia (Constantinople, Smyrna, Thessaloniki) in response to Balkan and Syrian-Arab nationalisms, and found no real echo in Turkish (and Kurdish) peasants of Central and Eastern Anatolia. Its options, which would become those of Kemalism, are known: Europeanisation, hostility towards Ottomanism, affirmation of the Turkish character of the new state and its secularising style. I mean secularising and not secular because the new Turkish citizen is defined by his social belonging to Islam (the few Armenians who survived the massacre, the Greeks of Constantinople and Smyrna are not admitted); nevertheless the Islam in question is reduced to the status of public institution dominated and manipulated by the new government in Ankara.
The wars led by the Kemalists from 1919 to 1922 against the imperialist powers allowed the Turkish (and Kurdish) peasant masses of Anatolia to rally with the new Turkish nationalism. The Kurds were not distinguished from the Turks: they fought together in the Kemalist armed forces. Kemalist Turkish nationalism became anti-imperialist by force of circumstance. It understands that Ottomanism and the Caliphate did not protect the Empire’s peoples (Turks, Kurds and Arabs); on the contrary, they facilitated the penetration of Western imperialism and the reduction of the Empire to the status of capitalist peripheralized dominated region. Which neither Balkan nor Arab nationalism had understood at the time: they openly called for the support of the imperialist powers against the power of the Sublime Porte. Anti-imperialist Kemalist nationalism then gave the final blow to Ottomanism.
4
The anti-imperialist character of the original Kemalist system had nevertheless rapidly weakened. The original option in favour of a state capitalism with an independent self-centred vocation was losing momentum while a mode of dependent peripheral capitalist development was progressing. Turkey paid the price for the illusion of its bourgeois nationalism, of its original confusion. Kemalism thought it could build a Turkish capitalist nation in the image of those of advanced Europe; it did not understand that the realization of this project was doomed to failure, in Turkey and elsewhere in all regions of peripheral capitalism. Its hostility to socialism, compounded by the fear of the Soviet Union, led Ankara to seek support from the US: Turkey’s Kemalist generals – like Greece’s Colonels – immediately joined NATO, and became Washington’s client states. The acceleration of the process of development of peripheral capitalism was reflected in the emergence of a new capitalist agriculture in Anatolia, to the benefit of a class of rich peasants, and the establishment of subcontracting industries.
These social changes eroded the legitimacy of Kemalism. The multi-party elections starting from 1950, strongly suggested by Washington, strengthened the political power of the new peasant and comprador classes, issued from the traditional Anatolian countryside and stranger to the secularism of the Roumelian Kemalist political class. The emergence of Turkish political Islam and the electoral success of the AKP were the result. These developments have not favoured the democratisation of society, but on the contrary confirmed the aspirations of the dictatorship of President Erdogan and the resurgence of instrumentalised Ottomanism, like his ancestor, by the major imperialist powers, namely the USA today.
Simultaneously these developments are driving the emergence in Turkey of the Kurdish question. The urbanisation of Eastern Anatolia, the mass emigration of its ruined peasants towards the western cities fuelled the emergence of the new issue of Turkey’s Kurds, aware that they were not “Turks of the mountains” but distinguished by the use of another language for which they demanded official recognition. A solution of the issue by the favouring of a genuine cultural autonomy of Turkish Kurdistan would have been possible if the new ruling class itself had evolved in a democratic direction. But that was not the case, and is still not. The Kurds were then constrained, in these circumstances, to respond to the repression worsened by their claims with armed force. It is interesting to note here that the PKK behind this struggle lays claim to a radical socialist tradition as its name suggests (Kurdish Workers’ Party!), probably associated with recruitment of the new proletariat of Turkish towns. You would imagine that they chose a line of internationalist conduct, and attempts to associate the Kurdish and Turkish proletarians in the same fight for both socialism, democracy and the recognition of the binational state. They did not do that.
“Official” map of “Kurdistan”
5
Although the Kurdish peoples occupy a continuous territory (Eastern Anatolia, a thin strip along the Syrian border, northeast of Iraq, the western mountains of Iran), the Kurdish question was posed in Iran and Iraq in other words than it was in Turkey.
The Kurdish peoples – the Medes and the Parthians (who gave their name to the Euphrates River) of antiquity – shared neighbouring Indo-European languages with the Persians. It seems that, perhaps because of this, the coexistence of Kurds and Persians had not been a problem in the past. Again the Kurdish question emerged with the recent urbanisation in the region. Moreover Shiism, more official in Iran than ever, is also the source of discomfort suffered by the Sunni majority of Iranian Kurds.
Iraq, within the borders defined by the British Mandate, separated the Kurds in the north of the country from those of Anatolia. But again coexistence between Kurds and Arabs was continuing, thanks in part to the real internationalism of a relatively powerful Communist Party in the cities and in the multinational proletariat. The dictatorship of the Baath – characterised by Arab chauvinism – unfortunately set back the previously made progress.
