Global Research

If you asked a typical American about conspiracy theories, he or she probably wouldn’t have any trouble rattling off an extensive list of theories ranging from the Kennedy assassination to 9/11. But if there’s one potential conspiracy that most Americans are totally unaware of, it’s the supposed CIA plot to kill UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld.

Dag had been the Secretary General for eight years, but died in an accidental plane crash in 1961, while en route to a cease-fire negotiation in the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia. But, over the years, there have been multiple claims that the plane was shot down, and that he was actually killed in an assassination plot that involved some combination of the CIA, a Belgian Mining Company, a South African paramilitary unit, and British intelligence. Why? Because he was pushing for Congo’s independence, which would have hurt the interests of any of those forces.

Adding fuel to the theories, was a copy of a secret government document that surfaced in South Africa 18 years ago, which suggested that the CIA, MI5, and the South African government were in on Dag’s death. They presented statements from CIA director Allen Dulles, saying that “Dag is becoming troublesome … and should be removed.” Unfortunately the original documents couldn’t be found, so there was no way to verify the copies.

But last year the South African government claimed to have found the original document, which has led the UN to reopen their investigation into Hammarskjöld’s death. The CIA has, of course, dismissed these claims as “absurd and without foundation.”

On Monday, the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced the final development phase of the upgraded airborne nuclear bomb B61-12 prior to production, the first version of which is to be completed by 2020; earlier reports suggested that 20 of these modernized bombs are destined for Europe as a possible deterrent against Russia.

Amnesty International strongly condemned tomorrow’s referendum regarding Thailand’s new charter aimed at moving the nation forward after over a decade of political chaos and now two military coups, the most recent having been in 2014.

Thailand’s The Nation would report in an article titled, “Amnesty International questions reliability of referendum,” would claim:

The Amnesty International has questioned the reliability of the Sunday referendum, pointing out it will be held under “chilling climate” when the people cannot speak their minds freely.

In its press statement issued Friday, the Amnesty International said the referendum is taking place “against a backdrop of pervasive human rights violations that have created a chilling climate”. It said the Thai authorities have arbitrarily arrested scores of people, have cancelled or disrupted peaceful assemblies and took off the air a television station in recent weeks.

It said these incidents were just the most recent undue restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.

However, what Amnesty International does not say is that the arrests were not “arbitrary,” and instead targeted supporters of ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, now a convicted criminal living in self-exile to evade a 2 year jail sentence and a raft of other pending criminal charges, according to the London Guardian.

Amnesty also fails to mention that the “peaceful assemblies” and the “television station” they referred to are also both organised and run directly by Thaksin Shinawatra and his political forces.

Amnesty International, based in the United Kingdom, would likely find it difficult to defend a political party in England run openly by a convicted criminal living abroad who regularly organised attempts to subvert state power including through the use of armed terrorism.

So one wonders why Amnesty International obfuscates the fact that this is precisely what Shinawatra has done in regards to Thailand, and why Amnesty believes arresting and disrupting the activities of those involved in such subversion amounts to “pervasive human rights violations” rather than the impartial application of the rule of  law.

Amnesty International’s Convenient Omissions 

According to Wikileaks, the US Embassy itself noted a string of terrorism carried out by the supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra leading up to and in the wake of the first military coup aimed at ousting him and his political forces from power in 2006.

In one cable titled, “Thai Government Ascribes Bombings to Political Opponents,” the US Embassy in Bangkok would admit:

Many observers will find it plausible that Thaksin or his supporters may have orchestrated bombings in order to discredit those who overthrew him. During the last two years of Thaksin’s administration, there were numerous incidents in which bombs were placed at Bangkok sites associated with Thaksin’s opponents…

In the cable, at least 5 separate incidents were listed.

Since then, Shinawatra has deployed violent mobs into the streets on a number of occasions, the most notable of which occurred in 2009, 2010, and between 2013-2014.

Shinawatra’s mobs would gun down two innocent bystanders in 2009 as they attempted to protect their property from the mobs’ looting. In 2010, Shinawatra would augment his mobs with an estimated 300 heavily armed terrorists, who on the first day of bloody confrontations, would ambush and kill 7 soldiers including the colonel leading anti-riot operations.

Another Western human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, would depict the initial outbreak of violence on page 62 of its report “Descent into Chaos (.pdf)” which stated:

As the army attempted to move on the camp, they were confronted by well-armed men who fired M16 and AK-47 assault rifles at them, particularly at the Khok Wua intersection on Rajdamnoen Road. They also fired grenades from M79s and threw M67 hand grenades at the soldiers. News footage and videos taken by protesters and tourists show several soldiers lying unconscious and bleeding on the ground, as well as armed men operating with a high degree of coordination and military skills.

The violence in 2010 would continue on for weeks claiming nearly 100 lives before concluding in citywide arson carried out by Shinawatra’s supporters that incurred billions in property damage.

Finally, between 2013-2014 when anti-Shinawatra protesters took to the streets to call for his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, to step down from power, his armed terrorists would again take to the streets, utilising 40mm grenade launchers, hand grenades, and military-style rifles in almost nightly attacks on protest camps throughout Bangkok.

In fact, up to the eve of the 2014 coup that finally ousted Shinawatra’s sister from power, there were violent attacks carried out by Shinawatra’s supporters.

Why Amnesty International does not mention any of this remains a mystery, unless the organisation is intentionally trying to misinform global public opinion as to the true nature of Thailand’s current political crisis and how the referendum represents an attempt to finally end political violence and abuse of power that in every way represents  “pervasive human rights violations” in reality, as Amnesty claims the referendum represents in fiction.

It is clear that political forces in Thailand still supporting Shinawatra despite the means he has used in pursuit of returning himself and his political allies to power, do not represent a legitimate opposition protected under conventions of “free speech” and “right to assemble.” Like criminals of every other variety, those who have systematically and repeatedly abused these rights at the cost of the lives and well-being of others in society, forfeit these rights and must be brought to justice.
Arresting people engaged in criminality, or disrupting the activities of those supporting criminals is universally recognised as both a legitimate and appropriate. That Amnesty International attempts to frame it otherwise in Thailand’s case, raises fears that just as the organisation did in Syria or Libya, where it portrayed armed terrorist organisations as legitimate opposition, their reputation and clout is once again being used to usher in and compound human catastrophe, not avoid it.

God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples.” — Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, during the US annexation of the Philippines, 1898.

A grotesque power-fest at the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia left me feeling about Hillary Clinton the way P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster felt about his Aunt Agatha—“the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.”

There is something disquieting and secretively lascivious about her open-mouthed cackle. She doesn’t so much laugh as lusts. She reminded me, too, of the mythical basilisk in the bestiary at the convention—the queen among the serpents. The basilisk of legend, wearing a king’s crown on his head, is only twelve-fingers long, but his venom withers all living plants in his wake. His gaze is enough to kill, according to Pliny the Elder. Only the droppings of a weasel have the potent odor to kill him, but it didn’t work with this basilisk. Her weasel endorsed her, embraced her, kissed her. His odor and her venom neutralized each other and merged into the unity party of the Serpent and the Weasel.

Her party’s opponent is Charybdis, “a huge bladder of a creature whose face was all mouth and whose arms and legs were flippers” according to Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings (1957). As if that were not enough, this Charybdis is reputed to be the troll of a foreign monster, Mandrake, the Demon in the Kremlin. Neither the basilisk’s party nor Charybdis’ own party, a sort of mollusk like the Kraken, likes him. See here and here.

I’m raving, you say? This is the Age of Empire, and empire breeds monsters. We live with them now. Imperialism is our political and economic reality. Nothing material or substantial can be reformed within this colossal juggernaut. Yet, we continue to pretend that this has no bearing on our lives. In 2003 alone, the Iraq invasion cost $60 billion, three times the yearly budget for education, yet, we wonder why schools are starving for funds. When we clamor for reforms without mentioning imperialism, it is as if we were told we would be dead in three weeks and reacted by scheduling an appointment for a facelift.

A facelift is exactly what elections have produced in the last two decades. Bill Clinton’s Nero, saxophone in lieu of harp; George Bush’s Claudius, malapropisms for stutters; Obama’s Titus, fortunate son, charm and treachery—they are all faces of imperialism, exceptionalism, hegemony, capital penetration, globalization, neoliberal reconolization, “full spectrum dominance,” “rebalance.” They are the CEOs of international capitalism in the White House. Their charge is to do away with the sovereignty of nations, economically when possible, militarily when necessary. They destabilize and destroy whole countries through open, economic, proxy, or clandestine wars; they organize and train terrorist organizations; they foment regime change; they privatize the public wealth; they impose deadly economic reforms on countries they indebt in perpetuity; they launch economic sanctions, often in tandem or in the run-up to war. The goal they serve is the domination of the planet to extract resources, secure markets, and depress wages. In Haiti, workers are paid 62 cents per hour. Why would any sane investor hire an American worker for $7 per hour when a Haitian, whose dependent country has stripped him/her of all workers’ protection rights, works for pennies?

We are the Lotus Eaters, if we don’t know the cost and suffering of imperialism.

In this predatory process, the masters of the world—the economic elite—have amassed mountains of money over tree decades, and are desperate for “opportunities” for investment. They know that money must move, or it dies. At this stage of disinvestment in industrialization in the capitalist centers because of diminished returns, money becomes the chief export commodity. To secure astronomical returns, lands and resources that belong to other people must be seized and controlled. To achieve this goal, they need a strong, autocratic, and authoritarian state and an appointed dictator. An imperator, head of the army, whose rule is characterized by weak legislative and judicial branches.

Ruthless, ambitious, violent, and conniving, Hillary Clinton’s Roman imperial analog is Agrippina, Nero’s mother and Claudius’ niece and murderous wife. Her ferocious chemistry makes her kindred by choice to the ferocity of the empire. The two are bound by “elective affinities”– Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809) of Goethe’s third novel, which examines the possibility that human passions are ruled by chemical affinities , the preference of one substance for another. I am convinced that the imperial candidate with the most affinities with the ruling elite is Hillary Clinton. If Donald Trump is sincere in saying he wants peace with Russia, he would have to be a Titan to reverse a centenary robotic American foreign policy by 360 degrees. That would go against all the laws of political motion, including inertia, which were set down at the birth of the United States. The prize was always to be fabled Eurasia—“he who controls Eurasia controls the world,” wrote that other cobra-eyed basilisk, Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinsk, the veteran Zbiggus Dickus of foreign lunacy at the State Department and the NSA.

And so this woman, the Agrippina on the Potomac, will sit behind the “grand chessboard,” playing with human pawns. She will make a good empress, even though less than 40 percent of the country’s voters consider her “trustworthy.” But the people’s trust is irrelevant. They are themselves untrustworthy. Having come out from under the spell of “charming” Obama to realize that he was a magician’s trick, the people are spinning off center—the “extreme center,” as Tariq Ali wittily calls it. The people need whipping back into the herd. For that, a virago will do. She will ride rough-shod with Sin and Death, the moral allies of the empire, over hurdles of sovereignties and international law. She will further ravish the already enfeebled Constitution before eating it whole because the inevitable cost of an expansionist foreign policy is the loss of economic and political freedom at home.

They all trust her. She has affinities with them all.

The Financiers

The financial empire trusts Hillary Clinton. Top mega-financiers and hedge fund founders and managers who have contributed to her campaign since March 2015 include: George Soros, hedge-fund billionaire, $7 million; Haim Saban, Israeli hawk and entertainment mogul, $5 million; James Simon, founder, Renaissance Technologies, hedge fund billionaire and former code-breaker for the military, $ 3.5 million; Herbert Sandler, founder of Golden West Financial Corporation, the California savings and loan enterprise; Donald Sussman, hedge-fund manager, $2.5 million.

There was no way that the new world order of financial monopoly capitalism would consider for CEO of the neoliberal empire someone like Bernie Sanders, not because he was “progressive” but because he was “regressive,” and in their view no doubt an unrealistic fantasist. The idea of bringing back the New Deal, a liberal order they had been overthrowing since the 1980s, must have had them belly-laughing in private, but they saw no harm so long as the senator from Vermont fed the illusion in the people that capitalism could be reformed and become a good thing. Ditto for Donald Trump: his regression consists of offering the people another fantasy, a return to a long gone Fordist America, the industrial powerhouse of the planet, in which American workers were the “aristocrats” of labor. At one point in history, Detroit was the capital of this aristocracy, the best-paid white workers in the world. Thus, both candidates offer a spectacle to the voters of a quarrel with their respective parties, but not with their parties’ de-facto bi-partisan pursuit of economic world supremacy. All the same they were useful. They helped to deflect, diffuse, confuse, and veil that stark, existential reality that is the cause of our woes and those of the planet: American economic and military expansion—the weasel more so than Charybdis.

Hillary Clinton is not a retro-fantasist, apart from being a fantasist of the neoliberal order. Her fantasy is their fantasy. Thus they back her.

The Liberal Humanitarian Carnivores

The liberal humanitarians trust Hillary’s exemplary ability to sell a war crime as a service to humanity.

The modern idea of “humanitarian war” is as old as Columbus; as old as the conquistadores. White, civilized Europeans, arriving in the “New World,” killed “savages” in order to civilize whoever survived. And then worked them to death and took their lands. In that tradition, the modern liberal humanitarian must be a flesh-eater. “A liberal society cannot be defended by herbivores. We need carnivores to save us,” wrote Michael Ignatieff, former Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, in a New York Times magazine op-ed piece, May 2, 2004. There is no need to recite the litany of Hillary Clinton’s bloody deeds since 1990. Gary Leupp covers them comprehensively in a 2015 CounterPunch article  but for carnivorism, who can forget her maenad-possessed laughter on watching the tearing apart of Qaddafi’s flesh on video—a scene reminiscent of Euripides’ tragedy, “The Bacchae”?

Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s disemboweled Yugoslavia on humanitarian grounds, after portraying it as the resurgence of the genocidal Third Reich and its president, Slobodan Milosevic, as the new Hitler. Milosevic, by the way, has just been exonerated of all crimes for which Clinton’s kangaroo International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia had formerly condemned him. In 2003, casting her vote for the invasion of Iraq, Hillary Clinton cited the persecution of Milosevic as the example to follow for removing Saddam Hussein. It’s worth listening to her self-assurance in demonizing a man she, and Bill Clinton’s administration, knew to be innocent of the charges—knew because they trumped them up:

We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak.

But Bill Clinton didn’t just scrap Yugoslavia; he junked international law by removing from the Security Council the legal monopoly on authorizing war. He set a precedent in the Kosovo War by claiming Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which gives humanitarian intervention the pseudo-legal means to overthrow a sovereign state. The UN Charter specifically disallows humanitarian intervention for a very good reason: it was that responsibility Hitler’s rogue regime claimed for invading Poland—the protection of German minorities—to start WW II.

Never mind. The Kosovo precedent opened the gates to all the “humanitarian” wars that followed, including Hillary Clinton’s war on Libya in 2009, consistent with her approval of her husband’s intervention in Kosovo. During a meeting with Code Pink on 6 March 2003 at the US Capitol, defending her vote in favor of attacking Iraq, Senator Clinton applauded her husband’s war in Kosovo, claiming that he saved Kosovar Albanian from ethnic cleansing—a lie—while commending his initiative to go it alone, without the “international community’s” consent:

With respect to whose responsibility it is to disarm Saddam Hussein, I do not believe that given the attitudes of many people in the world community today that there would be a willingness to take on very difficult problems were it not for United States leadership.  And I am talking specifically about what had to be done in Bosnia and Kosovo, where my husband could not get a Security Council resolution to save the Kosovar Albanians from ethnic cleansing.  And we did it alone as the United States, and we had to do it alone.  It would have been far preferable if the Russians and others had agreed to do it through the United Nations — they would not.  I’m happy that, in the face of such horrible suffering, we did act.

She’s praising here her husband’s international crime, the interference with a country’s sovereignty for fictional humanitarian reasons. No, the goal of the war in Kosovo was not ethnic defense (Bill Clinton’s policy throughout the 90s in the former Yugoslavia was to foment and prey on ethnic anarchy) but the expansionist penetration of a foreign territory and the construction of one of the largest military bases in Europe, at Camp Bondsteel, costing the American people a good chunk of social services—possibly, his welfare “reform,” for example.

Liberal humanitarian warmongers peddle the ludicrous claim that “America is the essential country” (Madeleine Albright) for safeguarding liberal democracy throughout the world, sublimely indifferent to the evidence that the world can’t wait to get America’s essentialism off its back. Hillary Clinton’s belligerent foreign policy is notorious. She has promised to bomb Iran. She has managed and supervised the destruction of Libya. She has organized the coups in Paraguay and Honduras. Her neo-con team at the State Department funded and organized the coup in Ukraine, Nazified its political, military, and cultural life, triggering a civil war (while calling Putin “Hitler”).

There’s no reason to believe that her carnivorous humanitarian resources have been depleted since then. While Secretary of State for Obama, she authorized the sale of weapons to Qatar that she knew would go to the Libyan rebels to topple Qaddafi and then go to Syria to arm al Qaeda to overthrow Assad. She denied any involvement under oath. In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, her campaign foreign policy adviser, Jeremy Bash, former Chief of Staff at the Pentagon and CIA, said that she would work to get President Assad “out of there”:

A Clinton administration will not shrink from making clear to the world exactly what the Assad regime is. It is a murderous regime that violates human rights; that has violated international law; used chemical weapons against his own people; has killed hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children.

If Assad is as guilty as she was sure at the time Milosevic was, we’re in for another international crime.

On Russia, the Council on Foreign Relations reports that she’s calling for strengthening NATO and “tougher measures against Putin to punish him for invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea as well as for supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” “I remain convinced,” they quote her, “that we need a concerted effort to really up the cost on Russia and, in particular, on Putin.” She considers that Russia’s intervention in Syria creates “chaos”:

I think it’s important too that the United States make it very clear to Putin that it’s not acceptable for him to be in Syria creating more chaos, bombing people on behalf of Assad, and we can’t do that if we don’t take more of a leadership position, which is what I’m advocating.

Russia Today blames Clinton’s outrageous Russophobia—“Hillary Clinton is the Bachman Turner Overdrive of US politics”–on Obama’s mistake for allowing the Neo-con contingent to dominate the State Department:

Obama’s other mistake was to allow Hillary, as Secretary of State, to retain neocon holdovers from the Bush administration on her Eastern Europe team. Even more incredibly, Kerry then inherited them for the second term. “Obama allowed US officials on the ground (in Ukraine and elsewhere) to pursue a grossly irresponsible and provocative anti-Russian policy,” Anatol Lieven recently told the Valdai Club. “What on earth, one may ask, was Victoria Nuland, a neo-conservative State Department official married to the arch neocon Robert Kagan, doing in the Obama administration at all, given that her attitudes run clearly counter to his?”Lieven also pointed out that “figures like Nuland are still favored by Hillary Clinton (Kagan is now moving into her political camp) and much of the US foreign and security establishment; and that with regard to Russia, that establishment is still conditioned to pursue what are in effect Cold War attitudes.”

The Neo-Cons and “New” Imperialists

 Hillary Clinton represents the personification of rehabilitated imperialism, the overarching geopolitical focus of American politics. That is why she will be the establishment’s choice—tested and proven. She will press hard against the political independence of Russia and the economic rise of China, a pressure that encapsulates American foreign policy in the foreseeable future.

Neo-con and neo-liberal promoters of the “new imperialism” are Western regime intellectuals and historians such as Max Boot, Niall Ferguson, and Michael Ignatieff.

As a result, by 2003, the year of the invasion of Iraq, media pundits were busy domesticating the word “empire.” American propaganda had proscribed the word for decades on account of there being only one empire, which was “evil”: the USSR. With the Soviet Union gone, America congratulated itself on being #1, the sole super-power, the essential country, and, the old standby, the exceptional country. None of these brands resonated with the force that the scope of conquering the world required. To make matters worse, critics of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, were floating the un-American term “imperialism.” Something had to be done. With the evil empire dead, the good empire could re-emerge. Max Boot, Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at Council on Foreign Relations, proposed “an American might to promote American ideals”–messianic political morality at the point of a gun. He explained,

In the early twentieth century, Americans talked of spreading Anglo-Saxon civilization and taking up the ‘white man’s burden’; today they talk of spreading democracy and defending human rights. Whatever you call it, this represents an idealistic impulse that has always been a big part in America’s impetus for going to war.

Soon after 9/11, 2001, Boot had already invoked this impetuous idealism to respond to the lament of suffering nations pining for the . . . return of a British-style imperial ministration.

Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.

And in 2002, Boot wrote, “Imperialism used to be the white man’s burden. This gave it a bad reputation. But imperialism doesn’t stop being necessary because it is politically incorrect” (New York Times Magazine, July 28, 2002). Neoconservative William Kristol, of The Weekly Standard, said more tersely on Fox television at the time, “if people want to say we’re an imperial power, fine.”If there is a place on earth that is testy about Western imperialism, that place is China. If there is an American official who has sorely tested China’s anti-colonial sensibility, that person is Clinton. As First Lady, she rousingly declared that “women’s rights are human rights” in Beijing at the UN World Conference on Women in 1995. As Secretary of State, in 2011, she denounced China’s “deplorable” record of human rights in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Again in 2011, she proposed a US policy toward China as one “of advancing democracy and human rights” in a Foreign Policy article, titled “America’s Pacific Century.”

To Chinese officials’ ear this aggressive insistence on human rights sounded suspiciously like a systematic call for color revolution in China. Her hostile intent, had already become apparent in 2010. At the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi, she confirmed China’s suspicion that she advocated a US policy of containment by intervening in the territorial disputes of the South China Sea. Recommending a “rebalance” of power in the disputed areas, she asserted that the US had “a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea.”

China’s Foreign Minister at the time, Yang Jiechi, at first walked out of the meeting, only to return an hour later with the ominous reminderthat “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”

On the unpopular Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, a pact China correctly perceives as economic containment, she said in her debate with Bernie Sanders on 4 February 2016 that she now opposes it after having strenuously and enthusiastically supported it as Obama’s Secretary of State until 2012 and beyond. Her flip-flops on the TPT are well documented here.

These three affinities—with finance, war, and imperialism—make Hillary Clinton the perfect mate for president of the financial-imperial White House. Picture her in jodhpurs and pith helmet astride the financial bull, taking on the “white woman’s burden,” and riding the humanitarian “savage wars for peace.” Stop worrying about Donald Trump “Charybdis” and learn to avoid where the Basilisk treads, which will be difficult. You can prepare by reviewing her record as “empire-slayer” here.

In choosing between presidential candidates today, it’s best to stick to Bertie Wooster’s advice about aunts: “It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.”

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.

Above and beyond the sentiments expressed by climate and social justice activists, many supporters of Bernie Sanders had arrived in the city. Not only did many of them criticize Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for policies revolving around the 2009 coup in Honduras, support for fracking, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), they blasted the former first lady and the Democratic Party over the revelation that the Democrats had rigged the race on the Democratic side in favour of Ms. Clinton.

As someone who was in the streets that week, I discovered that Bernie Sanders had broad support on the ground, while Hillary Clinton had virtually none. Sanders supporters were by and large hostile to Hillary, even declaring they would vote for (Green presidential candidate) Jill Stein.

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On this special summertime edition of the Global Research News Hour, we bring you audio from some of those Sanders supporters as well as environmental and other activists.

The audio recorded in this report contains interviews with and sound from a clean energy march, an outdoor of a black Resistance march,  and an act of civil disobedience.  Listeners exposed to propaganda of a party united behind Clionton may wish to consult this report to get a more balanced sense of what happened that week.

The Global Research News Hour will be presenting special broadcasts over the summer months. 

Affiliate radio stations are encouraged to air this content as appropriate. 

Past programs are also available for download and rebroadcast.

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

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In an effort to learn more about the impacts of long-term exposure to heavy metals and other toxins associated with warzone bombardments and military installations, a new study released Friday examined a sample of donated teeth and discovered that the children of Iraq are suffering from alarming levels of such substances, specfically lead.

The study—entitled Prenatal Metal Exposure in the Middle East: Imprint of War in Deciduous Teeth of Children—focused on Iraq, invaded by the U.S. and coalition forces over thirteen years ago, due to the amount of bombing its population has witnessed over the last thirteen years and the troubling level of cancers and birth defects now evidenced in the population that could be related to that relentless violence. The Iraqi teeth were compared to donated samples from both Lebanon, which has seen a more moderate level of bombing and warfare during the same time period, and Iran, which has experienced relative peace since the end of the Iraq/Iran War in 1988.

“In war zones,” the abstract of the study explains, “the explosion of bombs, bullets, and other ammunition releases multiple neurotoxicants into the environment. The Middle East is currently the site of heavy environmental disruption by massive bombardments. A very large number of US military bases, which release highly toxic environmental contaminants, have also been erected since 2003. Current knowledge supports the hypothesis that war-created pollution is a major cause of rising birth defects and cancers in Iraq.”

Scientifically known as a person’s “deciduous teeth,” what are also called “baby teeth” are useful to study, the researchers explain, because they “originate in fetal life and may prove useful in measuring prenatal metal exposures.” The researchers say their findings confirm the hypothesis that in war-torn Iraq the levels of contaminants found were much higher than in those countries that have seen markedly less violence.

“Our hypothesis that increased war activity coincides with increased metal levels in deciduous teeth is confirmed by this research,” reads the study. “Lead levels were similar in Lebanese and Iranian deciduous teeth. Deciduous teeth from Iraqi children with birth defects had remarkably higher levels of Pb [lead]. Two Iraqi teeth had four times more Pb, and one tooth had as much as 50 times more Pb than samples from Lebanon and Iran.”

To further explain the context and implications of the newly-published researchers, it is worth quoting the study at length:

In war zones, the explosion of bombs, bullets, and other ammunition releases multiple neurotoxicants into the environment, adding to the burden of childhood exposures. Recent studies in Iraq indicate widespread public exposure to neurotoxic metals (Pb and mercury) accompanied by unprecedented increases in birth defects and cancers in a number of cities (Savabieasfahani 2013). Current knowledge supports the hypothesis that war-created pollution is a major factor in the rising numbers of birth defects and cancers in Iraq.

The Middle East has been the site of a massive environmental disruption by bombardments. In 2015 alone, the USA dropped over 23,000 bombs in the Middle East. Twenty-two thousand bombs were dropped on Iraq/Syria (Zenko 2016). US military bases also produce and release highly toxic environmental pollutants in the Middle East. Though our knowledge is limited, a recent report by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) offers a conservative estimate of two million killed in the Middle East since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Around one million people have been killed in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan, and 80,000 in Pakistan. A total of around 1.3 million, not included in this figure, have been killed in other recently created war zones such as Yemen and Syria (Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)).

It may seem callous to focus on the “long-term” effects of war while these horrific consequences of war are here and now. Nevertheless, long-term public health consequences of war need to be better examined if we are to prevent similar wars in the future (Weir 2015). To that end, here we report the results of our last samples from a growing war-zone.

Deciduous teeth of children from Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran can show a continuum of high to low war-related-exposures in children. Measurements of environmental samples in the areas of our interest are rare in the literature. Therefore, we deduce that a continuum of high to low war-related exposures can be detected in children of the selected areas based upon the knowledge of the number and length of wars fought in each country in modern times. We do know that Iraq continues to be the target of repeated bombings and military activity, that Lebanon has been the site for multiple wars, and that military activities have occurred in Lebanon intermittently up to 2016 (Haugbolle 2010). In contrast, Iran has been the site of only one war in modern times, which ended in 1988 (Hersh 1992). Our aim is to evaluate deciduous teeth for their suitability to serve as markers of prenatal exposures to neurotoxic heavy metals.

Metals are one of the main components of bombs, bullets, and other weaponry. Buncombe (2011) offers a historic account of the very large number of bombs and bullets that were dropped in the Middle East post-2003. Additionally, 1500 US military bases and facilities—with their associated toxic pollutants—have been erected in the Middle East since 2003 (Nazaryan 2014; Vine 2014). It has been suggested that US military bases are among the most polluting operations on earth (Nazaryan 2014; Broder 1990; Milmo 2014).

In Iraq, there are currently over 500 US military bases (Kennedy 2008; Vine 2014). Pollutants released from these bases have reportedly harmed human health (Institute of Medicine, IOM 2011). Metals are released in the environment in large quantities during and following wars, either by direct bombing or as a result of waste generated and released by military installations (IOM). Metals are persistent in the environment (Li et al. 2014), and their adverse effects on health—especially the health of sensitive populations (i.e., pregnant mothers, fetuses, growing children)—have been established (Parajuli et al. 2013; Grandjean and Landrigan 2014). Public exposure to war-related pollutants intensifies as wars become frequent and as the environmental release of waste associated with military bases increases. Metal exposures and toxicity are frequently reported in children, particularly those living in areas of protracted military attacks in the Middle East (Alsabbak et al. 2012; Jergovic et al. 2010; Savabieasfahani et al. 2015).

“As prenatal exposures become more severe and common in war zones,” the authors write, “the accurate measurement of those prenatal exposures becomes more urgent. The use of deciduous teeth, which originate in fetal life, as a biomarker of prenatal exposure, is worthwhile if we are to protect children from such exposures in the future.”

On Friday, 5 August 2016, the open-ended working group (OEWG) to take forward nuclear disarmament negotiations met in Geneva for its third and final session. The first day gave participants the opportunity to share their general views on the Chair’s zero draft of the report before going into more detail during the first collective reading of the report.

Participants in the discussion included the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Indonesia on behalf of a group of states, Ecuador, Germany on behalf of a group of states, Norway, Canada, Chile, Austria, South Africa, Brazil, Guatemala, Fiji, Malaysia, Mexico, Iran, Switzerland, Ireland, Argentina, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Costa Rica, Nigeria, Basel Peace Office, Finland, Australia, Sweden, Kenya, the International Fellowship for Reconciliation, and Algeria.

Chile, Austria, Ireland, and Brazil appreciated the presence and contributions of civil society. Ireland also appreciated the gender balance of the meetings, both of panelists and participants, which it suggested should serve as a role model for international engagement on nuclear disarmament.

General comments

All delegations appreciated the efforts of Ambassador Thani to produce a balanced and factual report. However, it soon became clear that groupings that crystalised during the February and May discussions continue to hold diverse views about the best approach to nuclear weapons, which impacted their assessment of the report.

Germany, taking the floor on behalf of the states supporting the “progressive approach” working paper, expressed concern with some of the “imbalances and inconsistencies” these states perceive in the representation of some aspects of the debate and recommendations. Germany, in this context, referred among others to paragraphs 20, 25, 27, 30, and 50. Norway too saw “imbalances and inconsistencies” as expressed by Germany.

Norway, Australia, and Finland stressed that the participation of nuclear-armed states is necessary for nuclear disarmament. On the other hand, Guatemala pointed out that these states’ continued absence from the OEWG suggests they still do not have the necessary political will for nuclear disarmament. Austria stressed that the voluntary non-participation of the nuclear-armed states cannot be held against the value and outcome of the work of the OEWG.

Indonesia, speaking on behalf of Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Zambia, South Africa, and Nigeria, reiterated the call to convene a conference in 2017, by the General Assembly, open to all states, international organisations, and civil society, to negotiate a legally-binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.

Canada, in opposition to this approach, reiterated its belief that it is not yet the time for a legal prohibition and stressed that the incremental approach was the most realistic given the current environment. A ban would pose a considerable risk to the non-proliferation and security architecture, argued the Canadian delegation.

Chile pointed out, however, that the “progressive approach” alone cannot facilitate nuclear disarmament. Chile expressed concern that nuclear weapons remain the only weapon of mass destruction not categorically prohibited.

Australia again stressed the need to take into account the current geo-political situation, including considerations of national security. In that context, Austria stressed that there is no contradiction between human security and international security, nor between human security and national security, as national security aims at providing security to the population of a given country. Mexico stressed that collective security of all overrides national interests.

Fiji recalled the first hand experience of the Pacific islanders who survived massive nuclear testing in the area. For these survivors, nothing less than the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons is acceptable. It is not just a moral and legal issue, but must be a matter of conscience.  A legally-binding treaty would be the ideal way to fill legal gap, argued Fiji.

Ireland underlined that a whole range of global challenges are inextricably linked with progress on nuclear disarmament, cautioning that states’ failure to make progress on the nuclear issue puts all other goals at risk.

Recommendations 

Switzerland argued that based on the mandate of the OEWG resolution, the recommendations should enjoy consensus to be adopted. It also thought paragraphs 58 and 59 on legal recommendations could be more nuanced and would benefit from additions.

Germany, speaking on behalf of a group of states, suggested relabeling section V on recommendations to “issues for further consideration,” as they are not agreed upon. Moreover the recommendation in paragraph 59 would go against that contained in 58, Germany argued, as a prohibition might risk the rupture of the NPT, in the group’s perception. In connection to paragraph 59, Australia thought it important to clarify what a prohibition is, as it does not believe that a simple prohibition will facilitate the reduction of one nuclear weapon.

Guatemala, however, thought it unacceptable to replace the name of section V, as it should be in line with the mandate. Argentina believes this title reflects the debate correctly in an inclusive manner.

CELAC, Ecuador, Austria, Guatemala, Brazil, Kenya, and Indonesia speaking on behalf of a group of states reiterated their call for a recommendation for the UN General Assembly to adopt mandate to negotiate an international legally-binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons. Austria believes the OEWG will fail in its work if states do not agree on a clear recommendation initiating such negotiations with urgency.

Malaysia reiterated that paragraph 59 reflects the readiness of the majority of states to take action. However, Australia challenged the notion of the majority of states for the recommendation on prohibition. The delegation argued that a majority was only clear from “early sessions”, not in working papers or interventions from the floor. Australia also indicated its belief that a new legal instrument would risk legal overlaps. Additionally, Australia said, the negotiations of a new treaty could pose an unnecessary burden on smaller delegations.

Austria in this context highlighted the composition of the majority that wants to start negotiations in 2017, convened by the UN General Assembly, open to all states, international organisations, and civil society organisations.

First reading of the draft

After the general exchange of views, the Chair suggested a first collective reading of the draft and invited states to share their views on particular paragraphs. Ths exchange continued informally in the afternoon. The discussions focused on paragraphs 18-25, 26-37, 38-40, 41-45, Annex I, and 46-50.

Apart from specific suggestions regarding the wording and arrangement of paragraphs, the discussions also focused on the relative nature of qualifications used throughout the report, i.e. ‘a number’, ‘a few’, or ‘many’. These arguments bring back memories of the debate in Main Committee I during the 2015 NPT Review Conference.

The reading of the remaining paragraphs will continue on Monday at 3 pm in room XXVI at the Palais.

Reflections

Once again states that value nuclear weapons as tools for their security—above the security of other countries or even their own citizens—are continuing to vocalise opposition to the best opportunity for progress in nuclear disarmament that we have seen in decades.

While the draft report is far from perfect, its recognition that the majority of states have called for the start of negotiations on a prohibition treaty is correct. The development of such a treaty is the appropriate response to the now widespread recognition of their humanitarian consequences. The report also notes that a treaty banning nuclear weapons is seen as “the most viable option for immediate action” and that it would greatly advance the stigmatisation of nuclear weapons. This is an accurate reflection of the OEWG discussions and it must not be changed.

The opposition to this reality is loud, but it is small. And it is based on an unrelenting commitment to maintaining the existing nuclear order, in which a handful of states hold privilege and power through the threat of massive nuclear violence.

