Global Research

Over the past few days, Feronia Inc., a Canadian-based company majority-owned by European and US development banks, has been pressuring local communities to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would endorse the company’s continued operation and expansion of oil palm plantations within their territories.

Despite severe pressure and intimidation, the communities have rejected the MOU and are appealing for international support to demand that Feronia respect their decision.

They are calling especially on the development banks or funds, which have a combined control of over 80 per cent of Feronia’s shares, to respect their own internal guidelines regarding the free, prior and informed consent of communities. The development institutions with investments in Feronia include: the CDC of the UK; the AFD and Proparco of France; the AECID of Spain; OPIC of the US; BIO of Belgium; DEG of Germany; FMO of the Netherlands; and SECO of Switzerland.

The order of events

On 8 March 2015, over 60 customary chiefs and other community leaders from across the district of Yahuma, where 90 per cent of Feronia’s Lokutu plantations are located, gathered in the town of Mozité to call for the resolution of their longstanding grievances against Feronia. In a declaration, they stated that the company had never consulted them about the use of their lands and had no right to be there.

“We demand, first and foremost, the start of negotiations to reclaim our rights over the lands that have been illegally taken from us over the past 104 years”, they stated in the declaration. “We want to be compensated, and only afterwards can we proceed to discussions over a memorandum of understanding”.

Since then, several conflicts with Feronia have occurred, as the company has tried to send surveyors into the territories of the communities without their consent.

On 18 July 2016 a delegation of high level provincial authorities and elected officials was dispatched to Mozité to get the communities to agree to an MOU. One of the elected officials participating in this delegation was present during the 8 March 2015 meeting in Mozité and received a copy of the community’s declaration.

Sources within the delegation confirm that the objective of the delegation was to secure community consent to allow Feronia to resume with its land surveying activities. The sources also confirmed that the mission was paid for by Feronia and that the delegation was sent on orders from Kinshasa.

At the initial meetings with the delegation in the village of Mozité, the communities categorically rejected the proposed MOU. The delegation continued to pressure the communities to sign an MOU over the next days until 21 July 2015, when the communities once again refused to sign an MOU and the delegation finally abandoned its mission.

DFIs violate their guidelines

The development finance institutions that effectively own Feronia have guidelines that the companies they invest in must follow in their negotiations with local communities over lands. The current efforts to pressure the communities in Lokutu to sign an MOU are in direct violation of these guidelines.

The development finance institutions should therefore take immediate measures to force Feronia to respect the rights and demands of the local communities and to stop pressuring the communities to sign an MOU. The DFIs must also take measures to ensure the security of community leaders who have been intimidated because of their opposition to the signature of an MOU with Feronia.

Feronia has yet to respect the community’s clear demand that the company provide them with evidence of the legal rights that it claims to have to operate on their lands.

International support

RIAO-RDC and its international partners support the demands of the communities for the return of their lands.

RIAO-RDC and its international partners call on the Government of the DRC to fulfil its responsibilities and ensure the security of the affected communities and their leaders who are now under threat of disappearance and other acts of intimidation and call on the provincial assembly in Kisangani to leave the communities to freely and peacefully seek their rights and to refrain from pressuring communities to sign agreements with companies that affect their control over their lands.

RIAO-RDC and its international partners are calling for an international fact finding mission to investigate and report on the situation of the communities living within the areas affected by the operations of Feronia Inc in the DRC.

For more information please contact:

Jean-Francois Mombia Atuku, RIAO-RDC, +221 773 469621

Ange David Baimey, GRAIN, +233 269 089432

 

Meanwhile At The Democratic National Convention In Philly…

By Tyler Durden, July 25 2016

With the Republican and Democrat party conventions in progress or upcoming, it has now become clear that the 2016 USA presidential election is unlike preceding elections in recent decades. Large percentages of those who consider themselves members of either party do not approve of their presidential candidates, for one thing. That includes more than a third of both Republican and Democrat voters. For another, both candidates have assumed positions on issues that in previous elections would have been considered anathema to the dominant ruling economic and political elites.

Clinton had to know and be actively complicit with former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, along with other top party officials, in rigging the electoral process in her favor – handing her the nomination Tuesday night.

The traditional roll call of state delegates is pro forma pomp and circumstance, a tedious exercise, boring to watch, the outcome predetermined last year.

Hillary is called the most powerful woman in America, selected last year before announcing her candidacy to be Democrat party standard bearer.

It’s inconceivable for massive fraud on her behalf to have happened without her full knowledge, support, encouragement and complicity. She had to know and be actively involved – calling the shots as Democrat party leader.

Add another racketeering charge to her rap sheet. Her criminal history since the 1990s makes her the most villainous aspirant for president in US history.

How any thinking person can support her is beyond comprehension. A simple review of her despicable criminal record as me-first lady, US senator and secretary of state is easily accessible online, in literally dozens of articles I’ve written about her and husband Bill, along with what other reliable independent sources have reported.

Avoid cheerleading media scoundrels – the New York Times most prominent in praising her despicable record, suppressing her high crimes, inventing her nonexistent qualifications for president.

However short Trump falls as someone worthy of the nation’s highest office, at least he’s not Hillary. Some national polls now show him ahead – though with over three month’s before November’s election, a lifetime in US politics, anything can change many times between now and election day.

Preventing a Clinton presidency is top priority in US electoral history. Trump could win and still lose – Bush v. Gore and Bush v. Kerry perhaps the two most notorious examples. In 2000 and 2004, the winner lost and loser won, accomplished by massive fraud.

Electoral rigging handed Clinton the Democrat nomination – perhaps the process to be repeated to make her president.

With it, she becomes commander-in-chief of America’s military – a ruthlessly dangerous war goddess with her finger on its nuclear trigger, nothing preventing her from squeezing it.

Voting for Clinton is a crap shoot for global war with nuclear weapons – perhaps with loaded dice assuring it.

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

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

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

In a historic ruling, Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice U.U. Lalit of the Hon’ble Supreme Court have spoken out in favour of democracy. The judgment came on a plea by hundreds of families in the north-eastern State of Manipur for a probe by a Special Investigation Team into 1,528 cases of alleged fake encounters involving the Army and the police.

In particular, by saying: “It does not matter whether the victim was a common person or a militant or a terrorist, nor does it matter whether the aggressor was a common person or the state. The law is the same for both and is equally applicable to both…This is the requirement of a democracy and the requirement of preservation of the rule of law and the preservation of individual liberties”, the Hon’ble Supreme Court took a step in the direction of equality before the law, and reaffirmed Article 21 that no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.

The judgment has been welcomed especially among people in the “disturbed areas” of our northeastern states and Kashmir, and is surely in partial vindication of Irom Sharmila’s principled, 12-years-long on-going fast demanding repeal of AFSPA.

This writer, with his Army background, is the first to point out that no soldier (the term refers to all ranks of the Armed Forces – Army, Navy and Air Force) will defend wrong doing of any sort, leave alone heinous crimes like murder and rape, by another soldier whether he is “on-duty” or “off-duty”. The reason is not merely that such should be the attitude of any good citizen, but because a known offender in the team is a threat to the coherence, man-to-man trust and fighting efficiency of the military team, and to the survival of the individual soldier in high-risk situations, at all levels from the section, platoon, company and battalion upto the highest formations.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court’s ruling will not find dissonance within the Armed Forces (hereinafter Army, for short). However, without in any manner questioning the wholly welcome order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court and with all due respect and humility, this writer would like to make some points on the larger issue of AFSPA and deployment of the Army on internal security (IS) duties.

Disempowerment of the soldier

The plea by the families of Manipur concerns alleged fake encounters involving both the Army and the police. While a faked encounter is reprehensible, a murder is a murder and a rape is a rape, it is necessary to examine the differences between the Army soldier and the armed policeman, and see why the Army and the AFSPA take a beating.

Under Article 246 of the Constitution, Parliament makes laws concerning the deployment of the Armed Forces “in aid of the civil power”, prescribing the powers, jurisdiction, privileges and liabilities of soldiers during deployment. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) is one such law. Others are, the Army Act 1950, the Navy Act 1957 and the Air Force Act 1950, and associated Rules and Regulations, to administer military law to all ranks of the three Armed Forces.

These laws abrogate a soldier’s constitutional rights under Art.19(1)(a), (b) and (c), of freedom of speech and expression to communicate with the media, freedom of assembly, or the right to form or be members of associations or unions for collective bargaining. Besides this, the Army Act (AA, for short) and the Acts for the Navy and Air Force are strict by any standards, and in fact their “excessive” strictness has been commented upon in legal circles. Thus, because of the nature of duties performed by them and the strict laws in force for maintenance of strict discipline among them, soldiers are by law, uniquely disempowered citizens. This is not the case with members of the bureaucracy, state policemen or armed policemen (CAPFs), on whom restrictions by law and administrative rules are far less stringent. This (necessary) disempowerment is a stumbling block for the Army when called in aid of the civil power. The reasons are discussed hereunder.

Government can function in the interest of people when there is peace and order in society, functionaries in power use people-oriented politics, and the rule of law prevails among all sections of society. Providing security and public order by fair and just enforcement of extant laws, and maintenance of supplies and services essential to the public, is the primary task of governance by the civil administration, which is the combination of the powers, roles and functions of people’s elected representatives, bureaucrats and integral police forces.

Disturbance of law and order usually happens because of conflict of interests within civil society, caused by inappropriate laws and/or unfair policies and/or poor or ill-motivated implementation – in short, mal-administration or mis-governance. When law and order, and peace in society is disturbed and is beyond political resolution, governance calls for using the force of the state and/or central police (CAPFs). When law and order cannot be restored despite deploying state and central police or because of their misuse, it can only be restored by deployment of the Armed Forces (Army) on IS duties in aid of the civil power as permitted by the Constitution. Government has no other option; the Army is its instrument of last resort.

When government calls the army for IS duties as for example, to quell rioting, the army may confront a violent mob. The army officer commanding the sub-unit is obliged to take the written permission of a magistrate who accompanies the sub-unit, before opening fire if the situation so warrants according to the discretion of the magistrate, because the soldier cannot use firearms against civilians without permission from civil authority. But when law and order breaks down in a large area, government cannot provide magistrates to day-and-night accompany every army sub-unit, and it therefore empowers the Army to handle such situations by means of AFSPA.

The AFSPA

The AFSPA is an enabling legislation. It legitimises deployment of the Army in large areas which the civil administration may notify as “disturbed areas”. AFSPA is applicable only to the Armed Forces (under the Ministry of Defence), and not to CAPFs or state police forces under central or state Ministries of Home Affairs respectively. The Constitution of India makes a distinction between “the members of the Armed Forces” (Art.33(a)) meaning soldiers, and “members of the Forces charged with the maintenance of public order” (Art.33(b)) meaning police personnel. Thus the term “Armed Forces” (proper noun) should not be applied to just any body of uniformed persons bearing firearms such as police or CAPFs who may be authorized and trained to use firearms, but only to the soldiers of India’s military. But, often unable to distinguish between the Army and civilian forces that bear arms, media persons often use the catch-all term “security forces” or “armed forces” (common noun) to include the military, CAPFs and state police.

The confusion is exacerbated because CAPFs and police forces wear camouflage uniforms that are virtually indistinguishable from Army uniforms. In tense situations where a journalist takes risks, it can be risky for him/her, and even more so for any member of the public, to ask an armed man to which force he belongs. Thus often enough, the media and the public straightaway blame the Army for incidents involving CAPFs or police, because of AFSPA being in force. Even if subsequent inquiry by civilian authority in a particular case finds that the Army was not involved, the negative “Army-AFSPA” image persists in public opinion.

According to AA Sec.69 “Civil offences” and AA Sec.70 “Civil offence not triable by court-martial” read together, a soldier who commits rape, murder or culpable homicide not amounting to murder of a civilian, will not be tried by a court-martial unless he is on active service, or at any place outside India, or at a frontier post. In any case, AFSPA being in force is not the cause for his committing crime, and cannot be viewed as a facilitator for crime. But repealing AFSPA would cause AA Sec.70 to become inapplicable, making the soldier liable for trial by criminal law – and this is really the cause for the public demand to repeal AFSPA.

AFSPA Sec.3 confers upon a state or central government, powers to declare the whole or some part of the state as a “disturbed area” … “in such a disturbed or dangerous condition that the use of Armed Forces in aid of the civil power is necessary”, by issuing a notification to that effect. The assessment of the condition of society and the discretion to notify it as “disturbed” is the sole prerogative of government. The Armed Forces have no role in this whatsoever. AFSPA Sec.4 confers special powers upon members of the Armed Forces in the notified disturbed areas to arrest, enter and search, or open fire.

Demand for repeal of AFSPA

Notwithstanding the constitutionally permissible last-resort necessity of using military force for internal security when the political-administrative tools of governance fail, there is little justification for an elected government to use even police force for day-to-day governance continuously over decades.

People in our northeastern states and Kashmir, for decades trapped in the crossfire between government police and military forces on the one hand, and the bullets, grenades and IEDs of militants on the other, want nothing more than peace and democratic freedoms. Irom Sharmila, a national icon of courageous non-violence, who has been on fast for 12 long years demanding repeal of AFSPA, stated it squarely and unequivocally in 2013: “I am against a government that uses violence as a means to govern”. [Jiby Kattakayam; “I am against a government that uses violence to govern”; The Hindu, March 5, 2013].

She goes further to say that “the government and the army are colluding to cheat the people” . Her stating that the people are being cheated of peace, social order and meaningful development is understandable and correct. But her accusation of army’s colluding with government, suggesting that the army has an institutional interest or stake in IS deployment, is unfounded. It bears repetition that the army comes out of barracks at the specific call of government and not of its own accord. Therefore, “cheat the people” refers to government cheating the people through abject failure of the politics of development, and monumental political-bureaucratic corruption of ideology and principles. Decades-long continuous violence through the instrumentality of police and military for governance is antithetical to peace and social order essential for development of the sort that people crave for and need. This legitimate craving of the people is reflected in their demand for repeal of AFSPA.

Continuous use of AFSPA

Hearing several petitions challenging the constitutional validity of AFSPA, the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 [Naga People’s Movement of Human Rights v Union of India [1997] ICHRL 117 (27.11.1997)] that the powers given to the army by AFSPA were not arbitrary or unreasonable and did not violate constitutional provisions. However, the Supreme Court went further to rule that (#) declaration of an area as disturbed should be reviewed every six months, (#) central government sanction or refusal to prosecute army personnel should be accompanied by reasons in writing, and (#) army personnel operating under AFSPA would do so under legally binding safeguards or guidelines in the form of a comprehensive list of DOs and DONTs before, during and after operations, in dealing with civil courts, and when providing aid to civil authority. [Note below].

The restriction that government should review the declaration every six months is cosmetic, since it merely calls for bi-annual bureaucratic paperwork. It has not prevented governments from maintaining entire states as disturbed areas continuously for decades. To limit army deployment on IS duties, the continuity of AFSPA needs to be broken. This writer suggests amendment by inserting a final sentence in AFSPA Sec.3 as follows: “Provided that the Governor of the State or the Administrator of the Union Territory or the Central government shall not declare an area as disturbed for more than an aggregate of 90 days in any calendar year.” The period (of 90 days or less or more) suggested can be finalized after wide public discussion and cross-party consultation.

End note

The use of the military in aid of the civil power is an option that no government, howsoever liberal, will discard especially since it has constitutional sanction. The military on IS duties is to civil society what an ICU is to a critically ill person. A patient cannot remain for years in a hospital ICU, because he/she would be effectively dead. The patient needs treatment for the disease and right nutrition to regain normal health. Likewise, the military remaining deployed on IS duties over decades makes civic life in society effectively dead, without assuring peace or security. India’s societies need the “treatment” of honest political effort by transparent dialogue and engagement with people, and “nutrition” of good governance for their growth. Society does not need the army, except to guard the country’s borders against external aggression and protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

While no government may ever propose to Parliament to repeal AFSPA, it would certainly be open to amending it. An amendment to cap the applicability of AFSPA to a total of say, 90 days in any calendar year, will allow governments to retain their (albeit undoubtedly coercive but unavoidable) option of military deployment when civil administration fails to maintain law and order. This will make governments accountable to the people, to rediscover ways of providing a deeply troubled society with honest politics and good governance. It will also enable the Army, one-third of which is engaged in IS duties, to focus more on securing India’s borders.

S.G. Vombatkere is a Indian major-general  who was the additional director general for discipline and vigilance at the headquarters of the Indian Army. He retired in 1996 from the Indian military and is a member of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) and the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

ANNEX

List of DOs & DON’Ts as directed by the Supreme Court in NPMHR v. India in 1997, that are legally binding

DOs

1. Action before Operation

(a) Act only in the area declared ‘Disturbed Area’ under Section 3 of the Act

(b) Power to open fire using force or arrest is to be exercised under this Act only by an officer/JCO/WO and NCO

(c) Before launching any raid/search, definite information about the activity to be obtained from the local civil authorities

(d) As far as possible coopt representative of local civil administration during the raid.

2. Action during Operation

(a) In case of necessity of opening fire and using any force against the suspect or any person acting in contravention of law and order, ascertain first that it is essential for maintenance of public order. Open fire only after due warning

(b) Arrest only those who have committed cognizable offence or who are about to Commit cognizable offence or against whom a reasonable ground exists to prove that they have committed or are about to commit cognizable offence

(c) Ensure that troops under command do not harass innocent people, destroy property of the public or unnecessarily enter into the house/dwelling of people not connected with any unlawful activities

(d) Ensure that women are not searched/arrested without the presence of female police. In fact women should be searched by female police only

3. Action after Operation

(a) After arrest prepare a list of the persons so arrested

(b) Hand over the arrested persons to the nearest police station with least possible delay

(c) While handing over to the police a report should accompany with detailed circumstances occasioning the arrest

(d) Every delay in handing over the suspects to the police must be justified and should be reasonable depending upon the place, time of arrest and the terrain in which such person has been arrested. Least possible delay may be 2-3 hours extendable to 24 hours or so depending upon a particular case

(e) After raid make out a list of all arms, ammunition or any other incriminating material/document taken into possession.

(f) All such arms, ammunition, stores etc. should be handed over to the police station along with the seizure memo

(g) Obtain receipt of persons and arms/ammunition, stores etc. so handed over to the police

(h) Make record of the area where operation is launched having the date and time and the persons participating in such raid

(i) Make a record of the commander and other officers/JCOs/NCOs forming part of such force

(k) Ensure medical relief to any person injured during the encounter, if any person dies in the encounter his dead body be handed over immediately to the police along with the details leading to such death

4. Dealing with civil court

(a) Directions of the High Court/Supreme Court should be promptly attended to

(b) Whenever summoned by the courts, decorum of the court must be maintained and proper respect paid

(c) Answer questions of the court politely and with dignity

(d) Maintain detailed record of the entire operation correctly and explicitly.

DON’Ts

1. Do not keep a person under custody for any period longer than the bare necessity for handing over to the nearest police station

2. Do not use any force after having arrested a person except when he is trying to escape

3. Do not use third-degree methods to extract information or to a extract confession or other involvement in unlawful activities

4. After arrest of a person by the member of the armed forces, he shall not be interrogated by the member of the armed force

5. Do not release the person directly after apprehending on your own. If any person is to be released, he must be released through civil authorities

6. Do not tamper with official records

7. The armed forces shall not take back a person after he is handed over to civil police.

List of DOs and DON’Ts while providing aid to civil authority

DOs

1. Act in closest possible communication with civil authorities throughout

2. Maintain inter-communication if possible by telephone/radio

3. Get the permission/requisition from the Magistrate when present

4. Use little force and do as little injury to person and property as may be consistent with attainment of objective in view

5. In case you decide to open fire

(a) Give warning in local language that fire will be effective

(b) Attract attention before firing by bugle or other means

(c) Distribute your men in fire units with specified Commanders

(d) Control fire by issuing personal orders

(e) Note number of rounds fired

(f) Aim at the front of crowd actually rioting or inciting to riot or at conspicuous ringleaders, i.e., do not fire into the thick of the crowd at the back

(g) Aim low and shoot for effect

(h) Keep Light Machine Gun and Medium Gun in reserve

(i) Cease firing immediately once the object has been attained

(j) Take immediate steps to secure wounded

6. Maintain cordial relations with civilian authorities and paramilitary forces

7. Ensure high standard of discipline

DON’Ts

8. Do not use excessive force

9. Do not get involved in hand-to-hand struggle with the mob

10. Do not ill-treat anyone, in particular, women and children

11. No harassment of civilians

12. No torture

13. No communal bias while dealing with civilians

14. No meddling in civilian administration affairs

15. No Military disgrace by loss/surrender of weapons

16. Do not accept presents, donations and rewards

17. Avoid indiscriminate firing.

 

Lo mejor que podría hacer el gobierno de Estados Unidos con respecto a Venezuela, independientemente de los resultados políticos, sería dejar de intervenir.

Durante los últimos 15 años, Washington le ha causado un gran daño a Venezuela con su implacable búsqueda de un “cambio de régimen”. En marzo el presidente Obama declaró una vez más, de forma irracional, que Venezuela era una “amenaza inusual y extraordinaria para la seguridad nacional y la política exterior de Estados Unidos”, así que las sanciones económicas en contra del país se extendieron.

Aunque esas sanciones tienen un alcance limitado, acarrean consecuencias importantes en las decisiones de inversión pues los inversionistas saben lo que suele ocurrir con los países que Washington tiene en la mira como una amenaza inusual y extraordinaria para la seguridad nacional de Estados Unidos. Las sanciones, así como la presión por parte del gobierno estadounidense, provocaron que importantes instituciones financieras no le otorgaran préstamos al gobierno venezolano que en otro momento serían de bajo riesgo al estar garantizados con oro.

Washington estuvo involucrado en el golpe militar de 2002 en contra del gobierno electo de Venezuela. El gobierno de Estados Unidos reconoció haber proporcionado “entrenamiento, instalaciones institucionales y otro tipo de ayuda a personas y organizaciones” que participaron en el golpe. Después de eso aumentó la financiación a grupos de oposición y les sigue otorgando millones de dólares.

En 2013, Washington volvió a encontrarse en una posición solitaria en la región y el mundo, al rehusarse a reconocer los resultados de la elección presidencial (incluso cuando no hubo dudas acerca del proceso electoral); Estados Unidos le prestó ayuda a manifestantes violentos que buscaban derrocar al gobierno. Asimismo, le dio apoyo político a intentos similares en 2014.

Todo está bien documentado y se le ha dado a conocer a los periodistas que cubren Venezuela, pero habrá que intentar encontrarse a alguno en los medios importantes que tenga el valor de escribir al respecto. Es un poco como informar sobre Ucrania y nunca mencionar a Rusia.

La intervención de Estados Unidos en Venezuela, como en otros países, ha contribuido a la polarización política y al conflicto que ha durado años, ya que alentó a los elementos de oposición en numerosas coyunturas para que buscaran una estrategia de cambio de régimen, más que un cambio político pacífico.

Implementar una política de no intervención en Venezuela sería un cambio enorme para Washington y sentaría un sano precedente. Después de todo, el mundo está inundado de sangre derramada y refugiados por la búsqueda estadounidense de “cambios de régimen” en Afganistán, Irak, Libia, Siria y otros países. ¿Por qué no intentar algo distinto en Occidente?

Mark Weisbrot

 

Article in english :

http://www.nytimes.com/es/2016/07/08/mark-weisbrot-y-ricardo-hausmann-debaten-sobre-el-futuro-de-venezuela/

Mark Weisbrot es codirector del Centro de Investigación en Economía y Política (Center for Economic and Policy Research, CEPR) en Washington, D.C. y presidente de la organización Just Foreign Policy. También es autor del nuevo libro “Fracaso. Lo que los ‘expertos’ no entendieron de la economía global” (2016, Akal, Madrid).

Pauline Hanson came across a racist and incoherent cartoon character on the ABC’s Q&A program on July 18, 2016

But it would be a mistake to think that Hanson, and the more than half a million people who voted for her in the July 2 federal election, can simply be laughed away. They represent, in a distorted way, the deepening contradictions in our society that have to be addressed at their root.

The myth of the egalitarianism of Australia is cracking up after 50 years of Coalition and Labor Party governments helping the super rich get even richer at the expense of the rest.

Fear and insecurity are on the rise and governments of both stripes have implemented policies that encouraged people to blame minority groups for the pain they have inflicted.

Globally, we are in a time of great conflict. But what else can we expect when capitalism has made the richest 1% wealthier than the other 99%?

War has become permanent in a much of the world and this war is spilling over into the richest countries.

There is growing fear and insecurity and, especially in the richest, whitest countries, people are looking for easy solutions and looking to blame people. It’s easy for the Pauline Hanson’s of the world to blame the newest migrants to this country, whether they are Asians or Muslims.

Hanson trades on being sneered at and dismissed as a “bogan” by people who can be seen as part of the “elite” in society.

Yet, notice how she seldom attacks the rich while she goes for members of the “cultural elite” and takes a sideswipe at nameless “multinationals” and “foreigners” of all kinds.

Meanwhile, she remains quietly committed to the bipartisan policy of putting corporate profits first.

Hanson’s cartoon-like character is a political asset: it is a way of getting her supporters to see her as the victim.

But Hanson is not the victim.

Every hate-filled racist outburst of hers results in countless unreported acts of racist violence against children in schoolyards, people perceived to be non-white or of Muslim appearance on public transport, in the streets, shopping centres and workplaces.

It was good to hear this point scored strongly by a crew of First Nations militants at the front of the anti-racist protest outside the Sydney ABC studios when Hanson appeared on Q&A.

Led by Uncle Ken Canning and Aunty Shirley Lomas they forcefully argued that Hanson is not the victim here, so let’s not do anything that helps Hanson claim that she is.

In the 1990s, Hanson made Asians and “Aboriginals” her main target of hate. Today she is focussing her hate speech on Muslims. It was inspiring at the anti-racism protest to hear one First Nations militant after another welcoming Muslims and other refugees to this country.

This small protest was very significant. It followed hot on the heels of Murrandoo Yanner telling Hanson she was not welcome at the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair on July 16.

Hanson had showed up with a 60 minutes TV crew in tow, but they were turned away by Yanner.

“Now you are kicking the Muslims around, you are just a racist redneck with your red hair,” Yanner said as Hanson and her media entourage retreated.

“Go away, go back to Ipswich and your fish and chip shop, you’re disgraceful, you are intellectually dishonest and you are not welcome here.”

In the future, we may look back at this time and say, this is where the new movement against the return of Pauline Hanson recognised a First Nations leadership with the wisdom and power to roll it back.

The First Nations peoples of this continent are the most oppressed section of the community that has survived genocide and the most vicious racism for 228 years.

Their leadership in any anti-racist movement has a powerful moral and political authority and brings with it a rich experience in fighting racism.

A movement led by First Nations militants determined to deny Hanson her undeserved victimhood, to rebut her claim to speak for the downtrodden and to demolish her patriotic posturing, could quickly grow broad and strong.

Such a movement can unite communities of all colours and build alliances with militant trade unions and progressive groups to put Hanson and her racist followers back in the dustbin of history — where they belong.

Peter Boyle is a member of the Socialist Alliance. He was a migrant in Malaysia in the 1970s and has had a long involvement in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights and other anti-racism campaigns.

In an open letter to readers Amy McQuire, Michael Brull, and Samah Sabawi call for strong ties across communities to counter the rising tide of racism, wherever it comes from.

George Fredrikson was the Edgar E Robinson Professor of History at Stanford University, and his academic specialty was racism. He observed that in late 19th century Germany, an anti-Semitic party emerged in the election of 1881. Its “success was engineered from above”, as the Conservatives were “using hostility to the Jews to lure middle-class voters away from the Liberals.”

In the 1890s, a “more spontaneous and populist antisemitism” emerged. This time, the Conservatives decided to “emulate their tactics. The incorporation of an antisemitic appeal into the Conservative program led to the decline and disappearance of the single-issue anti-Jewish parties by the late 1890s.” Fredrikson concluded that, “Like the Democrats in the southern United States,” Germany’s Conservatives “learned that racism could be used, whenever expedient or necessary, to steal the thunder of their populist rivals and keep themselves in firm control.”