The new Kurdish question is the product of the recent deployment of US strategy which has given itself the goal of destroying the State and society in Iraq and Syria, while waiting to attack Iran. The demagogy of Washington (unrelated to the invoked alleged democracy) gave the highest priority to the exercise of the “right of communities.” Discourses defending “human rights” that do the same and to which I referred in this article, are thus very relevant. The Iraqi central government was thus destroyed (by Gauleiter Bremer in the first year of the occupation of the country) and its attributes vested in four pseudo-states, two of them based on restricted and fanatic interpretations of Shiite and Sunni versions of Islam, the other two being on the alleged particularities of the “Kurdish tribes” of Iraq! The intervention of Gulf countries, supporting – behind the USA – the reactionary political Islam that gave the alleged Caliphate of Daesh contributed to the success of Washington’s’ project. It should be almost amusing to observe that the US supported the Iraqi Kurds in the name of “democracy”, but not those of Turkey, an important NATO ally. Double standards, as usual.
Are the two political parties exercising power over different parcels of Iraqi Kurdistan territory are “democratic”, or is one better than the other? It would be naive to believe this nonsense of the Washington propaganda. It is only a question of cliques of politicians/warlords (those who know how to enrich themselves in this way). Their alleged “nationalism” is not anti-imperialist; because being anti-imperialist is about fighting the US presence in Iraq, and not being part of it for personal gain.
I will not say more here about the US project of domination in the region, of which I already analysed the real objectives elsewhere.
The proposed analysis will perhaps better explain the nature of the (or those) Kurdish nationalisms at work today, the limits that it (or they) imposes by ignoring the requirements of the anti- imperialist fight in the region, radical social reforms that must accompany this struggle, as the requirements of the construction of the unity of all the peoples concerned (Kurds, Arabs, Iranians) against their common enemy: the US and its local allies (Islamists or others).
I speak of Kurdish nationalism in the plural. For indeed the objectives of (often armed) movements which act today in its name are not defined: a large independent pan-Kurdish state? Two, three, four or five Kurdish States? A dose of autonomy in the states as they are? Are there a few possible reasons for this accompanying fragmentation and blur? Yes, in my opinion. Arabs and Persians carried out a splendid renovation/modernisation of their respective languages in the nineteenth century, the Turks did so later in 1920-1930. The Kurds have not been placed in conditions that required them to do so! So there is not a Kurdish language, there are neighbouring languages but they are certainly distinct and probably not up to the requirements of the modern world. This weakness found its counterpart in linguistic assimilation by the elites, who adopted Persian, Arabic and Turkish, for better or for worse!
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In the wake of the controversy surrounding high profile police violence against Blacks and retaliation in recent weeks, we feature the following repeat broadcast, which originally aired December 4, 2015.
February 26, 2012. Sanford, Florida. Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17 year old African-American high school student was fatally shot in the gated community in which he lived, by an armed neighbourhood watch coordinator named George Zimmerman. Zimmerman had profiled and pursued Martin. On Saturday July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was found not guilty of Second Degree Murder and acquitted of the charge of manslaughter.
August 9, 2014. Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown, an unarmed 18 year old African-American was shot up to 8 times by white police officer Darren Wilson. Some witness testimony claimed Brown had his hands up in surrender (leading to the familiar protest slogan “Hands up! Don’t Shoot!”) Brown’s killer was cleared of all charges that he had violated Brown’s civil liberties.
November 22, 2014. Cleveland, Ohio. A twelve year old African-American Tamir Rice, armed with a non-functioning replica of a pistol, was shot to death by two police officers within seconds of them arriving on the scene. The officers did not administer First Aid immediately after Rice was shot, and he succumbed to his injuries the following day.
July 17, 2014. Staten Island, New York. A 43 year old father of six, Eric Garner, died after being placed in a choke hold by arresting officer Daniel Pantaleo. Video of the arrest showed Garner saying “I can’t breathe!” The Garner family received a $5.9 million settlement from the city of New York for damages related to his death which was ruled a homicide, yet a local grand jury declined to bring charges against the officer responsible.
November 15, 2015. Minneapolis, Minnesota. A 24 year old African-American man Jamar Clark was shot by two police officers. Eyewitnesses claimed Clark was restrained, unarmed and not resisting at the time he was shot. The incident inspired activists to set up a protest encampment outside the city’s fourth police precinct, which was removed by police on December 3rd.
These are just a few of the more spectacular incidents of African American deaths which have sparked outrage among anti-racist activists all across the United States. The pattern suggests a tendency among law enforcement to persecute Blacks more often than Caucasians. This perception was partially confirmed in March of 2015 when a Department of Justice report determined that the Ferguson Police Department routinely violated the constitutional rights of its Black residents.
Anti-racism demonstrations have flared up in recent weeks. The social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has served as the cyber-backdrop for a movement aimed at confronting a highly unequal racialized justice system,
How have these events come to pass in 21st Century America? This is the subject of this week’s Global Research News Hour program.
Following a rundown of the Global Research website’s more popular articles, we hear from Michelle Gross of the Minneapolis-based watchdog Communities United Against Police Brutality. She outlines some of the history of persecution of people of Colour in Minneapolis, the futility of relying on Grand Jury indictments, the involvement of White Supremicist groups in the city, and an interesting strategy proposed to restrain officers from further violations of the rights of vulnerable citizens.
Then we speak with outspoken essayist, columnist and editor of Pan African Newswire, Abayomi Azikiwe. He explores the history of Black repression by US Law enforcement more generally, the successes and failures of past Black Liberation movements, and what it will ultimately take to root out the blight of racist violence by State authorities.