Yet these same states are ostensibly committed to the achievement of a nuclear weapon free world. They continuously water down their words, reducing the impact of their rhetoric, but the stated policy remains the same. They are bound to it by their adherence to the NPT. And any commitment to nuclear disarmament in fact requires support of prohibition. These states make their arguments about sequencing, but this does not hold up against scrutiny. Legally-binding, non-discriminatory, loophole-less commitments to the prohibition of nuclear weapon activities is an imperative step towards disarmament and it is this that causes them fright—for it would require actual change to their practices that have henceforth gone unchallenged in practical economic, legal, political, or social terms.

The arguments against the ban are either stale—a prohibition will support, not undermine the NPT—or becoming increasingly desperate. Australia’s suggestion that small delegations would be “overwhelmed” by negotiations of a nuclear weapon prohibition treaty does not seem to be reflected in the positions of “small delegations” themselves. Five very small Pacific Island states, for example, have submitted an extremely concrete working paper demanding that negotiations begin as soon as possible.

This first meeting of the August session was held on the eve of the anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Austrian delegation paid homage to this infamous anniversary, highlighting the statement of Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, arguing that the on this 71st anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons states must work to achieve the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.

The majority has made its view clear. The rest of this session must be spent ensuring that this view is carried forward to action at the UN General Assembly this October.

Obsessions of any sort, notably of a consuming nature, are never healthy matters.  The drive to win gold, laced with a desperation often reflected in steroid consumption and psychological battering, has made the Olympic Games the least of savoury spectacles.

Even worse than the physical reduction of the athlete to mechanism and medal winning machine is the complicity towards it from the coaching establishment and hungry spectators.  Nothing is quite as terrifying as triumph – or failure – by association, the vicarious delight, or woe, the groupies feel when their chosen champion falls.  “We,” they claim, were also in the pool that day.

Australia is particularly bad on this score.  Its failure to net a monstrous swag of medals at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 was seen as a catastrophe to morale, a national disgrace. Only one silver and four bronze medals were brought home.

The characteristic approach to gold madness was typified by the near hysterical antics of Australian swimming coach, Laurie Lawrence, at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.  After Duncan Armstrong won gold in the 200m freestyle event in record time, Lawrence exclaimed effusively how,  “He did it again. Lucky lane six.”

The interviewer proceeded to ask him whether Lawrence was ready to respond to a question about how he felt.  “Mate, we just beat three record-holders.  How do you feel?”  In conclusion, Lawrence lands the fundamental blow to those who believe that the competition, not the victory, is what counts.  “Why do you think we come here?  For the silver?  Stuff the silver!”[1]

The Lawrence philosophy was much evident during the London 2012 Olympics.  Australian swimmer Emily Seebohm had won silver in her 100m backstroke final.  Instead of congratulatory embraces, there was commiseration and grief. She had only won silver.  Apologies to parents, the coach and the Australian public followed.  To be second was to be humiliated.

With such conditions at play, it was little wonder that a 2010 survey of ethical and integrity issues in Australian sport conducted by the Australian Sports Commission and Colmar Brunton Social Research found a host of concerns: “Athletes being pushed too hard by coaches or parents”; “Negative coaching behaviours and practices” and negative administration.[2]

A quick glance at Australia’s performance at the London Games should have punctured the gloom of the medal cravers.  The country’s athletes won eight gold, 15 silver, and 12 bronze, a highly credible 35 medals leading to an eighth placing on the table.

Broadcaster, television presenter and author Waleed Aly, writing in The Monthly, encouraged a celebration of the achievement, while regarding any gold lust as a “puerile” fascination. Those treating the performance as below par were to be treated with derision.[3]

In the wake of that performance, deemed poor by the lucre-craving establishment, veteran Fairfax journalist Paul Sheehan would express concern at that voracious hunger for the medal count:

“Hundreds of millions of tax dollars and thousands of hours of grinding, invisible sacrifice by athletes have been compromised by an obsession with gold.  This obsession has clouded the reality that Australia has just had a brilliant Olympics.  An unambiguous success” (Sydney Morning Herald, Aug 13, 2012).

The other fallacy in boosting medal counts is the notion that high rankings actually lead to increased sports participation and a tongue wagging interest in following Olympic heroes.  The statistics regarding sport participation in England showed a decline of interest in sport leading up to the 2012 games. Nor has a figure like Michael Phelps, who dominated his swimming meets in 2008, inspired a generation of enthused swimmers.[4]

As the Games commence at Rio, Australian journalists and the sporting establishment, led by the steely Kitty Chiller, is running the pre-emptive remarks about gold again.  Predictions are being made, the loot being divvied out.  In July, Chiller suggested that the 410-strong team would bag “15 maybe even 16” gold medals of a projected medal tally of 45, a feat that would land Australia in the top five.[5]

Medals are being awarded even before the first events have taken place.  Even Chiller admits that, “For any country to double the number of gold in [four-year period] is a huge ask. I genuinely believe we can do it.”

The erroneous assumption made is that record holders will perform on the day and win gold.  On swimmer Cate Campbell, the ABC observed that breaking a world record a mere month before Rio made her “the favourite to win the gold in the 100 metres freestyle.”

The same network ran with the jarring headline that Australia’s swimming team were “aiming to erase memories of London.”  Readers were introduced to “the stars of the Australian swimming team hoping to rebound from the poor showing at the 2012 Olympics in London.”[6]

Again, the grand hope will be in the pool, where Australians are always expected to excel with automatic superhuman achievement.  In Chiller’s cool words, “Yes, we’re going to rely on swimming, we always do.”  Again, they will not be prepared for the disappointment should those medals not eventuate.  The gold disease tends to be a particularly aggressive one.

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

Notes

In an op-ed column in Friday’s New York Times, former top CIA official Michael Morell publicly endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In the article, Morell branded Clinton’s Republican opponent, Donald Trump, as a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Morell retired from the CIA in 2013 after a 33-year career, having spent two decades in high-level positions in Washington. His duties included preparing the President’s Daily Brief for George W. Bush. For three years he was deputy director, running the agency day-to-day, and he had two stints as acting director, for three months in 2011 and for four months in 2012-2013.

Morell was a top official throughout the period of CIA kidnappings (renditions) of victims who were then held in secret prisons and tortured. He helped lead the CIA when it was carrying out drone missile assassinations and other forms of covert state terrorism. Throughout his tenure in Langley, Virginia, the CIA was engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria and many other countries.

After Morell left the agency, Obama appointed him to the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which prepared a whitewash of National Security Agency spying following the revelations by Edward Snowden. He then moved seamlessly to a position as a well-paid media commentator for CBS News, while joining the campaign of former CIA officials to block the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.

That such an individual comes out publicly in support of Hillary Clinton says a great deal about the nature of the Democratic presidential campaign and the type of administration Clinton will head in the event that she wins the November election.

Morell’s op-ed column appears under the headline: “I Ran the CIA. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton.” As far as the New York Times is concerned, support for Clinton from an organization that is identified around the world with torture and murder should be shouted from the rooftops. It is something to be proud of, a positive credential for the Democratic presidential nominee.

The former CIA official declares Clinton “highly qualified to be commander in chief,” praises “her belief that America is an exceptional nation that must lead in the world,” and notes that in the internal discussions over US intervention in the Syrian civil war, “she was a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach.”

Morell denounces Trump as unqualified to be president, in part because of his volatile personality and lack of national security experience, but mainly because of his supposed connection to Russia.

He writes:

“President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated…

“Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests—endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States. In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

This extraordinary allegation adds fuel to the campaign launched by pro-Clinton pundits like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, portraying Trump as a “Siberian candidate” whose campaign represents a Russian intervention into the US elections.

The Clinton campaign has embraced and promoted these McCarthyite smears, issuing a video Friday posing the question, “What is Donald Trump’s connection to Vladimir Putin?” The video, available on YouTube, consists of clips of right-wing media figures, including Joe Scarborough, Charles Krauthammer and George Will, denouncing Trump for his praise for Putin, interspersed with questions suggesting that Trump has secret business ties to Russia and is being financed by Russian oligarchs.

In style and political content, the video recalls the ravings of the John Birch Society, the anticommunist organization of the 1950s and 1960s that claimed leading US political figures, including President Eisenhower, were Soviet agents.

This underscores the drastic shift to the right in the political orientation of the Democratic Party. It does not oppose Trump on the basis of his militarism or his authoritarian contempt for democratic rights. Instead, the Clinton campaign is presenting itself as the authoritative party of the military-intelligence complex and the political establishment, appealing to billionaires, the military brass and the intelligence agencies.

In the form of Trump vs. Clinton, the US electoral system has provided working people the “choice” between an openly fascistic demagogue and an avowed representative of the Pentagon, the CIA and the financial establishment hell-bent on launching new imperialist wars.

The barrage of claims by the corporate media that Trump, as distinct from “normal” US politicians, is deranged deserves only contempt. Both Trump and Clinton are deadly enemies of the working class. They may be opposed to one another in the election campaign, but that is no argument for working people to take sides. Rather, workers and youth must draw the conclusion that the entire political system is deeply dysfunctional and should be swept away.

The Democratic Party is appealing, not to the mass opposition and disgust with Trump on the part of working people, but to the opposition to Trump within the US ruling elite, whose main concern is that the Republican candidate’s friendly gestures towards Putin, his open questioning of the value of NATO, and his expressed reservations about US wars in the Middle East are cutting across the bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington.

This poses immense dangers to the working class. The logic of the Democrats’ anti-Trump campaign is to channel mass opposition to Trump behind preparations for war with Russia, a nuclear-armed power. In the event of a Democratic victory—increasingly likely according to polling this week—Clinton will claim a mandate for war policies that can be carried out only through a frontal assault on the living standards and democratic rights of American workers. This demonstrates that the differences between Clinton and Trump are purely tactical: how best to subordinate the working class to the war drive of American imperialism.

As the World Socialist Web Site has previously pointed out, Trump did not crawl out of the Manhattan sewers or a Munich beer hall. He emerged from the well-heeled, corrupt circle of real estate speculators in New York City, where he had the closest ties with the Democratic Party machine. He was molded and promoted for decades by the corporate-controlled media and the political establishment. He and the Clintons are old friends: he invited them to one of his weddings; they asked for his money for their political campaigns and bogus charities.

If Trump is suddenly branded as a monster who must be kept out of the White House, it is only because the US financial aristocracy and the military-intelligence apparatus have a different monster in mind, one they consider more dependable: Hillary Clinton. She’s the monster who is on message—on Ukraine, Russia, NATO and the anti-Chinese “pivot to Asia.” She knows which generals to salute and which billionaires to flatter. She’s a “safe pair of hands,” which means she can be relied on to kill the right people.

That is the meaning of Clinton’s endorsement by the CIA’s Michael Morell and, more generally, the wave of support for her campaign from billionaires, Republicans, generals and the media.

The most troubling aspect of the $400 million cash payment to Iran, is not the fact that the payment was made in cash. This can surely be explained by the US’s lack of a banking relationship with the heavily sanctioned Iran.

Nor was it the fact that the payment was not reported to the US public. The White House can say it had no reason to report, what it claims was a small part of a larger (Iran-Nuclear weapons) settlement deal…that had already been made public months ago.

What snags Obama, in what the president himself claims is “spy novel” stuff, comes down to simple timing and sequence of events.

To recap…on January 17, 2016, a cargo plane with $400 million in foreign currencies (Euros and Swiss Francs) was sent to Iran in the cover of the night.

The very same day the Iranian government released four American hostages held in Tehran.

One of the US Iranian hostage Saeed Abidini, spoke to FOX Business, and explained that the Iran government did not let his plane leave Tehran until the Obama ‘ransom plane’ arrived.

The four Americans waited on the tarmac for hours. Once the plane with the $400 million arrived, they were free to go.

Here is how Saeed Abidini explains it to Fox Business.

Timing is everything, and the timing of events in this case do not bode well for Obama’s explanation regarding the transaction with Iran.

Transcript below (courtesy of Gateway Pundit)…

Saeed Abidini: I just remember the night at the airport sitting for hours and hours there and I asked police— why you not letting us go — And he told me we are waiting for another plane and if that plane take off we gonna let you go.

Trish Regan: You slept there at the airport?

Abidini: Yes, for a night. They told us you going to be there for 20 minutes but it took hours and hours. And I ask them why you don’t let us go, because the — was there, pilot was there, everyone was there to leave the country. And he said we are waiting for another plane so if that plane doesn’t come we never let us go.

A large cache of US-made ammunition has been discovered in a house in Aleppo’s Bani Zaid district, abandoned by the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (also known as al-Nusra Front) fighters.

“The video appeared online on Thursday and purported to show the discovery of a large cache of western arms and ammunition in a house in Aleppo’s eastern Bani Zaid district. The majority of the weapons appear to be of US origin and include US-made anti-tank missiles system (TOW 2A), American UN0181 missiles, as well as US-made 81mm mortars and ammunition. Some of the boxes containing weapons are labeled with the letters ‘USA’,” RT reported Thursday.

Citing Scotland Yard detective Charles Shoebridge, the media outlet called attention to the fact that the video appears to be genuine.

It is no secret that American weapons destined for the US-backed “moderate” fighters have repeatedly ended up in the wrong hands.

On September 22, 2015 The Telegraph reported that fighters with the US-trained Division 30 surrendered to al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front and handed their weapons to the terrorists.

Two months later the al-Nusra Front militants released a video where they openly thanked the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for supplying them with US-made anti-tank TOW missiles.

On April 13, 2016, Al Jazeera released footage that purportedly showed al-Nusra Front extremists demonstrating US-made weapons captured from the Syrian Revolutionary Front (Jabhat Thowar Suriyya) in the Syrian province of Idlib. The White House regarded the SRF as its bulwark against Daesh in Syria.

On June 26, The New York Times revealed that “weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market,” citing American and Jordanian officials.

Adding embarrassment to frustration, the media outlet noted that some of the stolen weapons were used to kill two Americans at a police training facility in Amman, according to FBI officials.

On July 3, Al-Masdar News reported that al-Nusra Front raided the headquarters of the FSA on July 2 in the towns of Kafr Anbel, Hazazen and Ma’arat Harmeh.

“Al-Nusra [Front] seized all weapons and ammunition held by the FSA group, including a batch of US supplied TOW anti-tank missiles,” the media outlet reported.

Incredible as it may seem, the US State Department has as of yet failed to tackle the problem.

During a June 27 press briefing, State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau refused to provide any comments on the New York Times’ report regarding the systematical theft of the US-made weapons destined for “moderate Syrian opposition” in Jordan.

“We have no comment on that report. There is an ongoing investigation. The United States remains committed to Jordan’s security and stability, and we’re proud to stand side by side with Jordan in the global counter-ISIL [Daesh] coalition. But on that particular report, there’s an ongoing investigation. I just can’t speak to it,” Trudeau stressed.

Likewise she refused to discuss earlier reports shedding light on US weapons repeatedly ending in the hands of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.

Trudeau also remained silent about the agencies involved in the investigation into the case.

Speaking to Trudeau, Matthew Lee of the Associated Press called attention to the fact that the White House had been also questioned on the matter.

“You know what they did?” Lee asked, “They referred the questions to the State Department and to the FBI.”

So what lies at the root of the US State Department’s unwillingness to discuss the problem? Why are the same mistakes being repeated by the Obama administration over and over again?

In their article for War on the Rocks, US academics Austin Carson and Michael Poznansky explained why the US covert program of training and arming the Syrian rebels is “worth the trouble” despite the fact that US-made weapons often find their way into the wrong hands.

“Anecdotal reports of rogue Jordanian intelligence officers hustling weapons on the black market are a far cry from systematic evidence about the CIA’s success in affecting Assad’s thinking, influencing the battlefield, and expressing American interests. Of course, this opacity is the raison d’être of covert action,” the scholars believe.

In late July, Defense Secretary Ash Carter hosted the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL Meeting at Andrews Air Force Base in Washinghton. It was the fourth time when defense and foreign leaders from more than 30 countries gathered in order to discuss the ongoing operations against the Islamic State.

Carter emphasized a significant success of the US-led coalition that, according to him, had resulted in liberation of the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in Iraq, the narrowing of ISIS-controlled territory in the Syria-Iraq battlespace and the successful cooperation with local security forces in Iraq.

The US Defense Secretary called this approach a new tactical scheme of the war against ISIS.

However, the facts on the ground hardly show something really new in the US strategy in the Middle East. First of all, Ramadi and Fallujah have been liberated as result of agreements with the local Suni clans that had decided to make a deal with Baghdad instead of become involved into bloody clashes with the Iraqi Shia militias. In this case, a major part of ISIS units freely withdrew from these cities and deployed in the nearby areas. If this is a new US anti-ISIS strategy, it’s easy to expect the liberation of Mosul via the same way. However, these PR victories have nothing related to the destruction of the Islamic State as the organized terror group.

It looks that Washington sees ISIS and other jihadi groups as a counterbalance to the Iranian influence in Iraq and Syria. And only the Russian intervention in Syria is the only reason why the US-led international coalition has decided to intensify operations against ISIS. Furthermore, the so-called “new tactical scheme” offered by Carter allows ISIS to maintain its military and terror capabilities for further operations. The recent ISIS terror attack in Baghdad that killed 300 people showed this, clearly.

The expected operation to liberate Mosul was also discussed during the meeting. According to US officials, more than two billion dollars are needed to do this. This amount includes such thing as “support for the displaced, and what it requires of preparations to relieve their suffering and help them to return to their areas of residence.” In other words, this is contribution to the local Sunni forces under the possible agreement over Mosul. The United States expects is going to raise this amount from the coalition members.

All these developments demonstrated that the US has been implementing its long-standing strategy of using various terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq in order to oppose the growing influence of Iran and Russia in the region. The recent statements of US State Secretary John Kerry about preventing the Syrian government forces’ offensive in Aleppo is a part of the same strategy.

“Operation Unified Protector is one of the most successful in NATO’s history… We have done this together for the people of Libya, so they can take their future firmly and safely into their own hands. Libyans have now liberated their country. And they have transformed the region. This is their victory” – Former NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking in October, 2011.

“In Libya, the death of Muammar al-Qaddafi showed that our role in protecting the Libyan people, and helping them break free from a tyrant, was the right thing to do” – US President, Barack Obama, speakingin October, 2011.

“I am proud to stand here on the soil of a free Tripoli and on behalf of the American people I congratulate Libya. This is Libya’s moment, this is Libya’s victory, the future belongs to you” – Former US Secretary of State and Democratic Candidate for President, Hillary Clinton, speaking in October, 2011.

On August the 1st, US warplanes bombed Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL) targets in the Libyan city of Sirte, almost exactly five years after Western imperialists declared NATO’s 2011 war in Libya a complete success.

These strikes are not the first conducted by the US in Libya this year, in a broader campaign that is officially aimed at defeating an enemy that the US had a major hand in creating in the first place (I’m sure the military-industrial complex isn’t complaining however).

Peter Cook, the Pentagon’s Press Secretary, said in a statement released on the 1st of August in relation to the strikes that:

“Today, at the request of the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA), the United States military conducted precision air strikes [which is Orwellian/Pentagon-speak for dropping bombs (not uncommonly on civilians)] against ISIL targets in Sirte, Libya, to support GNA-affiliated forces seeking to defeat ISIL in its primary stronghold in Libya… The U.S. stands with the international community in supporting the GNA as it strives to restore stability and security to Libya.”

Wait a minute though, have I missed something? I thought Libya was “liberated” in 2011 and the country is now a beacon of ‘freedom and democracy’ for the Middle East and North Africa? Are the Libyan people not enjoying being “free from a tyrant;” similar to the liberty the Syrian people will experience if Assad the ‘tyrant’ is overthrown and the country is handed over to al-Qaeda?

Since the future belonged to the Libyan people in 2011, is the country not a vibrant and prosperous democracy today? Is Libya not one of the major hubs of the Mediterranean, with trade booming and flocks of tourists travelling from across the world to sample the delights of the country – from the fascinating culture of the indigenous people to the stunning (I must admit) Roman ruins?

I thought the standard of living for the average Libyan was much higher than it was before the tyrant was deposed? Is Libya not helping to build the African continent up to try and alleviate the millions of people who live in poverty?

I thought the “most successful” campaign in NATO’s history meant that terrorism could not gain a foothold in the country, considering the Western alliance spends the majority of its time (after antagonising Russia that is) talking about fighting terrorism? I thought NATO’s love-bombs only hit the baddies, and never killed or maimed any civilians?

Are the Libyan people not enjoying the fruits of another Western foreign policy success story? Are the Libyan people not enjoying the stability that always follows a Western war of aggression? I thought the Libyan “kinetic military action” was yet another triumphant imperial endeavour, just like Afghanistan, Iraq and the numerous other countries that were lucky to be the targets of Western ‘humanitarian’ forces?

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

As John Williams has made clear, the monthly payroll jobs number consists mainly of an add-on factor of 200,000 jobs.  These jobs are a product of the assumption in the Birth-Death Model that new business ventures create more unreported new jobs than the unreported job losses from business failures. 

If we sustract out this made-up number, July saw a gain of 55,000 jobs, not enough to keep up with population growth.  Even the 55,000 figure is overstated according to John Williams’ report: “The gimmicked, headline payroll gain of 255,000 more realistically should have come in below zero, net of built-in upside biases.”

In other words, the 255,000 jobs are the product of a virtual reality created by a faulty model and manipulations of seasonal adjustments. Williams says the real rate of unemployment is not the claimed 4.9% figure but 23%.

Even if we assume that 255,000 jobs were created in July, the news remains bad, because the jobs claimed are mainly lowly paid part time jobs without benefits and provide insufficient income to support an independent existence.  This is why so many employed young people continue to live at home with their parents.

The labor force participation rate, a measure of labor market strength, is far below where it was 22 years ago. The low participation rate is inconsistent with the claimed 4.9% rate of unemployment.

Real GDP growth has been flat since 2009. The government produces the illusion of growth by understating Inflation.

The conclusion is that Washington lies about the economy just as it lies about everything else.

The liquidity provided by the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England inflates the prices of stocks and bonds and keeps the stock market near its high.  The inflated stock market creates the impression that the economy is strong.  But, of course, if the economy were strong, interest rates would not be zero.

The house of cards will not forever stand.

The historical importance of relations between the United States, China and Russia has long been analyzed from the beginning of the Cold War. Often the tone of interactions has determined the global situation. Important information can undoubtedly be gleaned concerning current and future strategies by observing the direction in which the dynamic relations between Moscow, Beijing and Washington are headed.

For a good part of the Cold War the United States enjoyed a privileged situation that relied on a tempestuous relationship between Moscow and Beijing, especially from the end of the 1960’s until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ideological differences, regional conflicts and territorial disputes spanning for decades allowed Washington to occupy the apex of this complicated triangular relationship. It was in this climate that Nixon’s memorable visit to China developed in 1972, preceded by months of diplomatic work done by Henry Kissinger. The primary objective of the visit, beyond the dispute over Taiwan and the beginning of a fruitful economic cooperation, was to negotiate an agreement and align strategies against the Soviet Union. To date, there is no unique reason that can explain the collapse of the Soviet Union. But certainly the unenviable position of Moscow, subjected to the combined external pressures of Beijing and Washington, did little to help.

Since 1991, Russia and the PRC have embarked on a long path of reconciliation and reconstruction of bilateral relations based on trust and common interests. During the first post-Soviet decade, the triangular relationship between the powers saw strong cooperation and fewepisodes of conflict. It was during this period that the Chinese began to power up their economic engine, reaching what it is now. In particular, trade between Washington and Beijing skyrocketed, going from a few billion dollars in 1990 to a hundred billion dollars per annum in the early 2000’s. At the same time, Russia and the United States were experiencing their most agreeable period in history, thanks to Gorbachev and Yeltsin selling out Russia, bowing to western wishes to exploit the Russian Federation. It was during this embryonic phase that the trilateral relationship between the three powers began to crack. The level of poverty, decline, misery and humiliation suffered in the former Soviet Union, especially in Russia, compelled the Kremlin to appoint a young Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister, and then President, of the Russian Federation.

The apex of the triangle

Events on September 11, 2001 were the main driver for the adoption of a US global interventionist policy. Under the pretext of the infamous war on terror, every corner of the globe became open to attack, any perceived threat assuming a strategic priority to be addressed. As can be imagined, with such stated objectives, the next 15 years led to a progressive loss of stability and sense of security for both China and Russia. In particular, NATO expansion towards Russia’s borders, flaring up in the 2008 war with Georgia, marked the beginning of a direct action to attack the Eurasian superpower. Simultaneously in Southeast Asia, diplomatic action, increasingly expressed in military terms, led Beijing to demonstrate a more determined posture on matters concerning the definition and defense of its maritime boundaries.

In spite of the rising tensions, it was only in the recent 24-36 months that the situation took a dramatic turn. The events in Ukraine radically damaged relations between Moscow and Washington, and the affair concerning Crimea permanently changed the delicate balance in the triangular relationship between China, Russia and the United States. Specifically, it is important to observe the development of events from the coup in Ukraine, namely, international sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States on Russia forced Moscow to make a long-awaited strategic turn to the east.

Immediately, vital trade agreements that had been lingering for 20 years awaiting approval were agreed to in a matter of weeks, thanks to the sudden motivation of Moscow and Beijing. Even military technology exchanges have overcome the historical mistrust between Moscow and Beijing, delivering a huge blow to American hegemonic aspirations. The last 15 years have seen a gradual but inexorable strategic rapprochement between China and Russia, the inadvertent result of Washington’s perpetual bullying. The paradoxical result of this continuous bullying has been Moscow’s turning to the east, resulting in Sino-Russian cooperation that effectively serves to place the United States in a weaker position with respect to both.

The privileged position held for decades by the United States has gradually evaporated, vanishing completely.

Beijing is the new vertex

In spite of all this, the People’s Republic and the United States continued to increase their trade, reaching a staggering five hundred billion dollars per annum in 2015. The insistence with which Washington has tried in every way – initially with the Asian crisis of 1997, then with strong pressure on regional allies (Japan and India in particular) to contain the economic growth of China – has ended up putting Washington in a disadvantageous position. A similar situation was seen with the same attitude pursued by NATO and the European Union of advancing towards Russia’s borders. The reunification of Crimea and the militarization of the ‘Spratly Islands’ are just two emblematic examples of what consequences American policies can lead to and how unproductive they can end up being for Washington.

The aspirations to global dominance of the American deep state have resulted in pushing China and Russia to adopt a comprehensive shared strategy in which they place at the center of their relations common interests rather than differences. Historical mistrust is a thing of the past, with the absence of ideological difference no longer providing a hindrance to mutual cooperation that pervades all areas. The weaknesses of the two nations was transformed into a strength through mutual all-around support.

A good example can be seen in the need for Russia to attract fresh capital, following the application of illegal international sanctions, and the equally important need for China to have rich agricultural lands to cultivate. Recent studies show that Siberia has probably the most fertile lands in the world. Both Moscow and Beijing needed to correct respective strategic deficits: food independence in the case of China, and foreign investment in the case of Russia. The combination of these needs fostered a fruitful collaboration that allowed them to quickly solve their issues: Chinese companies received long Siberian land concessions in exchange for huge capital. Further developments of this agricultural strategy will be interesting to follow in the near future.

Equally obvious is the aspiration of China and Russia to become international brokers, organizing and bringing together different countries within frameworks such as BRICS, SCO and AIIB. Although differing in purpose, membership and methods of action, it is the principle that unites all these organizations led by Moscow and Beijing. Stability, economic prosperity, cooperation and security are the four pillars on which these new global alliances are being built.

The tragedy for the United States seems interminable

Although the global economic system is dominated by the dollar, benefiting only Washington, recent pushes towards the internationalization of the yuan (the IMF Basket and ASEAN), and trade exchanges between China and Russia that increasingly tend not to be conducted in dollars, explain the future trend of global currencies. The supremacy of the dollar depends mainly on its use in the oil trade, forcing countries to accumulate American money as a reserve currency in order to operate in the international markets. With the United States leading and imposing its international economic architecture, it is easy to understand the reasons behind the visits of Putin and Xi to Iran, and the even more significant visit of the Chinese leader to Saudi Arabia in recent months.

The maneuvers towards de-dollarization are already being conducted. This for Washington is an existential threat that can hardly be ignored. Equally improbable is the possibility of America halting this drift. The American policy over the past fifteen years has forged unexpected agreements between the Russian Federation and the Republic of China that will end up in benefiting global stability. The failure of the global hegemonic aspirations of Washington, and of the strategies adopted against China and Russia, have ended up isolating the United States rather than Moscow and Beijing.The tragedy for the United States seems interminable

The hysteria that has plunged the American oligarchy has produced devastating results in America. Donald Trump and his strategy to accelerate the withdrawal of the US from the world stage in favor of a domestic recovery has had an unexpected success and could be the last chance to save the American empire from a future collapse. We could even almost overdo it and go further by stating that a Clinton presidency would transform the understanding between Moscow and Beijing, raising it to hitherto unseen levels, permanently isolating Washington.

The purpose of this essay is to show that as capitalism has evolved from the early stages of small-scale manufacturing to the current stage of the dominance of finance capital, its arena of expropriation has, accordingly, expanded from the early colonial/imperial conquests abroad to today’s universal dispossession worldwide, both at home and abroad. Specifically, it aims to expose the class nature of imperialism independent of nationality and/or geography, and to indicate how this profit-driven characteristic of capitalism is at the root of today’s global austerity economics; an ominous development that dispossesses not only defenseless peoples abroad, but also the overwhelming majority of the people at home—a socio-economic plague that can be called the “new imperialism,” or “imperialism by dispossession” [1].

The new imperialism differs from the old, classical imperialism in at least four major ways.

First, contrary to the old pattern of colonial/imperial conquests and plunders, which often proved quite lucrative to the imperium, war and military operations under the new imperialism are not even cost efficient on purely economic grounds, that is, on grounds of national interests. While immoral, external military operations of past empires often proved profitable and, therefore, justifiable on national economic grounds. Military actions abroad usually brought economic benefits not only to the imperial ruling classes and war profiteers, but also (through “trickle-down” effects) to their citizens. Thus, for example, imperialism paid significant dividends to Britain, France, the Dutch, and other European powers of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. As the imperial economic gains helped develop their economies, they also helped improve the living conditions of their working people and elevate the standards of living of their citizens.

This pattern of economic gains flowing from imperial military operations, however, seems to have somewhat changed in the context of the recent U.S. imperial wars of choice. Moralities aside, U.S. military expeditions and operations of late are not justifiable even on economic grounds. Indeed, escalating U.S. military adventures and aggressions have become ever more wasteful, cost-inefficient, and burdensome to the overwhelming majority of its citizens.

This should not come as a surprise in light of the fact that imperialist wars and military adventures are often prompted not so much by national interests as they are by special interests. Recent U.S. policies of military aggression are increasingly driven not as much by a desire to expand the empire’s wealth beyond the existing levels, as did the imperial/colonial powers of the past, but by a desire to appropriate the lion’s share of the existing resources (or tax dollars) for the military-industrial-security-intelligence establishment. This pattern of universal or generalized expropriation can safely be called dual imperialism because not only does it exploit the conquered and the occupied abroad but also the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens and their resources at home.

Second, beneficiaries of war and military aggressions under the new imperialism tend to systematically invent (or manufacture, if necessary) external “threats to national security” in order to justify continued expansion of military spending. Enlargement of military spending during the Cold War era was not a difficult act to perform as the explanation—the “communist threat”—seemed to conveniently lie at hand. Justification of increased military spending in the post-Cold War period, however, has required the military-industrial-security-intelligence interests to be more creative in concocting “new sources of danger to U.S. interests.” This perennial need for international conflicts and/or external enemies is what makes the new, post-Cold War imperialism more dangerous than the imperialist powers of the past ages.

War profiteering is, of course, not new. Nor are bureaucratic tendencies in the ranks of military hierarchies to build parasitic, ceremonial military empires. By themselves, such characteristics are not what make the U.S. military-industrial-security-intelligence complex more dangerous than the military powers of the past. What makes it more dangerous is the “industrial” part of the complex: the extent to which war has become big business. In contrast to the United States’ arms industry, arms industries of the past empires were often owned and operated by imperial governments, not by profit-driven private corporations. Consequently, as a rule, arms production was dictated by war requirements, not by market or profit imperatives of arms manufacturers. As far as arms industry is concerned, instigation of international conflicts, or invention of external “threats to national security,” is a lucrative proposition that would increase both its profits by expanding its sales markets abroad and its share of national budget at home.

This has had dire consequences for world peace and stability. Under the rule of past military empires, the subjugated peoples or nations could live in peace—imposed peace, of course—if they respected the nefarious geopolitical interests and economic needs of those imperial powers and simply resigned to their political and economic ambitions. Not so with the U.S. military-industrial-security-intelligence empire: the interests of this empire are nurtured through “war dividends.” Peace, imposed or otherwise, would mean that the powerful beneficiaries of war dividends would find it difficult to either expand the sale of their armaments abroad or justify their inordinately large share of national tax dollars at home.

This means that, contrary to the model of past empires, mere perception of external threats is not sufficient for the accumulation of the fortunes of the U.S. military-industrial-security-intelligence empire. Actual, shooting wars—preferably manageable or controllable at the local of regional levels—are needed not only for the expansion but, indeed, for the survival of this empire. Arms industries need occasional wars not only to draw down their stockpiles of armaments, and make room for more production, but also to display the “wonders” of what they produce: the “shock and awe”-inducing properties of their products, or the “laser-guided, surgical operations” of their smart weapons. In the era of tight and contested budget allocations, arms producers need such “displays of efficiency” to prove that they do not waste tax payers’ money. Such maneuvers are certain to strengthen the arguments of militarist politicians against those (few) who resist huge military appropriations. Sadly, however, the incentive for the military industry to prove its efficiency is often measured, though not acknowledged, in terms of actual or potential death and destruction [2].

Third, as pointed out earlier, imperial dispossession has become increasingly more dispersed, generalized or universal: it deprives not only the peoples of distant lands, as did the old imperial/colonial powers, but also the overwhelming majority of citizens at home.

A variety of relatively newer instruments are now utilized to bring about the expropriation of the masses in favor of the plutocratic elites. These include privatization and commodification of public domain, public infrastructures and public services (such as healthcare and education); neoliberal fiscal policies that tend to lower tax obligations of the oligarchic interests by cutting social spending; continued escalation of military spending, which tends to disproportionately benefit the stock and/or stake holders of the military-industrial-security-intelligence spending; manipulation or utilization of financial crises to rescue, or bail out, the so-called too big to fail financial players; and (perhaps most importantly) asset price inflation by means of central banks’ polices of cheap or easy money, which benefits, first and foremost, the big banks and other major financial players that can outbid small borrowers who must borrow at much higher rates than the near-zero rates guaranteed to the big borrowers.

Instead of regulating or containing the disruptive speculative activities of the financial sector, monetary policy makers, spearheaded by central banks, have in recent years been actively promoting asset-price bubbles—in effect, further exacerbating inequality. This shows how the proxies of the financial oligarchy, ensconced at the helm of central banks and their shareholders (commercial banks), serve as agents of subtlely funneling economic resources from the public to the financial oligarchy—just as the rent or tax collectors and bailiffs of feudal lords collected and transferred economic surplus from the peasants/serfs to the landed aristocracy.

Four, in the same fashion as the imperialist expropriation has over time expanded from the early pillage of resources abroad to include the currently generalized dispossession at home, so have imperialistic means of expropriation been diversified or expanded from the sheer military force of earlier times to today’s multitudes of relatively newer means of regime change and dispossession. These newer means of worldwide dispossession include “soft-power” instruments such as color-coded revolutions, “democratic” coup d’états, manufactured civil wars, orchestrated and/or money-driven elections (peddled as manifestations of democracy), economic sanctions, and the like. Perhaps more importantly, they also include powerful financial institutions and think tanks such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), central banks, and credit rating agencies like Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Group.