This use of racism – by the respectable, mainstream conservatives – sowed a poisonous legacy for Germany. The future was not set in stone, but a dangerous path was paved for future generations to explore.

When Pauline Hanson was kicked out of the Liberal Party in 1996 for offensive comments about Aboriginal people, she was drawing on a long and sordid history.

In 1997, after her election to the lower house seat of Oxley, One Nation released a book: Pauline Hanson: the Truth. The book railed against the millions of dollars supposedly spent on Aboriginal people. Feeding off the racism which has propped up white prosperity for the past 200 years, it claimed that Aboriginal people were getting special privileges.

The central proposition the book used to bolster this bigoted view was that Aboriginal people were cannibals in the 19th century. “They killed and ate their own women and children and occasionally their men,” it read. “The older women were often killed for eating purposes, like livestock.”

These views may seem like an anomaly – racism on the extreme end of the spectrum, to be confined to the fringes of society. But the fact is that Australia’s racist history, its justification for killing Aboriginal men, women and children, for stealing land, children, wages and remains, were all based on racist tropes like this, which Pauline Hanson shamelessly revived. White Australia, and everyone who comes to this country, benefits in some way from the assault on Aboriginal people and culture that Hanson so crudely justified.

Most of these tropes – including the trope of the Aboriginal mother as an infanticidal cannibal – were based around the demonisation of Aboriginal women. Academic Liz Conor, discussing her recent book Skin Deep, told 98.9 FM that this trope was used to dehumanise Aboriginal people, and paint them as savages, to justify the stealing of land and cement the fiction that is “terra nullius”.

“The idea that primitive people were cannibals was everywhere and it was in settlers’ mouths before they arrived here. In Australia we did this especially nasty thing because I think we were especially nasty to be honest. And especially misogynistic. We said Aboriginal people were not only cannibals, they ate each other and etc, but their mothers ate their babies, they ate their newborns.”

“And in Australia we said that not because they were hungry even, but because the meat was especially tasty to them.”

Dr Conor has traced the journey of this demeaning trope through history, showing how and why it was re-circulated.

“(There was this) repeating motif from settlement right through to Daisy Bates” Dr Conor says, but “the last person to say (an incarnation of this) was Pauline Hanson.”

Racism becomes engrained when these tropes are repeated. Of course, you’d never see a mainstream conservative party repeating outrageous claims like this. And yet, much like the German Conservatives, they adopt their own form of racism, even more insidious because it is painted as sensible, and then sold to the public.

f you compare Hanson’s maiden speech to the Howard years, you see the seeds of Hanson’s racist thinking reflected throughout his policies towards First Nations people.

In her maiden speech to Parliament, Hanson called for the abolition of ATSIC. In 2004, the Howard government put that plan into action. In that maiden speech, Hanson led an outright attack on Aboriginal land rights, and on native title. Howard then began his plans to whittle down native title following the Wikdecision in the High Court, spurred on by powerful mining and pastoral interests.

The scare campaigns around Aboriginal land rights and native title from the Hawke era through to Keating and Howard, by mining and industry lobbies helped cement this racism, and paved the way for the acceptance of outrageous views like Hanson’s.

The claims of Hanson – that Aboriginal people get special privileges at the expense of non-Aboriginal people, that there is an “Aboriginal industry” – helped lay the groundwork for the era of “mainstreaming” in Aboriginal affairs, a disastrous policy era which still dominates thinking and policy today.

Ignoring and even trying to explain the racist bigots at the bottom excuses the equally vicious racism at the top – from the likes of both major parties, and sidelines the role of big corporations in promoting racism for their own self-interest.

Likewise with Hanson’s anti-Asian sentiment. It was institutionalised in the White Australia policy as Australia was founded, and continued at the elite level with anti-Asian sentiment in the 1980s, espoused by figures as respectable as the Leader of the Opposition, John Howard. This sentiment was then expressed in cruder form by One Nation. One Nation’s toxic agenda was then absorbed by the Coalition. This included the abolition of ATSIC, and the creation of Temporary Protection Visas for refugees. Just as in Germany 100 years earlier, the mainstream conservatives reclaimed the voters of the smaller racist party.

Equally, anti-Muslim sentiment did not begin with Hanson. A more sophisticated, highbrow anti-Muslim sentiment was used to justify the mandatory indefinite detention of Muslim asylum seekers. It was used to justify the torture of Australian citizens in Guantanamo Bay. It was, and is used to justify wars in Muslim countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. It is used to justify our support for Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians. It is used to justify our support for murderous tyrants in Muslim countries, who oppress their Muslim citizens. A lot of anti-Muslim argument has come from the elite’s need to defend their anti-Muslim policies. As Eric Hoffer observed, “when power is wedded to chronic fear… it becomes formidable”.

One Nation was wiped out for almost 20 years because the Coalition stole their agenda. Since 1996, Hanson has lost eight elections. The lesson of the 1990s was not that being mean to Hanson or her supporters makes her stronger. The lesson was that the real danger came from the mainstream, which was willing to legitimise her views, and lay the groundwork for the Coalition stealing her policies and regaining her voters.

The likes of Pauline Hanson are dangerous not because they are able to provide rational, compelling arguments that may persuade the majority to act in a certain way. They don’t. They present a more subtle menace; an imperceptible process of redefining our values and re-engineering our society.  Pauline Hanson’s rhetoric has pushed the limits on acceptable discourse, and is now delineating new boundaries of racism and hateful speech.

Following her appearance on ABC’s Q&A, radio broadcasters on many talk shows threw open the question of whether Australia should ban Muslim immigration. The very racist nature of such a question was lost on callers who perceived it as part of a legitimate debate. Also lost on these callers was the fact that the majority of ISIS’s victims are Muslims. Recently in Nice, one third of the victims of that horrific attack were Muslims.

Viewed this way, the task for opponents of Hansonism is not to be nicer to Hanson or her voters. It’s to stigmatise racist views, and marginalise them, while we still can.

We don’t have a Muslim problem in Australia. We have a racism problem, and it is an emergency. We urge readers to take this as a wake-up call, to build stronger ties across communities, and to challenge racism, whether it comes from the top or from the bottom.

Attacks on Muslims are attacks on us all.

The Korean people are one of the people that suffered the most during the Cold War, which was a hot war in the Korean Peninsula. The land of the Korean people was divided and ravaged by destruction. Real and imaginary lines divided entire communities and families while the Korean Peninsula saw one of the worst bombing campaigns in the history of humanity.

This is why many of the South Korean people do not want to be embroiled in any type of US tensions or confrontation against China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and many other countries.  In this regard, the National THAAD Countermeasure Council in South Korea has begun a public campaign against the deployment of the US missile shield and THAAD to their country. One of their demonstrations was held in Seoul on July 16, 2016. Trying to obfuscate the facts, most of the media in South Korea overlooked the event or casually mentioned it. The following is a brief article from South Korean news outlet MinPlus about the event.

 Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Asia-Pacific Research Editor, 25 July 2016.

---

 

Seoul — The National THAAD Countermeasure Council (preparing committee) held a peaceful gathering that demands to lift the THAAD deployment decision on the 16th at Cheonggye Plaza.

At the gathering, representatives from various civic organizations gave speeches against the THAAD deployment. Despite the heavy rain, the citizens who gathered for the gathering marched to the US Embassy after the gathering, expressing their willfulness to demand the lift of the THAAD deployment decision.

Choi Jong Jin, the acting chairman to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, said in his speech, “We now are here to show that the opposition against the THAAD deployment is the will of the whole Korean people, not just that of Seongju [where the missile shield is to be deployed] residents. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions will be in the center of the struggle to block up the THAAD deployment which threatens peace in Northeast Asia and makes the conditions of the Korean economy even more difficult.”

Park Seok Woon, the Korean Alliance of Progressive Movements co-chairman, insisted, “It has already been proved that the THAAD cannot intercept the Northern missiles. We do have to block up the THAAD deployment that makes the Korean Peninsula the arena of military competition toward the new cold war.”

The National Countermeasure Council holds ‘the Nationwide Peace Gathering to stop the THAAD Deployment in South Korea’ next weekend.

This article was edited by Asia-Pacific Research.

 

The Conversation is fact-checking claims made on Q&A, broadcast Mondays on the ABC at 9:35 pm. Thank you to everyone who sent us quotes for checking via Twitter using hashtags #FactCheck and #QandA, on Facebook or by email.

Senator-elect Pauline Hanson faced heavy questioning on Monday night’s Q&A program during a broad-ranging and often heated debate about Islam, radicalisation and terrorism [APR editor’s note, MDN: Hanson was expelled from the Liberal Party of Australia in 1996 for offensive comments about the Aborigine people of Australia. She is the leader and founder of the Australian political party One Nation and has made a career out of controversy. She has been denounced by the indigenous Aborigine community and many other Australians as an ignorant  bigot catering to anti-Aborigine, anti-Asian, and anti-Muslim perceptions by making proposals to discriminate against them and by voicing her opposition to immigration.].

Hanson criticised the Grand Mufti of Australia, a senior Islamic scholar, for not condemning recent overseas terrorist attacks. In response to a question from a Muslim audience member, Hanson said that “your Grand Mufti won’t even come out and condemn the terrorist attacks that’s happened overseas”.

Is that right?

Checking the Source

The Conversation asked Hanson’s spokesman for sources to support her assertion, but did not hear back before the publication deadline.

However, we can test her statement against publicly available evidence.

Who is the Grand Mufti and what has he said about terrorism?

The Grand Mufti of Australia is Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, an Islamic scholar from the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC). ANIC is made up of Imams from across Australia representing their respective communities.

Following the Paris attacks in late 2015, ANIC issued a statement that said the Grand Mufti “mourned the loss of innocent lives due to the recent terrorist attacks in France”. It also said that:

We would like to convey our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the deceased. We reiterate that the sanctity of human life is guaranteed in Islam. These recent incidents highlight the fact that current strategies to deal with the threat of terrorism are not working. It is therefore imperative that all causative factors such as racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitisation, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention must be comprehensively addressed.

Critics said at the time that this initial response to the Paris attacks didn’t go far enough or appeared to blame Western society for the attacks.

Two days later, ANIC issued a clarification saying that:

We wish to emphasise it is incorrect to imply that the reference to causative factors provides justification for these acts of terrorism. There is no justification for the taking of innocent lives. The sanctity of human life is guaranteed in Islam. Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohamed and ANIC have consistently and unequivocally condemned all forms of terrorist violence. The Grand Mufti on 15th September 2014 said about ISIS that: “These criminals are committing crimes against humanity and sins against God.”

Previous and subsequent statements issued by ANIC and the Grand Mufti have condemned terrorist acts and other forms of violence committed overseas.

The Grand Mufti also used Facebook to condemn the July 2016 attacks in Nice:

More generally, the Grand Mufti has supported a fatwa (or Islamic legal ruling) against joining Islamic State.

“Your Grand Mufti”

It is worth noting that the phrase “your Grand Mufti” is also misleading. It may convey the idea that the Grand Mufti of Australia represents all Muslims in Australia. That is not the case. In Australia, Islam has no easily defined hierarchy and ANIC is not the only body representing Muslims or Islamic scholars in Australia.

According to my research, many Muslims in Australia support and respect the position of the Grand Mufti; however, they do not always support the person in the position or respect their religious credentials.

Australian Muslim communities are not homogeneous and are made up of many different culturally diverse groups. A 2015 report on the demographic and social profile of Muslims in Australia, prepared by Professor Riaz Hassan from the University of South Australia, noted that:

According to the 2011 Australian Census there were 476,290 Muslims in Australia, of whom about 40% were Australian born. The rest came from 183 countries, making Australian Muslims one of the most ethnically and nationally heterogeneous religious communities.

There are also significant divisions in faith. The same report said that while most Australian Muslims are Sunni, there is a significant minority of Shi’ite Muslims and smaller numbers of Bektashis, Ahmadis, Alawis and Druze.

Lastly, many commentators and observers have advanced the view that it is unfair to expect Muslims and Muslim public figures to repeatedly publicly condemn every incident involving Muslims around the world.

Verdict

Pauline Hanson’s statement that “your Grand Mufti won’t even come out and condemn the terrorist attacks that’s happened overseas” was not correct.

Clarke Jones is the co-director of the Australian Intervention Support Hub (AISH) at Australian National University.

Former US Secretary of Defense William Perry warns that the world is on the knife edge of nuclear catastrophe.  Such catastrophe can result accidentally from electronic failures or glitches in warning systems and from the recklessly aggressive and unnecessary force buildup against Russia.  Conn Hallinan discusses these issues. 

http://fpif.org/may-greater-risk-nuclear-catastrophe-cold-war/

I doubt Hallinan is correct about Washington’s military predominance.  This is Washington’s view, and this view makes Washington confident that it holds the aces.  It is a mistake for Hallinan to encourage Washington in this view.  Nevertheless, Hallinan makes it clear that we could all be vaporized at any minute.  This extremely high risk has been created entirely by the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes in which zionist neoconservatives have controlled foreign and military policies.

It is tiresome to hear the argument that nuclear war won’t happen because it makes no sense.  William Perry points out that the failure of a 49-cent computer chip resulted in NORAD’s computers signaling that the Soviets had launched 220 nuclear missiles at the United States.  Just think about all the failures and glitches in our own personal computers, even the best ones.

Human miscalculation is also an enormous risk.  Miscalculation is a dominant human trait.  Consider that 50 percent of Americans’ choices of marriage partners are miscalculations as established by the divorce rate.

The mere existence of nuclear weapons means the nonexistence of life on earth.  It will happen sooner or later.  To raise the risk as the crazed American government is doing with irresponsible provocations of the Russians and Chinese is the ultimate criminal act.

There is no greater threat to human rights than to endanger all life, and that is what Washington and its two-bit punk NATO vassals are doing by increasing tensions between nuclear powers.

Have we Europeans been indoctrinated to not question the original puppet masters of the “War on Terrorism” beyond repair?  Will we soon see the same shut downs of Independent Media as President Erdogan is enforcing right now?

This morning, as I walked to my office in a Brussels where we now have sub-machine gun toting soldiers on every street-corner, I reflected on the lockdown that Münich experienced yesterday, even considering to cancel their famous Oktober Fest.

As a society, since we have politicians who join into imperial war conquests with impunity, it is not surprising that young deranged citizens are beginning to pull off more and more atrocious acts of mass violence. It seems to me they are often numbed in their humanity by Prozac-like drugs, and conditioned to kill in first person on-line warrior games, or caught up in the nauseating “Clash of Civilization” terror meme that our Main Stream Media totes on an everyday basis. These people are sick, in a very sick society.

Our politicians tell us that we need to get used to these security measures. For some reason, the same threat that formerly was perceived only by the Israeli Embassy, and with the “coalition of the willing” Iraqi invasion, then of course also the US Embassy, now hangs over every citizen in the big cities of Europe. Upon arriving at my office, I took a moment to watch an interview of “Syrian Girl” by ‘Paul Joseph Watson’ on infowars.com :

http://www.infowars.com/how-europe-is-causing-its-own-collapse

It is refreshing to listen to this young Syrian geo-political analyst give her non scripted interview on recent developments in Europe, because it is so removed from the controlled information we get from our politicians and Corporate Western Media who seem to adhere to a crippling creed to tell “The Politically Correct Truth, only the Partial Truth, and as little as possible about those darned politically disturbing truths” : Listen to her for example from the 20 minute mark : ( Below a text version, trying to respect her very special ‘Syrian Girl’ casual style of expressing herself in English) :

‘Syrian Girl’ : “Nothing is changing in Europe: all we have is “Pray for ‘INSERT COUNTRY/CITY IN EUROPE’ “; that’s it, that is all!! Or the solutions that they are giving are ludicrous, like “We need to topple Assad, then terrorism will stop.” It is ridiculous: we need a campaign to focus on the real criminals, and what their agenda seems to be, because for some reason, they don’t just want to destroy Syria, now they also want to destabilize Europe, and I said in 2012, and I said it then on InfoWars, and we were one of the few people then who were trying to warn about the stuff that is now happening, that, you-know, they want instability in Europe as well.

They want it, because they need it, because the economic situation isn’t to their liking, and also because it is a controlled threat: they can control people with it, they can cause clashes between people, and ignore the real target, which is the globalists. It is the people in Bilderberg who are making all those decisions. Brexit was something that occurred, that totally threw them off, and the coup in Turkey has everything to do with what happened in Brexit. And France, the thing that happened in France, with Nice, had everything to do with what happened with Brexit and the Turkish coup.”

‘Paul Joseph Watson’ : ( shortened version of his intervention) “Was the coup against Erdogan an inside job to root out the insubordinates within the military and within the Government?”

‘Syrian Girl’ : “I don’t believe it is, the man had to go on FaceTime to tell his people to come out in the streets and protest, it was quite humiliating! The reason I don’t believe it was, it’s because a few days before the coup, about 4 days, Turkey started making statements that they were sorry for shooting down the Russian jet, and they wanted to re-affirm their alliance with Russia, and they wanted to get closer to their regional allies. This was like a few days or weeks after Brexit. Basically, the EU wasn’t the same EU anymore.. and the Turkey wasn’t desperate to join it any-more, so Turkey decided to maybe come up with a different Foreign Policy,  and Turkey is also unhappy with the agenda to create a Kurdish state in Syria, because that is going to create a Kurdish state in Turkey as well, and of-course, it is going to displace the Christian and Syrian population in Syria as a result, but I guess those people don’t matter, as long as the agenda is pushed.

But, Erdogan is / has been a criminal for the last 4 years, and there is no doubt that he has supported terrorism up until this day, but, he is not the biggest criminal: the biggest criminals were his puppet masters which were in the White House, because, obviously, those people are far more powerful, and those people – there is a lot of indication that it was actually the CIA that was behind it. There were reports that came out that Russia actually tipped off the Turks : the leader behind the coup is in Washington, and Washington has refused to extradite him.

If you look at the Media, the Main Stream Media, for some reason, even though we have been calling Erdogan a terrorist supporter for ages, only now have they decided: “Yep! Oh yea, yea, he is a terrorist supporter.”

France, just before the Nice attacks, or – I’m not quite sure but at-least before the coup, they shut down their Embassy in Turkey. I mean, France has made statements now that Erdogan can no longer be a partner against terror. It’s a joke, cause France itself has been openly arming terror for the last 4 years, and, of-course, so has Turkey : so what’s really going on is France is angry that Turkey is choosing to go a different way now, it’s leaning now towards trying to reverse the disaster it has created for itself, with this instability, with economic problems with Russia, taking advice and shooting down a Russian jet, all because they wanted to join the EU – which is on its way to collapsing.

This is how I read the situation, and I think that *the idea that they did it to themselves.. uhm, I think it comes from a hate and distrust of Erdogan, like a lack of understanding as to why sometimes puppets are just thrown away when they are no longer doing what they are told, or they are no longer useful – which – you know, it’s a confusing situation, but no, many people died, people are in exile, coup leaders are in jail, I don’t think he did it to himself, I think that Russia tipped him off about a CIA agent to get rid of him, and put in some-one else that was gonna maintain the status-quo, and not try to make friends with Russia.”

On her youtube site, Syrian Girl explains more about how the West is intervening in Syria to create a “Kurdistan”, just like Israel was also created by the West :

https://www.youtube.com/user/SyrianGirlpartisan

*For a fun flash back on how Erdogan brought this predicament upon himself, it is nice to revisit the article that Kevin Barrett wrote on Thanksgiving 2015 :  Kevin Barrett VT 11-25-15… “This Thanksgiving, Erdogan is the turkey”

For some more ‘up to date’ speculations on how the possible help that Erdogan could have gotten from the Russians complicates matters for the Europeans, read also this article, written by John Chuckman July 22 2016 : Turkey Right Now Is a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma, to Paraphrase Churchill

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/07/22/turkey-right-now-is-a-riddle-wrapped-in-a-mystery-inside-an-enigma

‘Russia Insider’ writer Nikolai Starikov also argues there is good reason to believe that Erdogan was helped by the Russians : (July 21^st 2016)

Why Russia Revealed Coup Plans to Erdogan http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-russia-revealed-coup-plans-to-erdogan/5537259

Read also how International Free-Lance Journalist Pepe Escobar resumed the Turkish coup on sputniknew.com, only hours after it happened: “Hell Hath no Fury Like a Teflon Sultan” :

http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160717/1043158581/erdogan-turkey-coup.html

I pray for that our European Citizens will stand up for their values of free speech and a free press, with more and more reader-supported journalists like Pepe Escobar and ‘Syrian Girl’. When we take this precious human-felt information to heart, and start cleaning up the harm we have done to ourselves, by never confronting our politicians and institutions to the deeper criminal lies that lie beneath the whole concept of the “War on Terror”, then I think we will be able to start enjoying living in Europe again. Let us all get behind this effort.

Thank-you also, GlobalResearch.ca, for providing us with a consistent independent analysis of what has been going on, ever since the Summer of 2001 !

My name is Wiaam. I am a young woman who lives in Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza.

I attend the Islamic University and I have lived in this city for the entire 22 years of my life. I wish to be buried in this pure land.

I wish to talk to you about the suffering of the occupied Gaza Strip, especially in the field of education.

I lived the happiest years of my life in this neighborhood, as well as the worst imaginable moments during the last war.

We lived through a tough situation but did not lose our spirit.

Despite the fear in the hearts of our schoolchildren, as soon the assault was over, they resumed their education.

We are an unarmed people: education, and the power of justice are our weapons to liberate our land.

As a university student, I suffered enormously after the war. Unemployment soared and I could not afford to buy schoolbooks. I had to save on transportation and started walking half the way to college to save half of the cost for the following day.

Through this war, I developed an addiction to education.

I became protective of my university books. I kept them in a bag so that whenever we were forcibly displaced from our home, I could carry the bag on my back.

I am grateful I have not lost any books. Still, many of my friends lost books – and worse, family members who were killed in Israel’s attacks.

Nevertheless, my friends continued their education- but they need more support, such as scholarships.

My friends and I call the Gaza Strip “the education tsunami” because of the high number of educated people who cannot find jobs.

Unemployment rises, poverty spreads across Gaza, and average daily incomes drop.

As a student, I wish to pursue my education and learn more. But, under this situation, with the siege and lack of funds, I cannot.

I hope you continue to learn about the suffering of my people and to understand it.

DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was caught red-handed, rigging the electoral process for Clinton, assuring she’ll be party standard bearer in November.

She’s stepping down after this week’s party convention, continuing to represent Florida’s 23rd district – facing no criminal charges, despite committing a serious racketeering offense.

The Clinton campaign announced she’ll remain honorary chair to help elect Democrats in November. She’ll likely receive other rewards for faithful service to a corrupted system, a mockery of democratic fairness.

An RNC tweet said Schultz “out after rigged system exposed.” Democrat convention “off to a good start.”

Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort issued a statement, saying “Clinton should follow Wasserman Schultz’s lead and drop out over her failure to safeguard top secret classified information both on her unauthorized home server and while traveling abroad.”

Obama praised Schultz, saying “(f)or the last eight years, (she) has had my back. This afternoon (Sunday) I called her to let her know that I am grateful.”

Bernie Sanders shockingly said Schultz “deserves thanks for her years of service,” while saying she “made the right decision for the future of the Democratic (sic) party.”

Hillary Clinton issued a statement, “thank(ing) my longtime friend Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her leadership…over the past five years.”

She’ll stay on “as honorary chair…to serve as a surrogate for my campaign nationally…I will need fighters like Debbie in Congress who are ready…to work for the American people” – a deplorable perversion of truth.

All politicians are self-serving, Clinton in a class of her own – the most recklessly dangerous choice to lead America in its entire history.

Critics called Schultz’s leadership controversial, claiming she “spends more energy tending to her own political ambitions than helping Democrats win,” according to Politico.

Trump tweeted “(t)oday proves what I have always known, that (RNC chairman) @Reince Priebus is the tough one and the smart one, not Debbie Wasserman Shultz…The Dems Convention is cracking up…”

A change.org petition collected almost 65,000 signatures calling for Schultz’s resignation before she stepped down, expressing “the utmost sense of contempt and disdain for the Democratic (sic) party, its principles, and the democratic process.”

The Institute for American Democracy and Election Integrity filed a racketeering lawsuit against the DNC. It’s seeking funds to cover expenses.

Electoral fraud in America is longstanding, the process notoriously corrupt – no one in high places held accountable for crimes too serious to ignore.

Are things rigged for Clinton to succeed Obama? Will a war goddess/racketeer be handed the nation’s highest office? Will WW III follow?

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.htmlVisit 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.

As LA Times reporter Matt Pearce tweeted…

The US and Saudi Arabia have been conspiring with one another to engineer a series of crises that could prompt Iran to pull back its troops in Syria and redeploy them back to the homeland. The modus operandi has been to encourage peripheral insurgencies inside the Islamic Republic’s borderland regions concurrent with a terrorist threat to the interior, all while stirring up Color Revolution commotion. In short, Washington and Riyadh are working hard to wage a multidimensional Hybrid War on Iran, and all indications point to each respective component of this campaign intensifying in the coming months as the US turns up the heat against its decades-long Mideast rival.

The Kurdish Crisis That Nobody Talks About

The international media – both Western and alternative – has paid a lot of attention to the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, but practically no established outlet or reliable mainstream media network is focusing on the Iranian Kurds. For those readers who understandably aren’t aware of what’s been unfolding over the past month, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) has been waging a vicious insurgency against Tehran on the pretense that the government has reneged on a previous ceasefire and political guarantees. The reality, though, is that the militant Kurdish nationalism that’s been sweeping the Mideast over the past couple of years has finally infected Iran, just as the author predicted would inevitably happen in the scenario forecasting portion of his 2015 book about Hybrid War theory. Furthermore, this group isn’t fighting for independence, but openly wants a regime reboot that transforms the entire Iranian system from an Islamic Republic into an Identity Federation.

“Political Incorrectness”:

The reason that this conflict isn’t being talked about a lot is because it’s “politically incorrect” for both the Western and non-Western outlets to report on. For example, unipolar-supporting information networks seem to have an unspoken agreement to not gloat about this occurrence, despite it obviously being to the US and Saudi Arabia’s strategic interests. It’s uncertain exactly why this peculiarity is in force, but it might have something to do with Washington signaling to its proxies that it would prefer to wait until a forthcoming moment to fully publicize everything that’s happening, perhaps wanting a significant victory or alleged “human rights (false flag) violation” to take place first. There’s also the political sensitivity of still abiding by the nominal ‘détente’ between the US and Iran, and not wanting to feed into Tehran’s well-grounded accusations that the Kurdish combatants have international support. All of these considerations are of course only temporary and relevant for as long as the US refrains from permitting its mainstream information allies from going all-out in their coverage of this conflict.

From the other side of things, the alternative multipolar-aligned media is hesitant to report anything that presents the Kurds in a negative light, having fallen so deep down the rabbit hole in glorifying them for their anti-Daesh struggle that it seems almost impossible to ‘reverse the script’ and talk about the truth of their treachery (whether in Syria or Iran). The previous narrative of the Kurds being ‘brave freedom fighters’ was an overly simplistic one which failed to take into account documented human rights abuses by this group’s leading militias or the Syrian Kurds’ own hate-filled manifesto against Damascus. Instead of investigating who the anti-Daesh Kurdish militias really were and where their international loyalties lay, alternative media broadcasters opted to jump on the bandwagon of calling them “heroes” and implicitly lending normative acceptance to their autonomy/”federalization”/independence demands, especially in the immediate aftermath of Turkey backstabbing Russia, and thereby inadvertently falling into the US’ trap of building geopolitical legitimacy for the same groups that are now fighting to dismantle Syria and Iran.

Foreign Invasion:

To qualify the specifics of what’s been happening in northwestern Iran, it’s not indigenous Kurds that are “revolting”, but Iraqi-based Iranian Kurds that are invading the country from their safe haven in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). These cross-border attacks have become so bad and raised such a military-strategic alarm back in Tehran that the government even said that they’ll launch their own retaliatory cross-border strikes and engage in hot pursuits if they found it tactically necessary to defeat these terrorists. Iran knows that these militant incursions are supported by KRG President Barzani, which is another one of the many reasons that it has for supporting the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Change Movement (Gorran) against the Kurdish chieftain’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). Moreover, the oil pipeline that Iran plans to build to Iraq will extend to the KRG PUK-influenced city of Koysinjaq, which will eventually give a long-term boost to that party at the expense of the KDP.