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It’s official. Green Party delegates in Houston on Saturday nominated her as party standard bearer for president of the United States. She’s the real thing, the only true people’s candidate in the race for the nation’s highest office.
Money-controlled interests oppose her.
Clinton or Trump succeeding Obama assures more of the same, Hillary by far the worst of two unacceptable choices, the greatest threat to world peace if anointed America’s next president.
Jill humbly accepted her party’s nomination, saying “(t)his is what democracy looks like. This is what political revolution looks like.”
Her agenda reflects a nation and “world that works for all of us…that puts people, planet and peace over profit.”
The Green Party “stands up for the people” on all issues vital to everyone – endorsing peace over war, respect for fundamental human and civil rights, transition to green energy, social justice over neoliberal harshness, and governance serving everyone equitably.
Jill’s running mate Ajamu Baraka “brings a lifetime of dedication to racial and economic justice.” She called it “an honor” to run for president at a time of “unprecedented crisis and unstoppable momentum for transformational change…”
It won’t come from money-controlled “parties funded by predatory banks, war profiteers and fossil fuel giants.” Grassroots activism alone can change things.
Jill quoted abolitionist champion Frederick Douglas once saying “(p)ower concedes nothing without a demand. It never has. It never will.” We “must be that demand,” she stressed.
False claims about economic recovery and strength ignore a national “emergency,” including mass unemployment and underemployment, increasing poverty, homelessness, hunger and deprivation, a generation of debt-entrapped students, endless wars in multiple theaters at home and abroad, and national leaders caring only about their own self-interest.
“Meanwhile, the super-rich party on, richer than ever,” said Jill. “Twenty-two of these super-rich people have the wealth equivalent to half of the US population.”
“And the political elite that serve the economic elite are making things worse, inflicting austerity on everyday people while they squander trillions on wars, Wall Street bailouts, and tax favors for the wealthy.”
Government of, by and for everyone equitably and fairly is crucially needed at the most perilous time in world history.
Tell Trump “we don’t need no friggin wall. We just need to stop invading other countries,” said Jill. Both wings of America’s one-party state support dirty business as usual getting dirtier all the time.
“We can’t simultaneously fight terrorism with one hand, while we and our allies fund terrorism, train terrorists and arm terrorists with the other,” Jill stressed.
“The only ones benefitting from this catastrophic policy are the war profiteers themselves, who are calling the shots in foreign policy by funding the establishment parties and their politicians.”
“US foreign policy has become fundamentally a marketing strategy for the weapons industry. We started the terrorist threat. Now it’s time to shut it down. That is what our campaign alone will do.”
“Hillary Clinton is the problem…not the solution to Donald Trump. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
In November, vote Green, the only acceptable choice.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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.
“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles . . .
The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” — The Olympic Charter’s first two of seven Fundamental Principles of Olympism. (https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/olympic_charter_en.pdf)
Two days prior to the start of the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach called for a minute of silence — for the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches killed by Palestinian terrorists/freedom fighters at the 1972 Munich Olympics — during the inauguration of a “place of mourning” in the athletes village in Rio de Janeiro.
While it is commendable to mourn those who are in any way unjustly killed, Bach’s noble sentiment was to say the least hypocritical for several reasons. There was for instance no mention of, or moment of silence for the thousands of innocent Palestinians killed during Apartheid Israeli assaults including recent and current extrajudicial murders with impunity by the Israeli Defence Force and equally murderous settlers.
Double standards? During South Africa’s Apartheid era, the IOC in 1964 barred South Africa from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo over its refusal to condemn apartheid. The IOC’s decision was announced the in Lausanne, Switzerland, after South Africa failed to meet an ultimatum to comply with its demands by 16 August. Coincidentally, later that year in October South Africa was also suspended indefinitely by FIFA, football’s international governing body. So far, however, both these overtly august but covertly corrupt bodies have failed to either condemn or take action against Israel whose version of Apartheid brutality has repeatedly exceeded that of Apartheid South Africa’s worst massacre — when police opened fire on the crowd in 1960, killing 69 people in the township of Sharpeville — as opposed to Israel’s recent Operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge which alone slaughtered over 3,600 mostly innocent Palestinian civilians with tens of thousands of others injured.
Both the IOC (founded on June 23, 1894 in Paris) and FIFA (founded May 21, 1904 in Paris) were also around during the 1948 Palestinian exodus otherwise known as the Nabka when thousands of Palestinians were murdered with some 750,00 deliberately terrorised into fleeing from their homes and to be subsequently denied “the right of return” which Israel’s racial discrimination automatically grants to all Jews even though most of them have no genetic or other connection whatsoever to Palestine
The IOC’s current hypocrisy in Brazil is merely a repeat of 2014 World Cup when Israel — despite its well documented racism — was allowed to compete in the competition at a time when both the Brazilian government and FIFA had launched separate anti-racism campaigns. How could they have possibly missed such readily available evidence on Youtube.