These guardian-angels of global plutocracy can (and do) change “unaccommodating,” or “unfriendly,” regimes not only in the less developed countries but also in the core capitalist countries. This is how during the ongoing financial turbulence of recent years a number of governments have been changed in Europe. These have included the ousting of the Greek government of Prime Minister George Papandreou in 2011 and that of the Italian government of Prime Minister Mario Monti in 2013. This also explains the failure or defeat of socialist and/or social-democratic experiments in countries such as the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Brazil, Cuba, and many countries in Europe. Threatened by the fear of sanctions, capital flight, economic isolation, or regime change, most of these countries have been forced to abandon their humane economic models of the immediate post-WW II period and adopt the cruel austerity economics of neoliberalism.

*****

How are these historical transitions and transformations to be explained? What precipitated imperialism’s transition from the earlier pattern of core-periphery plunder to the currently borderless or dispersed dispossession worldwide, at home and abroad? Are these changes the products of purely political/ideological calculations, or are they the results of some more fundamental changes in the structure of capitalist production?

While no single factor can be pinpointed as accounting for these historical developments, long-term systematic changes in the structure of capitalist production (from the early stages of manufacturing at home to the current stage of the dominance of finance capital worldwide) seem to be most explanatory. In the early stages of capitalism, raw materials were imported from the periphery of the core capitalist world, used for the production of manufactures at home, which were then sold abroad. In other words, the dominant mode of capitalist production was manufacturing, the main location was the home country, and the dominant form of exports was commodity capital, or finished products.

This mode of production and international trade worked like a virtuous circle for the core capitalist countries: abundant and cheap imports of raw materials from abroad meant more production and higher employment at home, more production at home meant more exports abroad, more export of finished products meant more import of raw materials from abroad, and so one. This pattern of capitalist production, in turn, shaped the pattern of the colonial/imperialist means of safeguarding the interests of the imperium: military expeditions, colonial conquests and transfer of economic resources from the periphery to the core of the capitalist world—hence, the old, classical pattern of colonialism/imperialism.

Today, as the core capitalist economies are dominated by finance capital, the virtuous circle of trade, production and prosperity just mentioned has turned into a vicious circle: export of finance capital, or outsourcing, means less investment, less employment, less production and less income at home. This means, in turn, more imports from abroad, more borrowing to pay for those imports (more national debt), less tax revenue for the government, higher budget deficits, less social spending, more austerity, and so on.

By the same token as these developments tend to deprive the outsourcing countries of production and employment at home, they also bring the economic structure of host countries under the rules and regulations of neoliberal economics. Entrenchment of neoliberal economics on a global scale, however, requires more than the traditional armies or military forces of imperialism. Perhaps more importantly, it also requires new, metaphorical soldiers or armies such as WTO, the IMF, central banks, credit rating agencies, and the like—hence, the new imperialism: imperialism based on universal or generalized dispossession.

Globalization of capitalism and (along with it) universalization of economic austerity, has led to an indisputable cross-border class alliance between global plutocracies. Representatives of transnational capital and their proxies in capitalist governments routinely meet to synchronize their cross-border business and financial policies—a major focus of which in recent years has been to implement global austerity measures and entrench neoliberal policies worldwide. These meetings include the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the World Bank and the IMF annual meetings, the Periodic G20 meetings, the Aspen Institutes Ideas Festival, The Bilderberg Group annual geopolitics forum, and the Herb Allen’s Sun Valley gathering of media moguls—to name only a handful of the many such international policy gatherings.

Today’s elites of global capitalism “are becoming a trans-global community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home,” writes Chrystia Freeland, Global Editor of Reuters, who travels with the elites to many parts of the world. “Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, today’s super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves,” she adds [3].

*****

What is to be done? What are the political implications of this analysis for the working class and other grassroots? What can they do to protect their jobs, their communities and their environment?

Popular responses to these questions tend to focus heavily on protectionist policies of trade restriction, as often reflected in slogans such as “buy American.” Such populist sentiments are advocated by both the rightwing politicians such as Donald Trump and the so-called leftwing politicians such as Bernie Sanders. While nationalist and/or protectionist policies such as “buy American” may be pleasing to populist sentiments, long-term benefits of such policies to global labor and other grassroots are dubious. For one thing, such policies are bound to heighten international labor rivalry, thereby making labor more vulnerable to the accumulation imperatives of capital. For another, protectionist policies can easily become contagious with dire consequences in terms of trade wars, likely followed by actual/shooting wars.

Therefore, in challenging the unbridled corporate free trade agenda and, more generally, the global austerity of neoliberalism, the working people must put forth their own agenda, an agenda that would go beyond populist type of “buy domestic/national” slogans. A positive left-labor agenda must focus on, among other things, the importance of a long-term international labor strategy based on worker-to-worker or union-to-union links. Specifically, Such a strategy would aim at (a) eliminating or reducing international labor rivalry by taking the necessary steps toward the establishment of labor-cost parity within the same company and the same trade, subject to the cost of living and productivity in each country; and (b) establishing independent labor, community, and environmental organizations that would monitor, influence, shape and, ultimately, lead the world economy.

A strategy of this sort would replace the current downward competition between workers in various countries with coordinated bargaining and joint policies for mutual interests and problem-solving worldwide—just as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, central banks, and other multilateral organizations are constantly seeking solutions to the problems facing global markets/capital. While this may sound radical, it is not any more radical than what the transnational plutocracy is doing: coordinating their cold-hearted neoliberal austerity strategies on a global scale.

If at an earlier stage of capitalist development “workers of the world unite” seemed an outlandish dream of the leading labor champion Karl Marx, globalization of capitalism, fantastic increases in labor productivity, the abundance of material resources, and enormous developments in technology, which have greatly facilitated cross-border organizing and coordination of actions by the worldwide labor and other grassroots, have now made that dream an urgent necessity [4].

References: 

[1] See, for example, David Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford University Press, 2005. 

[2] The preceding four paragraphs are based largely on excerpts from Chapter One of my book, The Political Economy of U.S. Imperialism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007)]. 

[3]. “The Rise of the New Global Elite,” The Atlantic, January–February 2011, available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/308343/&gt ]. 

[4] For a longer discussion of these issues see Chapter 8 of my book, Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis: Parasitic Finance Capital (Routledge 2015)]. 

Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

Not long after a U.S.-backed rebel group in Syria received worldwide attention for a beheading, the group may have deployed chemical weapons in Aleppo.

A video of the rebels, known as Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki, beheading a 10-year-old Palestinian boy went viral last month, and on Wednesday, the Russian defense ministry said al-Zenki rebels were responsible for a chemical gas attack on the Old City of Aleppo.

“On August 2, 2016 at 19 hours 05 minutes militants from the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki group, considered by Washington as ‘moderate opposition,’ launched poisonous materials from the Sukkari district towards the eastern part of Aleppo,” the ministry reported, according to RT.

Quoting Syria’s state-run SANA news agency, RT continued:

“A ‘terrorist attack’ on the Old City of Aleppo with ‘shells containing toxic gas’ led to the deaths of five and suffocation of eight more civilians, the outlet quoted the city’s health director, Mohamad Hazouri, as saying.”

Watch “Five dead, dozens injured in chemical gas attacks in Syria” from RT America:

A doctor at a hospital in Aleppo told RT:

“We’ve taken 12 injured people, six other patients have already died from suffocation. Our doctors were prepared to treat people showing symptoms of gas poisoning. We’ve been expecting terrorists to use weapons of this kind.”

The rebels, whom the doctor referred to as “terrorists,” are still considered potential allies by the Obama administration. In 2014, the faction was part of a coalition that received military supplies from the United States, including anti-tank missiles.

The U.S. has repeatedly accused the Syrian government of chemical weapons use, despite a lack of conclusive evidence. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has ignored evidence that its rebel allies are committing similar war crimes. The renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in 2014:

“The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons.”

The U.S. government’s reaction to the latest incident seems to be following a familiar pattern. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Mark Toner gave a vague answer when pressed by Caleb Maupin, an RT reporter and MintPress News contributor.

“We condemn strongly the use of any chemical weapons and any credible allegations of their use in Syria we’ll investigate,” Toner told Maupin.

Toner further claimed the U.S. is still investigating the beheading, adding: “I know that the group itself said that they’d also made some arrests and set up a commission of inquiry into the incident.”

Last month, Toner said the State Department would reevaluate its support for al-Zenki rebels if it found proof of the beheading incident.

“If we [the United States] can prove indeed what happened and this group [al-Zenki] was involved in it… it would give us pause about any assistance or frankly any further involvement,” Toner told RT.

Despite these assurances, it’s likely that Western weapons and military aid will continue to flow to extremist groups. In December, investigative journalist Peter Oborne reported that military aid from the U.S., United Kingdom and their allies to the Free Syrian Army and other so-called “moderate” groups routinely ends up in the hands of terrorists — all in the name of destabilizing the Syrian government under President Bashar Assad.

“The weapons conduit that the West gave to the FSA is understood to be a sort of Wal-Mart that the radical groups can take weapons and use to fight Assad,” Oborne wrote. “The weapons migrate along the line to the more radical elements.”

Watch “Are chemical attacks enough for US to pull aid from ‘moderate’ rebels?” from RT America:

The following is a compilation of articles that create a historical countdown from Pressing Issues which looks at the behind the scene events of the days leading to the US nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively on August 6 and August 9, 1945. Examining the nuclear attacks on Japan, it is worth quoting General Eisenhower  that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Asia-Pacific Research Editor, 6 August 2016.

 

*      *     *

Author’s Note

Each summer I count down the days to the atomic bombing of Japan (August 6 and August 9, 1945), marking events from the same day in 1945. I’ve been doing it here for more than two weeks now. I’ve written  three books and ebooks on the subject: Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton), Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military), and Hollywood Bomb (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 epic was censored by the military and Truman himself).

The Nuclear Countdown

July 30, 1945: 

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of U.S. troops in Europe, has visited President Truman in Germany, and would recall what happened in his memoir (Mandate for Change): “Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act…

“During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…”

In a Newsweek interview, Ike would add: “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

— Stimson, now back at the Pentagon, cabled Truman, that he had drafted a statement for the president that would follow the first use of the new weapon–and Truman must urgently review it because the bomb could be used as early as August 1. Stimson sent one of his aides to Germany with two copies of the statement. The Top Secret, six-page typed statement opened: “____ hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on ______ and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT…. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.” Later, as we will see, the claim that Hiroshima was merely “a military base” was added to the draft.

–After scientists sifted more data from the July 16 Trinity test of the first weapon, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, military head of the Manhattan Project provided Gen. George Marshall, our top commander, with more detail on the destructive power of atomic weapons. Amazingly, despite the new evidence, Groves recommended that troops could move into the “immediate explosion area” within a half hour” (and, indeed, in future bomb tests soldiers would march under the mushroom clouds and receive harmful doses of radiation). Groves also provided the schedule for the delivery of the weapons: By the end of November more than ten weapons would be available, in the event the war had continued.

–Groves faced a new problem, however. Gen. “Tooey” Spaatz on Guam urgently cabled that sources suggested that there was an Allied prisoner of war camp in Nagasaki just a mile north of the center of the city. Should it remain on the target list?” Groves, who had already dropped Kyoto from the list after Stimson had protested, refused to shift. In another cable Spaatz revealed that there were no POW camps in Hiroshima, or so they believed. This firmed up Groves’s position that Hiroshima should “be given top priority,” weather permitting. As it turned out, POWs died in both cities from the bombing.

July 31, 1945:

–In Germany, Admiral William D. Leahy, chief of staff to Truman–and the highest-ranking U.S. military officer during the war–continues to privately express doubts about the bomb, that it may not work and is not needed,  in any case. (Gen. Eisenhowerhad just come out against using the Bomb.)  Leahy would later write in his memoirs:

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

“The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

–The assembly of Little Boy is completed. It is ready for use the next day.  But a  typhoon approaching Japan will likely prevent launching an attack. Several days might be  required for weather to clear.

–Secretary of War Stimson sends semi-final draft of statement for Truman to read when first bomb used and he has to explain its use, and the entire bomb project, to the U.S. and the world, with this cover note: “Attached are two copies of the revised statement which has been prepared for release by you as soon as the new weapon is used. This is the statement about which I cabled you last night.  The reason for the haste is that I was informed only yesterday that, weather permitting, it is likely that the weapon will be used as early as August 1st, Pacific Ocean Time, which as you know is a good many hours ahead of Washington time.”

It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

August 1, 1945:

—Truman wrote a letter to his wife Bess last night talking about the atomic bomb (but without revealing it): “He [Stalin] doesn’t know it but I have an ace in the hole and another one showing—so unless he has threes or two pair (and I know he has not) we are sitting all right.”

And today he gives a letter to Stalin, which confounds the Soviet leader. Earlier, Stalin had promised to declare war on Japan around August 7. Now Truman writes that more consultation is needed. Truman had earlier pushed for the quick entry, writing in his diary “fini Japs” when that occurred, even without use of The Bomb. Now that he has the bomb in his “pocket” he apparently hopes to stall the Soviets.

–Truman has also approved statement on the use of the bomb, brought to him last night in Germany by a courier, drafted by Secretary of War Stimson and others, and ordered it released after the bomb drop. A line near the start has been added explicitly depicting the vast city of Hiroshima (occupied mainly by women and children) as nothing but a “military base.” The president, and the drafters of the statement, knew was false. An earlier draft described the city of Nagasaki as a “naval base” and nothing more. There would be no reference to radiation effects whatsoever in the statement—it was just a vastly bigger bomb.

—The Potsdam conference ended early this morning, with Truman expected to head back to the US by sea tomorrow.

—The “Little Boy” atomic bomb is now ready for use on the island of Tinian. Under the direction of the lead pilot, Paul Tibbetts, practice runs have been completed, near Iwo Jima, and fake payloads dropped, with success. Truman’s order had given the okay for the first mission later this day and it might have happened if a typhoon was not approaching Japan.

—Stimson writes in his diary about decision today to release to the press, with Truman’s coming statement after  the use of the bomb, a 200-page report on the building of the bomb, revised to not give too much away. Here he explains why they will release it at all: “The aim of the paper is to backfire reckless statements by independent scientists after the demonstration of the bomb. If we could be sure that these could be controlled and avoided, all of us would much prefer not to issue such a paper. But under the circumstances of the entire independence of action of scientists and the certainty that there would be a tremendous amount of excitement and reckless statement, [Gen. Leslie] Groves, who is a very conservative man, had reached the conclusion that the lesser evil would be for us to make a statement carefully prepared so as not to give away anything vital and thus try to take the stage away from the others.”

August 2, 1945 

—Early today, Paul Tibbets, pilot of the lead plane, the Enola Gay (named after his mom) on the first mission, reported to Gen. Curtis LeMay’s Air Force headquartters on Guam. LeMay told him the “primary” was still Hiroshima. Bombardier Thomas Ferebee pointed on a map what the aiming point for the bomb would be—a distinctive T-shaped bride in the center of the city, not the local army base. “It’s the most perfect aiming I’ve seen in the whole damned war,” Tibbets said. But the main idea was to set the bomb off over the center of the city, which rests in kind of a bowl, so that the surrounding hills would supply a “focusing effect” that would lead to added destruction and loss of life in city mainly filled by women and children.

—By 3 p.m., top secret orders were being circulated for Special Bombing Mission #13, now set for August 6, when the weather would clear. The first alternate to Hiroshima was Kokura. The second, Nagasaki. The order called for only “visual bombing,” not radar, so the weather had to be okay. Six planes would take part. Two would escort the Enola Gay, one would take photos, the other would be a kind of mobile lab, dropping canisters to send back scientific information.

—Meanwhile, three B-29s arrived at Tinian carrying from Los Alamos the bomb assemblies for the second Fat Man device (which would use plutonium, the substance of choice for the future, unlike the uranium bomb meant for Hiroshima).

—Japanese cables and other message intercepted by the United States showed that they were still trying to enlist the Soviets’ help in presenting surrender terms–they would even send an envoy–but were undecided on just what to propose. The Russians, meanwhile, were just five days from declaring war on Japan.

–Top U.S. officials were on now centering on allowing the Japanese to keep their emperor when they give up.  In his diary Secretary of War Stimson endorses a key report which concludes: “The retention of the Emperor will probably insure the immediate surrender of all Japanese Forces outside the home islands.”  Would offering that win a swift Japanese surrender–without the need to use the bomb?  Not considered.

—Six years ago earlier on this day, August 2, 1939, Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Roosevelt stating the Germans were trying to enrich uranium 235—and that this process would allow them to build an atomic bomb. This helped spark FDR’s decision to create the Manhattan Project.

August 3, 1945 

–On Tinian, Little Boy is ready to go, awaiting word on weather, with General LeMay to make the call. Taking off the night of August 5 appears most likely scenario.

–On board the ship Augusta steaming home for USA after Potsdam meeting, President Truman, Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Leahy, and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes–a strong A-bomb booster–enjoy some poker.   Byrnes aide Walter Brown notes in his diary that “President, Leahy, JFB [Byrnes) agreed Japan looking for peace. (Leahy had another report from Pacific.) President afraid they will sue for peace through Russia instead of some country like Sweden.”

–Leahy had questioned the decision to use the bomb, later writing: “[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…. [I]n being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

–Our “Magic” intercepts show Japan monitoring the Soviets’ military buildup in the Far East (prelude to the declaration of war in four days).  Also, Japanese still searching for way to approach Molotov to pursue possible surrender terms before that happens. Another Magic intercept carried the heading, “Japanese Army’s interest in peace negotiations.” War Department intel analysts revealed “the first statement to appear in the traffic that the Japanese Army is interested in the effor tto end the war with Soviet assitance.” A segment of Prime Minister Togo’s message declared: “The Premier and the leaders of the Army are now concentrting all their attention on this one point.”

John McCloy, then assistant secretary of war and a well-known “hawk” in his later career, would later reflect, “I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs.”

–Soviet General Vasilevskii reports to Stalin that Soviet forces ready for invasion from August 7 on.

August 4, 1945:

—On Tinian, Little Boy is ready to go, awaiting word on weather, with General LeMay to make the call. With the weather clearing near Hiroshima, still the primary target, taking off the night of August 5 appears the most likely scenario. Secretary of War Stimson writes of a “troubled” day due to the uncertain weather, adding: “The S-1 operation was postponed from Friday night [August 3] until Saturday night and then again Saturday night until Sunday.”

—Hiroshima remains the primary target, with Kokura #2 and Nagasaki third.

—Paul Tibbets, pilot of the lead plane, the Enola Gay, finally briefs others in the 509th Composite Group who will take part in the mission at 3 pm. Military police seal the building. Tibbets reveals that they will drop immensely powerful bombs, but the nature of the weapons are not revealed, only that it is “something new in the history of warfare.” When weaponeer Deke Parsons says, “We think it will knock out almost everything within a three-mile radius,” the audience gasps.

Then he tries to show a film clip of the recent Trinity test—but the projector starts shredding the film. Parsons adds, “No one knows exactly what will happen when the bomb is dropped from the air,” and he distributes welder’s glasses for the men to wear. But he does not relate any warnings about radioactivity or order them not to fly through the mushroom cloud.

—On board the ship Augusta steaming home for the USA after the Potsdam meeting, President Truman relaxes and plays poker with one of the bomb drop’s biggest booster, Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes. Truman’s order to use the bomb had simply stated that it could be used any time after August 1 so he had nothing to do but watch and wait. The order included the directive to use a second bomb, as well, without a built-in pause to gauge the results of the first and the Japanese response—even though the Japanese were expected, by Truman and others, to push surrender feelers, even without the bomb, with Russia’s entry into the war on August 7.  Hence: assembly-line massacre in Nagasaki.

–Gen. Douglas MacArthur,  who directed the U.S. war in the Pacific, and would soon become the head of our occupation of Japan, had still not been told of the existence and planned use of the new bomb.  Norman Cousins, the famed author and magazine editor, who was an aide to MacArthur, would later reveal:  “MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed….When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”  As we noted earlier, both General Eisenhower and Truman’s top aide, Admiral Leahy, both protested the use of the bomb against Japan in advance.

August 5, 1945:

—Pilot Paul Tibbets formally named the lead plane in the mission, #82, after his mother,Enola Gay. A B-29 that would take photos on the mission would be named Necessary Evil.

—Also on Tinian, Little Boy is ready to go, awaiting word on weather, with General Curtis LeMay to make the call. At 3:30 p.m., in an air-conditioned bomb assembly hut, the five-ton bomb as loaded (gently) on to a trailer. Crew members scribbled words onto the bomb in crayon, including off-color greetings for the Japanese. Pulled by a tractor, accompanied by a convoy of jeeps and other vehicles, the new weapon arrives at the North Field and is lowered into the bomb pit.

–The bomb is still not armed. The man who would do, before takeoff, according to plan, was Parsons. But he had other ideas, fearing that the extra-heavy B-29 might crash on takeoff and taking with it “half the island.” He asked if he could arm the bomb in flight, and spent a few hours—on a hot and muggy August day—practicing before getting the okay.

—Pilot Tibbets tries to nap, without much success. Then, in the assembly hall just before midnight, he tells the crew, that the new bomb was “very powerful” but he did not mention the words “nuclear,” “atomic’ or “radiation.” He calls forward a Protestant chaplain who delivers a prayer he’d written for this occasion on the back of an envelope. It asks God to “to be with those who brave the heights of Thy heaven and who carry the battle to our enemies.”

—Hiroshima remains the primary target, with Kokura #2 and Nagasaki third. The aiming point was directly over the city, not the military base or industrial quarter, guaranteeing the deaths of tens of thousands of women and children.

— The Soviets are two days from declaring war on Japan and marching across Manchuria. Recall that Truman had just written in diary “Fini Japs” when the Soviets would declare war, even without the Bomb.  (See new evidence that it was the Soviet declaration of war, more than the atomic bombing, that was the decisive factor in Japan’s surrender.)

—Halfway around the world from Tinian, on board the ship Augusta steaming home for the USA after the Potsdam meeting, President Truman relaxes. Truman’s order to use the bomb had simply stated that it could be used any time after August 1 so he had nothing to do but watch and wait. The order included the directive to use a second bomb, as well, without a built-in pause to gauge the results of the first and the Japanese response—even though the Japanese were expected, by Truman and others, to push surrender feelers, even without the bomb, with Russia’s entry into the war on August 7.

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To see the original entries please click here:

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus 7 Days

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus 6 Days

Countdown to Hiroshima, X-Minus 5 Days

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus 4 Days

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus 3 Days

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus 2 Days

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus 1 Day

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books, with three on the use of the bomb, including Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military) and Hollywood Bomb (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).

On July 26, the South Korean government blocked two Korean-American activists from entering the country. Both activists planned to meet with their South Korean counterparts and to participate in a series of events, many of which are in response to the controversial decision to station a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery in South Korea.

[Elich] Let’s start with a little background.  Juyeon, I know you put an enormous amount of time and energy into organizing this trip. Would you tell us something about the peace tour?

[Rhee] Briefly speaking, this peace tour was about bringing awareness to the U.S. public regarding what’s happening in Korea around U.S. bases and the U.S. military presence. The U.S. has played a big role in the division and the current state of war in the Korean peninsula. Accordingly, it only appeared to be right to bring a peace activist delegation from the U.S., such as members of Veterans for Peace (VFP), to Korea, where local people’s resistance against U.S. bases is increasing, and to build solidarity and connection with each other.

This year, we are to explore and learn about people’s resistance against biological and chemical warfare programs such as the JUPITR [Joint U.S. Forces in Korea Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition] program at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, the air and noise pollution issues at Kunsan Air Base, and the THAAD deployment issue.  In addition, we are to participate in the annual Peace and Life March around Jeju Island against the new naval base, and in the annual International Peace Forum. The trip was planned about four months ago, when Seongju had not yet been named as the location for THAAD, so we were supposed to change the plan as we saw fit once we entered South Korea.

Where we stand, budget cuts on education and job creation in the U.S. have become important issues, and the peace tour is designed to highlight and connect that the THAAD deployments and U.S. base expansions are not serving anybody in both countries, but endangers the security of these two countries by increasing military tension in East Asia.

[Elich] Tell us what happened when you arrived at the Incheon airport. How did you learn that you wouldn’t be allowed to enter the country? What explanation was given?

[Lee] At the immigration checkpoint, we were taken into a small investigation room. There, immigration officers told us a “central agency” had placed a block on our entry. We asked why we were being denied entry, and they said because the immigration office is lower on the totem pole than the “central agency” that had placed the block, they couldn’t verify the reason.

They then gave us a piece of paper that read, “It has been ordered in accordance with provisions of Article 11 and 12 of the Korea Immigration Law, that you be deported…” They told us to sign the piece of paper, and we said, “This explains nothing. What are articles 11 and 12?” They then brought out a thick legal manual and showed us the text of Article 11, which prohibits the entry of foreigners who, among other things, are “deemed likely to commit any act detrimental to national interests of the Republic of Korea or public safety.”

We asked why we are deemed detrimental to Korea’s national interest or public safety. The officers were unresponsive to our question.

We were told that we would have to board the next flight out to Hawaii (as that was the first stop on our return ticket) at 9:00 PM the next day. So we stayed in the transit area of Incheon International Airport for the next 28 hours.

Because we knew that Veterans for Peace members Bruce Gagnon and Ken Jones were flying into Incheon at 9:00 PM the next day and we wanted to see them and make sure they safely entered the country, we spoke with a Korean Airlines ticket agent to see if we could take a later flight out of Incheon. We were told by the Korean Airlines ticket agent that the National Intelligence Service had blocked our entry and that there was an order for immediate deportation, so we could not extend our stay.

[Elich] How was your experience while waiting for a return flight?

[Rhee] While in the transfer area, I was mostly concerned about making changes to our trip plans, as I was the coordinator of the trip. I remembered that a Palestinian friend had once told me that every time she flies, she knows to expect harassment from border control agents and that Arabs are three times more likely to be stopped and harassed at airports than non-Arabs. I suddenly felt sad that this, unfortunately, is a routine experience for some people. But this experience of being denied entry has hardened our resolve to fight for democracy and peace even more. Many South Korean activists sent us text messages of encouragement and referred to our experience of state repression as a “rite of passage” as people fighting for justice in a time of increasingly authoritarian rule.

[Elich] The application of provisions 11 and 12 of the Korean Immigration Law in your case is logically unsupportable. Your plans were entirely peaceful, and the events will proceed regardless. What do you think are the real reasons behind your deportation?

[Lee and Rhee] We are of the opinion that it has to do with the current hot-button issue involving the THAAD missile defense system. The South Korean government may want to block peace activists from internationalizing the struggle to oppose the recent U.S.-South Korean decision to deploy a THAAD battery in South Korea. Since a joint U.S.-South Korean working group announced Seongju, a small agricultural town in North Gyeongsang Province, as the designated site for THAAD deployment, Seongju residents have been on the street every day — protesting and holding candlelight vigils. The government continues to send representatives to Seongju to quell the protests and offer to “negotiate” but keep getting chased out by the residents, who refuse to accept anything less than a reversal of the THAAD deployment decision. Ninety percent of Seongju residents had voted for Park Geun-hye in the last presidential election, but they held a mock funeral procession for the governing Saenuri Party and have begun to leave the party in droves.

South Korea’s neighbors, China and Russia, have also expressed their disapproval of the THAAD decision. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi chastised South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se at a regional forum for “undermining bilateral trust.”

An important objective of our peace tour was to build solidarity with the peace movement in South Korea in opposition to the THAAD decision. Ultimately the decision to deploy the THAAD system in South Korea was a U.S. decision — as part of its broader effort to encircle China and Russia with a network of missile defense systems and to protect its military assets in the region from North Korean missiles. We feel it is important for us, as U.S. citizens, to learn as much as we can from those who are fighting on the front lines of this issue in South Korea and return home to educate the U.S. public about what our government is doing abroad in our name and with our tax dollars.

And we believe it is precisely this type of solidarity-building that the Park Geun-hye government wants to prevent. A strong connection and solidarity between the peace movements in the U.S. and Korea can really empower both sides on this issue. The Korean government must fear that our presence and voice of solidarity will embolden the South Korean people’s resistance against THAAD deployment.

[Elich] What does your deportation say about the state of democracy in South Korea under the Park Geun-hye government?

[Lee] Our deportation is not unique; it is the latest in a long list of progressive activists being denied entry into South Korea. In May of this year, a German citizen of Korean descent was refused entry after trying to attend a conference to commemorate the anniversary of the democracy uprising in Gwangju, a city that was the site of a bloody crackdown against democracy activists during the dictatorship of the 1980s. In 2012, Veterans for Peace members, who arrived in Jeju Island to join protests against the construction of the naval base there, were also denied entry. Since establishing an office in South Korea in June 2011, four Greenpeace East Asia staff have been denied entry without justification.

Democracy has been under attack under the rule of Park Geun-hye, the daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee. Since taking office in 2012, Park has waged an aggressive campaign of crackdowns against opposition leaders, labor unions, and all those who are critical of her policies. She jailed opposition lawmaker Lee Seok-ki in 2013 and dissolved the opposition Unified Progressive Party the following year. In 2015, she jailed the president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, Han Sang-gyun for leading protests against labor market reforms and her neo-authoritarian rule. Recently, she shut down the investigation of the 2014 Sewol Tragedy despite protests from bereaved parents who lost their children in the tragedy. Today, her government is implementing by force the agreement reached with the Japanese government last December to absolve Japan of legal responsibility for its sexual crimes during WWII in exchange for a lump-sum monetary donation. The list of Park’s undemocratic policies and actions is long.

[Elich] What effect does this experience have on your spirit and motivation?

[Lee] It was an opportunity to reaffirm the strength of our community. Despite the unexpected setback, Veteran for Peace members with whom we had planned to meet up with in South Korea are able to continue the peace tour without us, because friends and organizations in South Korea are able to step in on a moment’s notice and fill in the gap — answering our last minute requests for translation and logistics coordination for the VFP members. We were turned around and stranded in Hawaii, but a community of activists immediately took us in and housed us, fed us and introduced us to the struggles of native Hawaiians. And friends back home from all over the United States sent us messages of encouragement. We feel blessed to be part of a broader community of progressive people — our greatest source of strength that enables us to face adversity without fear or hesitation.

The experience also emboldened us to redouble our efforts in building solidarity with those fighting for democracy and peace in South Korea.  As soon as we return home, we will immediately begin organizing U.S. opposition against THAAD deployment.

Hyun Lee is a New York City-based writer and activist. She is a Korea Policy Institute fellow and a member of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development.

Juyeon Rhee is a first generation Korean immigrant grassroots organizer whose work is focused on de-militarization, peace, and unification in Korea. Juyeon has been a member of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development since 2000 and a board member at Korea Policy Institute.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. His website is https://gregoryelich.org/

All three are members of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea.

More evidence of deep divisions between the IOC and WADA over the Russian doping scandal have emerged in two articles in The Australian.  One article, which is behind a paywall, derives from off-the-record conversations with IOC officials.  The other article, which is open access, gives Professor McLaren’s side of the story.  It alludes to the article behind the paywall and reproduces some of its material.

For an open source account of what is in the article behind the paywall, one is obliged to turn to RT.  It claims that the article says

“….that there are members within the International Olympic Committee (IOC) who believe the release of the McLaren report on the eve of the Olympics was designed to set off the “nuclear option” of issuing a blanket ban on Russia competing at the games.”

This is very similar to what I said in an article I wrote a few days ago.  I said that the whole way the campaign was conducted, and the timing of the publication of the various WADA reports, shows that the agenda all along was to get the whole of Team Russia expelled from the Olympic Games.  Here is what I said:

“That this was indeed the agenda is clear enough from the way the whole anti-doping campaign against Russia has been conducted.  It seems that a decision to expel Russia from the Olympic movement was taken probably around the time of the failure of the campaign to boycott the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.  All the various allegations of doping in Russia that have circulated since 2010 and even before were then sifted through to construct a case.  Someone then put them all together in a dossier, spicing them up with witness testimony from people like Stepanova and Rodchenkov.  A series of lurid articles and documentaries then appeared in the Western media, reviving all the allegations and putting the worst possible spin on them.  A series of reports from WADA then followed in quick succession starting in the autumn of last year, timed to make the maximum possible impact and to leave the least possible time for proper independent fact checking or for any other steps to be taken before the start of the Rio Games.  That way the allegations could not be properly and independently assessed and no fully fair arrangements could be made to allow for the admission of all indisputably clean Russian athletes.  That opened the way, just as the Rio Games were about to start, for the IOC to be presented with a demand for a blanket ban.”

In my article I also said on the basis of certain comments by IOC President Thomas Bach that all the facts pointed to the IOC being furious with WADA for its conduct of the whole affair.  Again RT’s summary of the article behind the paywall confirms as much.

“Once it was clear that the IOC was not going to support a full ban, the author of the report, the Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, handed over the names of Russian athletes who had been cited in his document to the 28 federations. These names had initially not been published when the report was first made public on July 18. However, The paper’s sources reportedly said that WADA now has a problem as it “had been caught short not having enough detail to justify some of the claims against athletes.”

“They sexed it up which is crazy because now the entire report is under scrutiny and I am sure most of the report is absolutely accurate. It just puts question marks where question marks should not be,” a sports official told the publication.

The president of the Australian Olympic Committee, John Coates, who is also an IOC vice president, reportedly wrote to Australia’s Health Minister Susan Ley, saying that the IOC had a “lack of confidence in WADA.”

“McLaren said there was evidence that 170 Russian athletes, the majority of whom were set to compete in Rio, had previously had positive doping tests destroyed by the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory.   Following further analysis of the samples carried out at the Moscow laboratory, it was found that Russian samples were split into four separate categories of seriousness. However, one of these categories was for samples which were not considered serious at all.

“We were asked to make a judgment about Russian competitors based on McLaren’s report but without having any of the detail to understand the significance of them being named,” a senior sports official said, as cited by The Australian. “Now to be told that there were four different categories – why weren’t we told this at the very beginning? It’s a mess and it’s WADA’s fault.’’”

That RT is reproducing the article accurately is confirmed by the open access article.  It corroborates RT’s account of the article behind the paywall:

“Sports officials have accused WADA of “sexing up” the case against Russian athletes by handing over to sporting federations the names of competitors who had no evidence against them in order to invoke the “nuclear option” of expelling Russia from the Games.  IOC spokesman Mark Adams said yesterday the confusion showed the dangers of working with an unfinished report: “To have someone who didn’t (commit) a competition doping offence but was counted as such is a very dangerous thing. We encourage a full report by Professor McLaren before we make any full and frank ­decisions.’’”

(bold italics added)

The reference to McLaren’s report being “unfinished” and to the need for a “full report” refers to something else I said in another earlier article I wrote a week ago:

“In any rational world what ought to have happened is that when Stepanova’s and Rochenkov’s allegations became public a full and proper investigation ought to have been set up, with all the witnesses examined and represented by legal counsel, and with the forensic evidence examined by a variety of scientific experts, who could have been cross-examined and whose reports would have been made public.  Since this would have taken time – a year at least – arrangements of the sort now set up by the IOC should have been made in the meantime to ensure that there was no cheating by Russian athletes at Rio.  Given the scale of the allegations and the suspicion of state involvement in the doping, this would inevitably have involved barring Russian athletes already found to have cheated from competing in Rio, harsh though that is.  At the end of this process the investigation would have delivered a proper report – not like the deeply flawed report provided by McLaren – either confirming or refuting the allegations, and making specific recommendations to prevent the problem arising again.”