The hostile forces behind this anti-Iranian insurgent war are much bigger than Barzani, and Tehran has actually accused its rival Riyadh of being the mastermind behind this war. Both the Saudis and the KRG expectedly denied these claims, but bearing in mind just how intense the regional competition is between Iran and Saudi Arabia right now, it’s completely plausible that the Kingdom would seek to capitalize off of the Kurds’ battle-hardened fighting skills and massive undercurrents of international support as a means of sowing unrest within the Islamic Republic. It would actually be uncharacteristically strange if the Saudis weren’t involved in this plot to some extent or another since they have a long track record of using all means available against their chief international opponent, so employing the Kurds as convenient allies in this larger regional proxy struggle would fully correspond to their previous pattern of strategic behavior. Therefore, despite being vehemently denied by the Saudis and their alleged KRG henchmen, observers have every reason to accept Iran’s claims about Riyadh’s covert military support to the KDPI and thenceforth proceed from this point of reasonable understanding.

“Lead From Behind”:

As could have been expected, the US is playing a very strong “Lead From Behind” role in indirectly funding this insurgency and strengthening its viability. Instead of openly having anything to do with the KDPI and thereby possibly compromising their “independence” and the mythos behind their “organic uprising”, the US chooses instead to syphon money and supplies to the fighters through its KRG proxy. Just the other day Washington clinched an historic deal to provide the KRG with $415 million for ammunition, food, pay, and medical equipment, though it’s highly probable that some of these funds and equipment will be purposely laundered to the KDPI. It’s an open secret among many that the KRG functions as the headquarters of the international Kurdish militant movement, though for reasons of political sensitivity and Great Power politics, this isn’t officially acknowledged by any major players except for self-interested Turkey from time to time.

The KRG first functioned as a safe haven for the PKK, though this has been changing in recent years as Barzani increasingly makes it known that he’s Erdogan’s main capo in keeping control over the region. Therefore, while the PKK has found the KRG to be less friendly of a host than it was before, the same can’t necessarily be said about the YPG, which cultivate such strong cross-border contacts with their brethren in northern Iraq that they even called upon them to ‘save the day’ by helping in the defense of Ayn al-Arab (popularly known in the international media by its Kurdish name “Kobani”). As for the KDPI, their headquarters are located in the KRG and they’re known to be close to Barzani, the recipient of the US’ nearly half-a-billion dollar largesse. For this reason, it’s just as predictable that the KRG will funnel some of its aid to its allied Syrian YPG as it would to its allied Iranian KDPI. Additionally, it’s very difficult to get any information about the KDPI’s activities in the KRG over the nearly past two decades that it’s been sheltering there, but an informed supposition would be that they’ve previously received indirect American assistance via this framework before, if not directly through some of the hundreds of on-the-ground military trainers that are active in the region right now.

Mideast Mischief:

The worst related scenario that could arise with the Kurdish insurgency in Iran is if the KDPI fighters allied with the PKK and began using Turkish territory as a launching pad for their cross-border raids. The two militant groups have previously been at odds with one another, but a mid-2015 meeting was meant to squash their mutual misunderstandings. The only state actors who have an interest in the PDPI attacking Iran from PKK-held territory in Turkey are the US and Saudi Arabia, which would be overjoyed to see observe the deteriorating relations between the two neighbors if Iran reacts by threatening cross-border retaliation and Ankara expectedly vows to defend its sovereignty in response. There’s no guarantee that either of these governments would react in this way, but it would be irresponsible to ignore the grand strategic interests that the US and Saudi Arabia have in working to bring this scenario into fruition.

On a related tangent, if it’s revealed that members of the KDPI are sheltering in the northern Syrian territories presently occupied by their YPG allies, then Tehran might predictably put pressure on Damascus to neutralize them as soon as possible. This in turn could move forward the likely scenario of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) carrying out a disarmament campaign against the YPG, perhaps even advancing it to before the full defeat of Daesh. In that case, it wouldn’t necessarily be to Damascus’ full advantage to initiate its law and order operation in the occupied northern territories until its most pressing domestic foe is vanquished, but conditions such as the ones just described might pop up to give it little choice in choosing the time of engagement. President Assad would obviously have the full and final say over whether and when the SAA  takes on the YPG, but Iranian encouragement and possibly even a Russian-promoted secret deal with Turkey in the context of Ankara’s reported re-engagement with Damascus might press it to do so sooner than many people might expect, especially if a significant KDPI (and PKK) connection can be undeniably proven.

Balochistan Rumblings

Nowhere near as urgent of a crisis as the Kurdish one, and truthfully not yet even at that dire of a stage, the return of Baloch separatism in Iran could force Tehran into a geopolitical siege mentality and herald in the full splitting of its military-strategic focus. Baloch insurgents haven’t been too particularly active in Iran for some time, but they haven’t been invisible, either. They returned to the fore of Iran’s eastern challenges in the mid-2000s when a spree of terrorism jolted the Sistan and Baluchistan Province, and it’s persistentlycarried on ever since. Still, the problems that Iran is facing with this potential crisis pale in comparison that of its Pakistani neighbor, which has accused both India and Afghanistanof aiding the insurgency. Both of Islamabad’s neighbors have a geostrategic self-interest in weakening their mutually adjacent neighbor, though it must be said that they’re very likely doing this with some sort of advisory and/or subtle encouragement from the US.

From Information To Insurgency:

Actually, the US seems primed to fuel the anti-Pakistani Baloch insurgency through its contemplation of a separate Baloch-language “Voice of America” (VOA) service. Although words are literally only just that – words – they could play a powerful role in persuading susceptible and misguided Balochi youth to sympathize with the insurgents and then take up arms alongside these very same fighters that the US influenced them to idolize. Thus, even though the US might not be directly involved or even indirectly have any physical influence on the situation, it could still harness its information services to act as a force multiplier for the efforts of its regional Afghan and Indian allies, both of whom are provoking this conflict with the intent of disrupting the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Rolling Across The Border:

As the conflict in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province heats up – which it’s sure to do if the US makes the decision to launch a Balochi VOA service – then it’s probable that the insurgency will eventually spill over into Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan Province as well, whether or not the US’ allies even intend for this to happen. The fact is that asymmetrical wars rarely go according to plan, and that the probability of the nascent US-Afghan-Indian South Asian axis successfully containing their Baloch insurgency inside of Pakistan’s borders is very low. More than likely, Pakistani-based militants will try to link up with their Iranian brethren, who might also end up encouraged by the VOA’s prospective Balochi broadcasts, and thus create a low-intensity international crisis. Ironically, this would actually be the detriment of Kabul and New Delhi’s grand strategy since they plan to use India’s investments in the Iranian Baloch port of Chabahar to spearhead a trans-Iranian north-south corridor between them, and the destabilization of Sistan and Baluchistan Province would be counterintuitive to their goals.

Geopolitical Cynicism:

The only one of the mentioned actors who would gain some sort of a benefit from this happening is the US, which has an interest in stoking Baloch separatism in eastern Iran so as to geographically split Tehran’s military-strategic focus. It’s not too important to Washington whether this interferes with the Afghan-Indian intermodal corridor through Chabahar (although the sustainable creation of this is also a long-term strategic goal for the US) because at the moment, it appears that the US has placed a much higher priority on destabilizing Iran along both its Western (Kurdish) and Eastern (Balochi) flanks. Earlier this month Iran revealed that terrorists killed four border guards and then fled into Pakistan, proving that the internationalization of the Balochi separatist crisis might have already begun. Just like with the Kurdish one on the other side of the country, the US and its regional allied conspirators are crossing their fingers that this leads to a deterioration of bilateral relations between Iran and its neighbor, which in the Pakistani case would complicate China’s One Belt One Road vision of connectivity between the two, while any prospective Afghani one could be used to justify a prolonged American military presence in the occupied country after the resolution of the Taliban War.

Daesh And Sectarian Drama

Not to be forgotten, the world’s most notorious terrorist group has long had their sights set on Iran, with their foreign backers eager to use the nominally “Sunni” organization to aggravate the sectarian proxy war with the Shiite-majority Islamic Republic. Daesh has yet to strike Iran, but they were accused of plotting one of the country’s largest-ever terrorist attacks late last month that would have seen them bombing around 50 places in and around Tehran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) thankfully foiled the attack before it could be carried out, but Iran still remains one of the group’s most sought-after targets, especially if one accepts the thesis that American and Saudi intelligence agents still hold partial influence over some of the group’s members. Washington and Riyadh are dedicated to undermining Tehran as much as they can, and a large-scale terrorist bombing campaign in the capital would have a tremendous effect in producing panic and making some segments of society susceptible to hostile suggestions that the government “didn’t’ do enough” to protect them or that the state’s response is “heavy-handed” and “dictatorial” (e.g. if they enforce curfews, deploy the IRGC/troops in the streets in response, and/or raid terrorist safe houses in Sunni-inhabited areas of the country).

Prognosticating the most predictable chain of events that could happen in the tragic event that this scenario becomes actualized one day, it’s foreseeable that Iran might launch highly publicized attacks against Daesh in Syria and/or Iraq, which would have near-equal symbolic and substantial value in exacting revenge for what happened. Unfortunately, Iran’s self-defensive actions would instantly be exploited by the US and its Saudi-Qatari allies in triggering an amplified information campaign alleging that Tehran was carrying out a “sectarian attack”. Never mind that it’s highly doubtful that Iran would ever actually do such a thing as militantly foster sectarian hatred, but the social effect of such disinformation would be to aggravate the regional sectarianism that Saudi Arabia has been furiously promoting over the past decade with the intent of producing an indigenous militant reaction inside of Iran itself. Little known among most casual observers is that some of Iran’s borderland minorities are Sunni, and while hitherto unreceptive to the Saudis’ sectarian rhetoric and mostly content with the equality that they enjoy within Iran, a few of them are vulnerable to believing Riyadh’s lie that Tehran is going on a retributive killing spree against Sunnis.

The groups that the Saudis would specifically be targeting with this weaponized disinformation are the Kurds, Balochis, and Arabs in Kurdistan, Sistan and Baluchistan, and Khuzstan Provinces, respectively. Most of these aforementioned minority categories are Sunni, and all three of them have a history of anti-government rebellion, with the first two actively engaged in such activities at the moment. The Arabs were previously reached out to by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War (the First Gulf War) and it’s common sense that the Saudis and Qataris have been trying to interact with this demographic for years already, but neither were successful in fomenting significant enough unrest that it truly destabilized the Islamic Republic. Interestingly, Iran’s foreign foes have had a much higher degree of success in doing so with the Kurds and now the Balochis, though the strategic risk can’t be ignored that a major Daesh terrorist attack or series thereof within the country (and the consequent weaponized disinformation that it produces) could push members of this group past the tipping point and inspire them to pick up arms alongside their fellow peripheral militants.

Cooking Up A Color Revolution

The US’ most commonly resorted-to method of regime change in recent years, the Color Revolution, is of course also part and parcel of the plan that it and the Saudis have to prompt an Iranian pullback from Syria. Even though the 2009 “Green Revolution” abysmally failed, the lessons learned from this test run were used to perfect the “Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions that were unleashed two years later, and they were also applied in modifying the future strategies that would once again be used against Iran, too.

Right now it’s unclear to what extent the population is susceptible to a “Green Revolution 2.0”, though it’s safe to say that the youth – as always – are the group most likely to be influenced to partake in this operation. Iran has a profoundly large youth bulge with around 60% of its population being under the age of 30, so there are more than ample enough recruits for the US’ plans when it finally decides to launch a rebranded version of them. Another thing to add is that this demographic appears to overwhelmingly tilt towards the “moderates”, which also adds another layer of intrigue that the US will probably seek to utilize in inflaming Iran’s inter-elite split between this group and the “conservatives”.

Though some voices have confidently asserted that a Color Revolution could never break out in Iran again, such arrogant statements absolutely dismiss the factual evidence that the US and its allies are actively preparing to repeat this scenario in the future, whether or not it ultimately succeeds. As the most indisputable confirmation that this is the case, one needs to look no further than the streets of Paris last week. The largest-ever “Free Iran” rally was held in the French capital and attracted over 100,000 people. This hostile gathering not only had the tacit support of the French state that allowed it (and whose Ambassador was angrily summoned by Tehran in response), but also the direct encouragement of a Saudi prince who spoke at the event. Perhaps most chillingly, though, was the participation of the “National Council of Resistance of Iran”, an umbrella group of anti-government movements that even includes the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (popularly known by its MEK abbreviation), which was previously on the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organization’s until it was ‘delisted’ in 2012. Seen by many as the most dangerous terrorist group to ever operate within Iran, the MEK has links to the US and Saudi Arabia, and it’s very likely that they’ll play some form of vanguard urban terrorist role in setting off a “Green Revolution 2.0” inside Iran whenever its foreign state sponsors decide that the time is ripe to do so.

Concluding Thoughts

The three interlinked destabilizations enumerated above have the potential to combine in such a way as to generate a serious multidimensional crisis in Iran. At the moment, only the Kurdish Crisis has been visibly activated, though the Baloch Insurgency seems to be gaining ground in recent years. It’s thus most accurate to state that the strategy of externally influenced peripheral destabilization inside of Iran’s borderland provinces is the first step of the three to ‘go live’, and even so, it’s still in its opening stages. Had the Daesh bombings not been proactively dealt with, then the sudden introduction of the second step of sectarian violence could have realistically catalyzed the peripheral conflicts and possibly sped up the implementation of the third step, another Color Revolution or a “Green Revolution 2.0”.

Looking back at the events of the past month and seeing evidence that all three steps are vigorously being promoted in one way or another (the Kurdish insurgent invasion, the attempted Daesh bombings, and the largest-ever anti-Tehran Color Revolution rally in Paris), it should be self-evident to all Iranian decision makers and strategists that their country is explicitly being targeted for Hybrid Warfare and that precautionary defensive actions need to be taken as soon as possible. Just as the US expects, this could realistically take the form of part or all of the IRGC’s redeployment from Syria (and possibly also Iraq) back to the Iranian home front where they’d be much more urgently needed in assisting with internal (border and urban) security. Although ill-intentioned rumors (mostly created by Tehran’s adversaries) have abounded for a while now that Iran will pull some of its troops out from Syria, the recent events expounded upon earlier in this article give credence to the idea that Tehran might actually have a fairly legitimate reason for finally doing so in preemptively defending its own security, even if this means that it’s falling into the US-Saudi trap that was created to induce this very decision. Although there is no evidence that Iran has pulled back its forces from Syria, it could very well be contemplating such a move in the face of what its leadership might consider to be the much more urgent threats afflicting the homeland.

The most ironic aspect of this plot, though, is that it occurs at the exact same time that the US is considering to officially cooperate with Russia in its anti-terrorist operation in Syria through the tentatively proposed “Joint Implementation Group”, though it can be inferred that this possible twist of fate wasn’t at all countenanced by American strategists when they conspired with the Saudis in devising this grand Iranian trap. Instead, it was the surprise Russian-Turkish détente that completely changed the geopolitical dynamics by influencing Ankara to belatedly declare that al-Nusra is a terrorist group and to publicly make outreaches to Syria (despite repeating its ‘face-saving’ refrain that “Assad must go”). This means that while Iran might draw down some of its on-the-ground forces to protect its homeland, Russia might correspondingly increase its own aerospace ones in the battlespace, though Moscow would still be unable to compensate for the strategic withdrawal of Tehran’s much-needed frontline forces unless it takes the very unlikely decision to deploy its own boots on the ground to augment the Syrian Arab Army.

Even without this happening, a recommitted Russian aerospace campaign with the political will of seeing the war out to its logical end could be more than enough to restore the military balance that would be temporarily offset by the partial withdrawal of some of Iran’s highly skilled special forces, though a robust combination of Syrian-Russian-Iranian interservice forces would be necessary to ultimately secure whatever gains are made and assist with the probable post-Daesh liberation campaign against the illegal YPG-occupied areas of northern Syria.

The recently released, previously classified report titled, “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001″ (.pdf), reveals that indeed long-time US ally, Saudi Arabia, had connections to the alleged hijackers who purportedly carried out the 9/11 attacks.

While the US would go on to invade Afghanistan and Iraq predicated on the 9/11 attacks, it should be noted that all of the alleged hijackers were either Saudis or Persian Gulf citizens, or connected to terrorist organizations supported by Persian Gulf states.

The Western media has attempted to downplay the impact of the document’s release, claiming that subsequent investigations found “many” of the allegations in the document “without basis” – even as the US and Saudi Arabia today openly arm and fund terrorists in Syria.

To Whose Benefit? 

Many mistakenly believe on one hand terrorism is simply an inevitable clash of civilizations between “Islam” and the West, while others maintain it is the predictable backlash to flawed or unjust Western foreign policy.

In reality, it is neither.

It is meticulously engineered violence used as a tool for achieving geopolitical objectives around the world – from overthrowing governments and justifying military interventions, to creating paralyzing fear and hysteria at home to garner support for a growing domestic police state and a large military footprint overseas.

In essence, it is a highly conductive medium through which modern day empire can spread.

This can clearly be seen through the use of terrorism today. Some 14 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and as memories begin to fade, the US finds itself partnered with Saudi Arabia once again, arming and funding terrorists to fight their proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and beyond, just as they did in the 1980s when they jointly created Al Qaeda to begin with.

As the pendulum of geopolitical necessity swings from needing heavily armed, fanatical proxy forces to fight abroad, to needing a pretext at home to initiate large-scale military interventions overseas, these terrorist organizations are characterized by Western politicians and the media in a similarly shifting manner. During the 1980s Al Qaeda was portrayed as “freedom fighters.” In 2001 when the United States sought to use full-scale military force to rearrange the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, Al Qaeda was transformed into a villain.

The 2001 terrorist attacks allowed the US to justify over a decade of global-spanning war that it otherwise would have been unable to wage.

The Hijackers Had Ties to Saudi Intelligence 

The 28 pages now declassified depicts a tangled web of connections between the Saudi government, Saudi intelligence agencies, the Bin Laden family, and the hijackers – most of whom were Saudi citizens themselves.

The report states:

While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government. There is information, primarily from FBI sources, that at least two of those individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers. 

The report also reveals that the suspected Saudi intelligence officers worked for companies that had ties to both the Saudi government, and Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden (spelled: Usama Bin Ladin throughout the report).

And not only did various Saudi intelligence officers have connections to the alleged hijackers, several are revealed to have known each other as well.

Mentioned also is Osama Bin Laden’s half-brother, Abdullah Bin Ladin, claimed to have worked for the Saudi Embassy in Washington D.C. as an “administration officer,” revealing once again the incestuous ties between the Bin Ladin family, the Saudi government, and through equity firm – the Carlyle Group – the Bush family and other political and business leaders in the United States.

The report also mentions that despite the many apparent links, and attempts by the FBI to investigate them further, many suspects were inexplicably able to “leave” the United States and return to Saudi Arabia.

The report also referred to “mosques” either directly funded by the Saudi government in which various aspects of terrorism were thought to be coordinated, or mosques in which associates of the hijackers met frequently or operated out of.

This illustrates precisely how the US-Saudi terror enterprise keeps its ranks full – through a global network of centers masquerading as mosques, protected by law enforcement and intelligence organizations linked to the West, allowing for both the recruitment and radicalization of terrorists, as well as the planning and financing of terrorism itself.

US Intelligence Community Before 9/11: Incompetence or Collusion? Or Both?  

The US and Saudi Arabia helped create Al Qaeda and for years used the organization to wage proxy war around the world. It’s actions on 9/11 then helped set the stage for a decade of war in which the US toppled governments, occupied nations, while conducting covert warfare against others, expanding US hegemony across the globe, and dividing and destroying nations allied to its rivals in Beijing and Moscow.

It is very clear that Saudi Arabia played a role in the 9/11 attacks, as well as in terrorism of all kinds around the world before and after the attacks.

Clearly the FBI and the CIA both were aware of Saudi Arabia’s role. It is also clear that efforts were made to protect valuable Saudi assets by spiriting them out of the country as dutiful agents attempted to do their jobs by investigating them further. Those who spirited Saudi agents and officials out of the country, protecting them from further investigation regarding their role in 9/11, are likely linked to those Americans who helped their Saudi counterparts organize and carry out the attacks.

And while some FBI and CIA agents attempted to do their job, one comment toward the end of the 28 pages reveals that perhaps agents were not as aware as they should have been regarding the nature of Al Qaeda and its relationship to Saudi Arabia.

The report quotes a former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge, saying:

Basically [redacted]. They were not a country identified by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. And the theme or the common modus operandi that we saw in San Diego was that if there were [redacted] there, their primary objective was to monitor dissidents in the interest of protecting the royal family. So they were not viewed as an inimical threat to national security.  

The agent’s conclusion is based entirely on the assumption that the State Department’s terrorist designations are meaningful and accurate. If such designations are not accurate, then the FBI would have neglected to fully investigate suspects who were indeed very much an inimical threat to national security.

Today, Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) are likewise portrayed as enemies of Saudi Arabia. This is despite clear evidence showing both terrorist organizations and their affiliates in Iraq and Syria, are armed and funded by, as well as working in the direct interests of Riyadh – as well as Washington. When terrorist attacks do unfold in Saudi Arabia, despite being portrayed as attacks aimed at Riyadh itself, they are often instead aimed at Shia’a targets throughout the country.

Shia’a in Saudi Arabia, unlike Al Qaeda and ISIS, do represent a threat to Riyadh – not predicated on fanatical extremism – but instead upon self-defense against the brutality and injustice of the Saudi political system which specifically targets Shia’a.

It appears that some agents, despite laboring under faulty assumptions, did attempt to do their jobs, while others appear to have been protecting suspects very likely tied to the 9/11 attacks, and possibly even tied to the attacks themselves. Together, through incompetence and collusion, the attacks unfolded, and the rest – as they say – is history.

Protecting Saudi Terrorism Then and Now 

While the Western media now claims that many of the declassified report’s allegations have been found to be “without basis,” the heavy redaction throughout the report leads one to believe that Saudi Arabia and the various tentacles of its security apparatus reaching into the United States are still being covered up by complicit American agents and interests.

Additionally, despite the very troubling implications of the report’s contents, it should be noted that in the aftermath of 9/11 the US, along with Europe, continued supplying Saudi Arabia with billions of dollars worth of military weapons while politically supporting Riyadh during its own brush with the “Arab Spring” in 2011. Today, despite evidence of Saudi Arabia’s arming and funding of designated terrorist organizations including Al Nusra, the US and Europe continue lending military and political support to Riyadh nonetheless.

Saudi Arabia didn’t victimize the United States on 9/11, nor trick Washington. Riyadh and Washington are partners in crime, at times in lockstep, at other times posing as adversaries when maximum plausible deniability is desired.

Despite attempts to claim Saudi Arabia is blameless in the 9/11 attacks, the hijackers were undoubtedly Saudis, inspired by indoctrination that originated in Saudi-funded networks, allegedly approached and assisted by Saudi intelligence agents, and representative of terrorist organizations Riyadh to this day still arms, funds, and uses to wage it and America’s proxy wars with.

The report is not really a revelation, but instead another piece of evidence that affirms the US and Saudi Arabia are collaborators in terrorism, not partners fighting it. Those who depend on either in a true fight against global terrorism, should be prepared for perpetual failure.

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

Democrats mock the term’s meaning. Exposed electoral rigging anointed Clinton party standard bearer honors – an unindicted war criminal/racketeer belonging in prison, not high office.

DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned on the convention’s eve – guilty of racketeering for stealing primary and caucuses to assure Clinton’s nomination – yet remaining unaccountable, staying on through the November elections as honorary chairwoman.

Had things been open, free and fair, Sanders would likely be Dem nominee, not Clinton. Despite flagrant fraud depriving him of the chance to face Trump in November, he shockingly continues supporting Clinton – responsible for back-stabbing him.

Asked if Sunday revelations changed his position, he replied “(n)o, no, no. We are going to do everything we can to protect working families in this country.”

“What a campaign is about is not about Hillary Clinton. It’s not about Donald Trump. It’s about the people of this country.” What rubbish from an exposed Judas – supporting what he campaigned against!

He called the most recklessly dangerous presidential candidate in US history a “far, far superior” one to Trump. “We’re going to focus on defeating the worst Republican candidate I’ve seen in a lifetime. We’ve got to elect Secretary Clinton.”

Conveniently he forgot the horrors of the Bush/Cheney co-presidency, their war on humanity after the 9/11 mother of all false flags, continuing throughout Obama’s tenure, virtually certain to escalate if Clinton succeeds him.

Trump justifiably blasted Sanders, calling him “weak…pathetic…Sorry folks, but Bernie Sanders is exhausted, just can’t go on anymore. He is trying to dismiss the new e-mails and DNC disrespect. SAD!”

His political revolution was phony all along – in name only, not real. New York Times Clinton cheerleading throughout the campaign tried downplaying flagrant DNC criminal fraud, saying:

It “threaten(s) to undermine the delicate healing process that followed the contentious fight between” Sanders and Clinton – more a tempest in a teapot as things turned out.

The Times disgracefully suggested “Russia (perhaps) had a hand in the leaks that helped bring down the head of an American political party” – despite clear evidence showing otherwise.

It quickly changed the subject to quoting officials expressing support for a legally challenged woman unfit for any public office, unaccountable despite her high crimes too serious to ignore.

Circus theatrics without substance will unfold over the next four days, the usual array of speakers pontificating plenty, saying nothing, Dems hoping to make voters forget about electoral rigging giving Clinton the nomination she didn’t earn.

Hail to the thief if more of the same hands her the nation’s highest office in November. America’s deplorable state continues reaching for new lows.

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.

The U.S. has no desire to invade Bangladesh, or take over the country in the name of assisting Bangladesh in fighting terrorism, said U.S. Ambassador Marcia Bernicat on Wednesday. Bangladesh has been a key recruiting ground for Afghanistan fighters during the 1980s and Al-Qaeda linked networks continue to play a role in regional tensions with geopolitical implications.

Ambassador Marcia Bernicat was speaking at a meeting at the American Chamber of Commerce at its office in Dhaka. Her statement was published by the U.S. embassy. The statement quotes Ambassador Bernicat as saying:

“I have been sad to see reports lately of some people who are saying that U.S. offers to provide counter-terrorism assistance are either our effort to invade Bangladesh, or take over Bangladesh, or control Bangladesh in some way, or even to drag you onto a battlefield. … We have no such desire to occupy this country in any way.  I just want to assure you that the types of assistance we provide to you are those of a partner; those of a partner who unfortunately has been fighting terrorism for a long time. … And again, more importantly, we must work on this challenge jointly.  No country today can fight terrorism alone because the terrorists don’t operate within borders.  We are looking to Bangladesh as a partner in this effort. … Our country’s assistance to Bangladesh aims to help the country ride out the crisis.  Bangladesh should create an example that defies the ideology of these groups: Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country, which has adopted a market economy, a great democracy, and you have women in key leadership positions and a woman as head of the government.  You are the very example they wish to crush.”

The Ambassador was thanking the Hasina-government for its efforts to fight terrorism and noted that Bangladesh also needs to conduct a rigorous, open and thorough investigation of these attacks that coordinates closely with the international partners. Bernicat added:

“And there needs to be an openness to accept the findings of the investigations wherever – and to whomever – they lead.  Only this level of commitment will counter the threat in Bangladesh.”

Bangladesh was one of the main regional contributors to “mujahedeen” during the U.S., Saudi, Pakistani and Bangladeshi intelligence linked fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan via the Al-Qaeda network. One of the products of this period, Harukat-ul-Jihad-al-Islam (HuJI) is active until this day. In 2012 a retired Bangladeshi military intelligence officer informed nsnbc that HuJI still functions as an instrument of Bangladeshi and U.S. intelligence.

The informant, whose name and credentials are known to nsnbc stressed that HuJI, among others, is allowed to infiltrate refugee camps for internally displaced Bangladeshi Rohigya as well as Rohingya refugee camps in neighboring Myanmar’s Rakhine State to destabilize Myanmar and Rakhine State in general. Bangladesh and Myanmar have fought several wars, initiated by Bangladesh, over Rakhine State. The region is the most rich region in terms of natural gas and other resources in the greater Mekong region.