The discrepancy between how the world has viewed Apartheid in Israel and South Africa has been due mainly to the fact that the Afrikaners, unlike the Israelis, had not been the victims of a horrendous holocaust; their past suffering was not of a sufficient scale to have accumulated either the amount or kind of international sympathy that would condone continued human rights violations; they did not have a dedicated worldwide network of lobbyists who could diffuse, suppress or influence negative public opinion; and last but not least, unlike the Israelis, they lacked the benefit of having at their disposal the support of the U.S whose influence or power of veto within international organisations have always been supportive of Israel.
While lobby and pressure groups can play a legitimate role in bringing about changes that are a benefit to society, they should not be allowed to erode and undermine any of the rights inherent to all human beings irrespective of nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled without discrimination to our human rights which are are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.The principle of universality of human rights became the cornerstone of international human rights law. The principle was first emphasised in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948 — the year of the Nabka — and has since been reiterated in numerous international human rights conventions, declarations, and resolutions with the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights noting that it was the duty of States to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems.
The Apartheid nation of Israel should recognise that such principles are present in all the major human rights treaties and provide the central theme of some of international human rights conventions with the principle of non-discrimination being complemented by the principle of equality, as stated in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Hypocritical Israelis who demand so much for themselves should perhaps pause and just for a moment unselfishly consider the following:
“The true civilisation is where every man gives to every other man every right he claims for himself.” — Robert G. Ingersoll
International organisations such as the IOC and FIFA are equally bound by human rights obligations which include making those who violate such rights accountable for their contemptible actions through bans and boycotts — as in the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign — which along with free speech are non-negotiable basic civil rights that pro-Israel Jewish lobby groups are trying to silence and criminalise. Jews should carefully consider the words of Yehoshafat Harkabi — Chief of Israeli Military Intelligence (1955-9) and subsequently a professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — who in his book Israel’s Fateful Hour, called for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories and warned as follows:
“We Israelis must be careful lest we become not a source of pride for Jews but a distressing burden. Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world. In the struggle against anti-Semitism, the frontline begins in Israel.”
William Hanna is a freelance writer with published books the Hiramic Brotherhood of the Third Temple and The Tragedy of Palestine and its Children. Purchase information, sample chapter, other articles, and contact details at:
Human Rights Watch stated during today’s UN Security Council meeting on Children and Armed Conflict: “Unlawful air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition have killed and maimed hundreds of children in Yemen and damaged dozens of schools, but the coalition strong-armed the Secretary-General in an attempt to escape scrutiny. The coalition should be returned to the Secretary-General’s list of shame until it stops its indiscriminate bombardment of Yemen’s civilians.”
Among the most incriminating disclosures at a press briefing held by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International at the United Nations on June 29th is the information that the US and UK have been active participants in this mass slaughter of civilians in Yemen, by providing intelligence to Saudi Arabia which has led to 3,000 civilian deaths in Yemen from Saudi air strikes. The US and UK are legally responsible for these war crimes, which can only be described as deliberate. According to Philippe Bolopion of Human Rights Watch, the Pentagon has been providing targeting assistance to the “coalition forces” led by Saudi Arabia, and a letter sent by Human Rights Watch to US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter more than one year ago, demanding cessation of this complicity has received no reply one year later. Human Rights Watch Deputy-Director Bolopian described Yemen as “one of the most hellish places on earth for children.”
In a call to suspend Saudi Arabia from the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International stated that Saudi Arabia has cynically manipulated its membership in the Human Rights Council to shield itself from accountability:
“As a member of the Human Rights Council Saudi Arabia is required to uphold the highest standards of human rights. In reality, it has led a military coalition which has carried out unlawful and deadly airstrikes on markets, hospitals and schools in Yemen. The coalition has also repeatedly used internationally banned weapons in civilian areas. At home it has carried out hundreds of executions, put children on death row after grossly unfair trials, and ruthlessly repressed opposition and human rights activists….In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has evaded accountability by pressuring the UN to remove the military coalition it leads in Yemen from a list of states and armed groups that violate childrens rights in armed conflict. Saudi Arabia threatened to disengage from the UN, withdraw its financial support including humanitarian projects, and to take its close allies with it. Key allies of Saudi Arabia, including the USA and UK, have failed to halt transfers of arms for use in Yemen despite mounting evidence of war crimes.”
In a howl of protest against what the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General described as overwhelming pressure, the UN Secretary-General exposed what has been the toxic modus operandi of the United Nations since the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 678 in 1990, authorizing the military action against Iraq which “destroyed the infrastructure necessary to support human life in Iraq,” as attested to by Marti Ahtissari in his report on the consequences of that 1991 US UK coalition’s relentless bombing of Iraq throughout the winter of 1991.
Ban Ki-moon’s highest level disclosure of the threats and blackmail to which he was subjected after issuing a report denouncing coalition attacks (the ‘list of shame’) massacring children in schools and patients and doctors in hospitals reveals the way “business as usual” is too often conducted, at all levels at the United Nations, leading to the discrediting of the legitimacy of the United Nations. Ban Ki-moon denounced as “unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure.”
At a press encounter on June 9th, the Secretary-General, after submitting to “bullying” by Saudi-Arabia, and removing their name from the “list of shame” stated:
“There has been fierce reaction to my decision to temporarily remove the Saudi-led Coalition countries from the report’s annex. This was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make. The report describes horrors no child should have to face. At the same time, I also had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would de-fund many UN programmes. Children already at risk in Palestine, South sudan, Syria, Yemen and so many other places would fall further into despair. It is unacceptable for Member States to exert undue pressure. Scrutiny is a natural and necessary part of the work of the United Nations.”