The IOC is obviously right to complain that it should not have been asked to make a decision on the basis of an incomplete report provided just 2 weeks before the Games in Rio were due to begin.  However, given his actions in preparing his report and the way he presented it, Professor McLaren is obviously the wrong person to prepare the full report IOC spokesman Mark Adams is referring to.

The open access article in The Australian shows the extent to which McLaren and WADA have been thrown onto the defensive.  It reports McLaren complaining that

“The focus has been completely lost and the discussion is not about the Russian labs and Sochi Olympic Games, which was under the direction of the IOC. But what is going on is a hunt for people supposed to be doping but that was never part of my work, although it is starting to (become) so. My reporting on the state-based system has turned into a pursuit of individual athletes.’’

I am at a total loss to understand how Professor McLaren thinks that a report supposedly about an alleged state-sponsored system of doping should not look into the evidence of doping on the part of individual athletes, when it is precisely those individual cases of doping which are the evidence that there was a state-sponsored system of doping in the first place.

Obviously there was insufficient time to look into each and every allegation of doping properly in the 57 days in which Professor McLaren’s investigation was conducted.  However that merely points to the fact that conducting a proper investigation within a timeframe of just 57 days was impossible.  Professor McLaren should have admitted as much and asked for more time to conduct his investigation properly, leaving it to WADA and the IOC to put in place proper arrangements to prevent possible cheating by Russian athletes at the Olympic Games in Rio in the meantime. However that is not what he did.   Instead he delivered an incomplete and defective report and demanded a blanket ban on the strength of it.

Frankly I cannot see in Professor McLaren’s words anything other than confirmation that that was his objective all along.  Judging from what IOC officials are reported to have told The Australian, it seems that is their opinion too.

Further confirmation that this was the objective is provided by the way WADA is now desperately trying to retreat from the way McLaren “implicated” individual athletes in his report.  In order to explain this away WADA’s chief executive Olivier Niggli is quoted by The Australian as providing what can only be called a twisted explanation of what happened.

“WADA chief executive Olivier Niggli said the confusion arose because sports officials had not understood what the word ‘’implicated’’ meant.  ‘’Professor McLaren gave each sport the list of the athletes who were implicated. That was the word used by the IOC; which athletes were appearing there in the report. Then we get to the confusing part. He gave the international federations everything he had, every name.’’ There was no further information about some names, yet the sports federations believed listing meant they were ‘’implicated’’ and they should withdraw the athletes and, following IOC guidelines, they should withdraw them from Olympics competition.”

That Professor McLaren (who is a lawyer) “implicated” athletes in a way that was not intended to cast suspicion on them strikes me as frankly absurd.  On the contrary it is now starting to look as if he presented his findings in such a way as to create the impression that there was more evidence of Russian athletes being involved in doping than was actually the case.

All this is of course grist to the mill for the lawyers in the court cases which the Russian athletes are now bringing.  Some of the comments on the thread to the article in which I discussed these court cases doubted that they would have much effect.  On the contrary it is precisely because these court cases are being brought that the IOC and WADA are now so publicly at odds with each other.  What one can see in these angry exchanges and recriminations are the frantic steps of the two sporting bodies as they try desperately to cover their positions in anticipation of the court cases that are now coming.  Moreover in any court case there is a legal duty of full disclosure which the Russian athletes can use to demand sight of all the correspondence (including telephone records and emails) which led to the decision to exclude them being made.  I expect their lawyers to advise them to use this right to the hilt.  This is beginning to look like a debacle.  As I have said before this affair is only at its start.

Riot police have fired tear gas to subdue protesters in Rio and prevent them from marching towards Maracana Stadium ahead of the Olympic Games opening. Hundreds of people are rallying to express anger at the interim government and costly sports event.

Police used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse several hundred people who had occupied a street near the stadium to protest interim government corruption and the billions spent on organizing the international competition.

Afonso Pena Square became the final destination of the massive anti-corruption march that was held in the city earlier in the day.

Angry over corruption, supporters of Dilma Rousseff, the nation’s ousted president, gathered in front of the Copacabana Palace, where some athletes are staying for the Games. Earlier this year, awmakers in Brazil approved Rousseff’s impeachment process over accusations she hid a budget deficit to have a better chance at re-election in 2014.

Holding signs reading “Fora Temer,” and “Temer Out,” some 3,000 activists came out in support of Rousseff who believe that her removal from office was a “coup” organized by Michel Temer, Rousseff’s vice president, who is currently serving as Brazil’s interim president.

The crowd also spoke out against hosting the Olympics, claiming that he billions spent on the event only aided corruption in the country and only helped the elite. “No to the Olympics!” signs were visible among protesters.

According the a recent Oxford University study about the Olympic Games’ pricetag, just the sports related costs of the event will run to as much as $4.6 billion, approximately 51 percent over the initial budget. But the overall cost will amount to $12 billion, Reuters reported.

“At 156 percent in real terms, the Olympics have the highest average cost overrun of any type of mega-project,” the Oxford study found. “For a city and nation to decide to stage the Olympic Games is to decide to take on one of the most costly and financially most risky type of mega-project that exists, something that many cities and nations have learned to their peril.”

Brazil’s economy was booming when Rio was awarded the games in 2009, but the country is now in its worst recession since the 1930s, with the Brazilian Real losing a third of its value, gross domestic product declining, and inflation and unemployment skyrocketing.

1.    http://www.saqibooks.co.uk/book/syria-speaks/

2.    https://theintercept.com/2014/11/06/many-countries-islamic-world-u-s-bombed-occupied-since-1980/

3.    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/04/british-woman-held-after-being-seen-reading-book-about-syria-on-plane

The paradigms a person uses (or assumes) while thinking about anything determines the conclusions reached. The choice of  an incorrect paradigm usually renders the thought process invalid.

Free trade was practiced long before restricted trade. Restrictions were placed on trade to prevent the damage done to domestic producers by allowing free trade with foreign producers. The elimination of these restrictions on free trade has reintroduced the damage the restrictions had been introduced to prevent. A careful examination of paradigms would have avoided this malign consequence.

The basic paradigm of free trade is this: Country A produces products for domestic consumption, but it produces more than the nation can consume. The excess production is sent to country B where no similar product is produced to be sold there. Country B does the same thing with a different product. Both nations are enriched by the trade. The excess production is gainfully sold and each nation gets access to a product it did not itself produce. The earliest example of such trade is European trade with China. European made metal utensils were sent to China to be traded for silk cloth. Metal utensils for the Chinese, silk cloth for the Europeans–win win.

Trade carried on in accordance with this paradigm enriches both trading partners. When this paradigm is altered, however, malign consequences to the nations involved always eventually occur. If the Chinese had made metal utensils similar to those made by Italians, the trade between Italy and China would have  resulted in competition that would have injured the producers in at least one of the countries unless the market for the products were increased enough to accommodate the additional supply. Such an increase in the market is impossible to insure. So to prevent the economic damage from such competition, restrictions (tariffs) on trade were introduced.

Free trade does not require international treaties. Free trade is the natural way of trading internationally. The current international attempt to define trade by means of trade agreements is a perversion of the basic idea and should be examined with some skepticism.

The basic paradigm cannot be used to explain what is happening today. Consider the paradigm currently popular with American corporations and economists: The manufacturer of some domestically consumed product in  county A off shores its manufacturing to country B and then ships the manufactured products back to country A to be sold. Economists claim that the benefit the people of country A receive from this practice is lower priced products, but nothing in this paradigm compels the manufacturer to lower his prices. The claim lacks any justification whatsoever. In fact, there is nothing in the paradigm to keep the manufacturer from raising prices. The price of no product is solely determined by where it is manufactured. After all, a free market is unregulated!

Furthermore suppose country A, for instance, is like Japan where kimonos and chop sticks are popular, traditional goods. Say the manufacturers of these products decide to off shore their manufacturing to the United States where kimonos and chop sticks are not traditionally consumed. Although this procedure is described as trade, nothing is traded. The cultures of neither Japan nor the United States are enriched. As a matter of fact, both economies are damaged. Japan gains nothing but loses the manufacturing jobs and all America gains is a few marginal, low-wage jobs.

Such is the situation American manufacturers have brought about by off shoring manufacturing. Kimonos and chop sticks do not become American products merely because they are manufactured in America. Kimonos and chop sticks are Japanese no matter where they are manufactured. And a hamburger does not become a Japanese product by being made in Japan. Hungarian Goulash is not American beef stew. An American product made in a foreign nation is still an American product. Bringing it back to America to sell doesn’t make it a foreign import.

This paradigm is a total inversion of the basic paradigm that has governed international trade for thousands of years. Not only is it not a paradigm of international trade, it is not a paradigm of any kind of trade. It is merely a manufacturing paradigm.

But what if the products involved are generally consumed in both cultures?

Consider this paradigm: Germans decide to try to increase the number of German made automobiles sold in America. The competition between German and American auto manufacturers is fierce. Either the imported autos result in an increase in the number of autos sold in America or the Germans fail to increase their share of the American market or sales of American made autos decline. No other alternatives exists.

Now economists assume that the number of auto sold increases. They argue that the market is not zero summed. But they forget that it is also not infinitely expandable. Again, nothing in the paradigm compels an increase in the number of autos sold. Increase in supply does not necessarily cause a corresponding increase in demand. And when this paradigm is generalized to include more and more products, the limit to market increases will be reached for more and more products. The consequence is mass employee dislocations, exactly what has happened in America. Every country in the world cannot continually increase the production of products with the intention of selling elsewhere what cannot be consumed domestically. Americans cannot be expected to buy Japan’s excess production of kimonos and chop sticks! Likewise, the rest of the world cannot be expected to buy whatever Americans want to sell. So the claim that trade agreements will result in a greater number of American exports is not true perforce. It might not lead to any increase in exports at all. That is the fallacy in Ricardo’s sketches of comparative advantage which no economist seems to have recognized. Ricardo’s example, if put to a test, might have resulted in the production of more and cheaper wine and cloth, but the wine produced might not have been potable. Somehow or other economists fail to realize that the number of items of a kind sold is not solely dependent on price. The sale of wine also depends upon its flavor.

Nations do not negotiate treaties to promote the interests of other nations. They negotiate treaties to promote their own interests. NAFTA was not negotiated to promote the interests of Mexico. But it has not promoted the interests of the United States either. So why does the United States government persist in negotiating “free trade” agreements? Perhaps the purpose of such agreements is not trade. Governments lie!

Suppose Americans started wearing kimonos and eating with chop sticks. Suppose, too, that they started eating whale meat and rice instead of beef steak and potatoes. Suppose they started viewing sumo wrestling instead of football. You get the idea. The more Japanese products Americans adopt, the more America looks like Japan. There is, in fact, a principle here. The more one culture adopts from another, the more the cultures become alike. Specifically, the more products America exports to the rest of the world, the more the rest of the world looks like America. The free trade movement is a tool which is exactly like regime change, When America removes a native government and replaces it with an American friendly one, it is trying to make the world over in America’s image. That’s exactly what “free trade” is all about. Regime change and free trade are hegemonic instruments. And neither is working to America’s advantage.

America began negotiating so called “free trade” agreements in the 1980s. At the present time. such agreements exist with twenty other nations. And the American economy has boomed since then, hasn’t it?

Well no, it hasn’t. Since then wages in America have stagnated and the nation has experienced the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression. So much for the success of “free trade.” Astute people measure the success of policies by their results. America measures success by failures.

Regime change has also failed. All it has accomplished is the creation of conflict. But the failure of regime change is already well known.

Think of what the world will be like if it were made over in America’s image. Misery would abound! Thoughtful people everywhere already know of this impending calamity. America is disliked throughout the world for what it is trying to do, not for any other reason.

The world’s peoples do not want to abandon their cultures. The people of India, even after more than a century of colonization, do not want to be Englishmen. As de Gaulle recognized, the people of Algeria did  not want to be Frenchmen and do not want to today after decades of living in France. Despite the American myth that everyone wants to be an American, unfortunately they really don’t, and they don’t want many of America’s products either.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

Originally posted on August 6, 2015 commemorating the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima

“I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” -J. Robert Oppenheimer

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August 6 is Hiroshima Day. It marks the 70th anniversary of the first detonation of an atomic bomb over a civilian population.

This week’s Global Research News Hour commemorates the anniversary of the dawn of the nuclear age by presenting three past interviews relating to the new nuclear threat.

We’ll hear a December 6, 2013 interview with a lay researcher named Hatrick Penry. Hatrick Penry is otherwise known as Tony Muga. He uncovered documents revealed through Freedom of Information requests with which he essentially discredits current and ongoing claims about the state of the facility. His site is http://hatrickpenry.wordpress.com

This interview is followed by a January 16, 2015 interview with Mimi German. She speaks to the prospect of other other nuclear plants around the world melting down and about how nuclear radiation in the air, water, and food supply represent a clear and present threat to all life on this planet. Mimi German is a self-described Earth Activist, with the grassroots group No Nukes Northwest, and is founder of Radcast.org which monitors radiation readings world-wide.

We finish the show with a June 20, 2013 interview of Global Research Founder and Director Michel Chossudovsky about the threats posed by the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the theatre of Conventional Warfare. Professor Chossudovsky  is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).

An extensive archive of  articles on Fukushima and the new nuclear danger is available on the Global Research Website.

Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The  show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CFUV 101. 9 FM in Victoria. Airing Sundays from 7-8am PT.

CHLY 101.7 FM in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario – Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the  North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

The GRNH’s regular programmes resume in September

Syrian Endgame: The Battle for Aleppo and ‘Plan C’

By Prof. Tim Anderson, August 04 2016

A new study by the RAND Corporation titled “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable” is just the latest think tank paper devoted to assessing a US war against China. The study, commissioned by the US Army, provides further evidence that a war with China is being planned and prepared in the upper echelons of the American military-intelligence apparatus.

That the paper emerges from the RAND Corporation has a particular and sinister significance. Throughout the Cold War, RAND was the premier think tank for “thinking the unthinkable”—a phrase made notorious by RAND’s chief strategist in the 1950s, Herman Kahn. Kahn devoted his macabre book On Thermonuclear War to elaborating a strategy for a “winnable” nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

According to the preface of the new study, released last week, “This research was sponsored by the Office of the Undersecretary of the Army and conducted within the RAND Arroyo Center’s Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. RAND Arroyo Center, part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the United States Army.”

The paper is a war-gaming exercise in the Kahn tradition: weighing the possible outcomes of a war between two nuclear powers with utter indifference to the catastrophic consequences for people in the United States, China and the rest of the world.

The study is based on a series of highly questionable assumptions: that a war between the United States and China would not involve other powers; that it would remain confined to the East Asian region; and that nuclear weapons would not be used. In reality, a war on China would from the outset involve US allies and would thus, in all likelihood, rapidly escalate out of control, spread beyond East Asia, and heighten the danger that nuclear weapons would be used.

As part of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” the US has been strengthening alliances throughout the region, establishing new basing arrangements and consolidating military “interoperability.” The US military could not wage war against China without the intelligence and military and basing resources of, at the very least, Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

The RAND Corporation study considers four simplistic scenarios for a conflict defined by two variables: intensity (either mild or severe) and duration (from a few days to a year or more). It also notes that given the pace of advances in military technology—in what is already an undeclared arms race—the outcomes change over time. Thus, it studies the losses and costs for both sides of a war fought in 2015 and one in 2025.

The summary of findings pays far more attention to the outcomes of severe conflicts than for mild ones. In both cases—a brief, severe war and a long, severe war—the study estimates that the economic and military impact on China would be far greater than on the United States. At the same time, it concludes that the US would suffer greater losses and costs in 2025 than in 2015.

The paper states:

“As its military advantage declines, the United States will be less confident that a war with China will conform to its plans. China’s improved military capabilities, particularly for anti-access and area denial (A2AD), mean that the United States cannot count on gaining operational control, destroying China’s defences, and achieving decisive victory if a war occurred.”

The unstated conclusion, which underpins all of the Pentagon’s planning and preparations, is that a war with China must be fought sooner rather than later. The US military build-up envisages 60 percent of all air and naval assets in the Indo-Pacific region by 2020—now just over three years away. Moreover, Washington’s deliberate inflaming of dangerous flash points in Asia, especially in the South China Sea, is aimed at portraying Beijing as “aggressive” and “expansionist” and concocting the necessary casus belli.

Source Rand Report

The very premises of the study, however, underscore the aggressive, neo-colonial character of a war confined to a region thousands of kilometres from the United States. Washington’s aim is nothing less than the complete subjugation of China to the strategic and economic interests of US imperialism.

In advising the Pentagon and the White House, the RAND Corporation paper calls for “prudent preparations to be able to wage a long and intense war with China.” It continues: “Of no less importance is the ability of the United States to limit the scope, intensity, and duration of a war with China through its planning, its system of civilian control and its ability to communicate with China.”

The reference to the necessity of a “system of civilian control” in the United States is particularly sinister. Behind the backs of the American population, plans are being drawn up by think tanks like the RAND Corporation, by the military/police forces and by the broader state apparatus for police state measures to suppress anti-war opposition that go well beyond those employed in World War II.

The RAND Corporation paper is a chilling confirmation of the warnings made by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in its statement of February 18, 2016 titled “Social ism and the Fight Against War.” The statement notes that at a certain point, military fatalism becomes a significant contributing factor to the outbreak of war. It cites an international relations specialist who wrote: “Once war is assumed to be unavoidable, the calculations of leaders and militaries change. The question is no longer whether there will or should be a war, but when the war can be fought most advantageously.”

The new study indicates that such a shift in thinking is underway in Washington. And while the RAND Corporation study dismisses the possibility of nuclear war, other imperialist strategists are planning for such an eventuality.

Just two weeks ago, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which has played a central role in the planning of the “pivot to Asia,” issued a report assessing the Chinese nuclear arsenal. The paper was titled “China’s nuclear forces and weapons of mass destruction.”

The CSIS also downplayed the likelihood of nuclear war, but did not reject it out of hand. “History is a grim warning,” it stated, “that deterrence sometimes fails, and escalation occurs in ways that are never properly planned or controlled.

Driven by the worsening economic and political breakdown of capitalism, another catastrophic war on a global scale is not only possible, but inevitable without the intervention of the international working class. However, the same capitalist crisis that is driving towards the insanity of world war is also creating the impulse for social revolution. This underscores the urgent necessity of the political fight being waged by the ICFI to build an international anti-war movement of the working class to put an end to capitalism and its outmoded nation-state system and reconstruct society on socialist foundations.

I just listened to Obama give Washington’s account of the situation with ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

In Obama’s account, Washington is defeating ISIL in Iraq, but Russia and Assad are defeating the Syrian people in Syria.  Obama denounced Russia and the Syrian government—but not ISIL—as barbaric.  The message was clear: Washington still intends to overthrow Assad and turn Syria into another Libya and another Iraq, formerly stable and prosperous countries where war now rages continually.

It sickens me to hear the President of the United States lie and construct a false reality, so I turned off the broadcast.  I believe it was a press conference, and I am confident that no meaningful questions were asked.

If Helen Thomas were still there, she would ask the Liar-in-Chief what went wrong with Washington’s policy in Iraq.  We were promised that a low-cost “cakewalk” war of three or six weeks duration would bring “freedom and democracy” to Iraq.  Why is it that 13 years later Iraq is a hellhole of war and destruction?

What happened to the “freedom and democracy?”  And the “Cakewalk”?

You can bet your life that no presstitute asked Obama this question.

No one asked the Liar-in-Chief why the Russians and Syrians could clear ISIL out of most of Syria in a couple of months, but Washington has been struggling for several years to clear ISIL out of Iraq. Is it possible that Washington did not want to clear ISIL out of Iraq because Washington intended to use ISIL to clear Assad out of Syria?

No one asked the Liar-in-Chief why Washington sent ISIL to Syria and Iraq in the first place, or why the Syrians and Russians keep finding US weapons In ISIL’s military depots, or why Washington’s allies were funding ISIL by purchasing the oil ISIL is stealing from Iraq.

It seems to be the case that ISIL originated in the mercenaries that Washington organized to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya and were sent to Syria to overthrow Assad when the UK Parliament refused to participate in Washington’s invasion of Syria and the Russians put a stop to it.

All of the violence in the Middle East, violence that has consumed countless lives and produced millions of war refugees now overrunning Washington’s NATO vassals in Europe, is 100 percent the fault of Washington, not the fault of ISIL, or Assad, or Russia. Washington and only Washington is to blame.

Washington produced this violence.  Where is the question:  “Why, Mr. President, did Washington introduce 15 years of massive and ongoing violence into the Middle East and then expect us to believe that it was the fault of someone else?”

If Helen Thomas were there, she would ask the relevent questions.  But the pussies that comprise the American press corps are merely an audience that validates the false reality spun by Washington by accepting it without question.

Meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing have understood the message.  Washington intends war.  The purpose of Washington’s lies is to prepare the insouciant Western peoples for war against the two countries that Washington cannot subjugate except by victory in war.

By faithful vassalage to Washington, Europe is bringing death and destruction to the world.

August 4th, 2016 began with successive announcements from the so-called ‘Army of Conquest,’ regarding the advent of a third and fourth stage in their effort to break the government siege of Aleppo. The Army of Conquest, or Jaish al-Fatah, is comprised of Islamist factions colluding together to undermine the rightful government of Syria. Bands of criminals, such as Faylaq al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, and other members of Jaish al-Fatah, reported up the chain of command within the Islamist forces—the ultimate goal to retake lost ground.

Prior to the assault on the 1070 Apartment Block within Aleppo, Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces shelled rebel positions with 2S1 ‘Gvozdika’ self-propelled howitzers.  During the assault on 1070 itself, pro-government sources reported two T-72 main battle tanks and three BMP-series infantry fighting vehicles destroyed. Nine government soldiers were listed as dead.

However, the only corroborating evidence from the Islamist factions regarding casualties would indicate that a single rebel T-72 tank and IFV were destroyed in fighting around Aleppo. In eastern Ghouta, Jaish al-Islam reported the destruction of a single government T-72 tank.

Near the government artillery base on the southern Aleppo Front, Faylaq al-Sham destroyed a 14.5 mm gun with an Anti-Tank Guided Missile. Across southern Aleppo, the forces of Faylaq al-Sham faltered against government positions.

Predictably, the tightly connected Western media, whose Southeast Asian correspondents often converge at the swank Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) in downtown Bangkok to align and coordinate their often politically-motivated narratives, has begun an information war on Thailand ahead of Sunday’s referendum on the nation’s new charter.

This includes leveraging other Western-backed news organisations and political fronts in the region, including the recently installed client regime of Aung San Suu Kyi in neighbouring Myanmar.

Reuters in its report, “Myanmar paper: Thailand risks ‘substandard democracy’,” would report:

A state-run newspaper in Myanmar says Thailand risks “substandard” democracy if a military-backed draft constitution is approved in a referendum on Sunday.

The irony of the comment is hardly lost on voters and political observers alike across the region. For decades Myanmar suffered economic stagnation under harsh military rule while Thailand was seen as an Asian “tiger” economy with extensive freedoms and a developing democracy.

But the tables have turned recently, at least to some extent, with Myanmar democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi winning a landmark election last year while Thailand has been ruled by a military government tough on dissent since a 2014 coup.

Image: Some might wonder what say a room full of white American and European men have in Thailand’s internal affairs, yet the disproportionate influence the FCCT wields in Thailand and across wider Southeast Asia is nonetheless very real.

What Reuters conveniently omits is the fact that Suu Kyi’s political front campaigned heavily before Myanmar’s elections to disenfranchise the votes of tens of thousands of Rohingya. This means Suu Kyi’s current regime is as much “substandard” in terms of democracy in reality as Myanmar’s Information Ministry-run newpaper has claimed of Thailand.

Australia’s ABC News would report in its February 2015 article, “Myanmar scraps temporary ID cards amid protests targeting ethnic minorities without citizenship,” that:

Myanmar’s government says identity cards for people without full citizenship, including Muslim Rohingya, will expire within weeks. The scrapping of ID cards snatches away voting rights handed to them just a day earlier (Tuesday), after Myanmar nationalists protested against the move.

The Rohingya, along with hundreds of thousands of people in mainly ethnic minority border areas, who hold the documents ostensibly as part of a process of applying for citizenship, will see their ID cards expire at the end of March, according to a statement from the office of president Thein Sein.

The dramatic about-face comes after protesters gathered in the commercial hub Yangon to call on the government not to allow people without full citizenship to vote in the proposed referendum.

The protests, it would be revealed, were led by Suu Kyi’s political supporters.

And since coming to power, Suu Kyi has systematically tightened pressure on the nation’s Rohingya population even further, often under-reported by news organisations like Reuters.

In fact, the same Information Ministry connected with recent anti-Thai comments, would be implicated in further targeting the Rohingya after Suu Kyi’s party took power. Australia’s ABC News in an article titled, “Burma leader Aung San Suu Kyi bans use of Rohingya name for oppressed Muslims,” would report:

In an Orwellian move, Burma’s Information Ministry has instead instructed officials to call Rohingyas “people who believe in Islam in Rakhine state”.

Ms Suu Kyi said: “All we are asking is that people should be aware of the difficulties that we are facing.”

It is not clear how eliminating a name reference will ease tensions or solve long-running differences.

But the decision has cast Ms Suu Kyi in the role of villain for the first time since she took effective control of the country in March.

It should also be noted, that Suu Kyi is not even the legal head of the Myanmar government, though she has vowed to “rule above” the government in what can be categorised as the absolute contravention of democracy.

Public Relations and Lobbying, or Journalism? 

For Reuters and others engaged in the current media assault on Thailand, eager to undermine the legitimacy of Thailand’s current government and pave the way for yet another US-backed government to come to power in the region, Suu Kyi’s human rights abuses against the Rohingya constitute an inconvenient truth that would blunt the sort of public relations stunts Reuters is now engaged in with its so-called news coverage.

And while Reuters covers up the realities of Suu Kyi’s government in an attempt to portray it as an emerging democracy, it is also covering up the realities of Thailand’s current political crisis, consistently failing to inform readers of the violence, abuse of power and human rights abuses that were ongoing, including state-sponsored terrorism, just before the military took power in 2014.

Before the military seized power, the government they were to oust had deployed armed terrorists in the streets who attacked anti-government protesters almost nightly, killing and maiming many, including on the very eve of the 2014 coup.

Should Western news organisations like Reuters truthfully report on Thailand’s current political crisis, in context with the events that led up to it, the fact that the military by necessity took power would not seem all that unreasonable. Nor would the fact that the new charter seeks to prevent such political forces from taking power in the country again.

The Reuters article is just one of many penned recently echoing the same coordinated distortions, constituting what appears more like public relations campaigning and lobbying than objective journalism.

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The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has taken a further turn to the right, with open appeals to Republican Party loyalists to break with their nominee Donald Trump on the grounds that he is disrespectful of the military and opposed to confronting Russia and other countries targeted by Washington for attack.

Three incumbent Republican congressmen, other prominent Republican officials and ex-officials, and numerous Republican fundraisers have announced their support for Clinton, or at least their opposition to Trump.

Tuesday’s endorsement of Clinton by Representative Richard Hanna, an upstate New York Republican, was followed by statements Wednesday from Representative Adam Kinzinger, whose district is in the Chicago suburbs; Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania; and former Montana Governor Marc Racicot, an ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee. These three declared they could not support Trump, while stopping short of saying they would vote for Clinton.

A bipartisan group of 37 foreign policy and national security officials, including several former military officers, issued an open letter Thursday condemning Trump’s comments downgrading the significance of the NATO alliance. The letter declared:

“Trump’s ill-considered statements have already sown doubt in the minds of our European partners as to whether they can count on American resolve, commitment, and strength in the future. Those statements also threaten to weaken our collective deterrence against Vladimir Putin from further territorial aggression in Europe after his invasions of Ukraine and Georgia. If Trump’s policy was implemented, it would undermine the essential credibility of the United States in Europe and around the world.”

Among those signing were Thomas Pickering, UN ambassador under the first President Bush; Steven Pifer, a top-level State Department official in the second Bush administration, with responsibility for Russia and Ukraine; John Bellinger III, chief counsel for the National Security Council and later the State Department in the second Bush administration; and neo-conservatives Kori Schake and Randy Scheunemann, officials in the second Bush White House and advisers to the McCain-Palin Republican presidential campaign in 2008.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that 45 prominent Republicans have so far come out publicly for Clinton, in an effort coordinated by campaign Chairman John Podesta and Leslie Dach, a former Wal-Mart executive and longtime Clinton crony. Clinton herself has participated in the wooing of top Republicans, phoning Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor of California in 2010, last month. Whitman declared her support for Clinton Tuesday and pledged a six-figure donation to the campaign.

According to the Journal, “The effort, which largely targets national-security experts and business leaders, began several months ago but has ramped up in the wake of Mr. Trump’s recent troubles, including his spat with the parents of a Muslim US Army captain who died in Iraq, people familiar with the effort said. It is expected to culminate in a Republicans for Hillary group, whose members will endorse her candidacy.”

One Republican former Reagan and Bush administration official, Frank Lavin, told the Journal he had been reassured by the Democratic National Convention and Clinton’s selection of Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate. “I have an increasing comfort level with Hillary Clinton,” he told the newspaper. “She’s not going to be bossed around by the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.”

The Washington Post carried a similar report Thursday night on Clinton’s “outreach to potential Republican converts, including donors, elected officials, and business and foreign policy leaders. The message is simple: Even if you have never before considered voting for a Democrat, and even if you don’t like Clinton, choosing her this year is a moral and patriotic imperative.” The informal slogan of the outreach effort, according to the newspaper, was “duty, honor, country,” an indication of the extremely right-wing posture being taken by the Clinton campaign.

Clinton aides told the newspaper that the patriotic campaign was aided by Trump’s comments on foreign policy, particularly his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and by his public attacks on the father and mother of a Muslim US Army soldier, Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

Clinton herself has begun to appeal publicly to Republicans to support her campaign as a “patriotic duty,” as the Associated Press put it Thursday. She told a union hall audience in Las Vegas, “I want to be the president for all Americans—Democrats, Republicans, independents. We’re going to pull America together again.’’

The shift to the right was unveiled at the Democratic National Convention, where an array of former generals paid tribute to Clinton as the best choice for “commander-in-chief,” and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former Republican mayor of New York City, was given a featured position as a Clinton endorser.

The choice of Bloomberg (net worth $48 billion) was a signal of the real social constituency to which Clinton is appealing. It was followed July 30 with the endorsement of Clinton at a Pittsburgh rally by

media billionaire Mark Cuban (net worth $3 billion), a right-wing libertarian and devotee of Ayn Rand.

August 1 found Clinton being introduced to an Omaha, Nebraska campaign event by investor Warren Buffett, whose personal net worth of $63.3 billion, derived entirely from financial speculation, makes him one of the richest men on Earth. On August 3 came the endorsement by Meg Whitman (net worth $2.1 billion), and on August 3, backing from hedge fund mogul Seth Klarman (net worth $1.35 billion), who has generally donated to Republican candidates in the past.

Several groups have been formed to harness the support of wealthy Republicans behind the Democratic nominee. These include Republicans for Her 2016, led by Republican lobbyist Craig Snyder; R4C16, led by officials from President George W. Bush’s administration; and the Republican Women for Hillary, which is led by US Chamber of Commerce official Jennifer Pierotti Lim.

Other prominent billionaires (Democrats and Republicans) supporting Clinton include Walmart heiress Ann Walton (net worth $5 billion); LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman ($3.8 billion); Univision television network owner Haim Saban ($3.6 billion); Hyatt Hotel chain heir J.B. Pritzker ($3.4 billion); Slim-Fast founder Daniel Abraham ($2 billion); Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com ($4 billion); Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg ($1.4 billion); medical industry heirs Jon and Pat Stryker ($2.3 billion); television personality Oprah Winfrey ($3.1 billion); and Hollywood producers Steven Spielberg ($3.6 billion) and Jeffrey Katzenberg ($1 billion).

Especially noteworthy is the large number of Wall Street financiers backing Clinton. These include speculator George Soros ($24.9 billion), hedge fund managers James Simons ($14 billion), David E. Shaw ($4.7 billion) and Tom Steyer ($1.6 billion); venture capitalist John Doerr ($4.7 billion); and banker Herbert Sandler ($1.2 billion).

The combined wealth of the aforementioned billionaires openly backing Clinton is roughly $200 billion—divided among 21 individuals. This is roughly the same amount that the Obama administration proposes for education, housing, transportation and science in its 2016 budget.

This line-up demonstrates the worthlessness of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s claims, as he ended his campaign and endorsed Clinton, that the Democratic Party had been fundamentally changed by his “political revolution.” Sanders denounced “the billionaire class” throughout his campaign, rallying the support of millions, including large numbers of young people and students. But he delivered his supporters to the tender mercies of a candidate who is a trusted servant of that billionaire class.

At his speech to the Democratic convention, Sanders claimed that Clinton’s campaign had “the most progressive platform” in history. Within days, America’s financial aristocracy has reminded everyone just who owns Clinton and the entire Democratic Party.

Sanders did not create the mass opposition of working class and youth that found brief expression in his campaign. His aim, as he repeatedly stated, was to absorb that opposition within the Democratic Party, which, he argued, could be made a vehicle of social reform.

In conceding to Clinton, Sanders fulfilled his campaign’s mission. Her subsequent sharp turn to the right—which includes not just fulsome support from billionaires, but from the military-intelligence apparatus based largely on warmongering against Russia—has very rapidly exposed the reactionary character of Sanders’ politics, and the bankruptcy of any perspective that claims that working people and youth can achieve progressive change through the Democratic Party.

In an effort to bolster a weak and largely impotent U.N.-backed government in Libya, the United States has launched a bombing campaign against ISIS fighters in the city of Sirte. After having destroyed Libya and rendered what was once the country with the highest living standards in Africa to a desert of chaos and barbarism, the United States is now once again bombing the embattled nation. This time, however, the bombing is under the guise of “defeating ISIS” so that the limp GNA (Government of National Accord) can establish control over the country and, obviously, so that it might be able to translate and enforce the decisions made by the West into real results inside Libya.

Unlike in Syria, where U.S. bombing strikes are carried out mainly against Syrian military positions, civilians, or simply wasted in the desert (although sometimes ISIS targets are indeed bombed in order to encourage and force the fighters into moving from or ceding territory – terrorist herding), the bombing in Libya appears to actually be directed at ISIS targets. This is because the anti-imperialist figure of Ghaddafi is now gone and, in his place, is a puppet government more amenable to Western dictates. Thus, there is no more need, at least for now, of Islamic radicals to be used as a proxy force against the Libyan government.

Thus, after a request from the GNA, the United States began bombing targets in Sirte on Monday.

Prime Minister Fayez Seraj said on state TV that “The first air strikes were carried out at specific locations in Sirte today causing severe losses to enemy ranks.” Pentagon Spokesman Peter Cook stated that the airstrikes did not have “an end point” at this time, suggesting the possibility that U.S. involvement will become even greater as time progresses as well as the potential for a much longer duration of operations.

Seraj stated that the Presidential Council of the GNA has “activated” its involvement in the “international coalition against the Islamic State” and “request[ed] the United States to carry out targeted air strikes on Daesh (Islamic State).”

Sirte, Ghaddaffi’s home town, is considered to be a strategically significant area of operation outside of Iraq and Syria as the city sits along the Meditteranean coast. ISIS fighters are now relegated to a “few square kilometers” of the city center where they hold a few important sites.