Rivalling energy-security interests over Myanmar’s gas resources, between Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, India, as well as U.S. and British cartels were fueling the use of HuJI as a geopolitical instrument. The transition to a generally more U.S.-leaning government in Myanmar may, as Ambassador Bernicat’s statement may suggest, indicate a change in U.S. and possibly Bangladeshi policy with regard to the use of HuJI and other Islamist terrorist organizations and insurgencies in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Historians still debate whether President John F. Kennedy would have withdrawn U.S. troops from Vietnam had he lived to win re-election in 1964. Since President Barack Obama recently announced his intention to keep at least 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through the end of his presidency, the only debate will be over why he never withdrew but chose instead to bequeath an unwinnable war — the longest in U.S. history — to his successor.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan will officially pass the 15-year mark in a few months. But like Vietnam, where the United States began aiding French colonial forces in the late 1940s, Afghanistan has been the target of Washington’s war-making for more than three-and-a-half decades.

On July 3, 1979, President Carter first authorized the secret provision of aid to armed opponents of the leftist regime in Kabul. A senior Pentagon official advocated the aid to “suck the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire.”

When Moscow took the bait and sent troops that December to support the Afghan government against a growing rural insurgency, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski gleefully wrote President Carter, “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.”

Call it blowback, or just an irony of history, but Afghanistan has turned instead into America’s second Vietnam War. The Soviets finally had the good sense to pull out after being bloodied for a decade. The Obama administration envisions staying there indefinitely. Under the Bilateral Security Agreement that President Obama got Kabul to sign in 2014, U.S. troops may remain in Afghanistan “until the end of 2024 and beyond.”

President Obama explicitly rejected any analogy to Vietnam in a speech nearly seven years ago. But like Vietnam, our ongoing conflict in Afghanistan has become a hopeless quagmire, marked by official lies, atrocities, pervasive corruption and poorly led government forces who survive in the field thanks mainly to U.S. bombing. Like Vietnam, Afghanistan represents a staggering waste of lives (more than 300,000 direct casualties through early 2015) and resources (more than two trillion dollars).

Even more than Vietnam, it is a conflict for which no one in Washington bothers to offer any strategic rationale. The best that President Obama could come up with in his July 6 statement on Afghanistan, was “I strongly believe that it is in our national security interest — especially after all the blood and treasure we’ve invested in Afghanistan over the years — that we give our Afghan partners the very best opportunity to succeed.”

The same logic is what keeps gamblers coming back to Sheldon Adelson’s casinos year after year to lose more money.

‘Precarious’ or Unwinnable?

In Vietnam, the United States couldn’t win with more than half a million troops. In Afghanistan, the United States couldn’t beat the Taliban with 100,000 troops. Obama doesn’t really think he can win with a mere 8,400 troops — especially with the Taliban making steady gains.

“The security situation remains precarious,” he admitted. “Even as they improve, Afghan security forces are still not as strong as they need to be. The Taliban remains a threat. They’ve gained ground in some cases.”

As in Vietnam, however, ambitious military officers and armchair civilian warriors claim confidently that victory requires just a modest degree of escalation. Sounding just like Vietnam-era hawks, Retired Gen. David Petraeus and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings — previously a cheerleader for invading Iraq — accused the administration of making “U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan operate with one hand tied behind their backs.” To win the war, they declared, “We should unleash our airpower in support of our Afghan partners.”

In Indochina, of course, all of our furious bombing, which unleashed three times the tonnage dropped in World War II, only hardened enemy resistance. Recent studiesconfirm that the bombing was ineffective and drove civilians into the arms of the Viet Cong, just as U.S. bombs, drones and night raids build support for the Taliban.

President Richard Nixon knew it at the time, though he insisted publicly that American bombing was “very, very effective.” As he wrote despairingly in a note to Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, “We have had 10 years of total control of the air in Laos and V.Nam. The result = Zilch. There is something wrong with the strategy or the Air Force.”

Massive bombing could not make up for the unwillingness of South Vietnamese troops to risk their lives for corrupt leaders. As in Vietnam, which became known as the “dirty war,” Afghan officials have pocketed tens of billions of dollars earmarked for infrastructure and institution building. They also encourage rampant trafficking in opium and heroin, as do the Taliban.

The Taliban, however, use their profits to finance their insurgency, rather than siphoning them off to Dubai, where the families of leading Afghan officials maintain fat bank accounts and luxury villas.

Much of Afghanistan’s army consists of “ghost” soldiers and officers, who draw pay that enriches corrupt Army leaders. In some provinces, nearly half of all police are ghost employees as well.

Meanwhile, real soldiers are busy selling tens of thousands of U.S. weapons to the Taliban. Others fire their weapons at no one in particular so they can sell copper ammunition casings on the black market.

Pakistani Bases

Highly motivated Taliban forces are particularly tough to beat because they get refreshed and resupplied from bases in Pakistan, where their leaders reside. One of the key lessons of the Vietnam War was the near impossibility of defeating a determined insurgency that enjoys neighboring sanctuaries.

In Vietnam, at least, U.S. leaders pursued negotiations with the enemy to end the conflict. In Afghanistan, no one is sitting at the peace table, and the U.S. drone strike that killed Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in May was hardly a welcoming invitation from Washington.

Pakistan blames Afghanistan for the failure of the peace process to go anywhere. A spokeswoman for the Pakistani government cited the “absence of a national consensus in support of the reconciliation process,” as well as the “worsening security situation, corruption and other administrative problems.”

The Taliban and their unyielding allies are to blame as well. In June, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of one militant Islamist faction, demanded that the Kabul government send all foreign troops home and disband itself. Ironically, he was America’s (and Pakistan’s) primary ally during the war against the Soviet Union, despite (or because of) his reputation for pathological brutality and leadership of Afghanistan’s drug trade. So much for grateful allies.

So why doesn’t Obama just get out? That worked in Vietnam, which Washington today is courting as an ally. But like many CEOs today, Presidents think far more about the immediate future than about outcomes long after they leave office.

Again, Vietnam is instructive. President Lyndon Johnson heard plenty of warnings that the war was unwinnable, but remembered all too well how Republicans clobbered the Truman administration after the “fall” of China. As LBJ told Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in late 1963, “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.”

Similarly, President Nixon — who built his career in Congress by playing the anti-communist card to the hilt — said he was not going to be “the first President of the United States to lose a war.”

President Obama knows full well that the Republican attack machine will go after him and other Democrats if he “loses” Afghanistan or Iraq, despite public ambivalence about both wars. So his calculated decision to keep fighting, at minimal cost and without any real hope of winning, makes political sense.

But his policy is also cowardly and immoral. President Obama — and his current secretary of state — should recall the testimony of former Navy Lt. John Kerry before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.

Citing President Nixon’s vow not to be the first president to “lose a war,” Kerry asked, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international affairs, including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International Drug Traffic (Stanford University Press, 2012). Some of his previous articles for Consortiumnews were “Risky Blowback from Russian Sanctions”; “Neocons Want Regime Change in Iran”; “Saudi Cash Wins France’s Favor”; “The Saudis’ Hurt Feelings”; “Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Bluster”; “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess”; and “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.” 

China is fuming. It has obviously had enough, it is reaching the limit. For decades it tried to appease the West, to play by international laws, to be a good and responsible member of the international community. And for decades it never interfered in the internal affairs of other countries, it sponsored no coups and attacked no foreign lands.

Even its counter-propaganda has been measured, polite and mild.

All this has gained China no admiration, not even respect!

It is being constantly antagonized, provoked and encircled both militarily and ideologically. Not far from its territory are deadly US military bases (Futenma and Kadena) located on Okinawa, there are enormous bases on the Korean Peninsula and increasing US military presence in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines. There are constant exercises and naval maneuvers near its shores and just recently, a decision by South Korea (ROK), to allow the US to deploy an advanced missile defense system (THAAD) in Seongju County.

In Nagasaki, my friend, an Australian historian Geoffrey Gunn commented on the situation:

“Well, the fact of the matter is that China is indignant at this encirclement. China is indignant that Washington backs Japan, that Washington is ready to support Japan’s non-negotiation policy over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. So we see, in this situation, a clearly indignant China, and Japan that is taking a basically aggressive position in relation to so-called territorial integrity. So Pacific Asia is increasingly becoming more belligerent, more conflict-prone East Asia.”

The propaganda against China in both Europe and North America is reaching a crescendo. The more socialist (Chinese way) it is once again becoming, and the closer its ties with Russia become, the more powerful the ideological attacks are from Western governments and mainstream media.

The latest decision (over the South China Sea dispute) of the ‘kangaroo’ arbitration court in The Hague appears to be the last drop.

The Chinese Dragon has risen in anger. Tired of receiving punches, mighty and strong, it has sent a strong message to the West: China is an enormous and peaceful country. But if threatened, if attacked, this time the country will be firm and determined. It will defend itself and its interests.

*

Just around the time when the court in The Hague was getting ready to rule, I was driving south from the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, straight towards the border with China.

Flowing below us was the mighty River Ussuri, which separates two great nations, China and Russia. The modern bridge we were driving on was brand new; it had not even made it onto Google Maps, yet. Now it connects the Russian mainland with the Big Ussuri Island, a substantial land mass hugged from one side by the Amur and from the other by the Ussuri rivers.

In the past, this area used to suffer from great tensions and lived through several conflicts. The island was clearly a ‘disputed territory’, a ‘no go’ area, a military zone.

Still remembering the past, I came armed with my passport and several press cards, but my driver, Nikolai, was poking fun at my precautions.

“It is absolutely peaceful and quiet here now,” he said. “Now Russia and China are great friends and allies. Look there, on the shore, people are just parking their cars and having picnic.”

True, but all around I saw the remnants of the past – abandoned bunkers, as well as military ghost towns and constant warning signs announcing that we are entering a restricted border area. Not far away, I spotted a tall Chinese pagoda. We were really at the frontier.

A man was riding his horse, and close to the road, I spotted a collective farm.

I still couldn’t believe that I was here, in this twilight zone. It all felt like watching an old film by Andrei Tarkovski.

But for the local people, all is ‘quite and normal’, now. Chinese and Russian people are mingling, getting to know and understand each other; tourists and bargain hunters travel by ferries, buses and airplanes, crossing the border in great numbers. The Vladivostok and Khabarovsk museums, concert halls and shopping centers are now overflowing with curious Chinese visitors.

The conflict is over. Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao met in 2004, both leaders harboring clear and good intentions. Negotiations were complex but both sides overcame the obstacles. They signed an addendum to the Agreement on the Russian-Chinese state border, and all difficult disputes were resolved, rapidly.

Now China is investing tens of billions of dollars in the flourishing Russian Far East. Great infrastructural projects are materializing. A Solid friendship has been forged. The anti-imperialist alliance is in place. Both countries – China and Russia – are on the rise; both are full of optimism and hopes for the future.

‘It can be done’, I am thinking, after speaking to several local people who express their admiration for neighboring China. ‘It definitely can be done, if there is a strong will!’

*

A few thousand kilometers south, I drove through the horrific slums encircling Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.

Like Indonesia, the Philippines is clearly a ‘failed’ state, but both countries are known to be staunch allies of the West and therefore, their elites are continuously reaping rewards for their submissiveness and servility. To provoke and to antagonize China is one of the most secure ways to prove allegiance to Washington and to the European capitals.

As early as in 2012, I first decided to write about the ‘confrontation’ over the Spratly Islands for the People’s Daily (one of the most important newspapers in China and the official publication of the Communist Party). I spoke to several of my friends – leading Filipino academics. One of them, Roland G. Simbulan, Senior Fellow and Professor in Development Studies and Public Management at the University of the Philippines, spoke to me about the ‘dispute’, as we were driving through Metro Manila, at the time searching for the remnants of the horrid US colonial rule over the archipelago, for my documentary film:

“Frankly speaking, those Spratly Islands are not so significant to us. What’s happening is that our political elites are clearly encouraged by the US to provoke China, and there is also the big influence of the US military on our armed forces. I would say that the Philippine military is very vulnerable to such type of ‘encouragement’. So the US is constantly nurturing those confrontational attitudes. But to continue with this type of approach could be disastrous for our country. Essentially we are very close to China, geographically and otherwise.”

“China has a stronger claim than Philippines,” explained Professor Eduardo C. Tadem, Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Philippines (UP), two years later, in his home:

“China controlled the Spratly Islands before we even knew anything about them. The only claim we have is their proximity, and frankly, that is not a particularly strong claim.”

Both Eduard Tadem and his wife Teresa S. Encarnation Tadem (Professor at the Department of Political Science College of Science and Philosophy at University of the Philippines and also the former head of ‘Third World Studies’ at UP), agree that the West is continuously provoking China while trying to ensure that the natural resources of the Spratly Islands goes to the weakest players:

“We are totally dependent on foreign companies for the exploitation of our natural resources. The Philippines only gets a share from what is extracted. The international companies hold all the major contracts. Foreign multi-nationals would greatly profit from the natural resources of the China Sea, if a weak and dependent country like this one were to be put in charge of them.”

*

In China, passions exploded right in July 2016, right after the final decision came from The Hague. As reported by Reuters on 18^th July 2016:

“China has refused to recognise the ruling by an arbitration court in The Hague that invalidated its vast territorial claims in the South China Sea and did not take part in the proceedings brought by the Philippines.

It has reacted angrily to calls by Western countries and Japan for the decision to be adhered to.

China has repeatedly blamed the United States for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually.

China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam all have rival claims, of which China’s is the largest.”

A researcher of US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences made this correct observation: “We can see that Washington, which has never ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, encouraged and supported Manila to initiate the arbitration case from the very beginning.”

Many observers, in Beijing and abroad, pointed out that the ruling was clearly political, and that out of five, four judges were citizens of the EU, while one (the chairman) was Ghanaian but also a long-term resident of Europe.

The Chinese response was quick and determined. The official newspaper, “China Daily”, declared on July 15^th: “Beijing said on Thursday that it will respond resolutely if any party seeks to use the ruling in the unilaterally initiated arbitration on the South China Sea to harm China’s interests.”

*

The position of China is clear: it is bound by several bilateral agreements with its neighbors, and it is willing to negotiate further. But not through the West and its institutions that are hostile towards China and towards all countries that are not ready to accept Western dictates.

During a recent meeting in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc met China’s Premier Li Keqiang and declared that “Vietnam stands ready to push for forward bilateral negotiations and properly manage differences with China, in order to contribute to regional peace and stability.” Such approach is welcomed and encouraged by Beijing.

Even in Manila, there are countless voices of reason emerging, calling for further and immediate bilateral negotiations with China.

*

To antagonize China is not only wrong; it is dangerous and shortsighted. Beijing has been backing up and compromising too long, for many decades. It will not any longer. Chinese people demand fairness. The Philippines should realize that the West is using their country as a proxy, for its imperialist goals.

To involve Western courts in internal Asian disputes, as is being done by the Philippines, will only aggravate the situation. To shoot at Chinese fishing vessels in the disputed waters (as was recently done by the Indonesian navy) can only escalate tensions (Indonesia already has a horrid historic track record in relation to China – banning the Chinese language, culture and even names, for decades, after the bloody Western-backed coup of 1965).

For the time being, China will be applying a ‘wait and see’ strategy. Once again, it will use its diplomacy, re-launching bilateral negotiations with the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries.

But if the West refuses to back up, and if some of the Southeast Asian countries continue to act as proxies for the West, Beijing would most likely use one of the tougher options. One would be setting up an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea. Another would be direct military escalation – greater naval and air force presence in the area.

And what is the position of the world? No matter what the Western propaganda is trumpeting, only a handful countries, mainly the US and its closest allies (5 at the time this essay is being written), have publicly supported the Philippines and the Ruling coming from The Hague. Over 70 nations support China and its belief that disputes should be resolved through negotiations and not arbitration. The rest of the world has remained ‘neutral’.

It is possible to negotiate a good deal with China. But one has to approach Chinese Dragon as a friend, never as a foe. And the hand of peace has to be honestly extended. It should never be hiding the sword of Western imperialism behind the back!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.  Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

Make America Safe Again! 

Make America Work Again! 

Make America First Again!

These were the official themes of Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention. From the podium the newly anointed GOP standard-bearer focused on law and order, on boosting the economy, on an American foreign policy based on limiting foreign entanglements, and on further restricting immigration. The dangers of immigration were raised over and over again. In his speech Thursday night Trump even implied that illegal immigrants were criminals responsible for harming many Americans.

But for many of Trump’s supporters reached by WhoWhatWhy outside the convention in Cleveland, as well as those protesting against him, riling up white fears of minority encroachment did not need to be so subtle. They were clear that race is the biggest issue in this campaign.

No Problems Being Called Racist

Lawrence, a student in his 20s from Mississippi who requested not to have his last name printed, described himself as a white nationalist, and said he had no problem with being called racist. He feels that many Trump supporters are just hiding their true feelings when they talk about immigration.

“They think that the only way you can be racist is by screaming the N-word at somebody,” he told WhoWhatWhy.

Lawrence felt that most of the Trump supporters were racists as well, but said “I don’t think that they realize it yet.”

Lawrence first got interested in Trump’s campaign through discussions with friends on the online chat-room 8chan. He became excited when he saw Trump “targeting specific groups and not pandering” — specifically regarding his views on Mexicans and Muslims.

He sees America as a “WASP nation,” founded by Europeans, which would be better off not mixing with blacks or Latinos. He feels that the country’s “cultural heritage” is important enough to enforce massive deportations and even violence by the government, since integration between the races only leads to strife anyway.

Trump, to him, is a revelation — a candidate who actively advocates for the white population. And he is not alone.

“I just believe very passionately in the preservation of Western Civilization,” Jeff Jones, a 48-year-old worker for a defense-contractor supply chain from Syracuse, NY, told WhoWhatWhy, after he attended the Citizens for Trump America First rally on Monday. “If someone was to interpret that as some form of racism on my part, then so be it.”

Jones says that he has not personally been affected by illegal immigration in his own life, but is concerned about how it will affect the future.

“I grew up in a traditional America,” he says, and he is unnerved by “these changes that are happening so fast.”

“We have our own culture. We’d like to keep it.”

Fighting Back Against Discrimination and Racism

On Wednesday morning, immigration advocates held a “Wall Off Trump” rally just outside the convention. They marched from the Cleveland public square to the Quicken Loans Arena, where they held up a large banner emblazoned with bricks, yelling chants against the Republican nominee in both English and Spanish.

José Landaverde, 49, an Anglican priest from Quincy, IL, and 27 other activists walked for 37 days to attend the rally and other Trump protests in Cleveland. He came “to send a message to Donald Trump that we will no longer tolerate his message of discrimination and racism, and also his position against our immigrant communities.”

“I’m angry. I’m pissed,” said Sheridan Aguirre, 22, the communications coordinator for United We Dream, an immigrant activist organization that joined the rally’s organizers, the “LatinX” group Mijente, in protesting at the RNC. “Hearing all this foul language, all this hate, every day. Every time that I log on to Facebook or Twitter, I’m seeing people who are getting killed, who are getting murdered, who are being deported, and all of it’s being agitated by this hateful language, by all these ideas of white supremacy, all these ideas that encourage people to go out and marginalize people like me.”

Aguirre is himself an undocumented immigrant — he was brought to Texas by his mother when he was just a year old and has lived there ever since. He has five younger siblings, who, by virtue of being born in America, are American citizens, and therefore only worried about their parents and their brother being deported, not themselves.

Aguirre is not ashamed of his immigrant status. He works as an activist, and says that his fear of personal repercussions is “long gone. When people are aware that they have power and that we’re here to stay, that does a lot to change our perspective on our role here.”

Coded Language

Many commentators have expressed the idea that racial antagonism is central to the Trump campaign’s success. And while some have questioned this characterization, the same view was echoed by many of the Trump supporters reached by WhoWhatWhy.

Many of the Trump supporters were somewhat more subtle about their feelings about race, but still focused on immigration as a major concern.

“‘Racist’ is a crock of crap,” said Brian Bokuniewicz, 52, a designer at Ford from Dearborn Heights, MI, who also attended the America First rally. He felt that Trump’s words were being misconstrued by the media to make him seem racist instead of focusing on security. “The immigration thing — you know that’s a bunch of crap. They’re just twisting it.”

Bokuniewicz nevertheless repeated far-fetched claims about Barack Obama usually considered racially charged: that his Hawaii birth certificate is a lie and he was not born in the United States, that he is secretly a Muslim, that at the US-Mexican border “they’re landing planes, they’re bringing them off, they’re taking them and throwing them in buses, and then they’re going out to all these bus depots and they’re giving them free rides.”

“[Trump] just wants to protect us,” Bokuniewicz told WhoWhatWhy.

When it comes to attitudes about immigration, the divide between these Trump supporters and his most fervent detractors could not be deeper or wider.

“I’m here because I live in a neighborhood in Portland, Maine, that has a lot of Muslim refugees, and my wife works closely with a lot of Muslim refugees,” said Chris Thompson, a 44-year-old writer attending Monday’s Stop Trump rally. “And these are people I see every day and people I have dinner with. The whole idea that they should be under this cloud of suspicion just disgusts me.”

Thompson was one of the few protesters at that rally who saw voting for Hillary Clinton as a necessary action in the face of Donald Trump’s candidacy. He told WhoWhatWhythat although he usually ignores electoral politics, and considered Clinton “corporate,” the Trump campaign was different.

“My daughter goes to a grade school in Portland where 40-50% of the students are Muslim,” Thompson told WhoWhatWhy. “And while those kids were walking downtown one day, this grown man comes up to them and starts yelling in the Muslim kids’ faces, ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’”

“People need to understand that the only way you can stop something like this is to stop it on the early side.”

Some Trump supporters in Cleveland tiptoed around the importance of race in their view of the candidate.

Trump campaign gear for sale at the 2016 Republican National Convention
Photo credit: Jon Hecht / WhoWhatWhy

A Fort Wayne, Indiana, man wearing a Trump t-shirt he got for volunteering for the Trump campaign cited overregulation of his small business as the main reason for supporting Trump. But he also complained that the country was “losing a common language,” and talked about how areas in Indiana had changed quickly to having majority Hispanic populations.

He also brought up security concerns from letting Muslims into the country.

Those sentiments alarm Muslims in Cleveland. The Stop Trump rally on the first day of the convention featured a large group from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights and legal advocacy for Muslim-Americans. They came to the rally to make clear their opposition to Trump’s rhetoric blaming Muslims for America’s problems.

“The Republicans have been very exclusive. They really have shunned Islam and Muslims,” said Isam Zaeim, a board member for CAIR in Cleveland. He said the Democrats have been slightly better, but “still have been too quiet against what has been happening in our country.”

“I expect them to treat everybody equally. American Muslims are an important part of the tapestry of the nation and we should not be treated as second or third class citizens,” Zaiem told WhoWhatWhy.

“We shouldn’t feel like we are being attacked on a daily basis. That is not American.”

How much did the military-security complex pay the Atlantic Council to publish this sales pitch to Poland to load up on US weapons systems?  (see image below)

The sales pitch was written by arms salesmen Richard Shirreff, a partner at Strategia Worldwide Ltd., and Maciej Olex-Szczytowski, a “business adviser specializing in defense.”

The sales pitch is titled “Arming For Deterrence.”  The Kremlin is unpredictable, say the arms salesmen, and could at any moment decide to attack Poland. However the Russian regime “respects a show of force” and would back down if Poland has a sufficient inventory of US weapons.

The sales pitch encourages Poland to take many aggressive and dangerous steps toward Russia, such as targeting Russia cities and facilities including RT.  But before provoking the Bear like this, Poland needs “to join the tactical nuclear capability scheme within NATO, so enabling its F-16s to be carriers of tactical nuclear ordnance.”

Poland also needs to be able to strike deep inside Russia and for this needs to purchase American long-range JASSM air-launched cruise missiles, the Navy Strike missile coastal missiles, and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.

Poland also needs “offensive cyber operations”  and “more tandem-warhead Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs) capable of penetrating reactive armor, and also anti-aircraft (including anti-helicopter) and anti-UAV missiles. “

The bill for this deterrence against non-existent “Russian aggression” comes to “some US $26 billion” on top of planned expenditures of  US $34 billion.  “Poland should move forward expeditiously with procurements,” say the arms salesmen or risk being attacked by superior Russian forces.

The zionist neocons get away with their warmongering because it is profitable for the US military/security complex.  Whereas the crazed neocons want real war, the military/security complex only wants the propaganda threat of war.  The numerous military/foreign policy think tanks funded by the military/security complex provide the propaganda and made-up threat.  This is a dangerous game, because the Russians see a real threat in the hostility that is directed at them.

The anti-Russian propaganda is universal and includes the Olympic Games.  Washington wants Russia excluded based on the allegation that only Russians take performance-enhancing substances.  What extraordinary nonsense.  I have a relative who travels widely to test athletes of every sport, even golf, for the use of performance-enhancing substances.  There are many non-Russian athletes who have histories of using performance-enhancing substances.

It is not the Russians who have corrupted “clean sports.”  It is the money that the corrupt Americans have poured into sports.  To be a champion, to win the Masters at Augusta National, to win a gold medal means to be a multi-millionaire.  Sports that people once played for enjoyment are now a lucrative profession.

Money corrupts everything, and it is capitalism that turns everything into a commodity that is bought and sold.  In capitalist regimes everything is for sale: honor, integrity, justice, truth. Everything is reduced to the filthy lucre.

The response of the Malaysian government authorities to the civil suits filed by the US Department of Justice to seize more than US$ 1 billion (RM 4.02 billion) in assets allegedly linked to 1MDB has been a huge disappointment.   Faced with suits that allege massive embezzlement of funds and one of the worst  money laundering scams in history, Cabinet Ministers and the Attorney-General are determined to absolve “ Malaysian Official 1” of any wrongdoing. They are obsessed with preserving, protecting and perpetuating the Prime Minister’s position whatever the costs and consequences.

It is not just the US Attorney-General that has gone public on this shameful attempt to launder perhaps US 3.5 billion (RM 14.07 billion) from a state investment company established ostensibly for the people’s benefit.  Singapore authorities have also seized assets worth S$ 240 million (RM 717.45 million) in an investigation of 1MDB related fund flows for possible money-laundering.  Switzerland is another international financial hub that has begun to take action. 1MDB’s activities between 2009 and 2013 have now been exposed as utterly fraudulent on a global scale.

The government should face up to this reality. As has been proposed by a number of groups and individuals in the last few days, it should set up an independent tribunal comprising men and women of integrity and credibility which will once and for all establish the whole truth about 1MDB and its activities and recommend appropriate action against the wrongdoers. Apart from individuals with legal expertise, the tribunal should also have members with in-depth knowledge of the intricacies of money-laundering and money flows in today’s world. It should consist of both Malaysians and non-Malaysians. Cooperation with relevant agencies in the US, Switzerland, Singapore and other countries would be crucial. The tribunal should also have unhindered access to all those linked directly or indirectly to 1MDB and its affiliates. All the information gathered and analysis undertaken by the Auditor-General, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), the Central Bank, the Attorney-General’s Chambers and the Police in the last few years should be made available to the tribunal.

Prime Minister Najib should not have anything to do with the appointment of the proposed tribunal. Since 1MDB is wholly owned by the Ministry of Finance and he is the Minister of Finance and was also the Chairman of 1MDB’s Board of Advisers, he should keep his distance from the tribunal. Isn’t it also true that right from the outset he was involved in the creation of the company and was, to all intents and purposes, its principal decision-maker? Besides, in the US Department of Justice’s civil suits he is alluded to as ‘Malaysian Official 1’ 36 times.

To give moral ballast to the formation of the tribunal and its work, Najib should in fact relinquish his position as Prime Minister and Minister of Finance until the tribunal presents its findings to the nation. If the tribunal exonerates him, he can always return to his job. I had suggested on 10 July 2015 that to facilitate investigations into 1MDB he should step aside temporarily.   The situation has now become a lot worse.