Although the coalition has been accused of “indiscriminate” bombing of non-military and civilian targets in Yemen, the involvement of the Pentagon in providing targeting assistance leads to a more sinister interpretation of possibly deliberate “coalition” action, substantiating allegations of war crimes.
In his final months in office, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon may have rendered a great service to the UN, exposing the process which is betraying the original purpose of the UN, desecrating and transforming the UN into an instrument of war.
Twenty-five years ago, during the inexorable drumbeat of the UN Security Council leading to the “coalition” attack which devastated Iraq, and began the transformation of that country into an incubator of terrorism, I asked the Ambassador of a non-permanent member of the Security Council, representative of a country adamantly opposed to military action against Iraq, whether he had been subjected to pressure to change his position by the then Soviet Union. He replied: “Never.” I then asked him whether he had been subjected to pressure by the US, and he replied: “Constantly.” When I asked whether I could quote him, he replied: “If you do, I will never speak to you again.” Ultimately, the then US Secretary of State James Baker wrung the arm of the Ambassador’s Foreign Minister, and the country reversed its position, and supported the “War Resolution, 678” in violation of its own principles. Perhaps if that Ambassador had agreed to expose this pressure to which his country was being subjected, the ensuing perversion of the United Nations could have been prevented, and the devastation of Iraq, with its deadly and tragic consequences could have been avoided.
Ban Ki-moon’s howl of protest against the “undue pressure” to which he has been subjected, compelling him to act against his own conscience, may have proved his most important service to the United Nations, as he affirmed that “Scrutiny if a natural and necessary part of the work of the United Nations.”
After two terms in office, and almost a decade at the job, this may become his parting gift to the organization he must lead, and his legacy.
This year, it resembles militarization seen in war zones with tens of thousands of soldiers, police and other security operatives infesting Rio, the site of the games – hosted by an illegitimate US-supported coup d’etat regime.
Mass street protests rocked opening night, continued on Saturday, perhaps remaining unrelenting through the August 21 closing ceremony – media downplaying or ignoring them.
Among the NYT’s top commented on reports and commentaries, nothing on Rio rage, nothing on the coup d’etat regime hosting this year’s games, nothing on billions of dollars spent while imposing crushing neoliberal harshness on Brazil’s poor and disadvantaged at a time of the country’s most dire economic conditions in half a century.
Instead, The Times featured America’s men and women basketball teams housed on a luxury liner. The Washington Post covered athletic contests alone. Wall Street Journal reports were similar.
Mass outrage in Rio’s streets, demanding its coup d’etat regime resign, were ignored. One sign displayed reflects overwhelming public sentiment, saying “FORA TEMER (out Temer, the illegitimate interim president).”
Telesur said Washington sent over 1,000 intelligence operatives (spies) to Rio – citing NBC News quoting National Intelligence director James Clapper’s spokesman, Richard Kolko, saying “US intelligence agencies are working closely with (their) Brazilian (counterparts) to support their efforts to identify and disrupt potential threats to the Olympic Games in Rio.”
Hundreds of other US security personnel were sent, together with Brazilian operatives turning Rio into an armed camp, an inhospitable venue for sport, tourism or anything else, especially for city residents.
As a young boy in the 1940s when my dad took me to Red Sox games, the only police around Boston’s Fenway Park were traffic cops – perhaps things much different today and for Chicago sporting events where I now live. I haven’t been to one since I took my own children to see the Cubs and White Sox many years ago.
Obama devoted his weekly address to the Rio Games, suppressing what most needed highlighting – instead featuring meaningless comments like “we’re ready to root on Team USA,” claiming it “reminds the world why America always sets the gold standard.”
His remarks make painful listening – demagoguery substituting for straight talk.
Talented young athletes represent the best in sport. Olympism disgracefully exploits them for huge profits.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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.
Theories and speculations about the failed military coup in Turkey abound, ranging from a botched CIA coup; to one inspired by Erdogan’s arch-enemy, the self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, now living in Pennsylvania, USA; to a combination of both, CIA-Gulen; to a purposely failed auto-coup by Erdogan and his close military allies – and possibly many more, or combinations of different conspiracies. – The old question Cui Bono is in order.
As of now, Erdogan looks like the big winner. He has regained popular support, was able to accuse his ultra-rich preacher enemy, Gulen, as well as Washington as the coup instigators, and he can pursue his new alliance with Russia and renewed friendship with Bashar al-Assad.
Is it so simple? By looking closer, a failed CIA-Mossad-MI6 coup is perhaps the most realistic scenario.
It appears that Russia played a crucial role in having the audacious and ill-prepared coup fall apart.
Washington and its European-NATO allies are becoming ever bolder in their pursuit of attaining world dominance. The arrogance of being untouchable does not pay well with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Flash-back to the downing of the Russian Sukhoi Su-24M fighter jet near the Syria–Turkey border on 24 November 2015. It was pursued by two US-made Turkish Air Force F-16 fighters that took off from the Turkish Incirlik Air Base, also used by the US and Royal Air Forces, where the US has stationed about 5,000 servicemen, in addition to uncountable fighter jets and war helicopters.