The Monday strikes were the third round of airstrikes by the United States inside Libya after the original destruction of Libya. In February, the U.S. launched strikes against Sabratha.

The air campaign apparently also involves the deployment of a small number of Special Forces squads who are to be rotated in and out of Libya as well as drone surveillance.

According to a Reuters report,

Although it does not include the use of ground troops beyond small special forces squads rotating in and out of Libya and drones collecting intelligence, the air campaign opens a new front in the war against IS and what American officials consider its most dangerous component outside Syria and Iraq. [emphasis added]
. . . . .

Small teams of Western countries’ special forces have been on the ground in eastern and western Libya for months. Last month France said three of its soldiers had been killed south of the eastern city of Benghazi, where they had been conducting intelligence operations. [emphasis added]

Deployment of U.S. Special Forces to Libya was known in May, 2016.

While the bombing mission in Libya is without a doubt an escalation in the U.S. involvement in Libya, it is also not unexpected as both the United States and the French move toward an increase their presence in the country, strengthening the puppet GNA government and solidifying a return to Western imperialism in Africa.

Brandon Turbeville is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 650 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

Anti-Assad luminaries in the United States suddenly play surprised that their beloved “moderate” insurgents are a bunch of racist and sectarian head choppers. But this was obvious as even the very first demonstration against the Syrian government in March/April 2011 were driven by sectarianism. Countless members of minorities in Syria have since been murdered by “western” and Gulf supported “moderate rebels”.

Why do these anti-Syrian “experts”, who supported the genocidal insurgents, suddenly find that abhorrent?

The “moderate rebels” and al-Qaeda in Syria currently attack the government held parts of the city of Aleppo. Part of their attack plan is the storming of the Artillery Academy in Ramouseh district. The academy was the scene of mass murder in the 1979-1982 Muslim Brotherhood uprising against the government. The name they chose for the battle make their intentions clear.

3:07pm · 4 Aug 2016 – Hassan Ridha @sayed_ridhaBattle is named after “Ibrahim Yusuf”, an Ikhwani who murdered ~80 Alawite cadets in Ramouseh Artillery Base in 1979 pic.twitter.com/7TVYiZNeBP

London Times reporter Hala Jabar explains:

2:00am · 5 Aug 2016 – Hala Jaber @HalaJaberRecap: Former #AQ#Nusra now moderate #Jabhat_Fath_alSham, name 3rd phase of liberating Aleppo after Ibrahim_al_Yussuf, who they deem a hero.

.2/ They deem #Ibrahim_al_Yussuf, a hero, for separating Sunnis 4rm #Alawites & apostates & executing 80 Alawites of them, in 1979.

.3/ That incident took place in Aleppo’s artillery school then. Now JFS/JAS is promising 2 “conquer” same artillery school & kill Alawites.

.4/ So now they– his “grandsons” — pledge to do same “blessed” thing. Kill all #Alawites & desecrate their bodies. https://www.youtube.com/embed/LqEw_6_Dzpo

.5/ This all in the name of phase three of the “blessed battle”to conquer” #Aleppo.

The bloody sectarian name for the battle is promoted not only by al-Qaeda under its sham new name but by all U.S. supported “moderates” who take part in it. The political leader of the U.S. supported Zinki group, members of which recently beheaded a sick child, is a near relative of Ibrahim al Yussuf.

The Muslim Brotherhood insurgency in Syria between 1979 and 1982, of which al Yussuf was part, was a series of bloody guerilla attacks and mass murder incidents against the state and minorities. It finally ended when the government trapped the leadership and many militants in the city of Hama and fought them down in a bloody urban battle. Many members of the militant cadre of the movement fled to foreign countries. Some came back to reignite their killing spree when the protests in Syria started in 2011.

For those who have been watching the developments in Syria the sectarian motive of the insurgents is certainly no surprise at all. But here are two U.S. “experts” who suddenly find them “extraordinary”.

Robert Ford was U.S. ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014 and one of instigators of the protests against the Syrian government. He has since feverishly argued for more weapons for the insurgents and for U.S. bombing to destroy the Syrian government and the country.

1:27 PM – 4 Aug 2016 – Robert Ford @fordrs58If oppo fighters’ goal n #Syria now 2 separate Alawi citizens &kill them, then the fighters don’t merit outside help. Up to them 2 clarify.

Joshua Landis is professor for Middle East studies. In his blogposts and public comments he has been mealy-mouthed about condemning the insurgents whatever they did, but was always negative about the government. He thinks that a new President Clinton:

has to re-escalate but w/o major costs. Trick will be to bomb w/o making many commitments or getting sucked in

Tricky indeed, but she “has to” do it. Right?

About the Aleppo battle announcement:

7:50pm · 4 Aug 2016 – Joshua Landis @joshua_landisExtraordinary statement by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham declaring intent to separate Sunnis fr Nusairis (Alawis) & kill them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqEw_6_Dzpo

“Extraordinary” in this is only that these “experts” suddenly find something surprising that has been central to the insurgency from its very beginning.

Consider:

Analysis of Syrian Protest Movement – Mazda Majidi, April 2011
[The opposition movement] undoubtedly includes many thousands who simply a desire a society free of poverty and state repression. But it has also included sectarian religious forces who want to overthrow the country’s secular orientation, and have chanted “Alawis to the coffins, Christians to Beirut.”

Syria’s Minorities & Split Loyalties: Through the Sectarian Lens Albawaba – Feb 1 2012
Chants heard at revolution rallies have been to the tune of: “Alawis to the coffins and Christians to Beirut.”

The World’s Next Genocide – NYT Nov 2012
[I]nside Syria those chanting “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to their graves!” have become more than a fringe element. Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented cases of rebels executing Syrian soldiers and Alawites regarded as government collaborators.

Here is video from the early March 2011 protests in Syria. They were clearly sectarian with the protesters loudly threatening to kill minorities.

What was so difficult to understand with “Alawis to the coffins” and other genocidal “revolutionary” slogans and deeds that Ford and Landis did not comprehend them throughout the last years?

What has changed that Landis and Ford now act surprised about the “extraordinary” sectarianism of the insurgencies they supported and still support?

Late last month, Jabhat al-Nusra (the Nusra Front), al-Qaida’s Syrian arm, announced that it was severing ties with al-Qaida and renaming itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (the Front for the Conquest of Syria).

In a video, the group’s leader, Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, explained that the group’s association with al-Qaida permitted the outside powers intervening in the Syrian conflict to label it as an Islamic terrorist group.

The Guardian quoted al-Jolani as saying that the name change is intended “to remove the excuse used by the international community – spearheaded by America and Russia – to bombard and displace Muslims in the Levant: that they are targeting al-Nusra Front, which is associated with al-Qaida.”

He further explained that the new policy was an attempt to have the group removed from international terror lists and to allow it to be perceived as a more acceptable alternative to its main competitor, Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group known as ISIS or ISIL in the West).

Al-Nusra shares certain common goals with Daesh in seeking to overthrow the secular government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and replace it with a more traditional form of Islamic rule. It has also expressed hatred for the United States and other Western governments. Writing for the National Interest in November, geopolitical analyst Daniel R. DePetris explained:

“Like its jihadist competitors in the Islamic State, al-Nusra is composed of highly motivated individuals and commanders who would like nothing more than to strike at the United States or at targets in Europe. Jabhat al-Nusra shares the same, minority-within-a-minority Salafi-Jihadist interpretation of Islam as ISIL, despises any and all sectarian groups outside of Syria’s majority Sunni community and has engaged in the same kind of atrocities that have made ISIL’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the most wanted international terrorist alive.”

Though it has focused its attacks more directly on Syrian government forces and their symbolic and physical centers of power, it maintains a similar ruthlessness to that of Daesh. In its World Report 2016, Human Rights Watch noted that both groups were “were responsible for systematic and widespread violations, including targeting civilians, kidnappings, and executions” in Syria. Daesh and al-Nusra both impose strict and discriminatory rules on women and girls, and have actively recruited child soldiers, according to the report.

Smokescreen or strategy?

In its recent rebranding, Al-Nusra also seems to be evaluating the political calculus of the Syrian civil war and acknowledging the recent gains by Syrian forces and their allies — Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. With Assad strengthening his position and the rebel forces in disarray, al-Jolani may be making a bid to unify the opposition by projecting a less militant image to the outside world.

Nusra Front leader Mohammed al-Jolani undated photo released online on Thursday, July 28, 2016 to announce a video message that the militant group is changing name, and claims it will have no more ties with al-Qaida.

Still, it’s unclear what this apparent break with al-Qaida actually means. At the announcement of the group’s new name, al-Jolani was joined by a high level associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaida, creating the impression that the changes are more tactical than strategic.

Ayman al-Zawahri, head of al-Qaida, delivers a statement in a video which was seen online by the SITE monitoring group.

Smadar Perry, an Israeli journalist known to have close ties to Israeli intelligence sources, even hinted that Israel’s Mossad urged this new path on al-Nusra. In an opinion piece posted by YNet on Monday, Perry wrote:

“It may be that this separation is just a smokescreen, and that al-Julani will keep in touch with al-Qaeda in secret. It may also be that Jabhat al-Nusra have received an intelligence analysis from a very certain organization that told it to prepare for the day after Assad leaves power.

The White House has a hard time buying this turnover. They’re in a test period with us, said an official spokesperson, not dismissing outright the possibility of local fighters joining the American-led coalition against ISIS.

If they make a show of force in the field, and Jabhat al-Nusra’s dissociation leads to al-Qaeda’s further weakening in Afghanistan, and if Israel provides its supposed intelligence about al-Julani – Hezbollah and Assad swear he’s a Mossad agent – al-Nusra may become another piece of the puzzle that is the new Syria.”

In the original Hebrew version of the same analysis, Perry noted the likelihood that Syria will be divided in “three or four cantons.” This has always been the goal for Tel Aviv, which sees Syria as one of the few remaining Arab states that can threaten its interests and security.

Israeli soldiers secure an area where a mortar which was fired during clashes between Syrian rebels and President Bashar Assad’s forces in the Quneitra province hit in a community in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. For the first time in the Syrian civil war, militants linked to al-Qaida are positioned on Israel’s doorstep, Aug. 27, 2014.

In Israel’s view, peace on its northern border would be guaranteed if Syria can be splintered into warring factions. It’s an approach championed at the onset of the civil war in 2012 by Daniel Pipes, a pro-Israel neocon who serves as president of Middle East Forum, a conservative think tank. Arguing that “the continuing Syrian conflict offers benefits to the West,” he explained:

“As Sunni Islamists fight Shiite Islamists, both sides are weakened and their lethal rivalry lessens their capabilities to trouble the outside world. By inspiring restive minorities (Sunnis in Iran, Kurds and Shiites in Turkey), continued fighting in Syria could also weaken Islamist governments.”

He further noted:

“Nothing in the constitutions of Western states requires them to get involved in every foreign conflict; sitting this one out will prove to be a smart move. In addition to the moral benefit of not being accountable for horrors yet to come, staying away permits the West eventually to help its only true friends in Syria, the country’s liberals.”

In a 2012 email released by WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton offered an Iran-focused variant of this approach:

“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.”

The al-Nusra-Israel bond

Ultimately, Israel doesn’t care much about what happens in Syria as long as it can maintain a puppet protectorate along its Golan border. Israel began occupying and administering the region in the Six-Day War of 1967, and it officially annexing the Golan in 1981. Israel continues to refuse to return the territory to Syria despite near universal consensus that the occupation is illegal under international law. Further, the discovery of potential gas deposits there has coincided with a rise in Israeli settlement expansion in recent years.

Examining the al-Nusra-Israeli alliance in the region, it’s clear that the bonds between the two parties have been exceedingly close. Israel maintains a border camp for the families of Syrian fighters. Reporters have documented Israeli Defense Forces commandos entering Syrian territory to rendezvous with Syrian rebels. Others have photographed meetings between Israeli military personnel and al-Nusra commanders at the Quneitra Crossing, the ceasefire line that separates the Syrian-controlled territory and the Israeli-occupied territory in the Golan Heights.

A photo from the Israel, Syrian border along the Golan Heights showing IDF soldiers conversing with Jabhat al Nusra fighters.

U.N. personnel also documented Syrian rebel vehicles picking up supplies from the Israeli side:

“Quarterly UNDOF [United Nations Disengagement Observer Force] reports since the pullback reveal an ongoing pattern of Israeli coordination with those [al-Nusra] armed groups.

According to the December 2014 report, UNDOF observed two Israeli soldiers ‘opening the technical fence gate and letting two individuals pass from the [Syrian] to the [Israeli] side’ on 27 October. Unlike most fighters seen entering the Israeli side, these individuals were not wounded and the purpose of their visit remains a mystery.

UNDOF ‘sporadically observed armed members of the opposition interacting’ with the Israeli military across the ceasefire line, the report states.

The next UNDOF report, released in March, notes that UN forces witnessed Israeli soldiers delivering material aid to armed Syrian opposition groups.”

These were presumably supplies and equipment designed either to help the rebels in their fight against Assad or to improve communications between Israeli and rebel forces.

Israel’s divide-and-conquer approach

Israel’s support for radical terror groups is a long-term strategy it’s exploited in multiple theaters. Its ultimate purpose is to weaken a strong foe.

In terms of Hezbollah, Israel hadn’t anticipated that the Lebanese militant group would grow to become a much more powerful and dangerous foe than the PLO had ever been in Lebanon.

Israeli soldiers walks near the border with Syria near the site of a Sunday Israeli airstrike, in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights, Monday, April 27, 2015

The strategy worked better regarding Hamas because it has never been able to dominate Fatah. The two have maintained a wary and draining battle of wills over the decades, with neither being able to oust the other. This has created a rift that has substantially weakened the Palestinians and their cause. Still, Hamas has trained its sights on Israel as well and become an even more militant foe than Fatah ever was.

Thus, Israel’s strategy of forging an alliance with al-Nusra and strengthening it so that it can wage a formidable fight against Assad, is part and parcel of a longstanding goal of dividing the enemy. Israel hopes the militant extremist group will dominate the Golan region and maintain stability and security there. However, Israel neglects what almost always happens to these golems: Once they are created they take on a life of their own. The creator loses control of his creation, which wreaks havoc and even turns against him.

Just as it happened to Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, and Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, so it happened with the U.S. alliance with the Afghan mujahadeen, and the Israeli alliances with their own Arab proxies.

Israel’s alliance with al-Nusra also points to the utter cynicism of its approach. While the rest of the world labels the group terrorists, and fights to prevent their terror attacks on Western soil, Israel looks only for its own advantage. There’s the old saying that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but in Israel’s playbook, the saying goes: “The enemy of my friend may certainly be my friend.” This rings especially true when Israeli leaders warn the world about the threat of global jihad, while also cozying up to jihadis in their own corner of the world.

Benjamin Netanyahu looks at Syrian ‘patient’ being treated in an IDF field hospital. (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)

The U.S. and European countries seem to either not notice or deliberately ignore Israel’s tactical embrace of the jihadi movement. The Obama administration is even preparing to ink a new record-breaking military spending agreement with Israel that will up U.S. aid from the current $3 billion a year. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded $5 billion per year over the life of the 10-year deal, and the final amount will likely settle somewhere in the middle.

Only Israel gets away with such a level of cognitive dissonance in its alliance with the U.S. Any other ally which depended so profoundly on Washington for its security and existence wouldn’t dare risk endangering that relationship to forge an alliance with an enemy of the U.S. But not Israel. It forges its own path without regard for the interests of others, even its best friends.

Richard Silverstein is a MintPress analyst who has written the Tikun Olam blog since 2003, specializing in Israeli politics and US foreign affairs. He earned a BA from Columbia University, a BHL from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and MA in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Follow Richard on Twitter: @Richards1052

The US media is nearly foaming at the mouth with unsubstantiated allegations that Russia is attempting to influence US elections. The words of commentators on mainstream US media are, “How dare Russia try to influence our elections!” and “How dare Putin meddle in the affairs of other countries!”

Beyond the lack of actual evidence to back up these claims, there is a layer of absolute hypocrisy. For decades leaders of the United States have been actively trying to influence the elections of other countries in a way that is favorable to the centers of American economic power. Often, this meddling is also done to prevent the election of governments who are sympathetic to Russia or China.

The stated purpose of the “Marshall Plan” enacted by the United States after the Second World War was to weaken Moscow-aligned political forces across the world. US leaders put pressure on various governments to suppress Communist parties, even when they were wildly popular and won at the polls. In 1947, when Communists pushed out of the cabinet, the World Bank rewarded France with a loan, just hours afterward.

In China the United States supported the Nationalist government in barring the Communist Party from participating in the post-war elections. In response to being barred from the ballot, the Communists took up arms and eventually created the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

In Korea, the United States coopered with forces who made sure that the post-war elections, which would likely have elected Soviet- aligned forces, never took place. Instead of the planned national election for the entire Korean Peninsula, the US supported General Sygman Rhee in establishing a military dictatorship in the south. With full US support Rhee slaughtered tens of thousands of leftists at Jeju Island and elsewhere.

In Italy and other countries throughout Europe, the United States cooperated with NATO countries to conduct “Operation Gladio” in order to prevent the often wildly popular Communist parties from winning the elections. In Italy, the CIA not only facilitated a campaign of media smears and demonization, but also conducted election fraud and staged armed acts of violence, successfully preventing the Italian public from electing a Russian-aligned government. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been revealed that US and other NATO intelligence services were involved in terrorist attacks in which civilians were killed. These acts of terrorism were done with the intention of weakening the Communists at the polls.

These kinds of schemes were conducted by US intelligence agencies throughout the Cold War. In Indonesia, the United States did everything possible to sabotage and discredit the China aligned government of Sukarno. When well-funded attempts to defeat the pro-Chinese coalition government were unsuccessful, the United States backed a military in coup d’etat in 1965. In the aftermath of the military seizing power in Indonesia and toppling Sukarno, hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Some say the mass slaughtered that followed the 1965 escalated beyond political violence and became a genocide against ethnic Chinese people in Indonesia.

In the early 1970s, the United States intentionally worked to sabotage the economy Chile, openly hoping to destabilize the country and discredit the socialist coalition which had been democratically elected. Richard Nixon directly ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” in order to weaken the popularity of the Socialists, who were friendly to the Soviet Union. When efforts to influence the elections failed, the United States supported a military coup d’etat in which Augusto Pinochet seized power, killing thousands of leftists and dissidents.

In 1990, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua held elections. The United States had been funding armed groups known as Contras for over a decade hoping to topple the government. As the elections drew near, the allies of the United States, with millions of dollars to fund their campaign at the ballot box, assured the public that if the Sandinistas were voted out of power, the campaign of terrorism would end. The people of Nicaragua, scarred by years of war, voted for the opposition.

Clinton’s Meddling in Elections Across The Planet

Since the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999, the United States has been actively working to influence the elections in a number of Latin American countries. The US openly cooperates with opposition forces in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba.

The leaked e-mails of Hillary Rodham Clinton reveal that as Secretary of State she worked very hard to influence elections in Latin America and to defeat of Bolivarian socialists at the ballot box.

Clinton and other US leaders have actively tried to influence elections and secure the defeat of the elected government of Belarus, led by Alexander Lukashenko. On several occasions when the pro-western minority in Belarus has been defeated at the polls, the streets of the country have experience a wave of violence from US-backed “oppositionists.”

Despite Vladimir Putin being one of the most popular heads of state on earth, Clinton has publicly aligned herself with the widely unpopular, pro-western Russian opposition. The US State Department most certainly has a relationship with such forces as well.

The allegation currently plastered across US media is that somehow Russia was involved in making public some e-mails revealing dishonesty and malpractice by the Democratic National Committee. The allegation is that Russia would prefer that Trump rather than Clinton be elected in November, and that making the dishonest activities of Debbie Wasserman Shultz and others public will hurt Clinton’s image.

The actions that the Clinton campaign is currently accusing Russia of engaging in are very mild in comparison to what has been actively done by US leaders to influence the elections of other countries. Across the planet, when it was feared that elections may go differently than they preferred, US intelligence agencies have funded terrorist groups, supported people engaged in electoral fraud, and done everything possible to secure the results they want. Often, when countries elect governments they disfavor, the United States has supported military coups that overturned the elected governments.

In allegations surrounding the US elections, Russia is not being accused of anything remotely close to what US leaders have done to influence the elections of other countries. However, the history of US meddling with elections across the planet is unfortunately absent from mainstream media discourse, allowing a hostile climate of Russophobia to escalate.

Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

As the battle for Aleppo gathers momentum and the encircled terrorist factions respond violently to the strangulation of their supply lines and diminishment of their territory in eastern Aleppo, CNN  goes to extraordinary lengths to obfuscate US connections to these terror gangs, romanticise the role of terror in Syria and even more astonishingly “normalise” suicide bombers and promote the re-branded Al Nusra as the new “moderates”. 

Al Nusra Front (aka Al Qaeda in Syria) under new nomenclature suddenly become ‘freedom fighters’ (sounds familiar) and the new ‘reasonable option’ in the US mainstream media and the US voting public barely seem to notice?

On August 2nd 2016, as the Syrian Arab Army made serious advances on the ground against the NATO and GCC-backed terrorist factions occupying the eastern sectors of Aleppo, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat Al Nusra made the announcement that it was changing the name of the group.  Naturally, CNN ran with this story almost immediately.

This re-branding also coincides with the agreement between Russia and the US to finally combine forces in combating Al Qaeda/Al Nusra fighting inside Syria. Here we can see the true function of CNN in the conflict theatre – to help sculpt the US government narrative – and to carefully nudgethe public perception along those lines.

CNN’s crack journalist, Clarissa Ward, who has visited terrorist held areas inside Syria 14 timessince the NATO dirty war on Syria began 5 years ago, even donning the full veil and chador, or niqab, presumably to “respect” the ‘moderate rebel’ jihadi extremist demands, has played the staring role in the CNN team producing these sensational reports.

Clarissa Ward. Photo collage created from CNN reports

Clarissa Ward who professes Syria is a place “close to her heart” wrote that Al Nusra had taken the decision to split from Al Qaeda and re-brand as Jabhat Fatah al Sham.

Mostafa Mahamed, one of the group’s leaders, says that prior to the split al-Nusra “was an official branch of al Qaeda. We reported to their central command and we worked within their framework, we adhered to their policies.With the formation of JFS, or Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, we are completely independent. That means we don’t report to anyone, we don’t receive our directives from any external entity. ~ CNN Report

CNN then go on to draw on comments from Charles Lister, known propagandist and executive producer of the “moderate rebel” promotional literature. Scholar at the the Washington based and Qatari funded Middle East Institute., Charles Lister of course celebrates this name change, claiming it is a natural progression for the group to protect it from Russian and Syrian Airforce strikes.

Qatar itself is also heavily invested in “regime change” in Syria.  Besides funding the terrorist factions directly, Qatar is also involved in the more subtle building of a shadow state inside Syria via the myriad of NATO and EU funded NGOs who serve as a fifth column for the governments hostile to Syria and enable these governments to work on infiltrating local services and councils. This operation has been discussed in a previous 21st Century Wire article ~ #AleppoIsBurning Campaign Created by NATO to Facilitate a “No Bomb Zone”

So, this group that receives weapons, equipment and “directives” from NATO, in particular the US, has rebranded to prevent Russia targeting them as an internationally designated terrorist group? According to Charles Lister, there are perfectly logical explanations for this re-brand that defy suchspurious speculation:

Al Qaeda as an international organization has been changing,” says Lister. “It is becoming more of an idea than an organization. It is looking to decentralize jihad, to give more autonomy to individual affiliates with the aim of making jihadi rule more likely. “Jabhat al-Nusra has demonstrated the value of that,” he says, distancing itself from some of the more bloodthirsty Islamist groups. “It has an explicit ban on tough punishments: It doesn’t chop hand off for thievery, it doesn’t execute for murder. ~ CNN Report

Has nobody watching or reading CNN realised how twisted this statement is?

Al Nusra does not “chop hands off for thievery, it doesnt execute for murder“. There is some logic to this however… when the murderers absolve themselves of their own crimes it makes sense that they will abolish the execution policy when they are the primary perpetrators of the crime inside Syria. They don’t chop hands off, what is the point when a head can be chopped off instead?

Why punish murder when they are massacring the Syrian people on a daily basis?

The Al Nusra Invasion of Maaloula Whitewashed by CNN

Maaloula. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

Yesterday Vanessa Beeley [the author] met with Father Talal Taalab, a Christian priest from the historic Christian village of Maaloula perched 15oo metres high on the mountainside of the Rif Dimashq governorate, 56 km north-east of Damascus and close to the border with Lebanon. This beautiful Christian village has been in existence for more than 7000 years and has proudly preserved its culture and heritage including the Aramaic language.

In the 1920s, according to Father Taalab,  Turkey introduced Muslim Brotherhood factions into Maaloula “planting strangers in our land”

The Christian communities welcomed these “strangers” and provided them with housing and land, even building a mosque for them inside Maaloula.

From 2011 onwards, Father Taalab sensed a growing threat from members of this Muslim community, he noticed that many of them were joining the flourishing groups of insurgents and extremists.  Even those living inside Maaloula were being enticed into joining the ranks of those terrorists who wished only to cleanse the area of those who did not adhere to their extreme view of Islam and intolerance towards “apsotates” and infidels.

On the 4th September 2013, these terrorists that CNN are trying to present as reformed criminals, suicide bombed the southern SAA checkpoint that was the only defence for the crypto-occupied Christian residents.  A Jordanian suicide bomber drove a truck up to the checkpoint that was blocking the southern entrance to the village and detonated it, giving the signal for the attack to begin.

During this attack, 8 Syrian Army soldiers were murdered by the insurgents and two tanks were disabled.  The terrorists then went on to capture the Safir Hotel which gave them a vantage point from which they could snipe the village residents. Father Taalab describes how many of the Muslim Brotherhood residents who had been their neighbours for years, turned on their Christian hosts and began chanting in support of the Al Nusra insurgents while they were attacking Christian homes and looting or torching their churches.

On the 7th September 2013, Black saturday in the Maalouli calendar, Al Nusra extremists entered a house in Maaloula.  They rounded up three young men, [left to right] Sarkis, Mikhael and Anton. Their photos are pinned to the wall of Father Taalab’s office.

Al Nusra demanded that each man convert to Islam, each man in turn refused to renounce their faith and were shot in the head one by one. The second and third were forced to watch their lifelong friends and brothers murdered before being shot themselves for their refusal to abandon their beliefs.

The Al Nusra operatives then went on to shoot an 80 year old man, Lawandeus, who was Anton’s father.  Lawandeus was blind and deaf but this did not prevent Al Nusra’s attempted murder of this defenceless elder citizen whose son’s blood was already staining the floor.

On entering the house, these Al Nusra NATO agents had also shot Anton’s sister, Antoinette, in the back.  Presuming she was dead they then proceeded to shoot her brother and his two comrades in the head while Antoinette, half conscious, a bullet in her spine, was forced to witness the cold-blooded murders.  Her brother Anton was a shoemaker, the only son of their parents and someone who served his church and the community faithfully and compassionately.

Mikhael was the town baker and Sarkis was an engineering student with a promising future, cut short by the Al Nusra bloodletters whose purpose was to ethnically cleanse the Christian community from its ancestral home.

On the same day, Al Nusra kidnapped six young men from the village including Father Taalab’s brother and two other family members. Father Taalab maintains that Al Nusra deliberately targeted the families of the village clergy which further supports the claim that Al Nusra were intent upon the ethnic cleansing of this ancient community.

These six young men are still missing.  For the first six months, Father Taalab was in contact with them via phone. After that initial six months nothing has been heard from them.  The pain of this “not knowing” was visible in Father Taalab eyes and expression as he talked of efforts ongoing to try and locate the boys and to return them to their families in Maaloula.

Father Talal Taalab. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

We are hopeful that all our belongings will be returned to us including the icons and artefacts but most importantly the human souls that were torn  from our midst and from their mothers’ side. ~ Father Taalab

We would expect a media outlet as prominent as CNN to report on these atrocities in detail but when we look at their accounts of Al Nusra’s invasion and occupation of Maaloula we find that they have, to a large extent, whitewashed the extremism and murderous intent.

In fact, according to CNN, “Maaloua was spared the atrocities endured elsewhere across Syria”  In a May 2016 report, CNN barely mentions the Al Nusra savagery, with only a fleeting reference to the 2013 crimes: “The convent was badly damaged in 2013 and 12 nuns were taken hostage and held by Islamist fighters for months before being released unharmed”

This glib reformulation of the truth acts as a criminal gatekeeper as to the true evil of Al Nusra and the barbarity of their acts against the Maalouli people.  CNN is fundamentally entering into the arena of terror apologism and perhaps even endorsement of their heinous crimes against an unprotected and unprepared Christian minority community that had peacefully co-existed with its eventual attackers for almost a full century.

CNN also marginalise the desecration of ancient cultural heritage sites, the burning of medieval Icons, the torching of sacred places of worship, the shooting of the crosses, the theft of the ancient statues and artefacts. These NATO terrorsts cut a violent and bloody swathe through this steadfast civilisation that had evolved over seven thousand years into a humble and hospitable community that opened its doors to all faiths and sects.

Remember, according to Charles Lister, these murderers are “moderates:  “it [Al Nusra] doesn’t chop hand off for thievery, it doesn’t execute for murder.”

This short video was taken on the 29th July 2016, almost three years after these horrific crimes were committed by the CNN poster boys for “moderate” terrorism inside Syria.  It shows the US Peace Council delegation entering Maaloula. As you can hear from the comments, the scars of the Al Nusra butchery still remain in the bullet holes that pepper the walls and buildings and deep in the hearts of this simple community that has suffered inestimable loss and endured a savagery they never imagined could exist among them.

Are CNN Embedded with Al Qaeda inside Syria?

Now we have established evidence of just one of the many areas of Syria where Al Nusra have committed atrocities against the Syrian people we should return and examine more closely, the role of CNN as US State media purveyor of the “moderate rebel” myth and normaliser of terrorist acts “moderately” conducted daily and justified by any means possible.

Clarissa Ward stated that she has visited Syria 14 times since the NATO dirty operation to secure “regime change” began to tear Syria apart over five years ago. Ward has extensively embedded herself in the Al Nusra/Al Qaeda held areas of Aleppo and along the corridor that leads from the Turkish border to the terrorist occupied city.  As explained previously, Al Nusra and other NATO backed gangs such as Nour al Din Jenki occupy the eastern sectors of Aleppo city with ISISintermingling in the northern regions.

Nour al Din Jenki, another US supported terrorist faction were responsible for the recent horrific beheading of a young Palestinian child, the footage of which has shocked audiences across the world but which the US State Department still balks at condemning.  The life of a child, beaten, tortured and finally publically decapitated seems less important than the protection of their assets inside Syria.

In March 2016 Ward and CNN with the assistance of Bilal Abdul Kareem of On the Ground News [OGN] executed a plan to film deep inside the “rebel” territories of [eastern] Aleppo, Idlib city and Maarat al Numan.  It must be clarified that the areas infiltrated by this media team are in fact stongholds of terrorism, ISIS, Al Nusra/Al Qaeda and Ahrar al Sham the other half of the erstwhile Jaish al Fatah [Army of Conquest] alliance that Al Nusra has now publicly disassociated from with its convenient name change.

Bilal Abdul Kareem interviewing Muhaysini. Photo: Screenshot

Bilal Abdul Kareem is no stranger to these terrorist areas, he has been the long-time petinterviewer of Sheikh Abdullah Muhaysini, head of Jaish al Fatah and Riyadh educated and funded child suicide bomber trainer, executioner, judge of apostates and all round mass murderer who has very recently been calling upon terrorist suicide bombers in and around Aleppo to massacre Syrian Arab Army soliders and allies to gain their virgin prizes in Jannah [Paradise]:

Ward crossed into Syria illegally via the Turkish border without permission from the Syrian government and fraternized with the same terrorists that are massacring and sadistically brutalizing the Syrian people in these regions.

Had Ward entered legally, she would have had the protection of the Syrian Government and Armed forces.  She would not have had to wear the Niqab as the majority of Government held areas that house the majority of the Syrian people from all religious sects and walks of life do not enforce any sort of dress code.

Had Ward officially and respectfully asked if she could interview the “armed opposition” she would have been told by Dr Bashar Al Jaafari [Syrian Representative to the UN] that:

“If you wish to talk to the armed opposition, I suggest you go to Saudi Arabia”

What is Ward’s role in this war? It is certainly not to bring the truth to the outside world. 

Ward collectively re-brands these NATO funded mass murderers, activists and rebels.

Ward sits with these terrorist criminals and sympathises with their plight as they are bombed by the Syrian and Russian airforce trying to drive this cancer from a sovereign nation that has been invaded by a NATO proxy army comprising rapists, child abusers, smugglers, drug addicts and escaped convicts.

Ward romanticizes these felons and killers, she allies herself and CNN with their “cause” although an explanation of that cause is not forthcoming other than, naturally, the deposing of President Assad, his “brutal regime” and the destruction of the Syrian National Army.

Almost every family in Syria has a relative in the Syrian Army, Ward is advocating their murder and denying the universal grief and sorrow felt by every single Syrian man, woman and child that has lost their father, son, brother or uncle at the hands of the criminals that Ward portrays as heroic “rebels”.

They were the ones under the relentless bombardment from the Assad regime. The vast majority of people living there are good people who are suffering enormously. ~ Clarissa Ward: What its like being a Journalist in one of the Worlds most Dangerous Countries

What Ward fails to mention is that yes, the good people, the Syrian people are suffering enormously but from terrorist occupation.  In Syrian reality, the Syrian Arab Army is their liberator not their prison warden as so often described by Ward and the CNN team.

Ward does not mention Kafarya and Foua, the Ahrar al Sham besieged Shia Muslim villages in Idlib.  Kafarya and Foua are being starved to death.  Kafarya and Foua are being gradually and viciously ethnically cleansed by those Ward describes as “activists”.

This protracted war crime in Kafarya and Foua, endorsed and facilitated by the UN and NATOdoes not even warrant a mention from Ward and her CNN/OGN entourage.

The following video made again by Bilal Abdul Kareem of OGN demonstrates quite clearly that these terrorist factions and their supporters are not starving, they are not besieged, they are only hungry for bigger and better weapons with which they can continue their bloodletting inside Syria  on behalf of the Gulf States, Turkey, Israel and NATO.

In one interview, Clarissa Ward calculatingly says:

“Syria grabbed my heart and never let go”

Does Clarissa Ward ever mention the heart eating exploits of the CNN poster boys and their allies? No of course not.  That would muddy the filthy vermin infested water that CNN are trying to sell us as beneficial for the Syrian people who are in reality poisoned by CNN’s toxic propaganda and support of the terrorist entities that are destroying entire communities, uprooting many others and torturing or violating those that remain behind.

CNN Normalizes Al Nusra Suicide Bombers – “Inside the Mind of a Suicide Bomber”

Two nights ago, CNN aired a chilling and shocking programme where they actively normalised the use of suicide bombers as a natural act of war.

In a ten minute interview with CNN, who yet again give a platform to these pro-terrorist talking heads, Norwegian filmaker Paul Refsdal explains how he had to provide a CV and two references in order to be able to film and interview Al Nusra suicide bombers inside Syria.

In this hallucinatory interview, CNN allow Refsdal to reduce the massacres carried out by these suicide bombers down to the “absurd” and to justify the use of suicide bombers as a legitimate act of war against the Syrian Arab Army.