What if the government does not want to initiate a tribunal and Najib is determined to cling on to power? The people could through their members of Parliament try to persuade the Speaker to hold an emergency session of Parliament.  Both the proposal on a tribunal and the position of Najib could be resolved through a parliamentary vote. But for the vote to reflect the feelings of the people, the whip should be lifted and members on both sides of the House should be encouraged to vote according to their conscience.

If Parliament fails to act, one hopes the Conference of Rulers which had already expressed its profound concern over 1MDB in October 2015, will assume its moral responsibility to the nation and advice the Cabinet to do what is right on both the tribunal and the Prime Minister. The Rulers’ advice will carry much weight.

The Rulers one hopes will also impress upon everyone that resolving the 1MDB debacle is the nation’s top priority at this point in time. It is a moral issue of tremendous significance and should not be marginalised through inter-party, inter-personal politics and the desire to retain or to attain power. The 1MDB issue is not about ousting or hoisting anyone.

Similarly, legitimate concerns about Daesh terrorism and security should not be manipulated to divert attention from 1MDB. The people should not allow “a security situation” to be created which is then used to suppress the truth about 1MDB. There are many instances in history when the elite’s fear of being exposed for corruption or abuse of power has led to the victimisation of justice and the curtailment of freedom. In this regard, those who are dedicated to espousing integrity through demonstrations and the like must always be cognisant of the danger of their protest being hijacked by others with their own mischievous agenda.

Instead of demonstrating, it is much more important at this stage for more and more groups to speak up. If the voices of concern reach a crescendo, the powers-that-be will not be able to ignore their plea for truth and justice. The alternative media today offer unfettered channels of communication which have not been utilised to the fullest.

A sector of society that has yet to add its moral strength (there have been some isolated voices here and there) to the struggle for accountability and transparency on 1MDB are established religious personalities from the different faiths. They don’t have to be told that at its root 1MDB is about values that lie at the core of religion, values such as honesty, truthfulness and trustworthiness. This is why Muslim, Buddhist, Confucianist, Hindu and Christian theologians should take a stand now for what is at stake is the moral character of the nation itself and its future. Is it so difficult to uphold what is right and denounce what is wrong?

When you take a moment to reflect on the history of product development at Monsanto, what do you find? Here are twelve products that Monsanto has brought to market. See if you can spot the pattern…

#1 – Saccharin

Did you know Monsanto got started because of an artificial sweetener? John Francisco Queeny founded Monsanto Chemical Works in St. Louis, Missouri with the goal of producing saccharin for Coca-Cola. In stark contrast to its sweet beginnings, studies performed during the early 1970s,* including a study by the National Cancer Institute in 1980, showed that saccharin caused cancer in test rats and mice.

After mounting pressure from consumers, the Calorie Control Council, and manufacturers of artificial sweeteners and diet sodas, along with additional studies (several conducted by the sugar and sweetener industry) that reported flaws in the 1970s studies, saccharin was delisted from the NIH’s Carcinogen List. A variety of letters from scientists advised against delisting; the official document includes the following wording to this day: “although it is impossible to absolutely conclude that it poses no threat to human health, sodium saccharin is not reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen under conditions of general usage as an artificial sweetener.” (*Read the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s History of Saccharin here.)

#2 – PCBs

During the early 1920s, Monsanto began expanding their chemical production into polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to produce coolant fluids for electrical transformers, capacitors, and electric motors. Fifty years later, toxicity tests began reporting serious health effects from PCBs in laboratory rats exposed to the chemical.

After another decade of studies, the truth could no longer be contained: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a report citing PCBs as the cause of cancer in animals, with additional evidence that they can cause cancer in humans. Additional peer-reviewed health studies showed a causal link between exposure to PCBs and non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a frequently fatal form of cancer.

In 1979, the United States Congress recognized PCBs as a significant environmental toxin and persistent organic pollutant, and banned its production in the U.S.  By then Monsanto already had manufacturing plants abroad, so they weren’t entirely stopped until the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants banned PCBs globally in 2001.

And that’s when Monsanto’s duplicity was uncovered: internal company memos from 1956 surfaced, proving that Monsanto had known about dangers of PCBs from early on.

In 2003, Monsanto paid out over $600 million to residents of Anniston, Alabama, who experienced severe health problems including liver disease, neurological disorders and cancer after being exposed to PCBs — more than double the payoff that was awarded in the case against Pacific Gas & Electric made famous by the movie “Erin Brockovich.”

And yet the damage persists: nearly 30 years after PCBs have been banned from the U.S., they are still showing up in the blood of pregnant women, as reported in a 2011 study by the University of California San Francisco; while other studies are indicating a parallel between PCBs and autism.

#3 – Polystyrene

In 1941, Monsanto began focusing on plastics and synthetic polystyrene, which is still widely used in food packaging and ranked 5th in the EPA’s 1980s listing of chemicalswhose production generates the most total hazardous waste.

#4 – Atom bomb and nuclear weapons

Shortly after acquiring Thomas and Hochwalt Laboratories, Monsanto turned this division into their Central Research Department. Between 1943 to 1945, this department coordinated key production efforts of the Manhattan Project—including plutonium purification and production and, as part of the Manhattan Project’s Dayton Project, techniques to refine chemicals used as triggers for atomic weapons (an era of U.S. history that sadly included the deadliest industrial accident).

#5 – DDT

In 1944, Monsanto became one of the first manufacturers of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Despite decades of Monsanto propaganda insisting that DDT was safe, the true effects of DDT’s toxicity were at last confirmed through outside research and in 1972, DDT was banned throughout the U.S.

This chart illustrates how much dioxin an average American consumes per day

#6 – Dioxin

In 1945, Monsanto began promoting the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture with the manufacture of the herbicide 2,4,5-T (one of the precursors to Agent Orange), containing dioxin. Dioxins are a group of chemically-related compounds that since become known as one of the “Dirty Dozen” — persistent environmental pollutants that accumulate in the food chain, mainly in the fatty tissue of animals. In the decades since it was first developed, Monsanto has been accused of covering up or failing to report dioxin contamination in a wide range of its products.

#7 – Agent Orange

During the early 1960s, Monsanto was one of the two primary manufacturers of Agent Orange, an herbicide / defoliant used for chemical warfare during the Vietnam War. Except Monsanto’s formula had dioxin levels many times higher than the Agent Orange produced by Dow Chemicals, the other manufacturer (which is why Monsanto was the key defendant in the lawsuit brought by Vietnam War veterans in the United States).

(Pictured at left, Anh and Trang Nhan, with their father, when they first arrived at the Hoi An Orphanage; below are the same brothers shortly before Trang’s death. Source: Kianh Foundation Newsletter, Dec. 2011)

As a result of the use of Agent Orange, Vietnam estimates that over 400,000 people were killed or maimed, 500,000 children were born with birth defects, and up to 1 million people were disabled or suffered from health problems—not to mention the far-reaching impact it had on the health of over 3 million American troops and their offspring.

Internal Monsanto memos show that Monsanto knew of the problems of dioxin contamination of Agent Orange when it sold it to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam. Despite the widespread health impact, Monsanto and Dow were allowed to appeal for and receive financial protection from the U.S. government against veterans seeking compensation for their exposure to Agent Orange.

In 2012, a long 50 years after Agent Orange was deployed, the clean-up effort has finally begun. Yet the legacy of Agent Orange, and successive generations of body deformities, will remain in orphanages throughout VietNam for decades to come.

(Think that can’t happen here? Two crops were recently genetically engineered to withstand a weedkiller made with one of the major components of Agent Orange, 2,4-D, in order to combat “super weeds” that evolved due to the excessive use of RoundUp.)

8 – Petroleum-Based Fertilizer

In 1955, Monsanto began manufacturing petroleum-based fertilizer after purchasing a major oil refinery. Petroleum-based fertilizers can kill beneficial soil micro-organisms, sterilizing the soil and creating a dependence, like an addiction, to the synthetic replacements. Not the best addiction to have, considering the rising cost and dwindling supply of oil…

#9 – RoundUp

During the early 1970s, Monsanto founded their Agricultural Chemicals division with a focus on herbicides, and one herbicide in particular: RoundUp (glyphosate). Because of its ability to eradicate weeds literally overnight, RoundUp was quickly adopted by farmers. Its use increased even more when Monsanto introduced “RoundUp Ready” (glyphosate-resistant) crops, enabling farmers to saturate the entire field with weedkiller without killing the crops.

While glyphosate has been approved by regulatory bodies worldwide and is widely used, concerns about its effects on humans and the environment persist. RoundUp has been found in samples of groundwater, as well as soil, and even in streams and air throughout the Midwest U.S., and increasingly in food. It has been linked to butterfly mortality, and the proliferation of superweeds. Studies in rats have shown consistently negative health impacts ranging from tumors, altered organ function, and infertility, to cancer and premature death; click here to find countless study references to support these statements.

#10 – Aspartame (NutraSweet / Equal)

An accidental discovery during research on gastrointestinal hormones resulted in a uniquely sweet chemical: aspartame. During the clinical trials conducted on 7 infant monkeys as part of aspartame’s application for FDA approval, 1 monkey died and 5 other monkeys had grand mal seizures—yet somehow aspartame was still approved by the FDA in 1974. In 1985, Monsanto acquired the company responsible for aspartame’s manufacture (G.D. Searle) and began marketing the product as NutraSweet. Twenty years later, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report listing 94 health issues caused by aspartame. (Watch a quick video here.)

#11 – Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH)

This genetically modified hormone was developed by Monsanto to be injected into dairy cows to produce more milk. Cows subjected to rBGH suffer excruciating pain due to swollen udders and mastitis, and the pus from the resulting infection enters the milk supplyrequiring the use of additional antibiotics. rBGH milk has been linked to breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer in humans.

#12 – Genetically Modified Crops / GMOs

In the early 1990s, Monsanto began gene-splicing corn, cotton, soy, and canola with DNA from viruses and bacteria in order to achieve one of two traits: an internally-generated pesticide (the corn or soy causes the insect’s stomach to rupture if they eat it), or an internal resistance to Monsanto’s weedkiller RoundUp (enabling farmers to drench their field with RoundUp to kill ever-stronger weeds).

Despite decades of promises that genetically engineered crops would “feed the world” with “more nutrients,” drought resistance, or yield, the majority of Monsanto’s profits are from seeds that are engineered to tolerate Monsanto’s RoundUp—providing them with an ever-increasing, dual income stream as weeds continue to evolve resistance to RoundUp.

Most sobering however, is that the world is once again buying into Monsanto’s “safe” claims.

Just like the early days of PCBs, DDT, Agent Orange, Monsanto has successfully fooled the general public and regulatory agencies into believing that RoundUp, and the genetically modified crops that help sell RoundUp, are “safe.” Despite the fact that NO human testing has ever been done on GMO crops!

Meanwhile, Monsanto has learned a thing or two in the past 100+ years of defending its dirty products: these days, when a new study shows the negative health or environmental impacts of GMOs, Monsanto attacks the study and its scientist(s) by flooding the media with counter claims from “independent” organizations, scientists, industry associations, blogs, sponsored social media, and articles by “private” public relations firms—all endorsed, founded, funded or maintained by Monsanto.

Unfortunately, few of us take the time to trace the members, founders, and relationships of these seemingly valid sources back to their little Monsanto secret. (Read more on this page.)

Fooling the FDA required a slightly different approach: click on the below chart compiled by Millions Against Monsanto to see how many former Monsanto VPs and legal counsel are now holding positions with the FDA. And don’t forget Clarence Thomas, former Monsanto attorney who is now a Supreme Court Justice, ruling in favor of Monsanto in every case brought before him.

A Baker’s Dozen: #13 – Terminator Seeds

In the late 1990s, Monsanto developed the technology to produce sterile grains unable to germinate. The goal of these “Terminator Seeds” was to force farmers to buy new seeds from Monsanto year after year, rather than save and reuse the seeds from their harvest as they’ve been doing throughout centuries.

Fortunately this technology never came to market. Instead, Monsanto managed to accomplish the same thing by requiring farmers to sign a binding contract agreeing that they will not save or sell seeds from year to year, which forces them to buy new seeds and preempts the need for a “terminator gene.” Lucky for us… since the terminator seeds were capable of cross-pollination and could have contaminated local non-sterile crops.

What’s the Result of our Monsanto Legacy? 

Between 75% to 80% of the processed food you consume every day has GMOs inside, and residues of Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide outside. But it’s not just processed food—fresh fruit and vegetables are next: genetically engineered sweet corn is already being sold at your local grocer, with apples and a host of other “natural” produce currently in field trials.

How is it that Monsanto is allowed to manipulate our food after such a dark product history? How is it they are allowed to cause such detrimental impact to our environment and our health?

According to the Organic Consumers Association, “There is a direct correlation between our genetically engineered food supply and the $2 trillion the U.S. spends annually on medical care, namely an epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases.

Instead of healthy fruits, vegetables, grains, and grass-fed animal products, U.S. factory farms and food processors produce a glut of genetically engineered junk foods that generate heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer—backed by farm subsidies—while organic farmers receive no such subsidies.

Monsanto’s history reflects a consistent pattern of toxic chemicals, lawsuits, and manipulated science. Is this the kind of company we want controlling our world’s food supply?

P.S. Monsanto’s not alone. Other companies in the “Big Six” include Pioneer Hi-Bred International (a subsidiary of DuPont), Syngenta AG, Dow Agrosciences (a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, BASF (which is primarily a chemical company that is rapidly expanding their biotechnology division), and Bayer Cropscience (a subsidiary of Bayer). The website Biofortified.org maintains a complete list of companies doing genetic engineering.

Sources for the above embedded links:

Ever since the UK parliament released its long-awaited Chilcot report on the Iraq war in the first week of this month, there have again been heated discussions about the then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s calamitous decision to support US President George W. Bush in his 2003 misadventure. Sir John Chilcot’s 12-volume, 2.6 million-word report explores every detail of the processes and decisions that led to a military folly for which the entire Middle East continues to pay a terrible price.

But intriguingly in America, the report has not evoked interest on a scale the biggest foreign policy disaster of the last quarter century merits. Of course, Senate’s intelligence committee looked into the intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq war and its report was released in 2008.

The Democratic-led committee faulted the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for massive intelligence failures and the Bush administration for purposefully manipulating intelligence for public consumption. That is all.

This is all the more puzzling when we know that there were as many as 10 investigations into the attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya in 2012 that killed four Americans including US ambassador.

Bush went to Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Everybody now knows that everybody in the administration, including Bush knew Saddam had none. If regime change was the real aim, who ordered the disbandment of the Iraqi Army and “de-Baathification” which threw Iraq and the entire region into turmoil? Who drew the best-case scenario in which grateful Iraqis would welcome Anglo-American troops with rose petals? Who should be held responsible if the planning for the aftermath of the invasion turned out to be “wholly inadequate”?

One thought President Barack Obama who opposed the Iraq war would order an inquiry into all aspects of a decision everybody now admits was the largest strategic blunder in American history. No, he did nothing of the sort. Even those who were responsible for Abu Ghraib torture and abuses were spared. What is more, he has scrupulously avoided prosecuting Bush officials for anything related to the “war on terror.”

With the result that no US politician or senior-level official has suffered punishment for his or her support for the Iraq war or their involvement in the decision that led to the war or in its execution. Both political parties, Republicans and Democrats, have nominated people who supported the 2003 invasion. Nothing surprising when you remember that Hillary Clinton who supported the war was Obama’s first secretary of state. Her replacement, John Kerry, while contesting against Bush in the 2004 presidential election, said he would have supported the war even if he knew that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction.

This leads one to conclude that with few exceptions Democrats were with Bush on the issue of war. The same can be said of the US media. With few honorable exceptions, they served as the echo chambers of an administration that was determined to replace Saddam and was doing everything in its power to influence public opinion in favor of the invasion.

After the publication of the Chilcot report, there have been renewed calls all over Britain to try Blair for war crimes. It’s unlikely that anything will ever actually happen to Blair or any of the other architects of the war in the UK despite the report’s damning strictures. But the British public knows that the decision to invade Iraq was wrong and led to the presence of Al-Qaeda in that Arab country and later contributed hugely to the creation of Daesh (the so-called IS), which is now creating mayhem throughout the region and beyond it. Will the American public ever get a chance to know who was responsible for or behind a war that continues to kill innocent people in hundreds and led to the largest exodus of people in the Arab world after the creation of Israel?

Foreign Service Officer Richard Cabot Howland, who was stationed in Jakarta from 1965 to 1966 at the Embassy in Indonesia, in 1970 published an article in the classified internal journal of the Central Intelligence Agency, Studies in Intelligence (“The Lessons of the September 30 Affair,” Vol. 14, Fall 1970: pp.13–28). The article was approved for declassification and release to the public in 1994 by the CIA. It is available at the National Archives and Records Administration, RG 263, CIA Records, Studies in Intelligence. To date it is only one of two documents from the CIA’s internal journal that have been declassified about the involvement of the US in the 1965 coup and massacres in Indonesia. The other is an article written by John T. Pizzicaro (“The 30 September Movement in Indonesia,” Fall 1969) and the other by foreign service officer Richard Cabot Howland (“The Lessons of the September 30 Affair,” Fall 1970).

There, however, is a problem. Despite admitting its involvement in the mass killings in 1965, the CIA has sought to blame the victims for their own murders. In the words of Prof. John Rossa and Prof. Joseph Nevins, CIA officials tried to blame “the victims of the killings — the supporters of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) — for their own deaths.” The text below is the analysis co-authored by Rossa and Nevins that looks at the data the US and CIA itself released about the involvement of Washington in the 1965 coup in Indonesia.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Asia-Pacific Research Editor, 22 July 2016.

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 “One of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century.” That was how a CIA publication described the killings that began forty years ago last month in Indonesia. It was one of the few statements in the text that was correct. The 300-page text was devoted to blaming the victims of the killings — the supporters of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) — for their own deaths. The PKI had supposedly attempted a coup d’état and a nationwide uprising called the September 30th Movement (which, for some unknown reason, began on October 1). The mass murder of hundreds of thousands of the party’s supporters over subsequent months was thus a natural, inevitable, and justifiable reaction on the part of those non-communists who felt threatened by the party’s violent bid for state power. The killings were part of the “backfire” referred to in the title: Indonesia ­ 1965: The Coup that Backfired. The author of this 1968 report, later revealed to be Helen Louise Hunter, acknowledged the massive scale of the killings only to dismiss the necessity for any detailed consideration of them. She concentrated on proving that the PKI was responsible for the September 30th Movement while consigning the major issue, the anti-PKI atrocities, to a brief, offhanded comment. [1]

Hunter’s CIA report accurately expressed the narrative told by the Indonesian army commanders as they organized the slaughter. That narrative rendered the September 30th Movement ­ a disorganized, small-scale affair that lasted about 48 hours and resulted in a grand total of 12 deaths, among them six army generals ­ into the greatest evil ever to befall Indonesia [2]. The commander of the army, Major General Suharto, justified his acquisition of emergency powers in late 1965 and early 1966 by insisting that the September 30th Movement was a devious conspiracy by the PKI to seize state power and murder all of its enemies. Suharto’s martial law regime detained some 1.5 million people as political prisoners (for varying lengths of time), and accused them of being “directly or indirectly involved in the September 30th Movement.” The hundreds of thousands of people shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, or starved to death were labeled perpetrators, or would-be perpetrators of atrocities, just as culpable for the murder of the army generals as the handful of people who were truly guilty.

The September 30th Movement was Suharto’s Reichstag fire: a pretext for destroying the communist party and seizing state power. As with the February 1933 fire in the German parliament that Hitler used to create a hysterical, crisis-filled atmosphere, the September 30th Movement was exaggerated by Suharto’s clique of officers until it assumed the proportions of a wild, vicious, supernatural monster. The army whipped up an anti-communist propaganda campaign from the early days of October 1965: “the PKI” had castrated and tortured the seven army officers it had abducted in Jakarta, danced naked and slit the bodies of the army officers with a hundred razor blades, drawn up hit lists, dug thousands of ditches around the country to hold countless corpses, stockpiled guns imported from China, and so on. The army banned many newspapers and put the rest under army censorship. It was precisely this work of the army’s psychological warfare specialists that created the conditions in which the mass murder of “the PKI” seemed justified.

The question as to whether or not the PKI actually organized the September 30th Movement is important only because the Suharto regime made it important. Otherwise, it is irrelevant. Even if the PKI had nothing whatsoever to do with the movement, the army generals would have blamed the party for it. As it was, they made their case against the PKI largely on the basis of the transcripts of the interrogations of those movement participants who hadn’t already been summarily executed. Given that the army used torture as standard operating procedure for interrogations, the statements of the suspects cannot be trusted. Hunter’s CIA report, primarily based on those transcripts, is as reliable as an Inquisition text on witchcraft.

The PKI as a whole was clearly not responsible for the September 30th Movement. The party’s three million members did not participate in it. If they had, it would not have been such a small-scale affair. The party chairman, D.N. Aidit, however, does seem to have played a key role. He was summarily and secretly executed in late 1965, as were two of the three other core Politburo leaders (Lukman and Njoto), before they could provide their accounts. The one among them who survived the initial terror, the general secretary of the party, Sudisman, admitted in the military’s kangaroo court in 1967 that the PKI as an institution knew nothing of the September 30th Movement but that certain leaders were involved in a personal capacity. If the movement’s leaders had been treated as the leaders of previous revolts against the postcolonial government, they would have been arrested, put on trial, and sentenced. All the members of their organizations would not have been imprisoned or massacred.

With so little public discussion and so little scholarly research about the 1965-66 mass killings, they remain poorly understood. Many people outside of Indonesia believe that the victims were primarily Indonesian Chinese. While some Indonesian Chinese were among the victims, they were by no means the majority. The violence targeted members of the PKI and the various organizations either allied to the party or sympathetic to it, whatever ethnicity they happened to be: Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, etc. It was not a case of ethnic cleansing. Many people imagine that the killings were committed by frenzied mobs rampaging through villages and urban neighborhoods. But recent oral history research suggests that most of the killings were executions of detainees. [3] Much more research is needed before one can arrive at definitive conclusions.

President Sukarno, the target of the PKI’s alleged coup attempt, compared the army’s murderous violence against those labeled PKI to a case of someone “burning down the house to kill a rat.” He routinely protested the army’s exaggerations of the September 30th Movement. It was, he said, nothing more than “a ripple in the wide ocean.” His inability or unwillingness to muster anything more than rhetorical protests, however, ultimately doomed his rule. In March 1966, Suharto grabbed the authority to dismiss, appoint, and arrest cabinet ministers, even while maintaining Sukarno as figurehead president until March 1967. The great orator who had led the nationalist struggle against the Dutch, the cosmopolitan visionary of the Non-Aligned Movement, was outmaneuvered by a taciturn, uneducated, thuggish, corrupt army general from a Javanese village.

Suharto, a relative nobody in Indonesian politics, moved against the PKI and Sukarno with the full support of the U.S. government. Marshall Green, American ambassador to Indonesia at the time, wrote that the embassy had “made clear” to the army that Washington was “generally sympathetic with and admiring” of its actions. [4] U.S. officials went so far as to express concern in the days following the September 30th Movement that the army might not do enough to annihilate the PKI. [5] The U.S. embassy supplied radio equipment, walkie-talkies, and small arms to Suharto so that his troops could conduct the nationwide assault on civilians. [6] A diligent embassy official with a penchant for data collection did his part by handing the army a list of thousands of names of PKI members. [7] Such moral and material support was much appreciated in the Indonesian army. As an aide to the army’s chief of staff informed U.S. embassy officials in October 1965, “This was just what was needed by way of assurances that we weren’t going to be hit from all angles as we moved to straighten things out here.”[8]

This collaboration between the U.S. and the top army brass in 1965 was rooted in Washington’s longstanding wish to have privileged and enhanced access to Southeast Asia’s resource wealth. Many in Washington saw Indonesia as the region’s centerpiece. Richard Nixon characterized the country as “containing the region’s richest hoard of natural resources” and “by far the greatest prize in the South-East Asian area.” [9] Two years earlier, in a 1965 speech in Asia, Nixon had argued in favor of bombing North Vietnam to protect Indonesia’s “immense mineral potential.” [10] But obstacles to the realization of Washington’s geopolitical-economic vision arose when the Sukarno government emerged upon independence in Indonesia. Sukarno’s domestic and foreign policy was nationalist, nonaligned, and explicitly anti-imperialist. Moreover, his government had a working relationship with the powerful PKI, which Washington feared would eventually win national elections.

Eisenhower’s administration attempted to break up Indonesia and sabotage Sukarno’s presidency by supporting secessionist revolts in 1958.[11] When that criminal escapade of the Dulles brothers failed, the strategists in Washington reversed course and began backing the army officers of the central government. The new strategy was to cultivate anti-communist officers who could gradually build up the army as a shadow government capable of replacing President Sukarno and eliminating the PKI at some future date. The top army generals in Jakarta bided their time and waited for the opportune moment for what U.S. strategists called a final “showdown” with the PKI. [12] That moment came on October 1, 1965.

The destruction of the PKI and Sukarno’s ouster resulted in a dramatic shift in the regional power equation, leading Time magazine to hail Suharto’s bloody takeover as “The West’s best news for years in Asia.” [13] Several years later, the U.S. Navy League’s publication gushed over Indonesia’s new role in Southeast Asia as “that strategic area’s unaggressive, but stern, monitor,” while characterizing the country as “one of Asia’s most highly developed nations and endowed by chance with what is probably the most strategically authoritative geographic location on earth.” [14] Among other things, the euphoria reflected just how lucrative the changing of the guard in Indonesia would prove to be for Western business interests.

Suharto’s clique of army officers took power with a long-term economic strategy in mind. They expected the legitimacy of their new regime would derive from economic growth and that growth would derive from bringing in Western investment, exporting natural resources to Western markets, and begging for Western aid. Suharto’s vision for the army was not in terms of defending the nation against foreign aggression but defending foreign capital against Indonesians. He personally intervened in a meeting of cabinet ministers in December 1965 that was discussing the nationalization of the oil companies Caltex and Stanvac. Soon after the meeting began, he suddenly arrived by helicopter, entered the chamber, and declared, as the gleeful U.S. embassy account has it, that the military “would not stand for precipitous moves against oil companies.” Faced with such a threat, the cabinet indefinitely postponed the discussion. [15] At the same time, Suharto’s army was jailing and killing union leaders at the facilities of U.S. oil companies and rubber plantations. [16]

Once Suharto decisively sidelined Sukarno in March 1966, the floodgates of foreign aid opened up. The U.S. shipped large quantities of rice and cloth for the explicit political purpose of shoring up his regime. Falling prices were meant to convince Indonesians that Suharto’s rule was an improvement over Sukarno’s. The regime’s ability over the following years to sustain economic growth via integration with Western capital provided whatever legitimacy it had. Once that pattern of growth ended with the capital flight of the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the regime’s legitimacy quickly vanished. Middle class university students, the fruits of economic growth, played a particularly important role in forcing Suharto from office. The Suharto regime lived by foreign capital and died by foreign capital.

By now it is clear that the much ballyhooed economic growth of the Suharto years was severely detrimental to the national interest. The country has little to show for all the natural resources sold on the world market. Payments on the foreign and domestic debt, part of it being the odious debt from the Suharto years, swallow up much of the government’s budget. With health care spending at a minimum, epidemic and preventable diseases are rampant. There is little domestic industrial production. The forests from which military officers and Suharto cronies continue to make fortunes are being cut down and burned up at an alarming rate. The country imports huge quantities of staple commodities that could be easily produced on a larger scale in Indonesia, such as sugar, rice, and soybeans. The main products of the villages now are migrant laborers, or “the heroes of foreign exchange,” to quote from a lighted sign at the Jakarta airport.

Apart from the pillaging of Indonesia’s resource base, the Suharto regime caused an astounding level of unnecessary suffering. At his command, the Indonesian military invaded neighboring East Timor in 1975 after receiving a green light from President Gerald Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. The result was an occupation that lasted for almost 24 years and left a death toll of tens of thousands of East Timorese. Within Indonesia proper, the TNI committed widespread atrocities during counterinsurgency campaigns in the resource-rich provinces of West Papua and Aceh, resulting in tens of thousands of additional fatalities.