Were the pilots acting (indirectly) on behalf of US intelligence? [with a view to creating divisions between Russia and Turkey, GR Ed] One of them shot the Russian plane down. The pilot died.
The CIA had dozens of their agents infiltrated into the Turkish Air Force. How did the Pentagon think the Russians were not aware of this? The Federal Security Service (FSS) of the Russian Federation, KGB’s successor, informed the Kremlin. Putin knew who was behind the crime, when he cut all ties with Turkey. But he wanted Erdogan to react.
Putin knew Erdogan was vulnerable. He had lost the trust of Washington and was hated by the Europeans for his megalomania, his aspirations of becoming the new Ottoman ruler.
But Washington needed Incirlik and Turkey as NATO’s most strategic base in the region – just between Europe and Asia. The Americans were afraid that Erdogan might move into Russia’s camp as his hope for a future in Europe had vanished, and he increasingly realized that he was a mere peon for Washington – facilitating, funding and arming ISIS-Daesh, aka NATO’s ground troops, by keeping the border to Syria open, so ISIS could slip in and out, selling their oil stolen from Iraq, Syria and the Kurds, to such illustrious clients like Israel.
By playing along with the story that the SU-24M was shot down by orders of Erdogan, Russia severed all relations with Turkey – diplomatic and commercial. The latter were significant for the Turkish economy, particularly exports of agricultural goods (annually about US$ 1 billion), Turkish construction contracts in Russia (US$4.5 – 5 billion) and Russian tourism in Turkey (US$ 3.5 billion). Total annual losses for Turkey were estimated in excess of US$ 10 billion.
In addition, Turkey relies on Russia for 55% of its annual natural gas requirements. Russia has also suspended work on the TurkStream pipeline that was to bring Russian gas to the Black Sea for delivery to Turkey and Europe.
Erdogan had a lot to lose by playing patsy for the US-EU-NATO, helping them destroying the Middle-East and turning a “former friend”, Mr. Assad, into his arch-enemy. The calculation was not complicated. And Washington knew it. So – Erdogan had to go, in one way or another. Once more, ‘Regime Change’ was on the agenda. A coup was planned for mid-August 2016. The Pentagon-NATO-CIA had already made numerous ‘friends’ in the ranks of the Turkish military, police and judiciary system. Erdogan of course knew that there were traitors within his presumed supporters. He just needed a reason to purge them.
At the latest, when Mr. Erdogan called Mr. Putin to apologize for the downed Russian jet and subsequently went to Moscow to talk with the Russian leader in person, did he learned who was really behind the downing of the plane last November? He now had a confirmation for who his unreliable ‘friends’ are in Washington.
He hastened to solidify his new relationship with Russia (and Syria?), and Putin canceled all ‘sanctions’ against Turkey. Erdogan is scheduled to meet Putin in Saint Petersburg on August 9.
These were dangerous signs for the Washington-NATO alliance. The CIA-Mossad-MI6 coup had to be quickly brought forward, lest western armed forces may lose Incirlik – god forbid – to Russia! And that after ‘losing’ Crimea, the Russian Black Sea port, and Jumbo Prize for putting Ukraine under Nazi rule. The emerging Middle-East / Central Europe scenario did not look good.
Shortly before the quickly and poorly prepared coup was launched on 15 July, Putin informed Erdogan of the western plans. He sent a special emissary via a complex supposedly disguising detour route from Moscow to Ankara. The envoy handed Erdogan a long list of allegedly high ranking suspects in the Turkish Administration.
As soon as the rebellion to overthrow Erdogan began, he immediately mobilized the Turkish people to take to the streets in his defense. Strangely and paradoxically to do so he had the help of a CNN-Turk reporter who broadcast Erdogan’s call for support via her smart-phone over the social media. The public Turk TRT broadcasting station was in the hands of rebel soldiers. As Erdogan fled Ankara in a helicopter, two F-16 fighters took off in his pursuit – from NATO controlled Incirlik – of all places! But to no avail. The war jets did not fire a single shot onto Erdogan’s helicopter. The verdict must have been already clear at that time.
There are many controversies and contradiction in this strange ‘coup story’ – a story that defies all logic, especially knowing that the most perfected and most practiced coup-plotters are behind it – the alliance of lies, deception and assassinations, CIA-Mossad-MI6. Most likely their arrogance prevented them from contemplating that there may be an ace chess-player out there who can outsmart them all.
Erdogan did not hesitate to blame Washington for the failed putsch – which thanks to Vladimir Putin’s timely warning and the angry people in the streets hilariously climbing on to circulating tanks, was crushed and Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged as the new popular leader of Turkey.
For how long remains to be seen. The British Independent quotes the Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, reporting that 265 people died in the failed coup, including about ‘100 plotters’.
Let’s face it, Erdogan is no saint. His trustworthiness has a shabby record. It’s like a straw in the wind. He did not lose any time to use this occasion to arrest his enemies and suspects – so far about 70,000 and counting – military, police, judges, medical doctors, professors, teachers – and reintroducing the death penalty. He knows these drastic and tyrannical measures will distance him even further from the EU, but he doesn’t care. He knows first-hand how corrupt and deceptively the EU is dealing with her own people, let alone the people in the MENA Region (Middle East and North Africa).