It is interesting to note that duirng the US Peace Council delegation meeting with President Bashar al Assad on the 28th July 2016, Assad mentioned that according to his government data, the majority of ISIS leaders fighting in Syria, originate from Norway. Perhaps Paul Refsdal is a potential candidate.  Surely we should at least be asking who provided his references.

There is barely a whisper of condemnation for these mass murderers and ideologically deluded criminals.  Once more CNN serves as the platform to lionize terrorism and to elevate it to normalcy in the minds of viewers and readers.

This is a very dangerous path to walk down and one from which return is not easy. Where are CNN leading us and why?

Should we expect CNN to now suddenly approve of the Palestinian resistance tactics and their use of suicide bombers in response to the disproportionate force deployed against them by the Israeli Occupation Forces? That is the logical  conclusion surely?

Al Nusra/Al Qaeda name-change given a platform by CNN

CNN went one step beyond most other media channels who reported on the timely re-branding by Al Nusra/Al Qaeda. CNN televised the announcement by Mohammed Joulani, flanked by two unsavoury members of the terrorist group.  Once again CNN gave the platform to an internationally designated terrorist group and endorsed their attempt to distance themselves from the damaging Al Qaeda brand.

This cynical ploy to alter public perception and open the door to future protection of and collaboration with this NATO terrorist asset must be highlighted.  The consequences of this operation being successful are too dreadful to conceive or entertain particularly for the already bloodied and ravaged Syrian nation and its wounded people.

Video: @Walid970721

CNN Working in Lock-step with the US State Department

CNN is not the only State operative to be working hard at distancing Al Nusra from Al Qaeda and creating smoke screens to disassociate the US government from its terrorist connections in Syria.

John Kirby of the US State Department manages to twist his response to a question regarding the Al Nusra re-branding into an unintelligible concoction of double-speak, ultimately avoiding the question altogether as only the US State Department can.

Where is the categorical response that should have been forthcoming – “under any name they are a gang of mass murderers illegally on Syrian soil and as such are legitimate targets for the Syrian National Army and their allies”. Hell might freeze over long before we hear that from the US State Department or any of their related agencies in the media or predatory humanitarian complex.

The Deadly Implications of the Al Qaeda name change game

Wikipedia has already edited its entry for Mohammed Joulani, Emir of Jabhat al Nusra to incorporate the product re-branding:

Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a^[3] (Arabic: أحمد حسين الشرع‎‎), known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani^[4] (Arabic: أبو محمد الجولاني‎‎), is the emir of the Syrian militant group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, he also led its predecessor organisation Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.^[5] Al-Julani was listed by the US State Department as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” on 16 May 2013

The name change has significance and this should not be overlooked.

It is interesting that CNN translates “Sham” to Levant which includes Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Turkey and Cyprus.  The British would also add Libya and Egypt to the Levant.

The world “Sham” should actually only include Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan.

The Islamic definition of “Fateh” is conquest which means quite simply the introduction of the rule of Allah according to the armies of “Fateh”that are predominantly driven by the extremist ideologies of Wahhabism and Al Qaeda so ISIS, Al Nusra, Ahrar al Sham etc. Conquest in this context means the displacement and destruction of all those who do not adhere to this extremist ideology. ~ Abdo Hadad, Maaloula

The CNN expansion of the territory to include the whole of the Levant as opposed to the Sham is perhaps an indication of where this latest turn of events may lead.

Political map of Syria: Ezilon

Are we about to see the normalization of Al Qaeda and their deployment into Idlib to present the “moderate” face of extremism to the outside world.  An extremism that intends to impose its Islamic state upon a specific area of Syria that is already heavily occupied by its forces, controlled by Turkey acting as middle man for Saudi Arabia and NATO.

Aleppo is slipping from NATO’s grasp and will be a huge loss.  Is Idlib the new target and is Jabhat Fateh al Sham the new “moderate” Al Qaeda primed to occupy this belt of territory bordering Turkey which will give Erdogan an even greater role inside Syria without having to deploy his own armed forces.

Once again, CNN provide the clues by publishing Charles Lister’s view on the Al Qaeda re-brand:

“Their long term aim is to establish an Islamic emirate in Syria”

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

A four-minute video that was posted to YouTube on April 29th documents that the US government has been lying about an organization, the White Helmets, the US government hires to assist Syria’s al-Qaeda, called «al-Nusra», to dispose of corpses of persons al-Nusra executes. Al-Nusra kills Syrian government soldiers; and, according to Seymour Hersh and other investigative journalists, has, throughout the Syrian war, been supplied guns and other weapons by the governments of the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, for that purpose. This is part of America’s operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, whom even Western polling shows to be popular amongst the Syrian general population. That same polling shows Nusra and other jihadist organizations (and the US government, which arms them) to be extremely unpopular in Syria.

On April 19th, the US State Department had blocked entrance into the United States by Raed Saleh, the head of the White Helmets, and refused to say why. Saleh had been invited to receive in NYC an award by USAID and NGOs that the US government finances, but he was barred at the airport, apparently because the FBI had placed him onto its no-fly list as a known terrorist.

The White Helmets claim to receive no funds from any government, but the four-minute video shows a State Department official admitting «we supply through USAID about twenty-three million dollars in assistance to them» (which might be annually, but that question wasn’t addressed in the video). The White Helmets’ founder, James Le Mesurier, is himself funded by the governments of the UK, Japan, Denmark and the Netherlands, all of which are likewise trying to overthrow Assad.

 

Thus, US and other Western taxpayers are funding this allegedly ‘non-partisan’ and ‘humanitarian’ but actually jihadist, organization, whose leader was, on April 19th, prevented from receiving in the US, a ‘humanitarian’ award, for processing corpses that Nusra – which the US government also supports – is producing. The White Helmets also rescue jihadists (and their inevitable civilian hostages), who have been injured by Syrian government forces. That’s their ‘humanitarian’ work. This video shows jihadists cheering White Helmets. The anti-Assad ‘charities’ that were wanting to award Raed Saleh in the US, have said they’ll instead do it in Turkey, which is a US ally – even a member of NATO.

As regards what the Syrian people think, it’s highly favorable toward Assad and highly unfavorable toward the jihadist organizations that now infest their country from abroad, and also against the United States, which they view as being the main source of this ‘civil war’ (which is instead actually a foreign invasion of their country).

The video also shows the British agent (and Britain is yet another US ally) who founded and organized the ‘non-partisan humanitarian organization’, White Helmets, Mr Le Mesurier.

The Syrian government is an ally of Russia, and America’s policy is to overthrow and replace the leader of any nation who is friendly toward Russia, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Manuel Zelaya, Viktor Yanukovych, or Bashar al-Assad.

These governments then become failed states. When Zelaya was replaced in 2009, the country he led, Honduras, became a narco-state and has since had the world’s highest murder-rate. Jihadists weren’t even needed in the Honduran case. The US government didn’t perpetrate that particular coup, but only helped it succeed and enabled the installed new regime to remain in power.

The Honduran coup was actually perpetrated by agents of that country’s twelve aristocratic families, who own almost all of the country. However, normally, the US government itself overthrows the leaders it doesn’t like, and doesn’t merely aid the regimes that a coup by the local aristocracy has already installed. Hillary Clinton, the US Presidential candidate, was the key person in the Obama Administration who worked, behind the scenes, to keep in power the coup regime that took over in Honduras on 28 June 2009. Without her assistance to the Honduran coup-regime, Zelaya, whom virtually all other governments supported as being still the legal leader of Honduras, would have been restored to power; the coup-regime would have had to bow out. By contrast, her – and President Obama’s – efforts to replace Syria’s secular but nominally Shiite President Assad, by using Saudi-funded foreign-imported Sunni jihadists, haven’t been nearly so successful, unless creating the highest degree of misery among the residents in any country in the world, is viewed by Obama and Clinton as ‘success’.

As I had reported on April 16th, headlining, «Why Obama Prioritizes Ousting Assad Over Defeating Syria’s Jihadists»: «The 2016 Global Emotions Report by Gallup, surveying over a thousand people in each one of 140 different nations, found that, by far, the people in Syria had ‘the lowest positive experiences worldwide,’ the people there were far more miserable than in any other nation. The score was 36 (on a scale to 100). Second and third worst were tied at 51: Turkey because of the tightening dictatorship there as Turkey has become one of Obama’s key allies in toppling Assad; Nepal, on account of the earthquake».

So, America certainly doesn’t give a damn about the sufferings of the Syrians, and of the Iraqis, sufferings that the US itself caused and which invasions by us (and by the jihadists we and our Saudi and other ‘friends’ have armed and assisted to get into Syria through our ‘friend’ Turkey) have produced the two nations with the most misery on this planet. Our Presidents mouth platitudes of ‘caring’, but, to judge by their actions, are merely lying psychopaths. But whatever they are, they’re causing the most misery of anyone. How much coverage of that fact is there in the American press? Hasn’t America’s press actually been complicit in this, all along?

So, this is the reason why the US government refuses entry to a terrorist it hires to create hell for the people in Syria: it doesn’t want individuals such as Raed Saleh inside the United States. America’s leaders know that, if something like this happens, and if word of it becomes well known, the American public could become even less supportive of their leaders than they already are. It’s not what America’s aristocracy want. They might not care about the American public, but they care very much about staying in power, regardless whether under the «Democratic» or under the «Republican» label.

Back on 26 June 2015, Raed Saleh had somehow been allowed into the United States, to address an «Arria» briefing (named after the far-right aristocratic military Venezuelan diplomat and member of the US aristocratic Council on Foreign Relations, Diego Arria) to the UN Security Council, where Saleh announced in his opening paragraph that his focus would be «to convey the message of the search and rescue teams in Syria about the suffering of the Syrian people due to the regime’s bombing with indiscriminate weapons, particularly barrel bombs».

Those were the cheap, even amateurish, improvised bombs that the Syrian Army were using to kill as many of the jihadists as they could, but which also inevitably killed and maimed also many Syrian civilians in the occupied areas of the country – there’s no way to avoid it. Saleh’s speech didn’t mention any of the many foreign jihadist groups such as Nusra and ISIS that were and are killing far more of everybody than Assad’s forces were. His focus was instead totally against Assad and the government’s forces, not at all against the jihadist mercenaries who had entered the country and made hell there; and, Saleh said, «The Syrian people who are being killed every day, Ladies and Gentlemen, hold you responsible» for not helping those jihadists eliminate the existing Syrian government.

He said this without at all referring to what even Western polling of Syrians had consistently shown to be the case, which was the exact opposite: they hold the US to blame and they loathe the jihadists and support the government. So, clearly, the United States did the correct thing when finally placing this jihadist of theirs onto America’s no-fly list. To the exact contrary of the US government’s propaganda which says that he’s a hero and that he and his organization are ‘nonpartisan’ and that he is, as he calls himself, «the head of Syrian Civil Defense», that appellation for him is like calling Hitler’s medics during his invasion of, say, France, «French Civil Defense». George Orwell’s allegorical novel 1984 has clearly been surpassed in today’s reality. The extent to which Western publics accept the arrant lies they’re fed is exceeding, perhaps, even Orwell’s expectations.

So: one typical piece of Republican propaganda about the White Helmets is the May 1st article in the Wall Street Journal,  «White Helmets Are White Knights for Desperate Syrians», while a typical piece of Democratic propaganda about them is the New York Times eleven days earlier, on April 20th, which headlined «Leader of Syria Rescue Group, Arriving in US for Award, Is Refused Entry», and it reported there that «Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, called the denial of entry ‘a scandal’. ‘The White Helmets are one of the few organizations in Syria that have been above reproach,’ he said. ‘They have tried to observe strict neutrality in order to facilitate their humanitarian work and save lives. To do this they have worked alongside all sorts of militias in order to get to victims of the fighting’». He didn’t say that the «militias» are overwhelmingly foreign jihadist groups paid by America’s fundamentalist-Sunni allies the Sauds, and Qatar’s royal family the Thanis, to overthrow the secular Shiite Assad. But, after all, it’s only propaganda, anyway. Right?

Furthermore, the Syrian public might view that conception of ‘strict neutrality’ much the way Jews in Nazi concentration camps viewed the conception of ‘strict neutrality’ as between themselves and their oppressors, or the way Chinese in the Nanjing Massacre viewed that ‘strict neutrality’ between themselves and the Japanese invaders. And, polls in Syria do show they view the US and its allies as the invaders. Instead of ‘strict neutrality,’ the US and its allies are the foreign invaders, and not at all ‘neutral’. And, to state this documented fact (documented here by the links) isn’t propaganda at all; it’s news-reporting, in an entirely verified historical context (which is very different from propaganda).

What that four-minute video shows is news-reporting, in exactly this sense. That’s why it’s presented here: it brings all of this together, succinctly; and what I’ve done here is to document some of its important historical context, to help people who are skeptical of it (and, in such a lying world, everything should be viewed with a scientist’s skepticism) understand and evaluate it, at a deeper level than a mere four minutes can possibly present, even in a video.

 In an opinion piece written by Andrew J. Tabler, a Martin J. Gross fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) along with Dennis B. Ross also a William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the institute titled ‘The Case for (Finally) Bombing Assad’ calls for limited “drone and cruise missile strikes” against the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Dennis B. Ross served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush and a special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton then under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a special adviser for the Persian Gulf (Iran)and Southwest Asia. Ross is also part of the “Israeli Lobby” in Washington so it is no surprise with the content of the article coming from The New York Times is advocating that the Obama administration or the next elected president come this January 1st “bomb” Syrian government forces and President Bashar al-Assad. Israel would accept Ross and Tabler’s assessment since Syria is allied with Iran and Hezbollah.

They claim that limited drone and cruise missile strikes against the Syrian government would “make Mr. Assad behave.“ According to TheNew York Times Op-Ed article:

Wiping out terrorist groups in Syria is an important goal and, after years of death and destruction, any agreement among the country’s warring parties or their patrons may seem welcome. But the Obama administration’s plan, opposed by many within the C.I.A., the State Department and the Pentagon, is flawed. Not only would it cement the Assad government’s siege of the opposition-held city Aleppo, it would push terrorist groups and refugees into neighboring Turkey. Instead, the United States must use this opportunity to take a harder line against Mr. Assad and his allies

Ross and Tabler claim that ‘the Nusra Front’ were targeted for attacks by Russia, Iran (no surprise Ross mentions Iran as a danger every chance he gets, besides he is a lobbyist for Israel) and even the U.S. where there were opposition groups stationed with “some possible Nusra presence” in the same areas. Ross wants all parties to stop targeting“opposition groups” (who in reality are associated with various terrorist organizations) and focus on the Syrian government forces instead:

Secretary of State John Kerry hopes that this understanding with Russia will help lead to progress on other issues, including restoring the “cessation of hostilities,” a partial truce that began in February and broke down in May, and returning to negotiations on a political transition. These are reasonable goals, which are also embodied in a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted last December.

But a leaked text of the proposed agreement with Russia shows that it is riddled with dangerous loopholes. American and Russian representatives are now delineating areas where the Nusra Front is “concentrated” or “significant” and areas where other opposition groups dominate but “some possible Nusra presence” exists. This will still allow Mr. Assad and his Iranian and Russian backers to attack the non-Nusra opposition in those areas, as well as solidify the Syrian government’s hold on power

What is absurd about the article is that it claims that the Syrian government and Hezbollah will force al-Nusrah and other terror groups to flee into neighboring Turkey and eventually the West:

More worrying is that the Assad government lacks the manpower to hold rural Sunni areas and so will rely on Hezbollah and other Shiite militias to do so. These brutal sectarian groups will most likely force the Nusra Front and other Sunni rebels to decamp to Turkey, bringing them, and the threat of militant violence, closer to the West

The U.S. war against Syria along with its clear support of various Terrorists groups has already led to terrorist attacks in Turkey and Western Europe. The partial truce that began in February and ended in May, Ross and Tabler claim that Russia took advantage and bombed “Syrian rebel forces” instead of ISIS and al-Nusra terrorists and even called it a violation:

During the partial truce, Russia took advantage of similar loopholes that permitted it and the Assad government to keep fighting the non-Nusra and non-Islamic State opposition. Such violations have allowed Mr. Assad and his allies to gain territory and besiege Aleppo

In fact, on May 24th, RT News reported that Russia and Syrian government forces has eliminated more than 35% of the Islamic state fighters according to the deputy head of Russia’s top security body, Evgeny Lukyanov at the VII international security summit:

We estimate that at the beginning of our operation Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] possessed about 80,000 fighters, of whom 28,000 (35 percent) have already been eliminated. This is [the result of] our actions together with the Syrian Army

Ross and Tabler do have a solution thThere is an alternative: Punish the Syrian government for violating the truce by using drones and cruise missiles to hit the Syrian military’s airfields, bases and artillery positions where no Russian troops are present

The military solution promoted by the New York Times to target the Syrian government and its military forces and avoid Russian troops will be a disaster for Washington. First, Syrian and Russian forces are fighting together which would lead to casualties on both sides if the U.S. were to conduct drone or cruise missile strikes within Syrian government–held territories. Second, without the Assad government in power that holds Syria together would result in the“break-up” of Syria into several areas which would then be controlled by terrorist organizations including the Islamic state. Currently, a battle between the Syrian government forces that is surrounding the city of Aleppo in an attempt to defeat the Western-backed rebels who continue their attacks on government –controlled areas in and around Aleppo.at will not allow ISIS and al-Nusrah to expand into neighboring countries and that is by attacking the Syrian government:

Ross and Tabler’s assessment on what Washington should do in Syria has imperial motives to destroy, destabilize and then control Syria and then target Hezbollah and eventually Iran. Israel would be the dominant power in the Middle East. One of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails from December 31st, 2012 was released earlier this year by Wikileaks proved that the then-Secretary of State under the Obama administration wanted to use military force to overthrow the Assad government from the start of the civil war and strengthen Israel’s security apparatus:

Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted. Right now, it is the combination of Iran’s strategic alliance with Syria and the steady progress in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program that has led Israeli leaders to contemplate a surprise attack-if necessary over the objections of Washington. With Assad gone, and Iran no longer able to threaten Israel with its proxies, it is possible that the United States and Israel can agree on red lines for when Iran’s program has crossed an unaccepted threshold. In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria

Hillary Clinton’s email not only confirms that the Whitehouse sought to remove Assad by force; it also confirms (although the world already knew thanks to the nuclear weapons whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu) that Israel has a nuclear monopoly? Or rather, a nuclear weapons monopoly?

Dennis B. Ross, Andrew J. Tabler and the New York Times is providing the necessary propaganda for a future Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency (if she either wins or steals the election) to declare war on the Syrian government the minute she gets into the Whitehouse. Ross supported the Iraq war which has destroyed the country. The war on Iraq has led to the foundation of terrorism and to the creation of various terrorist groups in the Middle East and now Ross and company is advocating that Washington order drone and cruise missile strikes against the Syrian government. This is advice from a man who supported the 2003 war on Iraq and signed on the “Neocon” Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that promoted the idea that the U.S. should play a leading role in the world as an Imperial power. The New York Times is already guilty of promoting war in the past; remember the name, Judith Miller?

 

Two weeks ago, President Obama announced that the US will draw down its troops in Afghanistan from 9,800 to 8,400, altering his original plan to reduce the number to 5,500. His decision suggests that conditions on the ground are not as promising as he expected them to be, and maintaining a larger number of troops is important as he believes “it is in our national security interests…that we give our Afghan partners the best opportunities to succeed.” The president, however, did not spell out what success actually means. If he meant that Afghanistan will eventually become a stable and functioning democracy, he is fundamentally mistaken.

Indeed, even if the US stations three times as many troops for another 15 years or more, given the multiple conflicts, ruthlessness, and duplicity of the players involved and the country’s long history, the US cannot rescue Afghanistan from the quagmire in which it finds itself. The president’s concluding remarks strongly suggest that the US’ military presence in Afghanistan is essentially open-ended, saying: “…given the enormous challenges they face, the Afghan people will need the partnership of the world, led by the United States, for many years to come.” [emphasis added]

The facts on the ground remind us of the Vietnam War—a needlessly prolonged conflict with no prospect of victory—except that the war in Afghanistan is even more complicated and becoming increasingly intractable. To understand what the US strategy should be to end a war that has lasted more than any other in US history, consider the following:

First, Afghanistan is a landlocked country with a rugged and mountainous terrain replete with thousands of caves, some of which are miles long and familiar only to the indigenous population. Historically, no power has been able to conquer and sustain its conquest of Afghanistan from the time of Alexander the Great, including the Mongols, the British Empire, and Soviet Russia.

Demographically, the country has a population of 32 million, 99 percent of whom are Muslims, composed of tribes and kinship-based groups in a multilingual and multi-ethnic society. As such, the country is politically divided and lacks social and political cohesiveness.

Second, given the history and determination of the Taliban, bringing them to submission was always a non-starter. Even though the US is fully aware that many Taliban militants operate from safe havens inside Pakistan and other hard-to-reach areas, the US is still unwilling to confront Pakistan, giving the Taliban no incentive to negotiate in earnest.

As long as this situation remains unchanged, the touch and go negotiations over the past 14 years will lead to nowhere. Just like the Vietcong, the Taliban strongly feel that they will eventually wear out any government in Kabul, and will keep fighting and make all the sacrifices until they exhaust the US and eventually prevail.

Third, Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan—the Durand Line—stretches through the entire southern and eastern boundary between the two countries and is poorly delineated and unprotected. It divides the Pashtun tribes of the region between Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been a source of increasing tension between the two countries, which explains Pakistan’s unique concerns and determination to protect its national interests and have a say about Afghanistan’s current and future political order.

There is concrete evidence, revealed by the former head of Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency, Rahmatullah Nabil, that Pakistan fully supports the Afghani Taliban to achieve a dual purpose: maintain its influence in Afghanistan, and prevent India from establishing a presence in the country, thereby thwarting any effort by New Delhi from encircling it.

Chris Alexander, Canada’s former Citizenship and Immigration Minister and former Ambassador to Afghanistan, flatly stated “Canada and its allies must take a united front against Pakistan because it is a sponsor of terrorism that threatens world security.” That said, the Obama administration was and still is unwilling to confront Pakistan because the US views the country as an ally in the war on terror, and the Pakistani military serves to secure the US’ strategic interests in south and central Asia.

Fourth, the growing presence of ISIS and the return of strong elements of al-Qaeda, numbering between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters, have become increasingly evident in the mountainous region along the Pakistani border. Their recent attack against the Hazara minority killed 80 people, presumably because members of the community provided some support to the Assad regime in Syria. US military spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland aptly put it: “That’s our concern, these high profile attacks, they are effective because they’re not that difficult to achieve.”

It can be expected that ISIS attacks will become more frequent, especially because of its steady retreat in Iraq and Syria, while further destabilizing Afghanistan and complicating the war efforts regardless of the extent of the US’ continuing military backing.

Fifth, the premature introduction of democracy to Afghanistan is inconsistent with the culture of tribalism and dominance of Islam orthodoxy in the country. Although the new constitution recognizes gender equality, participatory politics, and some civic and political rights, it has also institutionalized tribal nationalism and ethnic hierarchy.

Given the above, one might ask why did the US, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, feel that it could go to any Muslim country, such as Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and others, ravage them, and then impose political values of which they are not disposed or willing to accept?

Afghanistan’s social and political setting makes it prone to ethnic and civil wars and the breakdown of state institutions. The West can at best provide only a model of democracy, and has no business going far and wide to promote its political culture which is alien to the natives and doing so under the gun no less.

This Vietnam syndrome must come to an end in Afghanistan. It is reminiscent of a slot machine gambler who pours money into the machine, hoping to get the jackpot that never materializes, finally leaving the machine exasperated and broke. Neither Bush nor Obama learned the bitter lessons of Vietnam, and both poured money and resources into a failing enterprise with no end in sight.

After the US officially spent more than $650 billion in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, in addition to $150 billion contributed by other allied countries, Afghanistan remains a mess. Bribes and favoritism are pandemic, and hundreds of millions are skimmed by corrupt officials, over which hardly anyone frowns.

As things stand now, the four-nation group (comprised of Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the US) has no plans to resume the negotiations with the Taliban, who has refused to participate in any negotiations since January. They fundamentally disagree about the political framework that should govern Afghanistan in the future.

The next US administration must change course and develop an exit strategy that offers some face saving way out. An agreement that all conflicting parties should accept rests on three pillars:

It is a given that the Taliban must be an integral part of any future government, as long as they commit themselves to basic human rights, specifically in connection with women, and prevent al-Qaeda and other extremist groups (including ISIS) from using Afghanistan as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against the US or any of its allies.

The moral argument against the Taliban has to be based on religious precepts to which they can relate and would enable them to change their ways without losing face. For example, there is nothing in the Koran that permits discrimination against women – rather, we find a defense of gender equality: “I shall not lose sight of the labor of any of you who labors in My way; be it man or woman; each of you is equal to the other.” (3:195) Nor is there any indication in the Koran that women are not permitted to receive an education.

Pakistan will have to be, for the reasons cited above, part and parcel of any solution to protect its national security interests and prevent India from meddling in Afghani affairs. Islamabad must also commit to ridding the country of radical Islamists, especially al-Qaeda. From everything we know, Pakistan and the Taliban can agree on such a political formula. The US should withdraw its forces from the country over a period of a couple of years, leaving behind a contingency of a few hundred military personnel, along with a UN presence, to monitor and ensure compliance with the agreement.

After 15 years of fighting, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and tens of thousands killed on both sides, Afghanistan is not better off today than it was immediately following the collapse of the Taliban regime. The upcoming American administration must commit itself to ending Afghanistan’s quagmire, because short of a negotiated agreement, there will be no victory against the Taliban any more than America’s disguised defeat in Vietnam.

To listen to an audio version of this article, click here.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

[email protected]

Web: www.alonben-meir.com

Early May U.S. Secretary of State Kerry set a deadline for “voluntary” regime change in Syria:

[He] said “the target date for the transition is 1st of August” in Syria or else the Assad government and its allies “are asking for a very different track.” Hoping that “something happens in these next few months,” he said the political transition would not include President Assad because “as long as Assad is there, the opposition is not going to stop fighting.”
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Kerry made those remarks after meeting with the UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. They agreed to establish a monitoring ceasefire center in Geneva, Switzerland, …

By the time of that statement, al-Qaeda in Syria and U.S. supported insurgents had already broken the February ceasefire announced by Russia and attacked Syrian government positions in the rural area south of Aleppo city.

Negotiations since May between Russia and the U.S. over Syria have not led to any tangible results. In retrospect the U.S. tactic seems to have been willful delay. The U.S. made some laughable offer to Russia and Syria to effectively accept defeat in exchange for common attacks on al-Qaeda. This was rejected without much comments.

The current attack on the government held Aleppo by al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al Nusra aka Fateh al Scam) was launched on August 1st. With up to 10,000 insurgents participating the attack was unprecedented in size. August 1st is exactly the same date Kerry had set as starting date for “a very different track”. This is likely not a random coincidence.

Despite the very large size of the “Great Battle of Aleppo” and its possibly decisive character for the war neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has so far reported on it.

The U.S. had long prepared for an escalation and extension of the war on Syria. In December and January ships under U.S. control transported at least 3,000 tons of old weapons and ammunition from Bulgaria to Turkey and Jordan. These came atop of hundreds of tons of weapons from Montenegro transported via air to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. According to the renown Janes Defense military intelligence journal these Bulgarian weapons ended up in Syria where the Syrian army confiscated some of them from al-Qaeda and U.S. supported insurgents.

During the ceasefire and negotiations with Russia, the U.S. and its allies continued to arm and support their proxies in Syria even as those were intimately coordinating and integrating with al-Qaeda. The U.S. does not consider these groups to be terrorists, no matter with whom they associate or whatever they do. Even when such a group beheads a 12 year old, sick child in front of running cameras the U.S. State Department continues to support them and opines that “one incident here and there would not necessarily make you a terrorist group.”

Good to know …

The Russian Defense Ministry warned since April that large amounts of weapons and men were crossing from Turkey to Syria:

The Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group (outlawed in Russia) in Syria is planning a major offensive with the aim to cut the road between Aleppo and Damascus, the chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff, Sergey Rudskoy, has said.
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“According to the information we have, about 8,000 Jabhat al-Nusra militants have concentrated to the southwest of Aleppo; up to 1,500 militants have gathered to the north of the city,” Rudskoi said.

A Jabhat al-Nusra spokesperson claimed that the attack on Aleppo was planned for “several month”. The U.S.-Saudi weapon supplies at the beginning of the year and the Russian observed deployment of forces in April were likely in preparation of the current attack on Aleppo. Kerry’s “very different track” remark fits right into these. But the large “very different track” attack failed.

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The attack started on Sunday and by Monday the 2nd the insurgents (green areas) managed to break Syrian government (red) defenses at the south-western border of Aleppo city. The plan was to break through roughly along the black line. Several vehicle based suicide attacks breached the Syrian front line. The insurgents captured the large, unfinished apartment project 1070 and several hilltop positions.

On Tuesday phase 2 launched when they attempted to take the Artillery Academy base a few hundred meters further east. But after intense Syrian and Russian air strikes and nightly counterattacks nearly all positions fell back into Syrian government hands. 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. A tunnel deployed bomb destroyed parts of the Syrian army positions in Ramouseh but the defense line held. The attack was repelled. Additional break-out attacks by the 2-3,000 fighters inside the besieged al-Qaeda controlled areas in east-Aleppo city failed too. Al-Qaeda never managed to brake the siege of the eastern areas and to thereby cut off the government held, densely occupied western areas from their supply route south towards Damascus.

Local fighting still continues on the front lines but the government positions seem secured and the attacking force is slowly grind down.

Al-Qaeda and allies had to deliver their attack from rural Idleb and Aleppo over open terrain towards the western Aleppo city borders. Here is where the Russian airforce and long range artillery concentrated their fire. As usual in such situations more attackers were killed on the approaches to the front line and in forward supply areas than on the front line itself. A Russian cruise missile evendestroyed (vid) an arms supply storage used by Jaish al-Islam, the al-Qaeda controlled insurgency alliance, in Bab al Hawa, Idleb, at the Turkish border. Several arms convoys on their way towards Aleppo were destroyed in other airstrikes.

Both sides currently accuse each other of minor gas attacks against each other civilians. The insurgents started these as they always do when they lose ground. This time the Syrian and Russian side immediately responded with their own claims. It is now he-said she-said – who can decide? These attacks or reports seem to be more diversions than serious incidents.

After the defeat of the third phase of their attack al-Qaeda and its allies broke off their original plan of an attack in six phases and pulled back. In Russian military doctrine such a situation demands a counterattack with a wide ranging, strategic pursuit of the retreating enemy. We may now see a lightning fast operation in which reserve troops held by the Syrian government proceed westwards and northwards from Aleppo under intense air cover.

There are no current plans on the government side to capture the insurgent areas in east-Aleppo which are under government siege. These can wait and their condition deteriorate before any costly move against them follows.

Reports of additional Russian attack planes arriving for the next phase of the conflict have not yet been confirmed.

All together Kerry’s “very different track” failed to achieve the desired aim. The government held Aleppo city was not cut off from the rest of the government held areas south of it. The attacking force, the largest insurgent concentration in this war, suffers up to 1,000 casualties and a large amount of its equipment was destroyed. A pursuit might shatter its remnants.

In another Syrian trouble spot Kurdish YPG fighters besiege and slowly conquer the Islamic State held city of Manbij in the east. They are supported by U.S. special forces and intense coalition air attacks. The city of Manbij is now mostly destroyed. The once 100,000 inhabitants are in dire straits. Up to 200 civilians fleeing the city were killed in U.S. air attacks. But as the operation is U.S. led no “western” humanitarian organization has lamented their fate.

Corporate media regularly attempts to present Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria as solely responsible for the ongoing conflict in the region. The media does report on events that contradict this narrative — albeit sparingly — but taken together, these underreported details shine a new light on the conflict.

10: Bashar al-Assad has a higher approval rating than Barack Obama

Despite Obama’s claims Assad is illegitimate and must step down, the fact remains that since the conflict erupted in 2011, Assad has held the majority support of his people. The elections in 2014 – which Assad won by a landslide with international observers claiming no violations – is a testament to the fact that although Assad has been accused of serious human rights violations, he continues to remain reasonably popular with the Syrian people.

Obama, on the other hand, won elections in 2012 with a voter turnout of a mere 53.6 percent of the American public; only 129.1 million total were votes cast. This means approximately 189.8 million American people did not vote for Obama. His current approval rating sits at about 50 percent.

9: The “moderate” opposition has been hijacked

There is no longer such a thing as “moderate” opposition in Syria – if there ever was. The so-called Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been dominated by extremists for years. The U.S. has known this yet has continued to support the Syrian opposition, despite the fact the New York Times reported in 2012 that the majority of weapons being sent to Syria have been ending up in the hands of jihadists. A classified DIA report predicted the rise of ISIS in 2012, stating:

“If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

Further, an FSA commander went on record not only to admit his fighters regularly conduct joint operations with al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria), but also that he would like to see Syria ruled by Sharia law.

Apparently, moderate can also mean “al-Qaeda affiliated fanatic.”

8: Assad never used chemical weapons on his own people

A U.N. investigation into the first major chemical weapons attack committed in early 2013 — an atrocity the West immediately pinned on Assad — concluded the evidence suggested the attack was more likely committed by the Syrian opposition. A subsequent U.N. investigation into the August 2013 attack never laid blame on anyone, including Assad’s forces. In December 2013, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh released an article highlighting deficiencies in the way the situation was handled:

“In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports…citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.”

7: Toppling the Syrian regime was part of a plan adopted shortly after 9/11

According to a memo disclosed by 4-star General Wesley Clark, shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon adopted a plan to topple the governments of seven countries within five years. The countries were Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Iran.

As we know, Iraq was invaded in 2003. American ally Israel tried its hand at taking out Lebanon in 2006. Libya was destroyed in 2011. Prior to this intervention, Libya had the highest standard of living of any country in Africa. In 2015, alone, it dropped 27 places on the U.N. Human Development Index rating. U.S. drones fly over Somalia, U.S. troops are stationed in South Sudan — Sudan was partitioned following a brutal civil war — and Syria has been the scene of a deadly war since 2011. This leaves only Iran, which is discussed below.

6: Iran and Syria have a mutual defense agreement

Since 2005, Iran and Syria have been bound by a mutual defense agreement. The Iranian government has shown they intend to fully honor this agreement and has provided the Syrian regime with all manner of support, including troops, a $1 billion credit line, training, and advisement. What makes this conflict even more dangerous, however, is the fact Russia and China have sided with Iran and Syria, stating openly they will not tolerate any attack on Iran. Russia’s military intervention in Syria in recent months proves these are not idle threats – they have put their money where their mouth is.

Iran has been in the crosshairs of the U.S. foreign policy establishment for some time now. George W. Bush failed to generate the support needed to attack Iran during his time in office — though not for lack of trying — and since 2012, sanctions have been the go-to mantra. By attacking and destabilizing Iran’s most important ally in the region, the powers that be can undermine Iranian attempts to spread its influence in the region, ultimately further weakening Iran.

5: Former Apple CEO is the son of a Syrian refugee

The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, was the son of a Syrian who moved to the United States in the 1950s. This is particularly amusing given the amount of xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism and hatred refugees and migrants seem to have inspired — even from aspiring presidents. Will a President Donald Trump create the conditions in which future technological pioneers may never reach the United States? His rhetoric seems to indicate as much.