With Suharto’s forced resignation in 1998, significant democratic space has opened in Indonesia. There are competitive national and local elections. Victims of the “New Order” and their families are able to organize. There is even an official effort to create a national truth commission to investigate past atrocities. Nevertheless, the military still looms large over the country’s political system. As such, there has not been a thorough investigation of any of the countless massacres that took place in 1965-66. History textbooks still focus on the September 30th Movement and make no mention of the massacres. Similarly, no military or political leaders have been held responsible for the Suharto-era crimes (or those that have taken place since), thus increasing the likelihood of future atrocities. This impunity is a source of continuing worry for Indonesia’s civil society and restless regions, as well as poverty-stricken, now-independent East Timor. It is thus not surprising that the government of the world’s newest country feels compelled to play down demands for justice by its citizenry and emphasize an empty reconciliation process with Indonesia. Meanwhile in the United States, despite political support and billions of dollars in U.S. weaponry, military training and economic assistance to Jakarta over the preceding four decades, Washington’s role in Indonesia’s killing fields of 1965-66 and subsequent brutality has been effectively buried, thus enabling the Bush administration’s current efforts to further ties with Indonesia’s military, as part of the global “war on terror.” [17] Suharto’s removal from office has not led to radical changes in Indonesia’s state and economy.

Sukarno used to indict Dutch colonialism by saying that Indonesia was “a nation of coolies and a coolie among nations.” Thanks to the Suharto years, that description remains true. The principles of economic self-sufficiency, prosperity, and international recognition for which the nationalist struggle was fought now seem as remote as ever. It is encouraging that many Indonesians are now recalling Sukarno’s fight against Western imperialism (first the Netherlands and then the U.S.) after experiencing the misery that Suharto’s strategy of collaboration has wrought. In his “year of living dangerously” speech in August 1964 ­ a phrase remembered in the West as just the title of a 1982 movie with Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver ­ Sukarno spoke about the Indonesian ideal of national independence struggling to stay afloat in “an ocean of subversion and intervention from the imperialists and colonialists.” Suharto’s U.S.-assisted takeover of state power forty years ago last month drowned that ideal in blood, but it might just rise again during the ongoing economic crisis that is endangering the lives of so many Indonesians.

John Roosa is an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia.

Joseph Nevins is an assistant professor of geography at Vassar College.

NOTES

1. A former CIA agent who worked in Southeast Asia, Ralph McGehee, noted in his memoir that the agency compiled a separate report about the events of 1965, one that reflected its agents’ honest opinions, for its own in-house readership. McGehee’s description of it was heavily censored by the agency when it vetted an account he first published in the April 11, 1981 edition of The Nation. Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA (New York: Sheridan Square, 1983), pp. 57-58. Two articles in the agency’s internal journal Studies in Intelligence have been declassified: John T. Pizzicaro, “The 30 September Movement in Indonesia,” (Fall 1969); Richard Cabot Howland, “The Lessons of the September 30 Affair,” (Fall 1970). The latter is available online: http://www.odci.gov/csi/kent_csi/docs/v14i2a02p_0001.htm

2. In Jakarta, the movement’s troops abducted and killed six army generals and a lieutenant taken by mistake from the house of the seventh who avoided capture. In the course of these abductions, a five year-old daughter of a general, a teenaged nephew of another general, and a security guard were killed. In Central Java, two army colonels were abducted and killed.

3. John Roosa, Ayu Ratih, and Hilmar Farid, eds. Tahun yang Tak Pernah Berakhir: Memahami Pengalaman Korban 65; Esai-Esai Sejarah Lisan [The Year that Never Ended: Understanding the Experiences of the Victims of 1965; Oral History Essays] (Jakarta: Elsam, 2004). Also consider the massacre investigated in Chris Hilton’s very good documentary film Shadowplay (2002).

4. Telegram from the Embassy in Indonesia to Department of State, November 4, 1965, in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. 26, p. 354. This FRUS volume is available online at the National Security Archive website:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB52/#FRUS

5. Telegram from the Embassy in Jakarta to Department of State, October 14, 1965. Quoted in Geoffrey Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 283.

6. Frederick Bunnell, “American ‘Low Posture’ Policy Toward Indonesia in the Months Leading up to the 1965 ‘Coup’,” Indonesia, 50 (October 1990), p. 59.

7. Kathy Kadane, “Ex-agents say CIA Compiled Death Lists for Indonesians,” San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990, available online at http://www.pir.org/kadane.html

8. CIA Report no. 14 to the White House (from Jakarta), October 14, 1965. Cited in Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise, p. 283.

9. Richard Nixon, “Asia After Viet Nam,” Foreign Affairs (October 1967), p. 111.

10. Quoted in Peter Dale Scott, “Exporting Military-Economic Development: America and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” in Malcolm Caldwell (ed.), Ten Years’ Military Terror in Indonesia (Nottingham (U.K.): Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation for Spokesman Books, 1975), p. 241.

11. Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New York: The New Press, 1995), p. 1.

12. Bunnell, “American ‘Low Posture’ Policy,” pp. 34, 43, 53-54.

13. Time, July 15, 1966. Also see Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Boston: South End Press, 1993), pp. 123-131.

14. Lawrence Griswold, “Garuda and the Emerald Archipelago: Strategic Indonesia Forges New Ties with the West,” Sea Power (Navy League of the United States), vol. 16, no. 2 (1973), pp. 20, 25.

15. Telegram 1787 from Jakarta to State Department, December 16, 1965, cited in Brad Simpson, “Modernizing Indonesia: U.S.­Indonesian Relations, 1961-1967,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Northwestern University, 2003), p. 343.

16. Hilmar Farid, “Indonesia’s Original Sin: Mass Killings and Capitalist Expansion 1965-66,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 6, no. 1 (March 2005).

17. For information on U.S.-Indonesia military ties, see the website of the East Timor Indonesia Action Network at http://www.etan.org/

Russia and China may create a unified missile defense system for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. That’s the conclusion of experts speaking at a forum dedicated to the US deployment of the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea. What would the Russian-Chinese system look like? Sputnik investigates.

In this episode of ‘Behind the Headline,’ host Mint Press Mnar Muhawesh meets Sut Jhally, an expert on media manipulation and propaganda. In the film ‘The Occupation of the American Mind,’ Jhally and others examine how high-paid spin doctors control the media message on Israel.

Following the Holocaust, the world community — led by the United States and Britain — sought to create a European Jewish-only state.

This humanitarian move, though, utterly failed in respecting the humanity of the land’s indigenous inhabitants — Christian and Muslim Palestinians.

Starting in December of 1947, their land and property was seized and destroyed to make way for the state of Israel, where white only European Jews would live . Over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled and over 10,000 were killed by the British and US armed Zionist militias, and later Israeli forces, during the Nakba, an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe.”

Those expelled by the Nakba and their Palestinian descendants who make up the world’s largest refugee population in the world are not allowed to return to their land.

Yet a recent poll found that nearly half of Americans believe Palestine occupies Israel — not the other way around. That’s because the mainstream, corporate-owned media continues to spin a propaganda wheel that dehumanizes Palestinians and paints Israel as a beacon of democracy.

Meanwhile, special interest groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, buy their way into the hearts and minds of our elected officials. Ever wonder why Israel gets $3 billion in annual military funding from Uncle Sam? Connect the dots from the campaign contributions to the spending bills.

There’s a lot riding on our relationship with Israel: Apart from serving as a proxy for U.S. relations in the Middle East and Africa, Israel is America’s second-top destination for arms exports. Yep — the country’s that’s no bigger than the state of New Jersey is basically a black check for the military-industrial complex.

But not all Americans are on board with the notion of Israel as the victim of Palestinian oppression.

Another study showed that 62 percent of the population now believes Israel gets too much foreign aid, and theBoycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has made waves across the world, imposing a kind of sanction against Israel’s economy by targeting Israeli products.

A new documentary, “The Occupation of the American Mind,” brings attention to how Israel’s public relations campaign has successfully manipulated the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict — in that, it’s not a conflict at all but a matter of modern-day colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

Today I’m joined by Sut Jhally, executive producer of “The Occupation of the American Mind” and a professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts. The film was produced, written and directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp.

I asked Jhally to explain how Americans are being kept in the dark about Palestine, and how that prevents a mass movement against Israeli apartheid from forming in the U.S.

Learn more about the US war in Afghanistan fueling  the worldwide heroin crisis, and Israel’s occupation of American minds:

Mnar Muhawesh is founder, CEO and editor in chief of MintPress News, and is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism, sexism, neoconservativism within the media and journalism start-ups. In 2009, Muhawesh also became the first American woman to wear the hijab to anchor/report the news in American media. Muhawesh is also a wife and mother of a rascal four year old boy, juggling her duties as a CEO and motherly tasks successfully as supermom. Follow Mnar on Twitter at @mnarmuh 

Transcript of  Peter Koenig’s interview with PressTV on the IMF’s anti-BREXIT propaganda in Beijing ahead of the G-20 financial officials’ meeting in Chengdu, southwestern China’s: 

According to the Associated Press,

“The head of the International Monetary Fund called Friday to end uncertainty over Britain’s vote to leave the European Union she says is dampening global economic growth.

The IMF cut this year’s global growth forecast by 0.1 percentage points to 3.1 percent in a report released this week due to the shockwaves of the British vote, said Christine Lagarde.

Lagarde spoke after meeting with the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, and leaders of the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and other bodies ahead of this weekend’s gathering of finance officials of the Group of 20 major economies.” 

Interview with PressTV

“Our first and immediate recommendation is for this uncertainty surrounding the terms of Brexit to be removed as quickly as possible so that we know the terms of trade and the ways in which the United Kingdom will continue to operate in the global economy,” said Lagarde at a news conference. Lagarde said that before the British vote, the IMF had been preparing to raise its global growth forecast by 0.1 percentage points due to improvement in Japan, China and the 17-country [19-country- author’s note] euro zone.

“Unfortunately, the United Kingdom decided to go for Brexit,” said Lagarde, a former French finance minister. “This is disappointing.”

Investors are watching the G20 meeting for any sign the United States, Germany, China and other major economies may agree on joint action to accelerate a weak global economic recovery.

A similar meeting in February in Shanghai ended with a joint statement that said coordinated action was impossible because major countries were at different points in their economic cycles. Some investors believe envoys in Shanghai agreed secretly to weaken the dollar to spur trade but there has been no official confirmation of that.

The final statement from this weekend’s gathering in Chengdu in China’s southwest “will be under scanner for any hints of policy coordination — monetary or fiscal,” Citigroup economists said in a report. – U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, speaking to reporters in Athens before flying to China, downplayed the likelihood of joint action. “I don’t think this is a moment that calls for the kind of coordinated action that occurred during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009,” said Lew. “It really is a moment where we each need to do what we can to ensure that where growth is soft it gets stronger and that prospects for the medium- and long-term are improved.” Lew appealed for close integration of Britain and the EU in the event of a split.

The best outcome is one that maximizes the integration of the UK and Europe and — because it’s likely to be a process that, at best, goes well beyond weeks or months — to have the nature of the discussion to be characterized by amicable, pragmatic engagement where the focus is on maximizing integration and cooperation. (Associated Press)

PressTV Question
What do you make of these IMF statements?

Answer PK
They are foremost an anti-BREXIT propaganda by Madame Lagarde. The IMF was given marching orders by Washington, to do their job in helping to avoid a BREXIT.

BREXIT could endanger ‘globalization’, as it may incite other European Union (EU) countries to do likewise – which would be good for the people of Europe and the world at large – but not for the corporate and financial elitist, of course. The dismantling of the undemocratic, dictatorial EU is a must for the people of Europe to regain their freedom and national sovereignty.

As usual, there is no logical explanation why BREXIT should negatively impact the world economy, none what-so-ever. – Why would it? – the UK is not even part of the Euro-zone and had always a lot of leeway making its own economic and monetary policy. In fact, the English Pound was linked closer to the US dollar than the Euro.

Only speculation and purposeful outside manipulation of currency and security and stock markets using BREXIT as a pretext to sowing financial havoc, initiated by financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank, FED and Wall Street might put a negative spin on BREXIT.

When the UK leaves the EU, it will be even freer, becoming a sovereign country again, and make monetary, financial and economic development policy as it best suits British interests.

We can just hope that other EU countries will also see the light.

PressTV Question
Aren’t the leaders of the EU at least in part responsible for BREXIT?

PK
Of course they are. Brussels has gradually swallowed up every bit of independence and sovereignty of EU member nations, with an enormously bureaucratic, corrupt and complex apparatus; and this despite the fact that, both the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties attempt to assure the protection of EU countries’ sovereignty. Unfortunately, the contrary was – and ever more is the case. There is also an uneasiness among the people of all EU nations about the gradual but steady integration of the EU with NATO.

So, what Madame Lagarde says which is followed up by Mr. Lew, US Secretary of the Treasury, of a needed close integration of the UK in the EU, and warning that Brexit might cause enormous problems – is sheer propaganda and mind-manipulation. – What problems could there be? – They are never explained. There is absolutely no foundation for them. None. Such statements are sheer fearmongering, aimed at brainwashing people with warnings and threats without any substance.

They are maneuvers to make people – and even politicians – believe that they could suffer from BREXIT; and maneuvers to influencing the British Parliament to revoke the peoples’ decision. As you know, the Parliament has to ratify the people’s vote to make it effective.

What is behind all this is the empire’s final domination of Europe, through the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). Because if the EU breaks apart, the TTIP breaks apart – which is a must if Europeans want to survive decently, rather than ending up in slavehood to the empire, as a new low-cost / high-tech American colony. This is one good reason why the EU has to be dismantled.

The TTIP is a proposition of uncountable trillions of dollars of profit for foremost corporate America and the related Wall Street mafia, and a legal domination of every EU state, as the private corporate courts imposed by the TTIP would have supremacy over national courts.

If the EU is in danger of breaking up, I would not be surprised if the IMF, World Bank, FED and their related Wall Street banks, would produce another crisis in Europe – as they have done in 2007/2008. Debt is always a good argument – and a good instrument to keep countries in line. Since nobody ever sets parameters of ‘manageable debt’, acceptable debt ceilings can be invented by the creditors. Debt will be fought with more debt and ‘high-risk’ interest, and with severe austerity programs. We know the scenario. Greece is a show case.

Manipulating countries – or the entire European Continent – into crisis mode is easy, as long as the western world depends entirely on the fraudulent dollar system, a pyramid system based on the debt-interest-debt spiral. So- anything the elusive elite wants is possible.

I know first-hand how these handlings of minds and ‘cooking’ of economic indicators work. I have seen it during my many years with the World Bank.

They call it ‘sanctions’ when they address an individual country, like Russia, Iran and so on; and it is an ‘economic crisis’, when an entire continent is being called to order.

I just hope the people will not fall for it.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, Chinese 4th Media, TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

A race to be Democrat nominee never existed, things rigged from the start last year to select Clinton party standard bearer.

The process was like holding a world series or super bowl with only one team represented.

Sanders never had a chance and knew it, enjoying his extended 15 minutes of fame while it lasted – caving in the end as expected, endorsing what he campaigned against, betraying supporters, proving he’s just another dirty self-serving politician.

Last week’s WikiLeaks revelations of thousands of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails showed party support for Clinton, plotting against Sanders, rigging things to make her party nominee.

Assorted dirty tricks were used, including DNC/media collusion (notoriously from the NYT, operating as a virtual Clinton press agent), as well as fundraising on her behalf.

Sanders never had a chance. Party bosses chose Clinton, rigging the process for her, stealing primaries and caucuses, more evidence of a political system too corrupted to fix – fantasy democracy, not the real thing.

The people’s choice” is doublespeak for what monied interests want and get. Elections are farcical. Ordinary people have no say whatever – voting a waste of time.

Trump reacted to WikiLeaks’ dump of DNC emails, tweeting “(l)eaked e-mails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders. Mock his heritage and much more…really vicious. RIGGED.”

Tim Kaine is, and always has been, owned by the banks. Bernie supporters are outraged, was their last choice.

He was counted out before campaigning began last year. So are independent candidates like Green Party presumptive presidential nominee Jill Stein – excluded from national coverage and party standard bearer debates.

Voters are denied a chance to hear genuine progressive views, representing their interests, not special ones exclusively.

Democrats invade Philadelphia this week, intending circus proceedings like Republicans – lots of pomp and circumstance, no substance.

On Thursday, things culminate with Clinton accepting her party’s nomination – a legally challenged war criminal/racketeer belonging in prison, not high office.

The deplorable truth about America’s political system is it’s too debauched to fix – fantasy democracy masquerading as the real thing, voters with no say on how they’re governed.

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 atsjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

The New York Times(7/15/16), writing about the man who reportedly killed 84 people in a truck attack in Nice, France, provided no evidence that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was motivated by either politics or religion to commit violence—yet still labeled the murders as “terrorism,” as though the definition of that crime were based on ethnicity rather than motivation.

Times correspondent Andrew Higgins wrote that Lahouaiej Bouhlel

was known to his neighbors only as a moody and aggressive oddball. He never went to the local mosque, often grunted in response to greetings of “bonjour” and sometimes beat his wife — until she threw him out….

Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel appeared not to have left behind any public declaration of his motive or indicated any allegiance to the Islamic State or another extremist group….

The New York Times‘ photo of the truck used in an attack the paper labelled “terrorist,” despite admitting that it had no knowledge of the presumed killer’s motives. (photo: Andrew Testa/NYT)

Residents in his former apartment building on a hill overlooking the city said they had never seen him at the local mosque and never heard him mention religion.

Indeed, they said he rarely spoke at all and seemed to be in a permanent haze of anger, particularly after his marriage fell apart.

The militant group ISIS issued a statement praising the attack, but as theTimes story reported,

it remained unclear whether the claim of support was an effort by the Islamic State, also know as ISIS or ISIL, to associate itself with a high-profile attack without having been involved in its planning or having any direct contact with Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel.

Despite the absence of any evidence of a political motivation, or indeed any motive at all—generally considered to be a key part of any definition of terrorism—the Times story still referred to the Nice killings as “the third large-scale act of terrorism in France in a year and a half.” The killings, Higgins wrote, “raised new questions throughout the world about the ability of extremists to sow terror.”

Why is the Times willing to label the Nice deaths “terrorism”—a label that US media do not apply to all acts of mass violence, even ones that have much clearer political motives (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/15/14)? In part, they seem to be following the lead of French authorities: “French officials labeled the attack terrorism and cast the episode as the latest in a series that have made France a battlefield in the violent clash between Islamic extremists and the West.”

But quotes from French officials made it clear that such claims were little more than guesswork: The story reported that Prime Minister Manuel Valls “said the attacker in all likelihood had ties to radical Islamist circles,” citing Valls’ statement to French TV: “He is a terrorist probably linked to radical Islam one way or another.” Later Valls is quoted noting that the attack happened on the French national holiday of Bastille Day:

Why on the 14th of July? Because it is a celebration of freedom. It was, therefore, indeed to affect France that the individual committed this terrorist attack.

French Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, “was more cautious,” the Timesreported: “We have an individual who was not at all known by the intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islamism,” Cazeneuve was quoted.

Why was the Times not similarly cautious about applying the label of “terrorism” to an act whose motives it admitted knowing nothing about? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Times believes that when the suspect is an Arab—Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a Tunisian immigrant—then allegations of terrorism require no evidence whatsoever.

Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at@JNaureckas.

A coalition airstrike reported on Tuesday that killed at least 85 Syrian civilians—one more than died in the Nice attack in France last week—wasn’t featured at all on the front pages of two of the top US national newspapers, theNew York Times and LA Times, and only merited brief blurbs on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, with the actual stories buried on pages A-16 and A-15, respectively.

According to the London Telegraph (7/19/16), the airstrike killed “more than 85 civilians” after the “coalition mistook them for Islamic State fighters.” Eight families were represented among the dead, with victims “as young as three.” The Intercept (7/19/16) reported the death toll could end up being well over 100.

The Pentagon has not denied the reports, saying an investigation is underway, according to Stars and Stripes (7/19/16), a media outlet that operates inside the Department of Defense.

As many on Twitter pointed out, the number of dead was roughly equal to that of the recent Nice attack, yet the airstrike did not garner nearly as much media coverage, nor did news outlets convey an outpouring of grief:

By contrast, the Nice attack garnered multiple front-page stories in the New York Times and LA Times, as well as significantly more than 20-word blurbs in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

For those who see a “false equivalency,” there are two mitigating reasons for this glaring discrepancy: 1) The airstrike deaths were an “accident” and 2) Syria’s a war zone, where civilian deaths are to be expected. Neither of these retorts are satisfactory, and certainly not enough to justify a virtual front-page blackout.

On the issue of accidental deaths having less import than purposeful ones, this doesn’t explain why unintentional natural disaster deaths routinely receive splashing front-page coverage. Intent rarely affects coverage of these events; only death counts do. And this is granting the deaths were actually accidental, which we don’t know for sure at this time, or whether the US military was using tactics, like so-called “signature strikes,” that are known to greatly increase the chances of killing noncombatants.

As for the “war zone” factor, according to Airwars, a Western group that monitors civilian deaths at the hands of the US-led coalition, the total number of civilians deaths since the beginning of airstrikes in September 2014 has been 190. To increase this number by almost 50 percent in a matter of days would indeed be a radical departure from the normal course of events—rendering it more than newsworthy.

Indeed, all of the publications in question ran a story on the “dozens of deaths” at the hands of US-led airstrikes, so we know they deemed it notable. Just not notable enough, for whatever reason, to put in a prominent position for US audiences.

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him onTwitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.

Recently Paul Craig Roberts recounted a conversation he had with James Jesus Angleton, a former head of CIA counterintelligence, in which they discussed strategies that the CIA employs to dupe the American and global public, with a view to perpetrating criminal agendas, cloaked beneath the lie of “national interests”.  Angleton explained to Roberts that, 

intelligence services create stories inside stories, each with its carefully constructed trail of evidence, in order to create false trails as diversions. Such painstaking work can serve a variety of purposes … Then if the official story gets into trouble, the backup story can be released in order to deflect attention into a new false story or to support the original story.

The strategy of “stories within stories”, and using competing narratives to confuse, to distract, and to lead the public down false paths (red herrings) is entirely consistent with the 9/11 crimes, the subsequent “War On Terror”, and the criminal invasion of Syria.

The official stories explaining the 9/11 false flag are bundled with hidden stories, “limited hangouts”, and “distance from accountability” strategies — all serving to daze and confuse North Americans in particular, to the point where we revert to passively accepting the narrative of the day and the overarching lie that supporting the neo-con war agenda is patriotic.

The first 9/11 story – Story A – identified al Qaeda and Bin Laden as the primary perpetrators, but this story is being supplanted by another story – story B – which features Saudi Arabia as the villain.  No doubt Saudi Arabia played a role in the crime and the on-going cover-up, but “Story B” is also a “limited hangout” in the sense that only a limited part of the story is “hanging out”.  It also serves to provide cover or “distance from accountability” for some of the major villains who are still shielded from the glare of the spotlight. Additionally, it serves to lead us down false trails (red herring) that divert public attention from the hidden agenda of global war and poverty.

The Saudi Arabia limited hangout does beg an important question though:  Will the CIA’s Wahhabi mercenary outfits — ISIS, al Qaeda/ al Nursra Front, and all the fraudulently labelled “moderates”, be targeting Saudi Arabia next?

The same strategy of “stories within stories” is occurring with the West’s criminal war of aggression on Syria.

Professor Tim Anderson explains in an interview that

“Washington’s plan for a New Middle East – with compliant states across the region – is failing. Their Plan B is to partition or otherwise divide Syria and Iraq. Their Plan C will be to withdraw while pretending that they have helped bring peace to the region.”

The original Plan A: to quickly destroy democratic, pluralist, non-sectarian Syria with Western and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) backed terrorist invaders — with a view to setting up a stooge Wahhabi-style dictatorship, is failing.  Not only are the terrorists being defeated on the battlefield, but the psy op “strategy of disassociation” is crumbling as well. More and more people are seeing through the lies of the “moderate rebel” story:  the Western/GCC – backed “moderates” (all of whom share the same strategic ambitions as ISIS and the West) are at least as bad, maybe worse than their “comrades in arms”, “ISIS”.

When U.S State Department spokesperson Mark Toner explained that they might put a “pause” on funding the so-called “moderates”, who publically and brazenly chopped off the head of a Palestinian boy, the “strategy of disassociation” was beheaded as well.

Plan B is also failing, at least in Syria, since the “balkanization” efforts at creating ethnically or religiously-based enclaves within Syria is hitting the wall of Syria’s longstanding culture of religious freedom and pluralism.  Syrians identify themselves first and foremost as Syrians, and not according to their religious affiliations.

Hopefully, Plan C is around the corner.  The West will pretend that it has achieved peace, and it will withdraw its disgusting terrorist proxies.

The ugly truth about the genocidal Western designs for Syria – well documented for years by sources including former Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief Michael Flynn, by Generals Dempsey, and Clark, by Vice-President Biden, and by publicly available Defence Intelligence Agency documents, as well as from other open source documents — is increasingly being accepted.

Despite the fake reporting, the fake NGOs, the “stories within stories”, the indolence and criminality of the corporate presstitutes, the ugly truth is imposing itself on Western audiences, whether they like it or not.

Just peace requires a foundation of truth.

 There are at least five Daesh military training camps in Kosovo, located in remote areas near the self-proclaimed republic’s border with Albania and Macedonia, a source close to the intelligence services told Sputnik.

In an interview with Sputnik, a source close to the intelligence services singled out at least five Daesh (ISIL/ISIS) training camps, located in remote areas near Kosovo’s border with Albania and Macedonia.

The largest camps are located in areas adjacent to the towns on the Urosevac and Djakovica line as well as the Decani district, the source said, adding that the smaller camps were tracked in the Prizren and Pec regions.

A total of 314 Kosovo Albanians along with Daesh terrorists are now fighting government troops in Syria and Iraq, among them 38 women, according to the source.

As for the recruitment, it takes in two stages; the first is conducted by non-governmental organizations that operate in Kosovo and at numerous private schools, the source said.

“The future Daesh terrorists are ‘brainwashed’ there and they also learn Arabic and study the Koran, something that is followed by so-called ‘combat practice’ training, headed by former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). They typically teach the rookies to wage guerrilla warfare and handle guns, among other things,” according to the source.

“In addition, each camp has several Daesh terrorists who decide on sending the rookies to the war or preparing them for the role of suicide bombers,” the source said, citing about 70 Kosovo Albanian families who decided to join Daesh.

The source also warned of the possible spread of such camps to Macedonia and in Bosnia, where about 800 jihadists arrived during the wars in the 1990s. As far as Macedonia is concerned, the country is just beginning to grapple with the problem, the source said, referring to Macedonian villages which were earlier KLA centers and which have already been turned into Daesh training camps.

In 2013, the Western Balkans Security Issues news website warned of the territory of Kosovo and Albania being used for Daesh training camps, something that was recognized by Kosovo authorities only a year later.

Meanwhile, the source has told Sputnik that the training process dates back to 1999, when al-Qaeda terrorists were involved in training the KLA militants in Kosovo.

In a separate interview with Sputnik earlier this week, Fadil Lepaja, director of the Center for Balkan Studies in Pristina, shared the view that with Kosovo’s borders with Albania and Macedonia existing only on paper, tracking Islamists’ training camps is almost impossible.

He noted that tackling Daesh supporters is a global problem, rather than one limited to Kosovo and Albania. Even though NATO’s mission in Kosovo (KFOR) and all relevant services keep a watchful eye on those who have returned from the war in Syria, it is hard to foresee everything, according to him.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 after spending several years under UN administration. It is recognized by Washington and many EU member nations.

A survey conducted by FAIRof US media coverage of ISIS or ISIS-inspired attacks in Europe and the Middle East reveals a disparity of coverage, showing that European deaths are roughly 1,800 percent more newsworthy than deaths in the Middle East.

For the purposes of this survey, both articles and video reports were included. We chose the three most-circulated “traditional media” newspapers andBuzzfeed, one of the most popular newsites for “Millennials,” to get another perspective. The list was compiled using a combination of the Nexis news database and Google.