While President Putin immediately called Mr. Erdogan wishing him well and congratulating him for the crushed coup, US Secretary Kerry flew to an emergency breakfast meeting in Brussels to confer with EU and NATO leaders (sic) to ‘discuss a unified stance on the crisis in Turkey.’
The French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, questioned whether Turkey could remain a reliable ally and suggested that European backing of Erdogan against the ‘putschists’ was not “a blank check”. Of course, they all knew better: The new Turkey-Russia alliance could be the death knell for US-NATO’s self-declared and presstitute-propagated supremacy in the region. Kerry went even further openly questioning whether to consider expulsing Turkey from NATO.
This sounded about as fake as when German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble threatens Greece to be excluded from the EU / Euro, if they don’t behave and pay up. These liars know it is sheer propaganda of treachery for the people at large to swallow such statements in awe, while the masters also know that Greece and Turkey are crucial for their wars and plans of global domination, since they are both strategically important NATO countries – absolutely to be prevented from drifting east.
This botched coup is BIG; much bigger than the mainstream media are making the west believe. It could definitely and irreversibly tilt the balance of power in the MENA Region, perhaps give rise to a new world paradigm, as the new and crucial Russia-Turkey alliance solidifies, Turkey may be accepted into the wider circle of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Turkey is geographically situated at one of the most strategically important cross-roads between East and West, thereby making her a geopolitical kingpin.
Turkey moving East might ruin the West’s game plan. We can only hope for that to happen. However, the masters and economic elites behind Washington, have no tendency of letting go after losing a battle. Defeat must be total. Theirs or that of the rest of the world. It’s all or nothing.
There is more at stake than just Erdogan and Turkey’s survival as a western ally, much more. It would be way presumptuous to rest on the laurels of winning a battle against the West. There may be more in store for Turkey.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, Chinese 4th Media, TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Interview with Theotonio Dos Santos, Brazilian social scientist and one of the most influential intellectuals of Latin America.
At 79, Theotonio Dos Santos can affirm that he has lived through the greatest political processes in the region: he was exiled in Chile after the 1964 coup in Brazil and his new destination in Mexico in 1973 until he came back to his homeland, Brazil, with the return of democracy, in 1985.
He is one of the pillars of the Dependency Theory and the term “World-systems”. Now, on his trip to Buenos Aires, where he was invited by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), which he co-founded, he explains the reasons why Dilma Rousseff’s government is agonizing and, parallelly, the region is experiencing a return to neoliberalism, even though it seemed to be in the past history of the continent.
“I see the situation in Latin America as part of a broader offensive at a worldwide level”, he says at the offices of CLACSO, where the determinant element is the loss of economic and political control by the hegemonic center of the world-system, the US.
How is this offensive manifested?
There is a very desperate strategy to regain power and, even though it didn’t come out as expected, it had quite destructive local effects. For example in the Middle East, where there is a deep crisis and Russia, that began to cooperate, ended up being labeled again as “Europe’s great enemy”.
Does this new confrontation start in Syria?
They see Russia as a threat, mostly because of its alliance with China, which once again puts us in a state of worldwide dispute. So far, they have only managed to create really difficult situations in the old Soviet world, but the US has no control over the situation.
So, the attack against Dilma’s government could be explained by her government’s rapprochement with the BRICS?
All that’s not under US control is regarded as a threat and the BRICS are a strategic threat to the US. In a way, they are right, because the BRICS have taken up a place that used to belong to the US. Regarding Latin America, their main concern is oil and Venezuela, which has the biggest reserves of the world. And, also, Brazil —after the discovery of the Pre-Salt—, which dedicates part of its income to health, education, science and technology.
Dilma’s government was terminated, boycotted, and the Congress was filled with disgraceful officials
That isn’t difficult to do (laughs).
The question is, why wasn’t the Workers’ Party able to stop the impeachment?
The Workers’ Party has always played the negotiation card and one of the consequences of this policy was diminishing the intensity of social and political mobilization.
That was their biggest mistake?
Every time I spoke with Lula about this I told him there had to be a united left, regardless of all the negotiations, because they needed a strong backing to support the negotiation. If you limit yourself, the result is that you start depending on negotiation more and more. Lula had a high ability to negotiate and there was a great expectation that the Workers’ Party and the PSDB would alternate in the presidential power. That was the proposal of (former President) Fernando Henrique Cardozo after he left the Dependency Theory. But there were many unnecessary concessions, and very negative too. Because a country can’t afford to sponsor the creation and strengthening of a financial minority that profits from unproductive activity and speculation.
But the Workers’ Party never attacked those financial groups.
On the contrary, Lula’s President of the Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles, is now the Minister of Economy (in Temer’s administration) and in the past he had been with Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He is a pawn of International Banking. This helped consolidate Lula’s relationship with the financial system, but the result is catastrophic.
What happened then? Did Dilma have a different capacity to negotiate?
There are some elements to be taken into account: First, the decrease in the price of oil due to the increase of US production via fracking, which had a great impact but only for a limited period of time. Around Dilma a group began criticizing the attempts of the PT to try to confront this negative situation and affirmed that an adjustment was necessary. All of this was during a very dangerous crisis and during a period of rising inflation, which used to be almost non existent (around 4 per cent), but then increased in addition to the increment of the interest rate.