4: ISIS arose out of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, not the Syrian conflict

ISIS was formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, which rose to prominence following the U.S.-U.K. led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is well-known that there was no tangible al-Qaeda presence in Iraq until after the invasion, and there is a reason for this. When Paul Bremer was given the role of Presidential Envoy to Iraq in May 2003, he dissolved the police and military. Bremer fired close to 400,000 former servicemen, including high-ranking military officials who fought in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. These generals now hold senior ranking positions within ISIS. If it weren’t for the United States’ actions, ISIS likely wouldn’t exist.

ISIS was previously known by the U.S. security establishment as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), but these fighters ultimately became central to Western regime change agendas in Libya and Syria. When the various Iraqi and Syrian al-Qaeda-affiliated groups merged on the Syrian border in 2014, we were left with the fully-fledged terror group we face today.

[Al Qaeda is a a construct of US intelligence going back to the Soviet Afghan war. It is supported covertly by the CIA, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, Turkish, and Saudi intelligence].

3: Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia wanted to build a pipeline through Syria, but Assad rejected it

In 2009, Qatar proposed a pipeline to run through Syria and Turkey to export Saudi gas. Assad rejected the proposal and instead formed an agreement with Iran and Iraq to construct a pipeline to the European market that would cut Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar out of the route entirely. Since, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have been staunch backers of the opposition seeking to topple Assad. Collectively, they have invested billions of dollars, lent weapons, encouraged the spread offanatical ideology, and helped smuggle fighters across their borders.

The Iran-Iraq pipeline will strengthen Iranian influence in the region and undermine their rival, Saudi Arabia — the other main OPEC producer. Given the ability to transport gas to Europe without going through Washington’s allies, Iran will hold the upper-hand and will be able to negotiate agreements that exclude the U.S. dollar completely.

2: Leaked phone calls show Turkey provides ISIS fighters with expensive medical care

Turkey’s support for hardline Islamists fighting the Syrian regime is extensive. In fact, jihadists regularly refer to the Turkish border as the “gateway to Jihad.” In May 2016, reports started emerging of Turkey going so far as to provide ISIS fighters with expensive medical treatment.

Turkey is a member of NATO. Let that sink in for a moment.

1: Western media’s main source for the conflict is a T-shirt shop in Coventry, England

This is not a joke. If you follow the news, you most probably have heard the mainstream media quote an entity grandiosely called the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” (SOHR). This so-called “observatory” is run by one man in his home in Coventry, England — thousands of miles away from the Syrian conflict — yet is quoted by most respected Western media outlets (BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, and International Business Times, for example). His credentials include his ownership of a T-shirt shop just down the road, as well as being a notorious dissident against the current Syrian president.

***

Despite the fact much of the information in this article comes from mainstream outlets, those circulating it refuse to put all of the storylines together to give the public an accurate picture of what is going on in Syria.

Assad may be brutal — and should face trial for allegations of widespread human rights abuses — but this fact alone does not make the other circumstances untrue or irrelevant. People have the right to be properly informed before they allow themselves to be led down the road of more war in the Middle East, and consequently, more terror attacks and potential conflicts with Russia and China.

What if the results of Election 2016 failed to give either major party presidential candidate 270 Electoral votes? In this event, the Twelfth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution stipulates the President is elected by the House of Representatives, and the Vice President is elected by the Senate. This process is referred to as “contingent election”.

What are the chances of this event occurring?

Which House and which Senate is stipulated: the sitting or the newly elected? What deadline dates are imposed? What occurs when either the upper house or lower house – or both houses – reach a stalemate? When does the Supreme Court decide the outcome?

In an election year when voters are asked to believe “Trump is a Russian agent” and Hillary “should be shot by a firing squad”, polling firms are facing inordinate numbers of respondents choosing “Other”, “Not Sure”, “Won’t Vote” categories; voters who mask their preference and voters altogether unhappy with both major party candidates. For these reasons and more, the 2016 election has been dubbed the “The Year of Neither”.

Reuters/Ipsos 5 Day Rolling poll released July 29 asked, “If the election were held today would you vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?” Clinton led Trump 40.5% to 34.6%; Refused 11.7%; Other 8.2%; Wouldn’t Vote 5.0%.

The methodology used in this poll differed from previous Reuters/Ipsos polls. The category “Neither/Other” was changed to “Other” eliminating the option “Neither”.

This change proved controversial especially to neoliberal and pro-Trump web sites like ZeroHedge.com and Breitbart.com.

To explain why Reuters/Ipsos results three days earlier (July 26) using prior methodology had Trump ahead of Clinton by one-point but after new methodology (July 29) had Clinton ahead of Trump by six points, Zero Hedge concluded, “Trump was soaring in the polls … the real reason for the (Reuters/Ipsos) ‘tweak’ was to push Hillary back in the lead simply due to a change in the question phrasing methodology.”

A PR release circulated to conservative and pro-Trump web sites read, “Breitbart News noted the 17-point swing for Trump, which seems to have set off alarm bells at Reuters.”

Conspiratorial explanations aside, polling compiled and aggregated by RealClearPolitics.com in the week of July 25 to August 1 showed Clinton ahead by one to nine points in seven out of eight polls conducted by eight different pollsters. If Reuters “tweaked” it, so must have seven others.

Furthermore, Real Clear Politics RCP Poll Average (compiled poll averages) of the last three months shows Trump led only during two three-day periods from May 22-25 (+ .2%) and from July 25- 28 (+1.1%).

While Reuters/Ipsos polls are widely followed, so too are polls from Gallup, Pew, Rasmussen, NBC News/SM, CBS News, CNN/ORC, Economist/YouGov and others.

It hasn’t been a bad year for pollsters, according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com. In the 2016 primaries “the polling averages had a good track record of calling winners, with the polling front-runner winning the vast majority of the time.”

Silver rated pollsters based both on past accuracy and on two measurable methodologies.

How did they do? ABC/WaPo (A+); Monmouth (A+); Ipsos (A-); NBC (A-); CBS (A-); CNN (A-); Pew (B+); YouGov (B); Gallop (B-); Rasmussen (C+).

With Trump and Clinton vying for the highest negativity ratings, the system does allow for “third party” candidates.

Although third parties haven’t had an impact since Teddy Roosevelt won 27-percent of the popular vote in 1912, Green and Libertarian parties are on most state ballots. As of August 3, the Green Party (gp.org) has ballot access in 24 states and D.C., and the Libertarian party (lp.org) in 36 states.

In the 2012 presidential election, Jill Stein and the Green Party secured 0.36% of the popular vote and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian party secured 0.99% of the popular vote. Neither secured one electoral vote. This election year promises to yield significantly higher percentages for each candidate across the country, though.

Comparing 2012 and 2016 polling data averages compiled by RealClearPolitics shows as much.

Percentage share of popular vote by major party candidates:

 RCP Average Polling Data for July 9-31, 2012 showed the two major party contenders (Obama and Romney) together secured 92% of the popular vote:

2012: Obama (47%), Romney (45%) = 92% combined

RCP Average Polling Data for August 1, 2016 showed a significant drop by the two major party contenders (Clinton and Trump) who together secured only 80% of the popular vote –– a decline in the combined share of the popular vote of 12-percent.

2016: Clinton (42.2%), Trump (37.8%) = 80% combined

Percentage share of popular vote by third parties and “other”:

Taking up 10.6% of the popular vote this year (as of August 1) are Gary Johnson/Libertarian (7.4%) and Jill Stein/Green (3.2%). The remaining 9.4% are “Other” voters.

2012: Green and Libertarian share of popular vote = 1.35% combined (2012 Final)

2016: Green and Libertarian share of popular vote = 10.6% combined (July 31, 2016)

It is rare for a third party and independent candidate to earn electoral votes; none have since 1968 when George Wallace carried five Southern states earning 46. Ross Perot became the most successful independent candidate in 1992. He drew 19-percent of the total vote but not one electoral vote.

As Michael Medved at The Daily Beast pointed out in 2011, “No candidate without major party backing can be president if we don’t get rid of the Electoral College.”

Due to vagaries of the “winner-take-all” Electoral College system, a strong third party candidate or the sum of two or more “third parties” winning electoral votes could keep Trump or Clinton from reaching the 270 electors needed. It only happened once – in 1824 – when John Quincy Adams won despite Andrew Jackson having gained popular and electoral pluralities.

In such an event, the top three leaders in electoral votes are sent to the newly elected U.S. House (taking office January 3) where each state’s delegation gets one vote. Two-thirds of the House must be present and the winner needs a simple majority vote.

Because each state casts one vote, Vermont with its three electoral votes or New Hampshire with its four yield as much clout as California with its 55. Pundits predict that if thrown to the House, Republicans would control the outcome because they dominate more, smaller states.

The Vice President is elected separately by the newly elected Senate, which is limited to choosing from the top two, not three VP candidates. So if on January 3, 2017 Republicans control the House and Democrats the Senate we feasibly could have Donald Trump as President and Tim Kaine as Vice President.

What if either house or both houses reach a stalemate?

If the House is unable to elect a President by January 20, the Vice President-elect serves as Acting President until the impasse is resolved. If the Senate is unable to elect a Vice President by January 20, then the newly elected Speaker of the House serves as Acting President.

Further permutations exist and party strategists are already building “what-if” models.

For example, Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think-tank, explained in USA Today (June 1, 2016) how Gary Johnson could give us President Paul Ryan.

Let’s assume Gary Johnson campaigned strategically and won enough electoral votes to deny Hillary and Trump the 270 needed.

So what happens if the election goes to the House? … If even five of those red states refuse to vote for Trump, there’s no majority and no president … If the Democrats take the upper chamber, House Republicans will have to reach a presidential agreement to prevent Hillary’s vice presidential nominee from becoming acting president. And if the Republicans keep the Senate, it could be that they prefer Trump’s vice president to The Donald himself … Oh, and there’s one more possibility: If the Senate is tied — or enough senators abstain to again prevent a majority of the whole body — then we’ll have four years of President Paul Ryan, who as House speaker is next in line. Wouldn’t that be huge?

But Washington Post’s Amanda Skuldt will tell you why it is unlikely for a third party candidate to win the presidency (August 2). She maintains, “Political science says no … The answer lies in what is known among political scientists as Duverger’s Law.”

In the essay “Duverger’s Law: Why American Third Parties Are Hopeless Fantasies”, Brian Underwood explains “the number of major political parties in any given republican/democratic country is determined by the electoral structure of that country. States with proportional representation – those that award seats to political parties based on the total portion of the popular vote they receive – tend to develop a multi-party system. Single-district plurality voting systems in which seats are allocated district-by-district based on which candidate wins the most votes in that single district – such as the United States – produce a two-party system.”

So how could a third party succeed? Amanda Skuldt explains:

A critical mass of people would have to defect from one party to the new party, essentially causing the old party to crumble and the new (formerly third) party to take its place … That’s what happened the last time a third party won the U.S. presidency in 1860, putting Abraham Lincoln in the seat. The insurgent Republican Party replaced its predecessor, the Whig Party, after the Whigs unraveled over slavery during the 1850s.

Other than this, to encourage more third parties our voting systems would require dramatic revision, she concluded.

Generally, political pundits like to group voters into either the practical/pragmatic category or the idealist/pure one. Mrs. Clinton is all of the former and Bernie Sanders all the latter; leaving Donald J. Trump in the “yet to be classified” category.

But it is fair to say that 2016 is a “none of the above”, “neither”, “won’t vote”, “don’t know”, rowdy, tumultuous period that pundits might be humbled to learn the political science rulebook isn’t the guidebook to follow or apply in this political year.

Imagine if Bernie Sanders joined Jill Stein and pulled enough Millennial votes to win several electoral ones and Gary Johnson won several electors from a number of libertarian-leaning states, a “contingent election” would occur activating the Twelfth Amendment.

But if an “October Surprise” occurred – a large terrorist act on American soil that would benefit Donald Trump, or a hot war with Russia that would benefit Hillary – all bets are off!

* * * *

Scoreboard

As of August 1: RealClearPolitics’ RCP Average polling data on a 4-way race was Clinton (42.2%); Trump (37.8%); Gary Johnson/Libertarian (7.4%); Jill Stein/Green 3.2%).

Michael T. Bucci is a retired public relations executive who currently resides in New England. He has written nine books on practical spirituality collectively titled The Cerithous Material.

Notes:

1. Reuters/Ipsos Poll: Clinton vs. Trump, July 29, 2016. Reuters.

http://polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM651Y15_DS_13/filters/LIKELY:1/type/smallest/dates/20160710-20160729/collapsed/true/spotlight/1

2. “Hillary Lead Over Trump Surges After Reuters ‘Tweaks’ Poll”, Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, July 31, 2016.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-30/clinton-lead-over-trump-surges-after-reuters-tweaks-poll

3. “Shock Poll: Reuters/Ipsos Radically Changes Methodology to Favor Clinton”, Neil W. McCabe, Breitbart, July 29, 2016.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/07/29/reuters-ipsos-poll-change-methodology/

4. Real Clear Politics, aggregator of national election polling data.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com

5. “FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings”, Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, July 15, 2016.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

6. “None of the above? Options for voters unhappy with Clinton and Trump”, Richard Rainey, NOLA, June 10, 2016.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/06/third_party_scenarios_trump_cl.html

7. Green Party US homepage

http://www.gp.org

8. Libertarian Party homepage

http://lp.org

9. Federal Elections 2012, Federal Election Commission, July 2013. (pdf)

http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2012/federalelections2012.pdf

10. “Gary Johnson could give us President Paul Ryan”, Ilya Shapiro, USA Today, June 1, 2016.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/06/01/gary-johnson-12-amendment-electoral-college-elections-2016-column/85170378/

11. “Presidential election in Maine, 2016”, Ballotpedia.

https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_in_Maine,_2016

12. “How the Constitution could let the House stop both Clinton and Trump: 12th Amendment 2016?”, Andy Craig, The Old Dominion Libertarian, January 14, 2016.

https://olddominionlibertarian.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/how-the-constitution-could-let-the-house-stop-both-clinton-and-trump/

13. “An Electoral College tie, explained”, Holly Munson, Constitution Daily, November 6, 2012.

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2012/11/an-electoral-college-tie-explained/

14. “Election of the President and Vice President by Congress: Contingent Election”, Thomas H. Neale, LoC Congressional Research, August 16, 1999.

http://electoralcollegehistory.com/electoral/crs-congress.asp

15. “General Election: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein”, RealClearPolitics (accessed August 3, 2016).

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

16. “Drop the Fantasy of a Third-Party Candidate Winning in 2012”, Michael Medved. The Daily Beast, December 3, 2011.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/03/drop-the-fantasy-of-a-third-party-candidate-winning-in-2012.html

17. “Could a third-party candidate win the U.S. presidency? That’s very unlikely”, Amanda Skuldt, Washington Post, August 2, 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/02/could-a-third-party-candidate-win-the-u-s-presidency-very-unlikely/

18. “Duverger’s Law: Why American Third Parties Are Hopeless Fantasies”, Brian Underwood, The Mendenhall, October 5, 2012.

http://themendenhall.com/2012/10/05/duvergers-law-why-american-third-parties-are-hopeless-fantasies/

 

The presidential campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump fell deeper into crisis on Wednesday, with numerous media reports that top Republican officials were considering an “intervention” to redirect the campaign, or even an effort to remove Trump as the Republican nominee.

The discussions within the Republican Party establishment over the fate of the Trump candidacy coincide with a campaign by the Democrats and the Clinton campaign to attack the fascistic candidate from the right, as insufficiently committed to escalating war in Syria and aggression against Russia.

Several publications discussed the intricacies of Republican Party rules under which the Republican National Committee could replace Trump in the event he could be pressured to withdraw from the race—less than two weeks after accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican convention in Cleveland.

Rule 9 of the Republican Party states that the RNC “is hereby authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for President of the United States …” The “otherwise” gives the committee essentially open-ended power to remove the candidate and replace him.

ABC News reported that “senior party officials are so frustrated—and confused—by Donald Trump’s erratic behavior that they are exploring how to replace him on the ballot if he drops out.”

NBC News reported, “Key Republicans close to Donald Trump’s orbit are plotting an intervention with the candidate after a disastrous 48 hours led some influential voices in the party to question whether Trump can stay at the top of the Republican ticket.” NBC named RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, former Republican New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as among the group seeking to salvage the Trump campaign.

The Daily News reported, “Top aides, including campaign Chairman Paul Manafort have become paralyzingly frustrated with their inability to steer their boss away from waging unsavory fights—most recently his ongoing battle with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim-American parents of a fallen U.S. soldier whom Trump has attacked repeatedly since their appearance at last week’s Democratic National Convention.”

The New York Times chimed in, writing, “Republicans now say Mr. Trump’s obstinacy in addressing perhaps the gravest crisis of his campaign may trigger drastic defections within the party, and Republican lawmakers and strategists have begun to entertain abandoning him en masse.”

CNN said that RNC Chairman Priebus was “especially frustrated” with Trump because of his well-publicized refusal Tuesday to endorse either House Speaker Paul Ryan or Senator John McCain in upcoming Republican primaries, even though both have endorsed Trump in the presidential race.

CNBC reported conflicts within the inner circle of the Trump campaign, quoting an unnamed “longtime ally of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort,” who said that Manafort had lost control over the candidate. “Manafort not challenging (Trump) anymore,” the source wrote. “Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.”

In a further sign of conflicts within the Republican Party, Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, publicly declared his support for Ryan’s reelection Wednesday, although he claimed that Trump had approved his statement.

The media campaign was all the more extraordinary because there has not been the slightest hint from Trump or his top aides that he was considering withdrawal. On the contrary, the candidate has continued to campaign before large crowds, while denouncing his opponents, in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

There is no doubt that important sections of the financial aristocracy, including some of the most prominent backers of the Republican Party, have decided either to oppose Trump openly or sit out the November election.

The most prolific spenders on behalf of right-wing Republican candidates, Charles and David Koch, refused to give any support to Trump at a conference of some 400 donors Sunday in Colorado Springs. Not only that, they reportedly convinced others to rescind their own pledges of financial support to the Republican presidential candidate.

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, a billionaire who was the Republican candidate for governor of California in 2010, announced Tuesday night in an interview with the New York Times that she would be supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton and contributing heavily to her campaign. Whitman, who is close to 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, denounced Trump as an “authoritarian character” and a “dishonest demagogue” who “has exploited anger, grievance, xenophobia and racial division.”

Whitman told the Times that Clinton had called her personally a month ago soliciting her support. This was part of a larger effort by the Clinton campaign, which reached out to an array of billionaires, including Michael Bloomberg, Mark Cuban and Warren Buffett, during the same period it was supposedly “moving to left” in negotiations on the text of the Democratic Party platform with supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The Clinton campaign was quite happy to give verbal sops to Sanders supporters while it launched a post-convention shift to the right, currying favor with billionaires and attacking Trump as insufficiently patriotic and deferential in his treatment of the military—as demonstrated in his attack on the Khan family—and insufficiently belligerent on foreign policy, particularly in relation to Russia.

Trump’s claimed opposition to US wars in the Middle East, and his friendly statements about Russian President Vladimir Putin, are at odds with the foreign policy consensus in Washington. Both Democrats and Republicans back the US-NATO buildup in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, threatening war with a nuclear-armed Russia. The Obama administration is pouring weapons and special forces troops into the war in Syria, Russia’s lone Mideast ally, and has launched expanded bombing and drone missile attacks throughout the region, including North Africa.

These foreign policy considerations were spelled out most openly in the editorial Wednesday in the New York Times, headlined, “The Case for (Finally) Bombing Assad.” The Times demanded a harder line from the Obama administration against the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, including launching bombing raids on Syrian government targets.

The editorial devotes special venom for Russian President Putin, claiming “Mr. Putin is more interested in demonstrating that Russia and its friends are winning in Syria and the United States is losing. He will not alter his approach unless he becomes convinced that it has grown too expensive.” It concludes: “It is time for the United States to speak the language that Mr. Assad and Mr. Putin understand.”

There is an unstated corollary: a US presidential candidate whose commitment to the anti-Russia, anti-Syria campaign is judged questionable, is entirely unacceptable to the Times and the Wall Street and military-intelligence quarters for which it speaks.

The battle for Aleppo has forced the al Qaeda groups into their desperate last stand, as the Washington-driven proxy war on Syria moves into its final stages. The liberation of Aleppo will be the beginning of the end.

The online maps have been misleading. Even before the Russian air power intervention of September 2015 the Syrian Government controlled 85% of the country’s populated areas. But reclaiming all of Aleppo is critical for Syrian control of the north and of supply lines to the shrinking ground of ISIS in the east.

Syria’s major problem has been Turkey’s semi-open support for jihadist armies crossing the 800km northern frontier, and the Turkey-Saudi-Qatari backed advances of ISIS from the east. In the past 10 months the Syrian Alliance has successfully pushed back on both fronts. Further, since last month, Turkey is in disarray, with its own problems.

Click image to order Prof. Tim Anderson’s book directly from Global Research Publishers

Many follow the logic of dominant forces but, to understand the endgame in this war, the logic of resistance is no less important. Syria is proving that independent peoples who unite and resist can end up with a greater say in the outcome.

Washington’s war on Syria began with sectarian proxy armies sent in to topple the government in Damascus. The western media continues to speak of ‘moderate rebels’, but the evidence is clear that the US and its allies have backed every single armed group in Syria, including the western group led by the group formerly known as Jabhat al Nusra (now rebadged as ‘Jabhat Fatah al-Sham’, in a futile attempt to avoid Syrian-Russian bombing), and the eastern group DAESH-ISIS. They all share a similar vicious, sectarian ideology.

Despite all the bloodshed and rhetoric, Plan A’s aggression failed.

‘Plan B’ then aimed at partition of the country using, in part, what the US saw as its ‘Kurdish card’.

Never mind that any such partition is against the terms of UN Security Council resolution 2254, which reaffirms the UN’s ‘strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic’. The US ignores such niceties.

Nevertheless, Plan B is failing due to the coherence of Syria’s communities, their support for the Syrian Army, and strong regional solidarity, particularly from Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and the nationalist Palestinian militia.

Even Syria’s Kurdish militia have been coordinating with and relying on the Syrian Arab Army. Whatever Syria’s Kurds want, if put to a vote, Syrians would not support a federalisation which would weaken the country against its enemies.

Plan C

‘Plan C’ may be where forces better converge. Washington’s ‘rogue state’ is a very bad loser. It took Washington seven years to withdraw from Vietnam, after it knew it was losing. However Syria has a master diplomat, in the form of the Russian President, willing and able to cloak a North American retreat with ‘dignity’.

President Putin gave President Obama a way out, once before, back in September 2013, over the fake chemical weapons stunt, carried out by Jabhat al Nusra and its partners (see Anderson 2016, Chapter Nine). The dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile (held as a deterrent against Israel) prevented a US ‘limited’ missile strike on Syria.

We may well see a similar deal where Putin hails Obama’s statesman like role in helping bring peace to Syria, allowing Washington to put Syria ‘on the backburner’, as it did with Iran last year. Of course, this will be a monstrous lie, but one that could help end the bloodshed.

Regime change in Turkey would certainly help with such a plan. But whether or not Erdogan survives the mutiny of his own armed forces, a strategic and economic tide is turning against the Turkish role in Syria. As its proxy armies lose, Ankara is trying to repair its bad relations with Russia while worsening those with Washington. Erdogan, rightly or wrongly, blames the US for backing the recent coup attempt.

Any ‘Plan C’, in the few months that remain for the Obama administration, would probably leave unresolved the question of the US ideological campaigns and economic sanctions against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, Israel’s key opponents.

The experience of Washington’s previous wars in Latin America and Vietnam tell us that the USA will try to keep alive its myths, its ‘official history’, as long as possible.

Aleppo is the final turning point in this conflict because, after the liberation of Homs, Qsayr and Palmyra, definitive reverses are destroying the morale of both the jihadists and their sponsors. Not even fanatics are keen to join in an obviously losing cause.

Since last year the sectarian groups have been steadily ground down in rural Damascus. The capital, with a population swollen to between 7 and 8 million people, has had very little rocketing, mortars or car bombs this year. Street life is far more relaxed. Ceasefires have ‘worked’ here because the remaining armed groups (in the East Ghouta and Daraya) are substantially weakened and surrounded.

Yet, while Damascus regained some sense of security, a shocking war raged on in Aleppo. As usual, the western media lied incessantly, focussing exclusively on that part of the city held by the al Qaeda groups and now including less than 200,000 people in total, including a small army of intelligence agents from the US, UK, France, Turkey and Israel, and several western NGOs such the White Helmets.

In more recent days small groups of jihadists have been surrendering, to take advantage of a possible Presidential amnesty, while dozens of residents pass out through Syrian and Russian army controlled humanitarian corridors. Those checkpoints are run by commando units, including General Suheil al Hassan’s Tiger Forces, as check points still face jihadist suicide car-bombs, as they did in Palmyra.

Typically, there have been almost no western media stories about the 1.5 million in the government held area. Over April-May many dozens of people were murdered across Aleppo as civilian areas and major hospitals were bombed by the NATO-backed ‘rebels’. They were even filmed firing their ‘hell cannons’ while saying ‘throw it on the civilians’ (Anderson 2016, 9 May). Nothing of this emerged in the western corporate media.

In April-May the White Helmets claimed Russian or Syrian airstrikes had destroyed ‘al Quds hospital’, killing the last paediatrician in Aleppo. In fact, as Dr Nabil Antaki and the Aleppo Medical Association pointed out, that facility was not a registered hospital at all, rather a makeshift clinic in a damaged residential building in an al Nusra held area. In fact, there are dozens of paediatricians in Aleppo’s main public hospitals (Antaki and Cattori 2016; Beeley 2016; Makhoul-Yatim 2016).

The mercenary gangs fired hundreds of rockets into the main part of Aleppo, gassed the Kurdish areas of the city and publicly beheaded a Palestinian boy, supposedly a spy for one of the Palestinian militia which fights alongside the SAA. Typically, the BBC gave prominence to jihadist claims that the publicly murdered 12 year old was ‘a fighter’ (BBC 2016). Distorted coverage to the end.

The western media, still on its war footing, ran false stories that ‘all of Aleppo’ was under siege, or that al Qaeda’s field clinics were the ‘only hospitals’ in Aleppo. For example, Australian state media reported: ‘Syrian city of Aleppo running out of food as regime forces surround city’. In fact, 15% of the population of Aleppo was under Syrian Army siege. At the same time the entire country of Syria is under siege by US, EU and Australian economic sanctions (ABC Radio National 2016).

Those stories matter less as they are displaced by the more immediate video testimony of residents leaving the al Qaeda areas, only to praise the Syrian Army and curse the western backed ‘moderate’ head choppers (Geopolitics 2016).

The western backed jihadists are losing and the region’s public mood is hardening. Syrian civil opposition leader Moustafa Kelechi (not allied to the armed groups) says the battle of Aleppo ‘is a war to crush the Takfiri groups’ bones’ (FARS News 2016). The Iraqi government, once thought a mere puppet of the US, has repeatedly confirmed its close cooperation with the Syrian Government’s struggle against terrorist groups (SANA 2016).

The regional alliance forged during this war – Syria, Iran, Russia, Iraq, Hezbollah and the nationalist Palestinian militia – will maintain a strong role in both the Syrian endgame and across the region.

Notes:

ABC Radio National (2016), ‘Syrian city of Aleppo running out of food as regime forces surround city’, 20 July, online:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/syria’s-aleppo-running-out-of-food/7643402

Anderson, Tim (2016) The Dirty War on Syria, Global Research, Montreal. (available online: 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria-washington-regime-change-and-resistance/5504372

Anderson, Tim (2016, 9 May) ‘The ‘Aleppo Hospital’ Smokescreen: Covering up Al Qaeda Massacres in Syria, Once Again’, Global Research, 9 May, online: 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-aleppo-hospital-smokescreen-covering-up-al-qaeda-massacres-in-syria-once-again/5524250

Antaki, Nabil and Silvia Cattori (2016) ‘Aleppo Doctor Attacks Western Media for Bias, Censorship and Lies’, Global Research, 1 May, online:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/aleppo-doctor-attacks-western-media-for-bias-censorship-and-lies/5522736

BBC (2016) ‘Syria conflict: Boy beheaded by rebels ‘was fighter’’, 21 July, online: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36843990

Beeley, Vanessa (2016) ‘Aleppo: US NATO False Flags, Lies and Propaganda’, 21^st century Wire, 4 May, online:

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/05/04/aleppo-us-nato-false-flags-lies-and-propaganda/

FARS News (2016) ‘Dissident Leader Sees Army Victories in Aleppo “Syria’s Winning Card in Geneva”’, 23 July, online:

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950502000650

Geopolitics (2016) ‘Trapped Aleppo residents begun flowing through 1^st humanitarian corridor’, 31 July, online:

https://geopolitics.co/2016/07/31/trapped-aleppo-residents-begun-flowing-through-1st-humanitarian-corridor/

Makhoul-Yatim, Amara (2016) ‘Nabil Antaki, the Syrian doctor who refused to leave Aleppo’, France 24, 21 May, online:

http://www.france24.com/en/20160520-syria-aleppo-nabil-antaki-doctor-maristes-civilians-civil-war

SANA (2016) ‘President al-Assad receives letter from Iraqi prime Minister: War carried on by Syrian and Iraqi armies is one’, 13 July, online:

http://sana.sy/en/?p=82559

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Obama’s Second Illegal War on Libya. Record of US-NATO War Crimes and Destruction

By Stephen Lendman, August 04 2016

The results are already in, even before the official campaign-finance final figures will become available after the election.

Though a large percentage of the people funding the campaign advertising will never be made public — due to recent Supreme Court decisions allowing “dark money” — data already exist on the final product of the campaigns (including both the above-board and the dark money), which is the booked advertising time for each of the two candidates at the start of their campaigns. (Similar proportions of donations go also to get-out-the-vote and other campaign-activities; so, these booked-advertising figures correlate rather well with across-the-board funding of the two campaigns.)

Advertising rates — the charges per second of air-time — get higher and higher the later and closer to Election Day the time is booked; so, any candidate who books late is really starved for funds and has little chance of winning; any candidate who does the booking early is getting a big break from the networks and from certain other media. This discount, for early booking, magnifies even further the cash-advantage of the candidate whom the oligarchs prefer.

However, normally, both Parties’ nominees have their own billionaires backing them (Republican billionaires backing the Republican nominee, and Democratic billionaires backing the Democratic nominee), and so there’s a real contest, they both have a chance; but not this time: Look at the figures, and you can see that, this time around, virtually all of the oligarchs are backing only one candidate: they have united around Clinton.

On August 2nd, Carrie Dann at NBC headlined, “Clinton, Allies Have Reserved $98 Million in Ads”, and she opened: “Hillary Clinton and her allies are poised for a TV ad blitz of nearly $100 million dollars, compared to less than $1 million currently reserved on the airwaves by backers of Donald Trump.” That’s a wipe-out of Trump, by the oligarchs.

The detailed total on ads that have already been aired was: “Through last week, Team Clinton had aired a total of $68 million in ads, while Team Trump had spent roughly $6 million.” The totals booked going forward are even more skewed in Clinton’s favor: $98 million for Clinton, $817,000 for Trump. (In other words: Trump’s ratio is even worse now, than it was leading up to the two Conventions.)

Going forward, it’s like a hundred-to-one advantage, Clinton over Trump.

Perhaps the reason why this is so, is: Clinton has already spoken privately with the heads of these companies (the companies owned by the oligarchs) and with their lobbyists, and she coordinates her campaign with their propaganda-operations. So: her messages are also their messages. (But what she has told them behind closed doors goes even beyond that, into her proposing new federal subsidies for their businesses.)

The historical background of the current developments in the U.S., has already been well covered in a lengthy paper by Ryan Patrick Alford, that’s appropriately-titled “The Dismantling of the Rule of Law in the United States”(especially see there “Citizens United,” which is a direct source of this).

But, whatever the reason: in the current U.S. Presidential race, there is no real contest at all, in terms of support by the oligarchs — and their support tends to be decisive. There is, amongst them, a near-100% unity around one nominee, as there has never been before in American history, at least going back to 1896, and perhaps to the founding of the republic. (Furthermore, back near the founding, there was no oligarchy; the nation started out as being, to a large extent, a democratic republic. It no longer is that.)

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

 

A recent ruling in a San Diego election integrity lawsuit should set a new trend in fighting voter suppression. Many citizens are concerned about the accuracy of voting machines, but feel powerless to challenge their findings. The court’s ruling upholds the viability of the “1% manual tally,” a method for citizens to test the machine results by comparing them to the paper ballot tally.

Ray Lutz is the director of Citizens Oversight, a nonprofit “dedicated to enabling citizens to provide needed oversight to our democracy.” When he hasn’t been leading the fight to decommission the San Onofre nuclear power plant, Lutz has put significant time into tracking the disastrous 2016 primary election in California.

Lutz noticed that the California election code required that 1% of “all ballots cast” must undergo a random audit comparing the ballots to the electronic tally.

He then noticed something else – that the San Diego registrar, Michael Vu, was not including the provisional ballots or the late-arriving VBMs (votes by mail) in his tally. This was about 37% of the entire vote – a discrepency of 285,000 votes that were not audited.

Lutz and Citizens Oversight filed suit days after the primary due to Vu’s failure to randomly sample the votes to check for fraud. Lutz’s attorney, Alan Geraci, emphasized that “the intention of the elections code is obviously to create an audit so that the people can know that the election has been done properly.” The county argued that seven other California counties were doing it the same way as Vu.

Michael Vu has a bad track record for election integrity. In 2004 Vu was the registrar in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, a swing state in the George W. Bush/John Kerry presidential race. Official vote counts gave the state – and thus the presidency – to George W. Bush by about 118,000 votes out of 5.5 million counted. A statewide recount, paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties, was marred in 87 of the state’s 88 counties by illegalities that led to felony convictions for two of Vu’s staff. During that election two female employees working under Vu illegally chose sample precincts for recounting ballots where they knew the count would yield a predetermined result.

This rendered the recount meaningless, according to Bob Fikrakis, an attorney, political science professor, and expert in election voting controversies. The workers were fired, indicted, and convicted. In 2007, shortly after the convictions, Vu was forced to resign by Cuyahoga County. Vu immediately moved to California and landed a job in San Diego weeks later.

Judge Joel Wohlfeil wasn’t impressed by Vu’s performance this time around either. The judge ruled that although his ruling was “moot” as the primary had been certified by the secretary of state, he would address the issues raised in the suit. He held that the registrar had the duty to follow the law and that no excuses were available.

Citizens Oversight will continue to execute legal remedies to get San Diego to either complete the rest of the audit encompassing the 37% of the ballots cast that were left out, restart the 1% manual tally audit from the start, or seek a complete 100% audit of the election. Similar action may take place in other parts of the state.

The group is also looking for volunteers to assist in oversight teams in the largest California counties. It is important to ensure that the 1% tally is properly conducted throughout California in the general election – and to make sure that the rights of election observers to view every aspect of the count is zealously protected. Throughout the state, hundreds of observers were denied the right to watch the count – they were separated by glass barriers from seeing what was going on and were frequently barred from taking photographs. This practice of suppression of observers resulted in the nullification of Austria’s general election on July 1.

In San Diego, the observers were able to see that election officials were modifying ballots with the use of white-out, with no checks or balances to the procedure. This YouTube video shows that Bernie Sanders’ name was whited-out in this process, with no good explanation as to why.

During one press conference on June 28, this video shows a giant shredding truck that was parked right in front of the registrar’s office, and which drove away when citizens started taking photographs.

Vu said no materials were removed from the registrar’s office. But why in the world would any registrar allow a shredding truck to come to the elections office in the midst of a count?