Building on a survey of media mentions from March (AlterNet, 3/31/16) of mass attacks on civilians that are either connected to or perceived to be connected to ISIS (note: The Nice attack has yet to be confirmed as an ISIS-inspired attack), one finds that a death in Europe, broadly speaking, is seen as 19 times more newsworthy as one in the Middle East. Setting aside Baghdad, which one could categorize as a “war zone” (unlike Turkey or Lebanon), deaths in non-Western attacks are nine times less likely to garner news coverage.

But why? American pundits like Max Fisher (Vox, 11/16/15) and Brian J. Phillips (Washington Post,  11/16/15) have dismissed those concerned over this discrepancy as “tragedy hipsters,” a pejorative used to describe people who feign outrage over imbalanced coverage.

Some commentators today honestly sound like tragedy hipsters, “Bro- I care about suffering and death that you’ve never even heard of”

— Jamiles Lartey (@JamilesLartey) 14 November 2015

Those like Fisher who dismiss such concerns largely chalk up the difference in coverage to a gap in reader interest, which Fisher supports with a personal anecdote. This argument ignores the extent to which audience interest is shaped by media priorities. Phillips blames the “man bites dog” factor—meaning the attacks in France have more news value by virtue of the fact that attacks there are “more unusual.” While this could be said for Baghdad (and to a lesser extent Turkey), there have actually been three times as many terror attacks in France as there has been in Lebanon over the past year and a half, yet France merited over five times the coverage. 

Not surprisingly, Fisher’s former publication Vox had only one passing mention of the Baghdad attacks, while dedicating nine articles to the Nice attack, despite it having one-third as many victims. As another point of reference, Vox dedicated three times as many articles to the Taylor Swift-Kanye West controversy as it did the worst terror attack in Iraq’s post-invasion history.

Recent reports by Public Radio International (7/16/16) and the New York Times (7/5/16) attempted to answer why, despite being the worst terrorist attack since the US-led invasion in 2003, media coverage of the ISIS Baghdad bombings earlier this month that left over 300 dead was largely absent but came up short, alluding toward the obvious but not really noting it with certainty.

The elephant in the room, and one the media doesn’t seem willing or able to address, is racism—sometimes gestured toward with the vague catch-all “shared cultures,” but more often simply ignored. While it’s possible that proximity and frequency, or a general lack of reader interest, is the culprit, it can’t account for such a wide gap. (It’s worth noting that there are more people in the US of Lebanese than Belgian descent—488,000 vs. 378,000, according to the US Census.)

Occam’s razor suggests that institutional white supremacy (often manifesting with orientalist assumptions about a “cycle of violence” in the Middle East) heavily influences the disparity of coverage. France isn’t any more the United States than Turkey or Lebanon are, but France and the US do share a majority white population. Without at least recognizing this factor,  how can newsmakers accurately assess their editorial priorities? Doing so doesn’t make one a hipster, it means one acknowledges reality — a trait that should be encouraged rather than glibly mocked.

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.

At a national youth educational forum, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed backstage the demands of US Secretary of State John Kerry in Syria.

Infrastructure financing needs of the five BRICS countries was discussed at the annual meet of the New Development Bank’s board of directors in Shanghai on Wednesday.

The NDB was launched by the BRICS nations last year and is seen by its members as an alternative to the World Bank.

On Wednesday, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli said the new lender needs to attract more capital into infrastructure and boost greater economic cooperation between the BRICS countries.

“The BRICS nations and developing countries will have a greater say in global economic governance,” he said.

BRICS members like India and South Africa are struggling with infrastructure deficit.

India needs over $1.5 trillion in investment in the next 10 years to bridge infrastructure gap, India’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at the BRICS Bank Board of Governors meet last month.

The NDB Board of Directors on Wednesday approved funding for its first Russian project: the development of a small-scale energy project in Karelia.

The new lender is allocating $100 million for the project, President Kundapur Vaman Kamath told journalists.

“Today we have approved our project in Russia for $100 mln,” Kamath said. Kamath is a former executive of India’s largest private lender, ICICI Bank.

“In this one year, we have put in place all our major operational policies and procedures. The Board has approved the first set of projects with a total commitment of USD 911 mln, which covers all our five member countries. All of these projects are broadly in an area of renewable energy and through our first set of loans the Bank has begun the process of establishing its credentials as an institution that supports green and sustainable infrastructure,” Kamath added.

The bank also plans to extend finance to private sector.

“As a first step we are developing our own operational policies on that front (private sector) loans without sovereign guarantees; We have to build capacities in terms of people. It will take next six months to do that. Some time in the middle of the next year, I hope we will start looking at private sector projects in member countries. That will bring innovation,” the President of NDB Kamath said.

An emailed statement said NDB Director and Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak stressed that “the Bank has become a part of a big family of multilateral development banks, showing that emerging markets can agree quite quickly and effectively on such an initiative”.

Storchak expressed confidence that “with the establishment of the NDB its members have embarked on providing a new orientation to the global financial system”.

The BRICS Bank announced on Tuesday that it has successfully completed its first green financial bond issuance of 3 billion yuan ($448 million), with a five-year term and interest rate of 3.07 per cent.

Brazil, Russia, India and China officially grouped together in 2009, with South Africa joining later, to press for a bigger say in global financial matters.

The NDB, which is headquartered in Shanghai, started work last year.

 

More than a dozen civilians are dead or injured after US warplanes launch fresh airstrikes in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo.

Local sources said warplanes hit targets in al-Nawajah village east of of Manbij on Saturday, leaving at least 15 people dead or injured.

Some of the wounded victims are said to be in a critical condition, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement from London.

The fresh attack comes shortly after at least 140 civilians were killed in French and US airstrikes in Manbij on Tuesday and Wednesday.

According to the Syrian Foreign Ministry, French warplanes struck the village of Tukhan al-Kubra north of Manbij, killing 120 civilians. The fatalities came a day after a US airstrike killed 20 civilians in Manbij.

Last month, at least 45 civilians were killed in two separate US-led airstrikes in the Syrian city, which is mostly populated by the Kurdish community.

On Thursday, opposition groups in Syria called on the US and allies to suspend airstrikes following the deaths of some 140 civilians in Aleppo until an investigation is completed into the deaths.

The Syrian government has written to the United Nations, asking the world body to condemn the airstrikes which are carried out without authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

The US-led coalition has been backing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces, to capture Manbij since last May.

The coalition has also been conducting airstrikes against purported Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014.

The Syrian government has criticized the unauthorized aerial campaign, saying it has damaged the country’s infrastructure instead of making a dent in the Takfiri group’s capabilities.

“President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan prepared a list of targets for arrest even before the coup (sic) was launched”, European Commission official on Turkey (quoted in FT,  7/19/2016).

The coup in Turkey was made to order. A group of military officers and police officials were set-up to seize power by senior intelligence operatives in the Erdoğan regime. They were allowed to drop a few bombs, seize bridges and buildings before they were encircled, rounded-up and arrested using a list of targets for arrest prepared even before the so-called coup. In the midst of this fake coup, the ‘vacationing’ Erdoğan flies into Istanbul unharmed, of course, because his vacation resort was bombed after he had left. He seizes the mass media, denounces the coup, rouses the Muslim masses and sets about on a mass purge of Turkish society, concentrating on the civil service, teachers and administrators, the military, the courts and judges. Indeed every institution capable of independent action or reputedly critical of Erdoğan is closed. After a week over 60,000 people had been purged.

Why did Erdoğan resort to a coup?

Why did Erdoğan purge Turkish society?

What policies will follow Erdoğan’s power grab?

Prelude to the Coup

Over the past 5 years Erdoğan has suffered a series of political, economic and diplomatic failures and defeats, seriously undermining his dictatorial and territorial ambitions. His air force shot down a Russian military jet operating within Syrian territory. The images of Turkish jihadi mercenaries murdering a Russian pilot as he parachuted to safety, as well as a member of the Russian rescue party, caused the Russian government to halt the multi-billion-dollar Russian tourism industry in Turkey and cancel lucrative business deals. He broke relations with Israel, which undercut a lucrative gas and oil offshore contract. His support for ISIS and other violent Salafist mercenary groups operating in Iraq and Syria provoked a rupture with Syria and Iran. His subsequent effort to disavow Turkey’s links with ISIS led to a series of horrific terror bombings by jihadi cells implanted in the country. Turkey’s diplomatic position in Egypt deteriorated as Erdoğan sought to maintain his ties with the Muslim Brotherhood after it had been ousted from power by a US sponsored Egyptian military coup.

Domestically, Erdoğan alienated the secular Kemalist military and civilian political-economic elite via trumped up trials and media purges. Erdoğan’s heavy-handed assault on liberal and leftist protestors over environmental issues increased Western concern. His brutal handling of the labor protests following the 2014 Soma coalmine disaster, when over 300 workers were killed, further isolated him.

Erdoğan’s war on the Kurdish independence movements in Turkey, Iraq and especially in Syria, where they were allied with the US against the jihadi terrorist ISIS, added to domestic unrest and international isolation.

In order to consolidate his executive power, Erdoğan had first allied with the extensive Gulenist-Islamist networks in Turkey in order to undermine the Kemalists and then he turned around to purge his former allies .

Faced with enemies and adversaries at home and overseas, Erdoğan decided on a dual strategy of improving his ties abroad, especially his links with Russia and Israel while launching a total war on domestic critics.

Fabricated Coup and the Permanent Purge

Erdoğan’s intelligence operatives within the military command encouraged or even provoked his critics in the General Staff, who were fed up with his bungling and disastrous policies, to mount a coup. They gave the rebellious military sufficient space and resources to provide a semblance of authority while retaining strategic control over the air force and key ground troops. They may have feigned sympathy to the launching of a premature uprising …doomed to defeat. Once the heavily infiltrated rebel units moved, the entire Erdoğan operation struck. Hapless conscripts thought they had been called out for military exercises, only to find themselves encircled, arrested and even lynched. The dissidents were isolated, their advances paralyzed, their leaders incapacitated. Erdoğan’s loyalist within the Turkish Air Force flew the triumphant president into the ‘liberated’ Istambul International airport to the cheers of his adoring civilian supporters.

Erdoğan immediately decreed a massive purge – in the name of the fatherland. A real coup had indeed taken place – Erdoğan’s total power grab. The entire political, military, judicial and police system was stripped of personnel within hours. There were over 20,000 arrests, beatings and disappearances. There were calls to re-introduce the death penalty.

Erdoğan’s power grab eliminated key US assets among the Gulenist and eliminated independent Supreme Court officials and secular republican officials. The president was free to rebuild an entire civil, governmental and military apparatus with his own loyalists. His control over the media and the educational institutions was total.

Rule Under Erdoģan

Erdoğan’s pre-emptive coup, purge and power grab will result in a monolithic state which Erdoģan will shape into his long-sought version of an Islamist regime. The new regime announced a ‘State of Emergency’, which places all Turks under strict compliance with Erdoğan’s policies.

Erdoğan’s “New Order” will launch large-scale operations against the Kurds, with no respect for the Syrian or Iraqi national borders. Erdoğan will ensure compliance with Islamist decrees designed to enforce conformity. He will succeed in imposing a dictatorial ‘Presidential’ regime. And parliament, if necessary will be bypassed; his ‘electoral’ mandate will be ensured.

In the immediate aftermath, mass detentions will strengthen the state – and Erdoğan’s generals, allied religious authorities and street thugs will call the shots.

Unleashing force and violence against his domestic enemies, however, may lead to internal disputes among the new predators over the spoils of victory. The economic elite may accept the New Order, but only if and when Erdoğan tones down his rhetorical attacks on the US and the EU.

Erdoğan has yet to develop a strategy on replacing the purged (‘Gulenist’) professionals within the civilian economy and public bureaucracy – especially the schools and judiciary. The impetuous reversals of his reckless policy of confrontation with Russia, Syria, Israel, Iran, Iraq and the Kurds are likely to generate new layers of discontent, especially among his current military commanders.

Erdoğan’s New Order arises from the breakdown of civil society and long-term alliances. He may remain in power in Ankara but he will be viewed as more of a local political thug than a partner among the regional big powers.

Erdoğan’s external allies will exploit his isolation and radical bombast to forge lucrative alliances. Israel will push for favorable gas and oil deals; Russia will insist that Erdoğan abandons his ISIS allies. The US will demand he cease attacks on the Kurds. The EU will use the ongoing purge and re-institution of the death penalty to finally declare Turkey unfit to join the European Union. Bankers and foreign investors will wait for Erdoğan to stop his rampage over the financial sector and ‘get serious’ about the economy.

Erdoğan’s dream of lifetime rulership presiding over an Islamic Neo-Ottoman caliphate, buttressed by street mobs, praetorian guards and crony capitalists makes for an unstable and unruly Turkey. Erdoğan’s military loyalists have their own rivalries and ambitions. Now that Erdoğan has established his ‘military road to power’, he has set a clear precedent for other ‘Erdoğan’s’ to take the same route.

In the short-run Erdoğan needs to restart the economy, stabilize the political system and establish a semblance of international order.

Erdoğan cannot and probably will not prolong tensions with the US over the Gulen affair. Gulen will remain in Pennsylvania, in the CIA’s ‘regime change’ pocket. Meanwhile, he has eliminated most of the Gulenist agents capable of working with the US as a fifth-column. The question is whether he now moves back to his role as a ‘valued’ NATO junior partner, or if he will launch an intensified war against the US’s strategic Kurdish allies?

Erdoğan’s ties with Russia are precarious. There is no reason for the Russians to trust him. He has fallen somewhere between the need for reconciliation with Russia and the desire to continue his proxy war against the government of Syria.

In the end Erdoğan may have secured power and undertaken a vast domestic purge of his enemies, but he has lost the regional war while bearing the consequences of millions of war refugees and a deeply entrenched jihadi terrorist threat within Turkey.

A plea signed by a great number of professors of international law and researchers entitled « A plea against the abusive invocation of self-defence as a response to terrorism » is circulating on the web since a few weeks.

Among the signatories, which are more than 220 professors and almost 50 assistants/researchers  (see the list available  here  at July 22, updated by the Centre de Droit International de l´Université Libre de Bruxelles, ULB) , we find distinguished names of international law community as well as younger  researchers and assistants.  The objective of this collective initiative is to challenge the invocation of the legal argument of self-defense by several States in the context of the war against ISIL or ISIS.

As well known, the United Nations Charter is extremely clear on the unique exception to the prohibition of the use of force since 1945:  self-defense (and military operations authorized by Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter).  However, since 9/11, various interpretations made by United States and its allies have tried to legally support unilateral military operations in the territory of a State without previous consent of its authorities.  In a recent note published on the website of the European Journal of International Law (EJIL), we read that: “Particularly since 9/11, several States have supported a broad reading of the right to use force in self-defence, as allowing them to intervene militarily against terrorists whenever and wherever they may be. A consequence of that conception is that any State could be targeted irrespective of whether that State has ‘sent’ the irregular (in this case terrorist) group to carry out a military action or has been ‘substantially involved’ in such an action” (Note 1).

The use of force in self-defense must be exercised in conformity with the conditions laid down in the UN Charter and international law. On this very particular point, it must be recalled that France presented at the Security Council a quite surprising draft resolution  after Paris attacks of November 13, 2015  (see  full text  of the « blue version » circulated among delegations)  avoiding any reference  to the Charter in the operative paragraphs: it is possibly a great “première” of French diplomacy at the United Nations (Note 2).

The text of this plea (available here ) in French, English, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic) considers, among others arguments, that:

«Thus, numerous military interventions have been conducted in the name of self-defence, including against Al Qaeda, ISIS or affiliated groups. While some have downplayed these precedents on account of their exceptional nature, there is a serious risk of self-defence becoming an alibi, used systematically to justify the unilateral launching of military operations around the world. Without opposing the use of force against terrorist groups as a matter of principle — particularly in the current context of the fight against ISIS — we, international law professors and scholars, consider this invocation of self-defence to be problematic. In fact, international law provides for a range of measures to fight terrorism. Priority should be given to these measures before invoking self-defence .

For the signatories of this plea,

 …. we consider that terrorism raises above all the challenge of prosecution and trial of individuals who commit acts of terrorism. A variety of legal tools are available in this respect. They relate first and foremost to police and judicial cooperation (chiefly through agencies such as INTERPOL or EUROPOL), aiming both at punishing those responsible for the crimes committed and preventing future occurrence of such crimes. Although there is certainly room for improvement, this cooperation has often proved effective in dismantling networks, thwarting attacks, and arresting the perpetrators of such attacks. By embracing from the outset the « war against terrorism » and « self-defence » paradigms and declaring a state of emergency, there is a serious risk of trivializing, neglecting, or ignoring ordinary peacetime legal processes”.

It must be noted that international law scholars and researchers around the world can sign this document until next July 31. The text recalls a certain number of very clear rules that diplomats in New York know better than anyone,  despite the ambiguous interpretations made by some of their colleagues, in particular since the beginning of airstrikes in Syria, without the consent of its authorities (Note 3).

This collective document refers also that:

 …, the maintenance of international peace and security rests first and foremost with the Security Council. The Council has qualified international terrorism as a threat to the peace on numerous occasions. Therefore, aside from cases of emergency leaving no time to seize the UN, it must remain the Security Council’s primary responsibility to decide, coordinate and supervise acts of collective security. Confining the task of the Council to adopting ambiguous resolutions of an essentially diplomatic nature, as was the case with the passing of resolution 2249 (2015) relating to the fight against ISIS, is an unfortunate practice. Instead, the role of the Council must be enhanced in keeping with the letter and spirit of the Charter, thereby ensuring a multilateral approach to security  /…/ 

However, the mere fact that, despite its efforts, a State is unable to put an end to terrorist activities on its territory is insufficient to justify bombing that State’s territory without its consent. Such an argument finds no support either in existing legal instruments or in the case law of the International Court of Justice. Accepting this argument entails a risk of grave abuse in that military action may henceforth be conducted against the will of a great number of States under the sole pretext that, in the intervening State’s view, they were not sufficiently effective in fighting terrorism.

It must be noted that, last February 2016, Canada new authorities decided to cease airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. We read on this  official note  produced by Canadian Armed Forces (CAF)  that: “ In accordance with Government of Canada direction, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) ceased airstrike operations in Iraq and Syria on 15 February 2016. From their first sortie on 30 October 2014 to 15 February 2016, the CF-188 Hornets conducted 1378 sorties resulting in 251 airstrikes (246 in Iraq and 5 in Syria), expended 606 munitions and achieved the following effects: 267 ISIL fighting positions, 102 ISIL equipment and vehicles, and, 30 ISIL Improvised Explosive Device (IED) factories and ISIL storage facilities”.

In 2015, a Canadian scholar concluded an extremely interesting article on Canadian airstrikes in Syria and Iraq in the following terms: “However, there is a further legal hurdle for Canada to overcome. Unless Canada can attribute ISIS´ attacks in Iraq to Syria, then the question becomes whether Canada may lawfully target ISIS, as a nonstate actor in Syria’s sovereign territory, using the ‘unwilling or unable’ doctrine to prevent ISIS’ extraterritoriality attacks against Iraq. This justification moves significantly away from the Nicaragua, Congo and Israeli Wall cases’ requirement for attribution. There appears to be a lack of consensus on whether opinion juris and state practice have accepted the “unwilling or unable” doctrine as customary international law. There is no escaping the conclusion that Canada’s air strikes on Syria are on shaky, or at least shifting, legal ground ” (Note 4).

The signatories of this collective plea, which number increase from day to day, including scholars from different continents and age, conclude reaffirming that:

1. See CORTEN O., « A Plea Against the Abusive Invocation of Self-Defence as a Response to Terrorism”, European Journal of International Law (EJIL Talk), July 14, 2016, available here .

2. See ou modest note published in France,  BOEGLIN N., «Attentats à Paris : remarques à propos de la résolution 2249 », Actualités du Droit, December 6, 2015, available  here . See also, after parliamentary debate  in United Kingdom authorizing airstrikes in Syria, BOEGLIN N. «Arguments based on UN resolution 2249 in Prime Minister´s report on airstrikes in Syria: some clarifications needed », Global Research, December 3, 2015, available here  .

3. On the notion of « unwilling or unable » State, justifying, for some diplomats, military operations on its territory without its previous consent, see: CORTEN O., “The ‘Unwilling or Unable’ Test: Has it Been, and Could it be, Accepted?”, Leiden Journal of International Law, 2016. Full text of this article available  here .

4. See LESPERANCE R.J. , “Canada’s Military Operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the Law of Armed Conflict”, Canadian International Lawyer, Vol. 10 (2015), pp. 51-63, p. 61. Full text of the article available  here .

This article was first published on May 31st, 2016 and on Global Research on June 2nd. Eric Draitser’s analysis is outstanding and incisive

Earlier this week, Bernie Sanders warned that Hillary Clinton’s eventual vice presidential pick must not be someone from the milieu of Wall Street and Corporate America. And while Sanders is still fighting to win the Democratic Party nomination in what many have argued is a rigged system with a foregone conclusion, it appears that Sanders is also intent on influencing the course of the Clinton campaign and the party itself.

In a thinly veiled demand that Clinton embrace the core principles of the Sanders campaign in order to secure the support of Sanders’s political base, the insurgent Democratic candidate hoped aloud “that the vice-presidential candidate will not be from Wall Street, will be somebody who has a history of standing up and fighting for working families, taking on the drug companies…taking on Wall Street, taking on corporate America, and fighting for a government that works for all of us, not just the 1%.”

And while that description may sound positive for its sheer idealism, it does not seem to account for the fact that banks and corporations effectively own both major parties, and that nearly every top Democrat is in various ways connected to the very same entities. In any event, it is useful still to examine a few of the potential Clinton running mates in order to assess just what sort of forces are going to be put in motion to help deliver a Clinton presidency.

The Actors on the Playbill

Beltway pundits are fond of remarking that Tim Kaine, the underwhelming centrist Democrat senator (and former Governor) from Virginia, is at the top of the list for Clinton. He’s safe. He’s experienced. He’s safe. He’s a Democratic Party loyalist with experience fundraising. Oh, and did I mention that he’s safe? Such is the general tenor of the conversation around Kaine, a politician with a long track record and a mostly forgettable personality known more to DC insiders than to the general voting public.

What could be better for Hillary Clinton, perhaps the least liked Democratic (presumptive) nominee in decades, than to have a party establishment insider who represents the status quo as her running mate in an election year that will undoubtedly be remembered for the ostensibly anti-establishment candidates and rhetoric on display throughout?

To be fair, Kaine does represent Virginia, a swing state that is crucial for Donald Trump, and which could spell victory for Clinton should she carry it.  And of course, Kaine can also posture as “tough on Wall Street” from his days as DNC Chairman and party mouthpiece during the passage of the so-called “Wall Street reform” bill.  Despite nothing substantive coming out of the bill, Kaine is still able to cash in the political currency derived from that bill, and perhaps meekly shield Clinton from continued attacks vis-à-vis her connections to Wall Street.

Of course Kaine also comes with his own baggage, including his anti-abortion stance which earned him the ire of many pro-choice activists in Virginia when he was Governor.  Considering the shameless droning from Clinton and her backers about being “the first woman president,” it would certainly raise serious questions – and open up an obvious angle of attack for Trump – were she to sport her feminism and focus on women’s reproductive rights by selecting a man with an anti-abortion record.

A look down the list of other potential choices reveals that Clinton truly has very little to choose from.  Both Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julian Castro, as well as Labor Secretary Tom Perez, have both had their names bandied around as Clinton seeks to solidify the Latino vote in an election where the Republican candidate has worked tirelessly to alienate that all-important demographic as much as possible.  But of course, the obvious question to be asked in response to either of these potential selections would be “Who?” Neither Castro nor Perez is well known nationally, nor have either of them won major elections or really done anything of note in their tenure in Obama’s cabinet.  Despite being Latinos, they are utterly forgettable, and unlikely to bring significant returns to Clinton.

While other names such as New Jersey junior senator Cory Booker, as well as Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, have been discussed, both men hail from states with Republican governors, meaning that were they to accept a VP slot, their senate vacancies would be likely filled by Republicans, a scenario that Senate Minority LeaderHarry Reid has already said “Hell no!” to, vowing to “yell and scream to stop that.”

Who Else Is “Ready for Hillary”?

So that then leaves the two most interesting potential running mates: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders himself. Warren, who conspicuously refused to endorse Clinton over Sanders, has tremendous upside for Clinton as she has been perhaps the Democratic Party’s most vehement opponent of Wall Street, having led many high profile attacks on the major banks in her tenure in the Senate.  From a public relations branding perspective, she is essentially the female Bernie Sanders, a progressive Democrat who presents herself as an ally of working people and an enemy of bankers. For Clinton, Warren would also round out the “First Woman…” card, allowing the Clinton campaign to quite literally become a campaign about breaking the glass ceiling in US politics. The stump speeches almost write themselves.

Finally, there’s Mr. #FeelTheBern himself. His latest comments (mentioned above) certainly do have a subtext that implies his willingness to accept a running mate slot.  Having fashioned himself as the champion of the middle class and threat to the Washington establishment, Bernie would provide much in the way of credibility to a lackluster Clinton campaign which has failed to excite even many ardent Democrats.  Sanders would also guarantee a unified Democratic Party ticket, and provide much needed defense of Clinton’s left flank.  In short, Sanders, like Warren, would give anti-Clinton progressives the pretext many of them need to justify their voting for the much-hated Clinton.

Never mind the fact that neither Sanders nor Warren would actually do anything to combat Wall Street finance capital as Vice President.  Never mind the fact that no one on Wall Street is particularly scared of either politician being given the ceremonial power that comes with the Vice Presidency.  These are just the kind of uncomfortable, but inescapable, facts that progressives must choose to ignore.

The difficulty for either Sanders or Warren is the marketing of their decision to left progressives, some of whom would see collaboration with Clinton and the Clinton political machine as a betrayal and a complete sell-out.  However, aside from driving a some relatively small number of progressives to vote for Jill Stein and the Green Party (or stay home entirely), it is unlikely that the negative impact in the progressive base would amount to anything more than some hurt feelings followed by the usual acquiescence to the Democratic Party line.

If such an analysis sounds cynical and jaded, that’s because it is. Perhaps a better descriptor would be disdainful.  Indeed, as someone who watched with bemused melancholy as progressives lined up to support Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, my position on support for ANY Democrat is the same as Harry Reid’s position on swing state senator VP picks: Hell no!

Indeed, the very notion of collaboration with a war criminal and Wall Street puppet such as Clinton is anathema to everything the left and “progressives” are supposed to stand for.

Of course, there is also the elephant (and donkey) in the room: both major parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of finance capital and the corporations that rule over us. This is the realization that millions of Americans have already made, and which millions more are making.  This is the realization that keeps Democratic and Republican apparatchiks up at night.  And this critical revelation is what Bernie, Liz, & Co. are there to suppress.

Zionism is primarily a Christian Protestant enterprise that has little to do with Judaism. This explains why US Christians are the most ardent Zionists and the most powerful supporters of Israel. The largest opposition to Zionism came initially from the rabbinical elite, which viewed it as heretical and an aberration of the Jewish faith. Zionism represents a break with Jewish tradition and historical continuity. Israel has to be seen in terms of European nationalism, colonial expansion, and geopolitical interests rather than as the divine fulfillment of biblical prophecies or even a culmination of Jewish history.

The traditional Judaic yearning for “Return”, which is a purely spiritual concept, was turned into a political cause by Christians in order to accelerate the coming of Christ and force the Jews to convert to Christianity. The influence of Christian Zionists plays a very important role up to the present day. These are only some of the most provocative conclusions of Yakov M. Rabkin’s excellent analysis of modern day Israel.

What was true of the 18th and 19th centuries, also held true for the 20th century. Many leading British politicians such as Lord Balfour were anti-Semantic. So there was a fertile ground for anti-Semitism in Britain among Protestants. Therefore, it should not surprise anyone, that the zeal of Protestant Christianity to settle the Jews of Britain in the so-called Holy Land, had little to do with Christians affection for Judaism, but rather with their latent anti-Semitism and pure self-interests.