This was on January 2014, when Dilma started her second term.
She had begun to accept the idea of rising the rate in 2013, forced by the Central Bank. She was paving the way to hold growth back, so as to paralyze inflation. On the other hand, there’s something that I have been discussing for many years with many schools of bourgeois economic thought: the idea that inflation is the result of an economic excess that can only be held back through a raise in interest rates.
The classic old monetarist formula
The dramatic result was that inflation increased. What conclusion do you draw? Both the theory and its application are wrong… but no, they claim that the interest rate grew very little. The climate was prepared for this situation and we were already at a 14% interest rate, and a declining growth.
What should we expect for the future? Will Dilma come back or not?
The common sentiment is that there will be conditions for her to come back because the campaign has been strong, but the interim government has done some terrible and paradoxical things: A union leader that supports such an anti-unionist and anti-workers’ government has to pay a cost, not only in elections, but in his own class as well. Union leaders, even the ones that supported the right and the impeachment, are backing out to avoid being associated to an increase in the retirement age or other similar measures. The proposition to raise weekly working hours and to directly modify the minimum wage, which Lula had increased by almost 200%, is very violent. This has had major effects in people’s lives. If you start to believe that you can make all of these changes in an exceptional regime, imagine what you could do if you were in fact effectively in power. This is creating a very complex situation that has not resulted in a new wave of support in favour of Dilma but I have been told by the PT that they have chances of coming back —the line is very thin, they only need six more Senators’ votes. Of course, every Senator is different and Dilma is not easy. She will hardly negotiate in terms of selling/buying votes, she comes from a revolutionary movement and she is faithful to that, even though, at the same time she knows that sometimes these things are necessary.
But she doesn’t like it.
No, she doesn’t, that’s the thing.
It seems as though Brazil is resigning a historical destiny of leadership that Itamaraty (the Ministry of External Relations) thought had been fulfilled after the country entered the BRICS.
It has been 200 years of struggle for the independence of Latin America. Pro-Hispanics and pro-Portuguese have struggled for years to remain in power when Spain and Portugal were only instruments of England’s power. These men thought that their ability to survive as a dominant class depended on that historical alliance. They believe that the US the greatest power and they don’t know how to handle the possibilities that China opens as a worldwide buyer. That’s very serious because the Chinese negotiate in a collective manner, in great projects, and therefore, they negotiate state to state. Businessmen are taken into account but only as auxiliaries for State planning. Our bourgeoisie doesn’t believe that. These people are the anti-independence of Latin America.
How do you see the future of the region? Because Mauricio Macri’s triumph has certainly accelerated the coup in Brazil and the onslaught against Venezuela
It seems as though this is a very favourable phase for them. But when the time comes that an effective resistance finally emerges, I highly doubt their ability to control the situation. Because they stand on top of a world created by mass media, which denies reality, and create psychological realities with specialized people who know exactly how to communicate that to the masses.
It’s absurd to believe in managing the world as if neoliberalism was the only source of economic growth and development. There are no economic sectors that are not lead by State’s investment nor any processes that are not related to the transference of State resources. This leads us to a false idea, that the left also needs to learn, which is that you need to cut down State expenses to transfer them to a minority that is basically in the financial sector. In Brazil, we pay 40% more in public expenses due to a debt explicitly created for macroeconomic reasons.
This scenario implies that at a given point there could be massive uprisings. Could this create situations similar to the ones in the Middle East?
Ultimately, it might, but I believe that the US doesn’t want this because the cost might be too high in this situation in which they are deploying their troops to do something that sounds incredible, but they say it explicitly: to surround China. In Middle East, the results have been devastating. The strategy might have been the “creative chaos”. If that is the case, they have already achieved it.
Washington has sent more than 1,000 intelligence agents to Rio in an effort to protect the 2016 Olympic Games, NBC News reports after reviewing a classified intelligence report on U.S. security efforts.
According to the report, the spies are already on the ground in Rio de Janeiro as part of a “highly classified” mission that includes a total of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that are working in coordination with Brazilian authorities.
“U.S. intelligence agencies are working closely with Brazilian intelligence officials to support their efforts to identify and disrupt potential threats to the Olympic Games in Rio,” Richard Kolko, a spokesman for National Intelligence Director James Clapper, told NBC News.
The U.S. also has hundreds of analysts, law enforcement and special operations on the ground to assist the 85,000 soldiers, police and other security forces Brazil deployed across Rio for the event. Security has been a major concern during these Summer Olympic Games, especially since the Olympic venue is an often chaotic and violent mega-city of 12 million people.
Last month, the FBI said it arrested 11 Brazilians who investigators say were sympathetic to the Islamic State group, a terrorist organization that would be attracted to the possibility of carrying out an attack on the Olympics while the world’s attention is fixed on the games.
A video of the service of process (see embedded video below) shows Shawn Lucas saying he was “excited” and “thrilled” to be the process server on this lawsuit, later in the video equating it to his “birthday and Christmas” rolled into one. A month later, Lucas was found dead on his bathroom floor. A cause has yet to be announced.
I will not say more here about the US project of domination in the region, of which I already analysed the real objectives elsewhere.