These concerns with electronic voting equipment are not theoretical. but extend throughout the United States. A research paper on the subject of possible election fraud has been recently released. One of the collaborators was Fritz Schueren, former president of the American Statistical Association and a statistics professor at George Washington University. Schueren said, “As a statistician, I find the results of the 2016 primary election unusual. In fact, I found the patterns unexpected [and possibly even] suspicious.”

Ray Lutz and Citizens Oversight have provided to all of us an invaluable tool to ensure election integrity.

Bill Simpich is an attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area who knows it doesn’t have to be like this.

The United States poses as a champion against the great threats facing global security and stability, an uphill battle it claims requires equally great sacrifices, especially in terms of defense spending. It must be just a coincidence that the many policy think-tanks promoting this notion just so happen to be funded by huge multinational defense contractors.

The Atlantic Council, for instance, includes among its corporate members, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Thales, Boeing and Northrop Grumman, just to name a few. So when Atlantic Council authors wrote about the subject of close air support (CAS) aircraft, it should come as no surprise that the development or procurement of a new system was the option of choice, this despite the fact that a brand new aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, was already supposed to fill this role.

The Atlantic Council’s article, “Starting with the Answer in Procurement: The USAF’s plans for new close support aircraft show an unusual willingness to move out quickly,” would claim:

…after years of hearing that the F-35A would be the sort-of replacement for the A-10C, it’s worth reviewing why it never could be. It’s not for the gun or the armor. It’s the increased threat: Russian motorized rifle brigades now run with lots of their own 30 mm guns, looking up. Missiles are now a bigger problem too. As Colonel Mike Pietrucha USAF wrote for War On The Rocks last month, the heat from that huge engine is itself a huge target for heat-seekers. Lockheed has worked hard to suppress the signature, but physics dictate there’s only so much that can be done. Overall, the hundred-million-dollar jet is just too expensive to hazard to for busting tanks that way.

The projected cost of the F-35 program in total is estimated to be well over 1 trillion USD. The cost for each aircraft averages 100 million USD. That the Atlantic Council’s authors deem it “too expensive” to use for one of the roles it was allegedly proposed to fill, should make US and allied taxpayers wonder just what they have mortgaged their futures for.

Currently for CAS, the US Air Force depends on the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, as well as multirole aircraft like the Lockheed Martin F-16. To replace the A-10, the US plans to use F-16’s more widely, that is, until a new CAS system is developed.
IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly’s article, “USAF considers future CAS options,” reports that:

In the short-term the USAF has plans to replace some A-10s with Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons, but in the medium- to longer-terms there are plans to procure or develop either a platform that that can operate either in a permissive environment only, or one that can operate in both a permissive and contested environment. The options are being considered under the auspices of the recently announced A-X project.

So in addition to the 1 trillion USD F-35 program, there will be an additional program to develop the next generation of CAS aircraft for the US Air Force. One wonders if the F-35’s other slated roles will also require parallel defense programs to fill as the fundamental flaws of the entire program begin to unfold.

The F-35 is Just One Symptom of a Wider Malady…

A trillion dollars spent on a useless aircraft that requires multiple parallel defense programs to compensate for, represents different problems to different people depending on their perspective. To some, it appears to be supreme incompetence and poor planning. To others, a tragic waste of national resources. But to others still, it appears to be the only logical conclusion a nation and its tax dollars can arrive at, when it is driven by special interests in pursuit of power and profits, rather than any particular purpose.

The 1 trillion USD going into the F-35 program is not disappearing into a black hole. Lockheed Martin is receiving that money. With it, it will purchase more lobbying power in Washington, more clout on Wall Street, more authors to pen favorable “policy” proposals within the halls of think tanks like the Atlantic Council and more journalists across the international press to promote these proposals to the general public. It will also use this wealth to help promote the wars that will in turn, drive demand for yet more costly defense programs it will undoubtedly share a stake in developing and profiting from.

While the F-35, the new CAS program being developed to augment it, and virtually every other defense program the US and its allies are moving forward with, are predicated on maintaining national defense, it appears quite clear that the self-preservation of the corporations involved takes primacy over the former.

The US will not be safer with the F-35 in the air. In conflicts like the 2008 Georgian invasion of South Ossetia, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine or the war raging in Syria, Russia has proven that a fraction of the resources spent on defense, if spent properly, can meet or exceed the performance of US-NATO military capabilities.

On what is a shoestring budget by comparison, Russia’s combination of pragmatic military spending and proper strategic planning and implementation has become a case study of how a Middle East intervention should be done. The Syria Russia is helping preserve through its military intervention is one with a stable, secular government that has and will continue to be a valuable ally against armed militants throughout the region. Compare this in contrast to the trillions of dollars spent on US interventions throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia where the apparent, or at least evident purpose was to divide and destroy nations, leaving them tinderboxes of violence and conflict as well as breeding grounds for extremism, seemingly, purposefully, inviting conflict after unending conflict.

The US is spending more to make the world a more dangerous place, with unnecessary weapons systems even analysts working for think tanks funded by their manufacturers admit are too expensive and impractical to use on the battlefield for the roles they were intended to fulfill.

It is not that the US and its industry are incapable in technical terms of creating a functional and premier national defense, it is that the US and its industry are incapable of adhering to a rational policy that would require such a national defense. Defense dysfunction amid a world intentionally destabilized, it turns out, is much better for business, and the F-35 with its emerging parallel defense programs it now requires, is symptomatic of this.

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

 

The U.S. launched a major new military campaign against ISIS on Monday when U.S. planes bombed targets in Libya, responding to requests from the U.N.-backed Libyan government. Strikes took place in the coastal town of Sirte, which ISIS took in June of last year.

The strikes represent a significant escalation in the U.S. war against ISIS, spreading the conflict thousands of miles from the warzones in Syria and Iraq.

All of these attacks took place without congressional authorization or even debate.

“We want to strike at ISIL anywhere it raises its head,” said Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook. “Libya is one of those places.” He said the airstrikes “would continue as long as [the Libyan government] is requesting them,” and that they do not have “an end point at this particular moment in time.”

The U.S. has long planned to spread its military campaign to Libya. In January, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the U.S. was preparing to take “decisive military action against ISIL” in Libya.

Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald responded with a post headlined “The U.S. Intervention in Libya Was Such a Smashing Success That a Sequel Is Coming.”

The New York Times editorial board called the plan “deeply troubling” and said it represented a “significant progression of a war that could easily spread to other countries on the continent.”

The Times supported the U.S.’s initial intervention in Libya in 2011, when the U.S. led a NATO air campaign to oust longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. But after a mob raped and murdered Gaddafi, the country plunged into years of anarchy and militia rule.

President Obama would later call his failure to plan for Gaddafi’s removal his “worst mistake,” and thousands of ISIS fighters have since gained a significant foothold in the country.

At the Pentagon press briefing on Monday, when Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast asked Cook if the war was legal, Cook responded by citing a controversial 15-year-old congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution passed in the wake of 9/11.

The AUMF resolution authorizes military force against organizations that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” But the resolution has been invoked, first by George W. Bush and then by Barack Obama, to justify military action in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and numerous other countries.

The administration has argued that the 2001 AUMF applies to the war against ISIS, even though ISIS and al Qaeda are sworn enemies. Several members of Congress, including Hillary Clinton’s running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., have argued that the administration should seek congressional authorization to continue its war against ISIS. Such authorizations for the conflict have failed to gain traction in a divided Congress.

Even without the AUMF, it’s unlikely that the White House would have acknowledged any legal barrier to bombing Libya. In 2011, the U.S. continued its Libyan campaign even after Congress rejected a resolution to authorize it. The White House even delivered a report to Congress that argued that the U.S.-led bombing campaign did not count as “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution. That resolution limits unauthorized conflicts to 180 days.

While emphasizing that the U.S. is “prepared to carry out more airstrikes,” Cook could not confirm basic details about Monday’s operation. When Cook was asked if he had a “ballpark figure” of casualties from the airstrikes, he responded, “I don’t.”

In the past year, the U.S. has also conducted a handful of individual military strikes against ISIS targets in Libya. In February, the U.S. carried out an attack near the coastal city of Sabratha, aiming to take out ISIS operative Noureddine Chouchane. Cook described the attack as “very successful,” but a day later, the Serbian government announced that two kidnapped members of the Serbian diplomatic staff had died in the bombing.

Moscow says it had warned Washington about the use of toxic shells by a US-backed “moderate” militant group before the Tuesday attack that killed seven people and injured over 20 more in Syria’s Aleppo.

On Wednesday, Lieutenant-General Sergey Chvarkov, the director of the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria, said the information was given to the US on Monday, a day prior to the attack.

The Russian Ministry of Defense also confirmed that the attack in Aleppo was launched by a Takfiri terrorist group.

“On August 2, 2016 at 19 hours 05 minutes militants from the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki group, considered by Washington as ‘moderate opposition’, launched poisonous materials from the Sukkari district towards the eastern part of Aleppo,” read a statement released by the ministry.

Moscow has long insisted that the US-backed so-called moderate opposition groups in Syria should leave the areas held by terrorists. Washington claims it is unable to remove the opposition groups.

It also noted that the shells were fired from militant-held areas towards a residential area.

According to reports, the gas used in the attack was Chlorine, which is highly toxic and leads to respiratory problems and consciousness loss in those who come in contact to it.

Syrians wounded following shelling by militants receive treatment at a hospital in the al-Jamiliyah neighborhood on the government-controlled side of the city of Aleppo on July 8, 2016.

On April 7, 23 people lost their lives and over 100 others suffered breathing difficulties when Daesh terrorists carried out a chemical attack against members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood of Aleppo.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Back in 2014, the UN said it would no more update its death toll for Syria because it could not verify the figures that it received from various sources.

Another oil price downturn threatens to deepen the plunging levels of investment in upstream oil and gas production, which could create a more acute price spike in the years ahead.

Oil and gas companies have gutted their capex budgets, necessary moves as drillers went deep into the red following the crash in oil prices. But the sharp cutback in investment means that huge volumes of oil that would have otherwise come online in five or ten years now will remain on the sidelines.

The industry will cut spending by $1 trillion through 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie. Those reductions are creating a “ticking time bomb” for oil supply. The consultancy projects that the market will see 5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboe/d) less this year, compared to expectations before the collapse of oil prices. And next year, the industry will produce 6 mboe/d less than it otherwise would have had the spending cuts not been made.

This is creating the conditions for a supply crunch and a price spike. The reason is simple: demand continues to rise by some 1.2 million barrels per day each year, but supplies are no longer growing because of the spending cuts. That is not a problem today as production still slightly exceeds demand and high levels of crude oil and refined products sit in storage. But by as early as the end of 2016 the oil market could tip into a supply deficit. And because the industry has scaled back so intensely on capex, global supplies could fall short of demand for quite a while. The end result could be a dramatic price spike.

This scenario has been described before by Wood Mackenzie, which published an estimate earlier this year that put the total value of cancelled projects over the past two years at $380 billion, projects that would have yielded 27 billion barrels of oil and gas.

So far, the markets are not pricing in the brewing supply crunch. Oil prices continue to fall, and speculators have taken the most pessimistic position in months, selling off long bets and buying up shorts.

Oil analysts and forecasters do not see a rapid rise in prices either. A Bloomberg survey of 20 analysts revealed a median price forecast of just $57 per barrel in 2017. No doubt that record levels of inventories are on their minds – even if oil production itself flips into a supply/demand deficit, it could take years to work through storage levels.

“We’re looking at a market that’s still in a very slow process of rebalancing and we don’t think that you’ll get a sustainable deficit until the second quarter of 2017,” Michael Hsueh, a strategist at Deutsche Bank AG, told Bloomberg. “Those deficits are necessary to draw down global inventories, but that will still take until the end of 2018, it appears.”

But the swing from surplus to deficit could be more dramatic than many think. Now that oil is once again entering a bear market, with WTI and Brent dropping to $40 per barrel, the industry could be forced to slash spending even deeper than it already has, leaving even more oil reserves undeveloped. And in any case, it is possible that high storage levels and the two-year production surplus is leading to a myopic view of the future – just because the markets are oversupplied today does not meant that they will in several years’ time.

Wood Mackenzie says that while U.S. shale has been the hardest hit by the steep fall in investment, the shale industry will be the first to bounce back because of the short-cycle nature of shale drilling. The price spike will lead to a resurgence in shale, and Wood Mackenzie is predicting that shale production doubles from the 2015 high-watermark of 4.5 million barrels per day to 8.5 mb/d by the mid-2020s.

But that is a long way off for oil executives dealing with deteriorating balance sheets and rising debt levels.

In 2011, he and then secretary of state Hillary Clinton bore full responsibility for the rape and destruction of Libya, transforming Africa’s most developed country into a cauldron of endless violence, instability, turmoil and unspeakable human suffering – the aftermath of all US imperial wars.

They flagrantly violated international, constitutional and US statute laws – attacking another country threatening no others, killing tens of thousands of noncombatant men, women, children, the elderly and infirm.

They were warned in advance of chaotic conditions following an attack but went ahead anyway. They knew extremist groups would flourish in its aftermath – ISIS, Al Qaeda and others Washington supports.

Libya today has no central authority. Based in Tripoli, US-installed puppet rule (the so-called Government of National Accord – GNA) controls one small part of the country – a rival Benghazi government, disparate groups and tribes most of it.

Endless violence, disorder, human deprivation and misery reflect daily life – the legacy of America’s “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect” – code language for naked aggression, war OF terror on humanity, the horror no one can imagine without experiencing it firsthand.

Last year, war correspondent Jon Lee Anderson said “(t)here is no overstating the chaos of post-Qaddafi Libya.” Various elements compete for control. “Armed militias roam the streets…(N)early a third of the country’s population has fled across the border to Tunisia.” Others head for Europe – treated with disdain and internment under concentration camp conditions on arrival.

No country may attack another except in self-defense and only if authorized by Security Council members. In 2007, candidate Obama, a one-time University of Chicago Law School senior lecturer, said the following:

The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

He’s terror-bombed seven countries and used terrorist foot soldiers to do his dirty work since taking office. He repeatedly lied to the public about his actions.

Time and again he’s proved lawless, ruthless and never to be trusted. Raping Libya a second time has nothing to do with protecting America’s “national security interests” or restoring stability to a war-torn country – everything to do with US imperial viciousness.

Obama saying the United States, Europe and other countries “have a great interest in seeing stability in Libya because the absence of stability has helped to fuel some of the challenges that we’ve seen in terms of the migration (sic) crisis in Europe and some of the humanitarian tragedies that we’ve seen in the open seas between Libya and Europe” ignored America’s responsibility for transforming a stable nation under responsible leadership into dystopian hellishness.

He massacred Libyans mercilessly while claiming he “did the right thing (by) preventing what could have been…a bloodbath in Libya…”

On Tuesday, he lied calling indefinite aggression a “30-day mission” – on the phony pretext of combating the scourge of ISIS Washington created and supports.

He’s raped Libya since 2011, new terror-bombing continuing where earlier assaults left off, virtually certain to go on indefinitely, perhaps with varying degrees of intensity, supplemented with US and other NATO special forces on the ground operating covertly.

His tenure ends in January. If Hillary succeeds him, perhaps she’ll turn the entire region and beyond ablaze. 

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.

Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado warplanes stepped up their bombing operations in Iraq on Monday by striking what the Ministry of Defence (MOD) said was a training centre for the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh).

The RAF has been taking part in air strikes against ISIS in Iraq since 2014, and against Syria since last December, as part of US-led operations.

In a statement, the MOD said, “Tornados participated in a major coalition air strike on Saddam’s former palace in Mosul, used by Daesh as a headquarters and training establishment for foreign terrorists, while Typhoons destroyed a network of fortified positions on the outskirts of Manbij.”

According to the Independent, Britain was one of seven countries involved in the raid. News sources reported that the Tornados used two of their largest 2000 lb. Paveway laser-guided bombs to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets.

The bombings mark an escalation of Britain’s participation in imperialist military operations in the Middle East. Although RAF planes were not reported to be involved in this week’s US airstrikes on the Libyan coast city of Sirte, they are understood to have been involved in reconnaissance missions ahead of the bombings. British Special Forces are also operating in Libya, alongside those from France and Italy.

The latest strikes came just three weeks after Theresa May replaced David Cameron as Conservative Prime Minister.

Within five days of entering Downing Street, May signalled that under her premiership Britain’s military would step up its global operations. On July 18, she authorised a debate in parliament on the renewal of the UK Trident nuclear defence system. May set the tone of the debate, in which three quarters of the Labour Party backed the renewal of Trident. The prime minister replied with an unequivocal “Yes” to an MP who asked if she would be “personally prepared to authorise a nuclear strike that can kill a hundred thousand innocent men, women and children.”

May stated that her “Government will continue to meet our NATO obligation to spend 2 percent of our GDP on defence. We will maintain the most significant security and military capability in Europe, and we will continue to invest in all the capabilities set out in the strategic defence and security review last year.”

She named seven countries/regions of the world where Britain’s military would continue to intervene, stating, “We will meet the growing terrorist threat coming from Daesh in Syria and Iraq, from Boko Haram in Nigeria, from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, from al-Shabaab in east Africa, and from other terrorist groups planning attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

UK armed forces are already deployed in more than 80 countries across the world. Well over a decade after the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, 450 UK soldiers remain in Afghanistan and more than 275 military training personnel operate in Iraq. An additional 50 troops are to be deployed to Afghanistan due to the worsening security situation in the country and in line with the slowing and reversal of the US troop drawdown.

During a visit to the RAF’s base in Akrotiri, Cyprus on Tuesday, UK Defence Minister Michael Fallon stated that additional British troops would be deployed to Iraq this month to support ongoing military campaigns. In a move first announced last month, an additional 250 troops will bring the total number of British military forces to more than 500.

Emphasising Britain’s commitment to the US-led NATO alliance, Fallon said, “The uplift underlines that Britain is stepping up, not stepping back from our international commitments,” following the June 23 referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union (EU).

Last month, speaking of Syria at a Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) conference on airpower, Fallon said, “The RAF has not operated at this sustained operational tempo in a single theatre of conflict for a quarter of a century.”

The opposition Labour Party, as befitting its historic role in support of the predatory interests of British imperialism, was the critical factor in overturning an August 2013 vote against Syrian operations, due to widespread public opposition, combined with divisions within the political and military elite over their efficacy. The vote severely damaged British imperialism’s standing in Washington and helped force the Obama administration to retreat from open warfare aimed at deposing Bashar al Assad and installing a client regime.

In September 2014, parliament voted by a massive majority in favour of “the use of UK air strikes to support Iraqi, including Kurdish, security forces’ efforts against ISIL in Iraq.” Just 24 of 257 Labour MPs voted against, as then party leader Ed Miliband lauded military action. Air strikes by British warplanes in Iraq took place in the hours immediately following the vote.

Under new, nominally “left”, leader Jeremy Corbyn, Labour then played a critical role in allowing British bombing in Syria.

After Cameron called a vote in parliament last December for Britain to intervene militarily in Syria on the pretext of fighting ISIS, Corbyn authorised a free vote by Labour MPs on the issue. This meant they would not be censured or disciplined for supporting war. Corbyn did this knowing that a large contingent of Labour MPs would line up behind the Tory war resolution. In the event, 66 Labourites backed military action, giving the Tories their politically required majority.

In January, Fallon provided an update on the escalation of Britain’s operation in Iraq and cited the vital importance of the Syria vote. “After the vote in parliament we have doubled the number of strike aircraft and we have tripled the number of strikes—by day and night—that we are carrying out six days a week,” he said.

Addressing RUSI, Fallon noted, “Two years on from Parliament’s vote to authorise airstrikes in Iraq, seven months since the extension of that authorisation to Syria, we now have over 600 air and ground crews in RAF Akrotiri.” He boasted, “Our aircrew have flown more than 2,800 missions in Iraq and Syria. They’ve conducted 865 airstrikes in Iraq and, since December, 50 in Syria—more than any other nation except the United States.”

Fallon’s speech was a declaration of the global ambitions of British imperialism. “Last year”, crowed the Defence Secretary, “our pilots and aircrew deployed to more than 60 countries.”

Delivering his speech just days after the June 23 referendum vote on leaving the European Union, Fallon said, “The result of the referendum will not change our global outlook. Nor the shared threats we face.”

“To counter those international challenges … we must work even harder with our allies and partners, becoming, in the words of our SDSR [Strategic Defence and Security Review], international-by-design. And while we’ve opted out of one particular union, we take our global responsibilities seriously, as members of NATO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Northern Group of European nations, the Five Power Defence Arrangements in the Far East and permanent members of the UN Security Council.”

While nominally directed against ISIS militias, the aim of Britain’s military interventions is to secure a good portion of the spoils from the ongoing imperialist carve-up of the region. Moreover, these operations, which are being promoted in the bellicose language of May and Fallon, are in readiness for war against Russia and China, in alliance with the United States and NATO.

Fallon stressed that the RAF was operating in “Eastern Europe for the third year running … protecting our NATO allies against Russian aggression.” He added that the RAF’s capital investment program was being increased to more than £6 billion as “Our competitors are striving to close the capability gap” with Russia “exploiting forward-swept wing technology” and with “North Korea ‘miniaturising’ nuclear weapons.”

“And this is what disturbs me: the fact that people today, despite living with more safety and wealth and access to information than anyone in human history, feel as though the world is going crazy and something drastic must be changed.” — Mark Manson, Jul 28, 2016

How quick one judges.  The warning about taking the draught of knowledge deeply, as opposed to a shallow sip, before assuming all is clear, should be borne in mind.  A knife attack in London’s Russell Square by a nineteen-year old youth, leaving five injured and one fatality, becomes an instant magnet for terrorist assumptions and a rampant phenomenon.  (True, it was terrifying for those attacked, but an act of terrorism?)

At work here is the surfeit of spectacle, and availability.  Images, raw and unprocessed, race through the social media sphere, hurried on by clicks and “shares” with viral purpose.  Twenty-four hour channels do the rest, adding spin and padding to what really happened.  The packaging, on being released, gives the impression of being unprecedented.  We never saw the like, and some such.

The response to the Russell Square attack played this out in full, showing good lashings of availability bias. Nothing, it seems, is allowed to escape that fateful utterance of “terrorist attack”. Moments of mental instability become instances of terrorist acumen.  People are not permitted to be cranks; they must have also embraced a philosophical and political system.  The suggestion is not merely demeaning to ordinary intelligence, but to the content of actual terrorism that Europe has witnessed for centuries.

What is different now, suggests Mark Manson, is not the events so much as the means they are conveyed, and the way such information is duly processed. “Cameras, the internet, and most importantly, social media.  That is what’s new.”[1] All in all, the attention economy, dominated by a growing surplus of seekers and opportunists, becomes a case of gaining kudos for being in the appropriate place, where exposure is maximised.

This also demands an active complicity on the part of the consumer of the image, those wishing to over read their subject matter as exceptional when it is, in fact, dreary and uninspiringly prosaic.  The banal, in a special way, becomes the remarkable.

To that end, Manson suggests that such “constant awareness of every fault and flaw of our humanity, combined with an inundation of doomsayers and narcissistic nihilists commanding our attention space, is what is causing this constant feeling of a chaotic and insecure world that actually doesn’t exist.”

The police have kept step with this.  The modus operandi of the modern police statement is seemingly grouped around a few formulae: do not exclude terrorism as a possibility, however incompatible with the scene; suggest mental illness as a distinct possibility, because people who kill are unstable. (History suggests that the greatest killers are more stable ones disturbed by their rationalism.)

As Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley explained, “Early indications suggest mental health is a significant factor in this case and that is one major line of inquiry.”  Coupled with this, one had to also keep an “open mind” to the possibility of “terrorism as a motivation”.[2]

Another necessary requirement is that of reassurance. The blood is rushing, the pulses are racing through the community, and those calming pills are in order. “As a precautionary measure,” said Rowley soothingly, “Londoners will wake up this morning to notice an increased presence on the streets of officers, including armed officers today. We would urge the public to remain calm, alert and vigilant.”

The dosage of such reassurance has been increased by feeding the public the knowledge that a special team will operating to combat the next ISIS-inspired rampage.  The Daily Mail does its bit to fan the enthusiasm about the Hollywood styled “C-Men”, those “600 awesomely armed (and masked) Counter-Terrorism firearms officers who hit the streets today in vans, boats and motorbikes.”[3]

None of this is reassuring on two grounds, the first being the forecast by Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe that an attack was not a question of if but when.  Having given ballast to the prospect of a decent protective barrier, he had to also express a view that it might not work.  Expertise can always be found wanting.

The second relates to the frequency of knife attacks as a general point, which has been somehow muddled in the poorly made pie of confusion. Knifing incidents in London remain a serious and growing problem. Epidemic it may well be, but terrorism?

The less than rosy statistics suggest that knife attacks in England and Wales over 2015 increased by nine per cent, much of it assisted by an increase of dark web sales and types of weapons awash in youth circles.  In September 2015, the Met Police claimed that knife crime in London had risen by 18 percent, with 10 youngsters being stabbed to death in the nine months prior.[4]

The other troubling feature of such incidents is that the security state remains a hulk of imperfection, and even worse, a hoax in the name of protection. A supposed prophylactic against disorder in a city with the highest concentration of closed circuit cameras in the world still cannot cope with lethal attacks.  As ever, the solution of security remains the last bastion of the credible.

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

Notes

Deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea will pose a serious threat to China’s strategic security, and China will by no means compromise such interests, read an editorial published in the People’s Daily on Wednesday.

The commentary, under the byline of Zhongsheng, comes as South Korea commits to the plan despite public outcry.

The following is the translation of the article:

As tensions mount in the Korean peninsula, it is irreproachable that South Korea wants to pursue a stronger sense of security. However, things will be different if its policy negatively affects the regional strategic balance and undermines the security interests of other countries.

South Korea must bear in mind that state-to-state relationships are by no means a game, especially when it comes to security issues involving core national interests.

Experts expects THAAD to raise regional tensions rather than deter the DPRK’s nuclear and missile threats, which the South Korean government cited as a main reason for the THAAD deployment on its territory. With the THAAD deployment, South Korea now enters the U.S. missile defense network, which would harm the geopolitical balance in the region and provoke strategic change from China and Russia.

A Russian newspaper pointed out that the US is trying to excuse its long-term presence around China and Russia under the pretext of the North Korean nuclear issue.

Though South Korean decision-makers are fully aware of the hidden motives of the US, they are stiff-necked in binding its destiny with the THAAD despite public opposition.

But Seoul may not able to afford the domino effect brought by its decision, as the price will be regional stability and the security interests of its neighbors.

The Korean Peninsula issue may finally encounter a dead end and nobody will be able to guarantee absolute peace on the powder keg. Amid such severe circumstances, the policy makers of South Korea should double their prudence to avoid the worst possibility.

The rushed and risky decision made by Seoul and Washington have crossed the security bottom line drawn by the South Korean public. A poll released on Monday showed that public support for South Korean President Park Geun-hye has dropped. Some 60.7 percent view her governance negatively, and her support among those around 20 years old was below 10 percent.At the same time, the South Korean public staged protests against the government’s surrendering of its national interests, and the opposition party has urged the government to rescind its decision on the THAAD deployment.

As a matter of fact, the US and South Korea once promised to negotiate with China on the deployment of the THAAD system, but later turned hostile and announced the rushed decision. However, their plans to strengthen defensive capabilities at the cost of other countries’ security would be a one-sided calculation.

During the 4th China-Russia consultations on Northeast Asian security on July 28, diplomats of the two countries expressed serious concern over the THAAD deployment, agreeing to safeguard the interests of both countries in most reliable and effective ways. The two comprehensive strategic partners also agreed to highlight their strategic security interests.

Analysts stressed that  deploying missile defense systems may fuel a dangerous arms race in Northeast Asia, as China and Russia would probably take counter-measures that the US and South Korea cannot afford.

According to the experts, the THAAD deployment will bring nothing good to Seoul, but trap the country in a military confrontation between the three powers. Once a conflict breaks out, South Korea will inevitably be the first target.

China is and will always be committed to building amicable partnerships with its neighbors, but such amicability must be based on a premise that other countries also take a peaceful development path like China.

As the THAAD deployment in South Korea will certainly impose a serious threat to China’s strategic security, China will by no means stay indifferent and compromise its security interests.

No one can underestimate China’s resolution and strength to safeguard its national security as it never fears external threats.

 

Silence is a word pregnant with multiple meanings: for many a threat; for others a nostalgic evocation of a time rendered obsolete by technology; for others a sentence to boredom; and for some, devotees of the ancient arts of contemplation, reading, and writing, a word of profound, even sacred importance.

But silence, like so much else in the present world, including human beings, is on the endangered species list.  Another rare bird – let’s call it the holy spirit of true thought – is slowly disappearing from our midst.  The poison of noise and busyness is polluting more than we think, but surely our ability to think.

I am sitting on a stone step of a small cabin on an estuary on Cape Cod.  All is quiet.  Three feet in front of me a baby rabbit nibbles on grass, and that nibbling resounds. A mourning dove moans intermittently.  I see the wind ripple the marsh grass and sense its low humming.  I feel at home.

I am dwelling in silent stop-time.

It strikes me how rare silence has become; how doing nothing seems so un-American.  Noise and busyness have become our elements.  While I watch the rushes sway, I wonder why wherever you turn people are rushed and stressed.  A frantic anxiety prevails everywhere.  Whether you ask the young, the middle-aged, or the retired, they all report stress and lack of time.  “It’s crazy,” you often hear them say. “It” is never defined.

Clearly there are powerful forces that profit from this noisy busyness, this connected way of technological consumption, this contraction of time.  Everyone seems to have their reasons why they are in such a state, but few imagine how and why it may be “engineered.” They don’t have the quiet time to do so.

Or they don’t want to.

When I speak of noise I am not thinking primarily of the din we associate with city life – cars, trucks, taxis, horns, sirens, congestion, etc. – a world rushing to get somewhere for unknown reasons.  That noise, alas, is hard to avoid, even in small towns or suburbs. If I travel a half mile from where I sit in silence, I will encounter such noise as people speed by in cars on their search for a vacation from it.

Being in a secluded spot on Cape Cod for a few days is a luxury.  I realize that.  So too is having these minutes to write these words.  Yet I know also that I am choosing to do so, and that for me the luxury is also a necessity.  How could I live without “doing nothing” in silence?  Even the computer I am typing these words on tells me I am wrong: it wants to correct my words “doing nothing” to “doing anything.”  I’m surprised it doesn’t tell me that I should be having “fun,” though perhaps doing anything is the equivalent.

The noise of modern life is hard to avoid completely, and, in any case, it is the least disruptive of the silence I have in mind.  There is another kind of noise that is self-imposed and whose purpose, consciously or not, is to make sure one is not “caught” by silence.  As those who flee from silence know, it can be dangerous to one’s reigning assumptions about self and the world.  Noise seems more comforting.

We all know people who go from morning till night, day in and day out, without ever pausing to enter the sounds of slow silence.  One doesn’t have to look far for them; technology has made them the rule.  They race through their lives in the cocoon of technological noise.  They’re informed, in touch, tuned in to everything but their own souls.  They drown themselves in the incessant noise of televisions and radios, or the busyness of telephone calls, texting, or trivia “that has to be done.”  They are always planning, going, organizing, and scheduling activities.  Or talking – endless chatter about the weather or shopping or the latest mainstream media’s blaring headlines.

They choose to fill their lives with distracting noise in order to avoid the silence that might force them to confront issues of self-knowledge that are the stuff of great books, true art, a fully human life; self-knowledge that connects the individual to his social circumstances in his historical period; knowledge that might allow them to grasp the sources of the profound anxiety and despair that induces their franticness. This is what C. Wright Mills called the sociological imagination.

For fifteen years the United States has been living under an official state of national emergency and constant, paralyzing fear – a fear that keeps people moving as fast as they can so they don’t stop and look back and see what has happened to them and why and where they are heading – over the cliff.

It is another day now and I am sitting in the shade of a tree looking out on a beautiful harbor filled with sailboats.  A seagull swoops and sails before me.  A strong wind picks up from the west. This water is the playground of the wealthy. Unlike the poor, they can buy outer silence. They seem to have plenty of time to think deep thoughts, such as where did all their money come from. From corporations that are part of the military-industrial complex?  By exploiting others?  I suspect they use their “free” time to think of other things.

For some reason the rough water reminds me of all those refugees fleeing war and chaos on the Mediterranean Sea.  Desperate people. Why must they die seeking refuge?  Why must they flee their homelands? Who drove them to the boats?  The sea and silence brings these thoughts to my mind?  Silent reverie can do that. It can conjure up disturbing thoughts.

I often write about such matters.  Most of what I write is serious stuff, what people refer to as “heavy” writing: wars, assassinations, coups, etc. – a lot of history, social issues, philosophical and theological questioning.  And I find that many people find it tough to take.  They can’t find the time or silent concentration to read it closely and study to see if my analyses are correct.  I think they choose not to take the time to enter the cocoon of silent concentration it demands. They will nod or demur, but not delve any deeper.  Deeper means danger.

Those hundreds of thousands of fleeing boat people, for example; who is responsible for their fate?  Who started the wars that drove them from their homes?  Might we be implicated?  Do we bear responsibility?  Can we be silently attentive enough to hear their cries and explore the facts?  Is the noisy busyness a self-imposed distraction from the truth?  Do we live in bad faith?

Can we stop talking, stop moving, and stop doing long enough to contemplate such matters?

Can we shut up long enough to listen to what the silence might reveal?

What are we running away from?  Are there truths so deep and so disturbing that they must be “silenced”?

I think so.

Slow silence would allow us to understand how the leaders of the United States are pushing the world toward the ultimate silence of nuclear conflagration by provoking war with Russia. Most people are too “busy” and too distracted – and therefore too ignorant – to notice. So for them it’s not happening. It’s not happening, as Harold Pinter said of all the countless war crimes committed by the United States while the American people were hypnotized into thinking otherwise: “It never happened.  Nothing ever happened.  Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening.  It didn’t matter.  It was of no interest.”

We were too busy to notice. All we could hear was noise, propagandistic bedlam.

A society suffering from socially induced attention-deficit disorder is a society in a state of disintegration.  Focused on the noisy foreground of conventional thinking fueled by a mass media spewing out endless distractions and pseudo-events, most people are lost in a cacophonous mental chaos.

I’m not sure if there is any point in writing these words.

But I am sure that the art of writing implies the art of reading.  The writer creates and the reader recreates; both demand silence, a not-doing, the cessation of all noise that serves to prevent true thought. Can you hear me?

The machines must be turned off. “Our inventions,” Thoreau noted, “are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.”

It is not hard to turn a switch, pull a plug, or press a button; the hard part is wanting to.  Harder still, but equally necessary, is the quieting of the mind, the silencing of the incessant internal chatterboxes that accompany us everywhere.

Unless by some miracle we reject the bill of goods of noisy busyness that has been sold to us to sow confusion, we are doomed.  That might sound hyperbolic, but it is not.  We are being led to the slaughter by crazed elites who are pushing for a world war.  We are drowning in lies and more lies, lies compounded by noisy repetition.

“There ain’t nothing more powerful than the odor of mendacity….You can smell it. It smells like death.”  That’s what I recently heard Big Daddy say in a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote that someday they will sell us the rain; in saying that he implied that any essential, beautiful aspect of life could be destroyed by a society hell-bent on destruction through war and consumerism. Now that they have sold us noise and speed to eliminate slow silence, we are in far deeper trouble. We can’t think straight, if we can think at all. And clear thinking has never been more important.

Gandhi, the revolutionary, put it perfectly,

“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.  Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”