Yakov M. Rabkin is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Montreal. He has been a visiting scholar at many universities around the world. He has written extensively on subjects such as science, technology, and ideology. His most acclaimed book, however, is  “A Threat from Within: a Century of Jewish opposition to Zionism”, which has been nominated for Canada’s Governor-General Award, Israel’s Hecht Prize for Studies in Zionism and listed as one of the three best books of the year in Japan. This book has been translated into twelve languages.

In nine chapters, the author compares the Zionist claims to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) with rabbinical Jewish teachings. He shows that the Zionist narrative has little to do with Judaism. Leading representatives of Zionism have cherry-picked from Jewish tradition to incorporate it into Zionist mythology. John Rose calls in his book “The Myth of Zionism” David Ben-Gurion the “greatest myth-maker”. The “Land of Israel” claim, as made by the Zionists, has a totally different meaning in Judaism. “‘Promised land’ means, in fact, that it belongs not to the to whom the promise was made, but to the one who made the promise.”

To understand modern-day Israel, one should put Judaism and Jewish tradition aside because such a connection is misleading; for “Zionism and the state that incarnates it are revolutionary phenomena”. Such provocative theses are very numerous scattered all over Rabkin’s book. It’s easier to understand the policies and the structure of the State of Israel by leaving aside references to Jewish history. As a consequence, Rabkin suggests that one should speak of the State of Israel as a “Zionist state” rather than a “Jewish state”. The same holds true for the Israel lobby, that should be designated as a “Zionist lobby” rather than a “Jewish lobby”. Instead of delving into the religious mythology of Jewish history, Rabkin urged readers to analyze Israel within the context of international politics, Western interests and the resources of the Middle East.

“The Jews came to Zionism long after the Christians”, states the author. Even Zionist leader Theodor Herzl was influenced by Christian protestant thinking. Herzl’s wanted first to “solve the Jewish question” (Judenfrage) by having all Jews convert to Catholicism. The idea to gather all Jews in one location did not originate with Jews but in English and American Protestant circles. It was considered of “supreme importance to Christianity” writes Rabkin. Herzl got initially familiar with this idea through a Protestant clergyman from the British embassy in Vienna. Till today, Protestant support for Zionism continues to play a crucial role, which can be seen in the U. S. According to a Pew poll, 82 percent of WASPs (=White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) believe that God gave the State of Israel to the Jewish people, while only 42 percent of Jews share this belief, as Rabkin says.

For several decades, the Zionist national movement was associated in Western public opinion with leftist socialist ideas. For socialist internationalists, it was not natural to support a movement that the second pillar is nationalism, whose ideas rooted in Europe and were popularized by a “mere handful of assimilated Jews in Central Europe”, said Rabkin.  Consequently, many Jews rejected Zionism as a reactionary movement, leave alone orthodox Jews all across Europe. They rejected the Zionist agenda of return to the “Land of Israel” by “political means” as incompatible with “the idea of salvation in Jewish tradition”, writes Rabin.

The most active Zionists in Palestine were Russians, who strove to build a new society. They wanted to build a socialist society but without the native Arabs. The word they mostly used was “separation”. Along the socialist Zionists, the Jewish community in Palestine included political Zionists from France, Germany, and Austria, who brought with them a liberal-bourgeois world-view.

Rabkin stresses the importance of the Russian dimension within the Zionist movement and highlights the fact that modern day Israel can’t be properly understood without accounting for the Jewish Russian influence. Jews from the Russian Empire formed the backbone of the Zionist colonial settlement enterprise in Palestine. Although there hasn’t been any significant emigration from the Soviet Union to Palestine/Israel since the 1920s until the end the 20th Century, over 60 percent of Knesset members in the 1960s were of Russian origin or descent.

That’s why it’s no coincidence that the Netanyahu government gets along so well with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in particular, Moldova-born Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. It should be added that common interests, smart diplomacy, and the esteem of the role of the nation-state are shared values between Israel and Russia.

According to Rabkin, for the majority of Zionists, “the Nazi genocide stands as the ultimate proof of the dangers that threaten Jews around the world”. From the start, Zionism has been seen, inter alia, as a movement to make anti-Semitism absolute by creating a State of the Jews, especially the right-wing Israeli government presents Israel as a reaction to this kind of racism. According to Rabkin, the emphasis on anti-Semitism seems a response to liberalism that attracts many Jews to settle in Israel who would otherwise not dare to emigrate to Israel. Israeli nationalistic leaders regularly tell world Jewry that Israel is the only place where Jews can live in security. i. e. in an “ethnocracy called the State of Israel”.

To speak about contemporary Jewish history, one has to deal with the Nazi genocide, writes Rabkin. The Nazi genocide is a constitutive part of Israeli Zionist identity. Zionists and religious orthodox Jews have drawn opposite conclusions from this horrific crime against humanity. “This tragedy has been transformed into a vector for national unity in Israel, and for Zionist allegiance in the Diaspora.” This transformation has given rise to serious critique among Israeli intellectuals. Although Zionists and their detractors agree on the hostility encountered by the Jews over the centuries, they differ on the reasons. Zionists generally explain “this hostility by the political and military weakness of the Jews, pious Jews tend to see it as a punishment for the sins committed by the Jews themselves”, so Rabkin.

Although only half of the world’s Jewish population lives in Israel, the Israeli political establishment pretends to speak on behalf of, and represent, all the world’s Jews. They claim that their Zionist state belongs to all Jews, while the native Palestinians have no legitimate place in the country. This view has also been stressed by David Ben-Gurion and the erstwhile Zionist labor movement. Rabkin rejects the criticism of the liberal Zionist that the current government has betrayed original Zionist intentions. Instead, he stresses the continuity of the Zionist state from its inception till this day. All the legitimate criticism of Israel and its negative image among the population in Western states, “Western elites lend it increasingly unconditional support”. As an example of this uncritical support, Rabkin cites the acceptance of Israel into the OECD, shortly after the Israeli Terrorist Forces (ITF) massacred 1 400 people in the Gaza Strip at the turn of 2008/2009.

What is modern about Israel, is not easy to say. It’s not that clear-cut than a first impression might imply. Although the State of Israel represents a high-tech society with a powerful military, that wields atomic weapons, it’s legitimacy is still questioned in the region. On the one hand, some segments of orthodox Jewry still does not recognize the Zionist State of Israel because they reject the nationalistic concept of the Jews; on the other hand, Palestinians  – the victims of Zionist colonization –  refuse to recognize Israel as a “Jewish” State as demanded by the Zionist ruling class. Even the question “who is Jewish” is still contentious within Israel. Is Israel a Jewish or a Zionist state? The author has opted for the latter because the gap between Zionism and Jewish history continues to exist and could not be bridged until today. All in all, the existence of the State of Israel is still in limbo.

Yacov Rabkin’s book demonstrates that Zionism is not the sequel of Judaism. That Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state” seems pseudo-religious dogma, designed only by believers. Although presenting provoking views, the book is convincingly and boldly argued. After “A Threat from Within: a Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism”, this is another must read from the pen of a true scholar.

Dr. Ludwig Watzal who works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He runs the bilingual blog http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de/

Yakov M. Rabkin, What is Modern Israel, Pluto Press, London 2016, 228 pp. $ 27.

So a few Russian athletes have been accused of doping. In some cases this is undeniable, in others it is debatable. Nowhere, in any database, in any investigation or laboratory, is there evidence that all Russian sports persons are guilty of doping, so under the precept of international law that a person is innocent until being proven guilty…

It makes no sense to ban innocent athletes. However the Court of Arbitration for Sport has upheld a blanket ban imposed on the entire Russian field and track (athletics) team by the International Association of Athletics Federations and the talk of the town this weekend is whether the entire Russian Olympic team will be banned. This, after it is apparent that not all members of the field and track events were involved in any type of doping in any way, shape or form.

This, after the Russian Athletics Federation has done everything within its power to ensure that the Russian field and track team could compete at the Games.

This, when in the last six months, in January, in February, in March, in April, in May, in June, all, I repeat all Russian athletes underwent tests for doping following the recommendations of the World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA.

This, when all the so-called evidence is based on the testimony of one single person, Grigory Rodchenkov, whose own reputation is described as scandalous inside Russia, and against whom criminal accusations were levelled precisely for breaching anti-doping legislation. But guess who (Canadian) professor Richard McClaren believed, and made his accusations against all and sundry in his puerile report, even making accusations without presenting evidence, for instance against the FSB?

Western justice: War criminals and murderers walk around free

Conclusion: Western justice at its best. Does anyone remember the howls of derision when the Soviet Union boycotted the LA Olympics in 1984 and accused Russia of mixing politics and sport? Where were those voices in 1980 when the west boycotted the Moscow Games because the USSR sent forces to help the beleaguered Afghan government to fight western-sponsored terrorists? And where are those voices now?

Remembering that WADA is funded by the Executive Office of the US Presidency, let us then read through a collection of doping reports. Since Lord Coe is so vociferous in expressing his satisfaction at the banning of the Russian athletics team, maybe we can start with the UK?

Let’s see the United Kingdom’s doping processes

OK then here goes. I am going to leaf through a collection of anti-doping reports in alphabetical order picking and selecting some of the cases, not all, under letters A to D and will stop after five minutes.

Ali Adams (Boxing, Stanozolol); David Allen (Rugby League, Metabolite of cocaine); Ijah Anderson (Soccer, cocaine); Chris Armstrong (Soccer, cannabis); Michael Banbula (Boxing, Performance enhancers); Ryan Barrett (Boxing, Methylhexanamine); Alain Baxter (Alpine skiing, Methamphetamine); Terry Bridge, Rugby league, Steroids); Ian Brown (Rugby, Testosterone); Johnathan Bullough (Weightlifting, Methylhexaneamine); Ian Burnham (Water polo, Cocaine); Danny Cadamarteri (Soccer, Ephedrine); Neil Campbell (Cycling, hCG); James Comben (Rugby Union, Methylhexanamine); David Cookson (Rugby Union, Methylhexanamine); Kofi Danso (Basketball, test tampering); Ceri Davies (Rugby, Drostanolone); Tony Dodson (Boxing, Performance enhancers); John Donnelly (Boxing, Benzoylecgonine); Terry Dunstan (Boxing, Performance enhancers); Jamie Durbin (Rugby league, Stanozolol).

I repeat, five minutes of typing, letters A to D. So we have letters E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z to go. Er…Is there any speculation that the entire Team Great Britain could be banned? No of course not. After all, the UK took part in the war crimes in Iraq, interfered in Syria and sent Libya into total chaos after it reached the status of the African country with the highest Human Development Index under Gaddafy.

And now for the United States of America

Let us turn to the USA, again letters A to D.

Andre Agassi (Tennis, Methamphetamine); Darell Alderman (Drag racing, cocaine); Stephen Alfred (Cycling, Norandrosterone, Testosterone, hCG, refusal to submit to doping control); Sadam Ali (Boxing, Cathine) ; A. J. Allmendinger (Auto racing, amphetamines); Lyle Alzado (Football, anabolic steroids); Chris Andersen (Basketball), Frankie Andreu (Cycling, EPO), Abdallah Anwar (Boccia, Hydrochlorothiazide); Lance Armstrong (Cycling, EPO, Human Growth Hormone, Testosterone, Cortisone, Blood transfusions); Sarah Baham (Swimming, refusal to submit to a test); John Barnett (Mixed martial arts, Boldenone); Phil Baroni (Mixed martial arts, Boldenone, Stanozolol metabolites); Doug Barron (Golf, Performance enhancing drugs); Bryan Berard (Ice hockey, 19-norandrosterone); Adam Bergman (Cycling, EPO); Dale Berra (Baseball, Cocaine); Alan Bogomolov Junior (Tennis, Salbutamol); Barry Bonds (Baseball, amphetamines); Stephan Bonnar (Mixed martial arts, Boldenone); David Boston (Football, Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid); Ryan Braun (Baseball, human growth enhancer); Matt Bricker (Swimming, Ephedrine); Emily Brunneman (Swimming, Hydrochlorothiazide, Triamterene); Rebekkah Brunson (Basketball, Salmeterol); Rachael Burke (Swimming, Boldione); Enos Cabell (Baseball, Cocaine); Mike Cameron (Baseball, Stimulants); Ken Caminiti (Baseball, Steroids); Jose Canseco (Baseball, Steroids); Roger Clemens (Baseball, Anabolic steroids); Chris Cooper (Football, THG); Kit Cope (Mixed martial arts, Boldenone); Joey D’Antoni (Cycling, EPO); Lindsay Devaney (Swimming, refusal to submit to testing); Jerramie Domish (Ice hockey, performance enhancers)…

Whoops a daisy, a tad embarrassing, what? Now, er…is…is the USA Olympic team to be banned from the Rio Olympics?

Let us be honest about this. I myself had Olympic competing times in the 1970s (specifically between 1974 and 1979) in long distance running, including three consecutive 5-minute miles and a 5,000 meters in 13 minutes and 29 seconds, in 1976. Did we use doping? We used every means possible to enhance our performance, in my case glucose tablets and pasta before the race. Having kept in contact with sports as a hobby, as an observer and as a player, I have a wide range of contacts from various sports modalities and the general perception is that you compete clean but everyone knows someone who goes as near to the legal limit as possible, the bottom line being not getting caught.

This does not mean that everyone uses doping, so it does not mean that the entire Russian team uses doping. Agreed? So why impose a blanket ban on all Russians?

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.

En Canadá, y en algunos otros países, la elección de Justin Trudeau como el nuevo Primer Ministro el pasado mes de octubre fue vista como una importante renovación. En parte esto se debe a la figura juvenil y comunicativa del nuevo Primer Ministro, todo lo contrario de su antecesor Stephen Harper quien estuvo 11 años en el poder siendo siempre no sólo un político de extrema derecha sino uno que no daba explicaciones a nadie de nada, violando incluso sus responsabilidades como político y administrador del estado. Harper no tuvo ningún empacho en cerrar el parlamento por dos meses en diciembre del 2008 simplemente para evitar un voto de no-confianza en contra de su gobierno. Sorprendentemente, podemos decir, en sus 11 años de “reinado” Harper recibió contadas críticas, ninguna de instituciones importantes o de medios de comunicación, ambos representante de las élites corporativas dominantes. Sin duda, Justin Trudeau capitalizó el descontento de una parte de los canadienses respecto a la figura despótica e indiferente de Harper; se podría decir que muchos votantes eligieron repudiar la persona de Harper más que a su conducción de gobierno o a las medidas que tomara. Así se impuso el viejo Partido Liberal con Justin Trudeau, un educador de 44 años de edad, que ejerció como profesor secundario antes de ser elegido representante político, y que sin duda también lo favoreció el ser hijo del más famoso político canadiense, Pierre Trudeau quien fuera Primer Ministro por 15 años en los años 70 y 80. Y si bien Justin Trudeau presenta una figura muy diferente a su antecesor Stephen Harper, no por eso Canadá emerge con un nuevo proyecto político de país con este nuevo gobierno, más bien el status quo continúa no sólo en la política canadiense interna sino también en la externa.

Justin Trudeau ha usado sus energías como Primer Ministro de Canadá para saludar a quien viera, sacarse fotos con quien se lo pidiera y sonreír al público acompañado muchas veces de su esposa, Sophie Gregoire, figura pública ella también de la televisión canadiense antes de ser primera dama. La pareja se presenta amable, sonriente, fotogénica y está acostumbrada a la vida pública. Son cualidades que facilitan las relaciones públicas y es posible que la popularidad de los Trudeau llegue a ser comparable con la de las más conocidas parejas del mundo de espectáculo, pero estas no son necesariamente cualidades para dirigir el país.  Sin duda los Trudeau forman una pareja atractiva, con niños pequeños y con una historia a la vez conocida y trágica, que emerge con un final casi feliz gracias a que la madre de Justin, Margaret Trudeau,  antaño problemática esposa de Pierre, se ha transformado en madura y crecida abuela con una misión en favor de la salud mental, ella misma superando la depresión bipolar. Pero esto no puede ser todo lo que hay.

Es que no existe labor política y administrativa para Justin Trudeau, esta queda en las manos de los encargados de siempre, los tecnócratas que no vemos necesariamente. En Canadá, como en cualquier país del  primer mundo y como muchos del tercero, los políticos del gobierno y de la oposición tienen como única tarea engañar a la gente al tiempo que defienden a los ricos y sus negocios, por eso necesitan hacer mucho show. Las promesas existen en los discursos, durante las elecciones; Justin Trudeau repetía constantemente el estribillo sobre su preocupación por la clase media canadiense, esto porque clase media se entiende como la mayoría de los canadienses.  Las promesas incluían un gran plan de gastos de infraestructura que habría de generar trabajos que no serían trabajos de servicios mal pagados, como son la mayoría de los trabajos que se crean. Se hablaba de democratizar el sistema de elecciones federales para que fuera proporcional y no como es actualmente en donde el ganador se lleva una proporción mayor de los asientos parlamentarios. De estas promesas y de otras menores nada se ha visto hasta ahora y seguramente nada se verá. Con la excepción  de haber aceptado 25000 refugiados sirios, asunto que está en proceso, y que significa un 10 por ciento de los inmigrantes que Canadá acepta cada año (no olvidemos que un 20 por ciento de la población nació fuera del país). Pero nadie exigirá al nuevo gobierno que cumpla con sus promesas, como nadie le exigió nada a Harper durante su gobierno, hay un marcado desinterés de parte de la población por los asuntos públicos de este país, el desinterés es endémico y los partidos de oposición no son sino organizaciones muertas que se focalizan en discutir asuntos irrelevantes en el Parlamento y comportarse como niños. La actividad política se reduce a los tiempos en que hay elecciones.

El partido NDP (Nueva Democracia) que es social demócrata ha dejado ya por muchos años de representar al centro izquierda en Canadá y trata hoy con mucho ahínco de ser lo más pro-corporación posible. En su seno se han discutido asuntos políticos de relevancia en el pasado pero las posiciones de derecha se impusieron y terminaron con todo cuestionamiento relevante. El cuarto partido aplica solamente a Quebec, no a todo el país. El quinto partido es el Partido Verde y tiene representación parlamentaria federal de un sólo parlamentario, se trata de su líder Elizabeth May, quizás el único miembro del parlamento que cuestiona y se comporta con decencia.

No es que no existan asuntos que solucionar en Canadá, que como país y en lo económico sufre un creciente endeudamiento público federal más las provincias que ya alcanza a 1,3 billones o sea a un 91,5 por ciento de su PIB, y que tiene un déficit comercial que en el 2015 llegó a casi 22 mil millones de dólares (Statistics Canada) y que además ha sido también duramente afectado por la caída del precio de las materias primas incluyendo al petróleo que junto al gas natural se exporta casi en un 98 por ciento a Estados Unidos y que significa un 23 por ciento del total de las exportaciones. Canadá ha sido gravemente  afectado por la globalización (o el dominio corporativo mundial) y por las políticas neoliberales de las últimas tres décadas, razón por la cual ha perdido más de un millón de puestos de trabajo en la industria, y en esta área el sector que más ha sobrevivido es el de procesamiento de alimentos aunque tampoco se ha escapado pues han cerrado más de 150 plantas en los últimos 10 años. Y esto no se ha detenido, pues Canadá está listo a firmar el próximo octubre un tratado de libre comercio con la Unión Europea  y más adelante el TPP (Tratado Trans-Pacífico), ambos afectarán negativamente la producción de productos lácteos, causando cierres de factorías y creciente desempleo.

Pero Justin Trudeau, el nuevo Primer Ministro,  igual que los anteriores, ha hecho un tremendo show cada vez que se reúne con los representantes de Estados Unidos y México con quienes se ha firmado el tratado de libre comercio desde 1994, como si los efectos de este tratado, y de los otros, hubiese sido positivo, recordándonos a alguien que celebrara cada cierto tiempo sus desgracias.  Los llamados “Tres Amigos,” como ridículamente se los llama en la prensa, hicieron su show en Ottawa el pasado mes de junio y parte de este circo incluyó al Presidente Obama y al Primer Ministro Trudeau, destacando con emoción  la gestión democrática  del señorito Presidente de México Enrique Peña Nieto. Siendo que México es uno de los países más represores y violentos del mundo. Y para que decir que cuando Obama fue invitado al Parlamento canadiense, después de su discurso hizo bromas típicas del “humor norteamericano” que para congraciarse con él los parlamentarios canadienses celebraron tanto que un periodista no pudo sino destacar la expresión ya no como exagerada sino como esquizofrénica. En Canadá la adulonería a Obama es aparatosa, quizás debido al pasado racista que este país ha tenido con sus afro-descendientes y aborígenes.

El comercio con China, segundo socio comercial después de Estados Unidos, se ha hecho más importante para Canadá porque sus exportaciones, principalmente de materias primas –minerales, papel y madera, han aumentado al doble en los últimos diez años cosa que no ha sucedido con las exportaciones canadienses hacia el resto del mundo que se han mantenido estáticas. Pero aún así, siendo China un socio tan importante para Canadá, Trudeau no pudo contenerse de hacer críticas públicas a este país hablando sobre los derechos humanos, todo esto basado en datos dudosos y como si Canadá fuera un paraíso en este tema y en el tema de acceso a la libre información.  Pero esta vez el embajador de China en Canadá se ofendió con la diatriba del gobierno canadiense y le expresó claramente que estas actitudes atrevidas tienen consecuencias y que es tiempo que el gobierno de Canadá se ocupe de sus propios asuntos de derechos humanos, lo que la prensa canadiense interpretó como un acto espontáneo del embajador chino que quería lucirse ante el gobierno de su país para poder trepar mejor. Vale decir, sólo los gobernantes canadienses son patriotas cuando defienden su país, los gobernantes de otros países si lo hacen son simplemente oportunistas.

En cuanto al tema de política exterior, Trudeau  repite la posición habitual de que Canadá es el más fiel aliado de los Estados Unidos y el más fiel miembro de la OTAN, por lo tanto está siempre presto a condenar, atacar y si es necesario destruir a cualquier país y gobierno que sea elegido como enemigo de turno. Tal es el caso de Siria donde este gobierno expresa por un lado su deseo de ser intervención y por otro trae un puñado de refugiados que él mismo ha ayudado a crear.  En el continente americano Canadá junto a Estados Unidos y algunos otros gobiernos latinoamericanos cooptados traman desde la OEA constantemente una intervención contra Venezuela, la última maniobra conspirativa no prosperó pero el deseo intervencionista continúa. Las críticas a Venezuela son también en base a los famosos derechos humanos, pero Canadá nunca ha criticado las violaciones criminales a los derechos de sus pueblos por parte de las autoridades de México y Colombia en este continente o de Arabia Saudí en el mundo. Los crímenes de las autoridades en México y Colombia sido ampliamente verificadas y son atroces y sin embargo con ambos y con Arabia Saudí Canadá tiene muy buenas relaciones y el tema de los derechos humanos no es tocado. Con Arabia Saudí ha firmado incluso hace algunos meses la venta de vehículos armados por un total de 11 mil millones de dólares que ha de entregar en un plazo extendido.  Trudeau también ha condenado las supuestas amenazas de Rusia en Europa, como lo expresara en la última cumbre de la OTAN en Varsovia el pasado 8 de julio y además se ha comprometido a enviar soldados canadiense a Letonia para supuestamente desafiar a los militares rusos, y luego, como si todo lo anterior fuera poco, Trudeau pasó a Ucrania para rendirle honores a los golpistas neo-nazis caídos durante el golpe de estado de febrero del 2014, golpe que derribó al gobierno legítimamente elegido por los ucranianos.

Si hablamos de política interna, tenemos en Canadá un desempleo significativo, que aunque es oficialmente del 7 por ciento sabemos que es mayor puesto que el desempleo en Canadá considera solamente a quienes califican para recibir el beneficio de desempleo y no al total de desempleados. Algo similar sucede con la inflación en Canadá, que se considera de un 3 por ciento anual pero en realidad es mucho mayor porque en las mismas estadísticas se incluye alimentos con vehículos, equipos electrónicos, viajes de placer, en fin. La realidad es que muchos alimentos han subido hasta el 50 por ciento en los últimos dos años, de la misma forma ha subido la renta de viviendas, incluso en lugares donde hay exceso de espacios, lo que iría contra la lógica misma del mercado. Entre  los muchos atrevimientos corporativos  en Canadá vale mencionar el de los grandes bancos canadienses que informan a la prensa, con supuestos análisis periódicos, en todo tipo de temas incluso en temas laborales y temas sociales y ridículamente la prensa le da más importancia a la información que recibe de ellos que a la que le puede brindar el gobierno federal mismo. Así está la prensa de coludida con la banca y la élite del poder para manipular la información en este país que teniendo una gran viga en su ojo anda sin embargo buscando la paja en el ojo ajeno.

Mientras, son los canadiense comunes y corrientes quienes acarrean el gran endeudamiento personal del país, por promedio de cada dólar ganado se debe 1, 65 de dólar, sumando un total de casi 2 billones (2.000.000.000.000) de dólares de deuda, de los que el 75 por ciento se debe en hipotecas, porque la construcción de viviendas y edificios comerciales ha pasado a ser el motor de la economía canadiense de los últimos 15 años y debido a que esta actividad es altamente especulativa ha aumentado también la corrupción en la administración de gobiernos locales y provinciales además de la incertidumbre porque es evidente que esta es una burbuja que crece y puede en cualquier momento reventar.

Afortunadamente, Canadá sigue todavía el modelo de estado de bienestar social, lo que quiere decir que hay leyes y políticas que amparan a la población. Aunque sin duda el modelo de estado de bienestar social canadiense se ha venido deteriorando en las últimas décadas (tendencia que parece ha de continuar) aún los gobiernos provinciales y federal mantienen beneficios fundamentales –como el de la salud pública gratuita, el de la educación primaria y secundaria que es más del 90 por ciento pública y gratuita, el de sus 43 universidades que otorgan doctorados y otras menores que son todas públicas, el de que medicamentos y alimentos no paguen impuestos agregados al valor. En este país el uso de las carreteras es gratuito, vale decir no se pagan en general peajes. El modelo de estado de bienestar social sin embargo no se ha expandido a áreas que son hoy fundamentales, como por ejemplo creando un sistema público de guarderías infantiles de calidad, una necesidad creciente en un país donde la mayoría de las mujeres trabaja, o en la creación de sistemas adecuados y efectivos de protección a los aborígenes que viven hoy en  reservas sumidas en una miseria similar a la de los países del tercer mundo o sufren abierta discriminación en las ciudades.

Canadá es una sociedad consumista y de clases, donde existen prejuicios y egoísmos, una sociedad donde el espacio entre los que tienen mucho y los que no tienen nada va en aumento. Canadá como país sufre arrogancias típicas de la civilización occidental, civilización hoy decadente. Además se ha hecho dominante la falta de conciencia política, el dejar hacer, el no cuestionar, con notables excepciones. Muchos en Canadá se niegan a ver lo obvio incluso cuando lo saben o intuyen, es simplemente más cómodo negarse a ver y focalizarse en pasarlo lo mejor posible cuando la situación no te toca personalmente. Pero, es peligroso dejar hacer a los privilegiados, y además impide que emerja un proyecto alternativo de país, uno que se focalice en el bien local, sanamente productivo, ecológico y en lo social igualitario. Es necesario que Canadá se aleje de las alianzas que favorecen su intervencionismo en otros países y apoye en cambio proyectos liberadores en casa y afuera.

A falta de una visión vale la pena que en la política interna Canadá expanda lo bueno que tiene, que extienda su estado de bienestar social a otra áreas para que este cumpla con su papel fundamental de protector de todos sus habitantes. Y en la política exterior, es fundamental que Canadá favorezca, respete y apoye, en lo posible, proyectos más distributivos del tercer mundo en vez de proteger opresores. De esta forma la perspectiva de gobierno canadiense cambiaría radicalmente ya que debería aliarse con los gobiernos del continente que trabajan a favor de sus pueblos y no en su contra. En el futuro, solamente la participación de todos los canadienses puede ayudar a decidir si la agenda de los más ricos, de sus corporaciones, sus administradores y políticos actores y bufones será la reinante o no.

Mario R. Fernández

After two years of bombing, the U.S. recently marked a horrendous milestone in a war with no clear end in sight.

Vocativ reported that the American-led coalition in the Middle East has now dropped 50,000 bombs in the ongoing campaign against Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group commonly known as ISIS or ISIL in the West) that began in August 2014.

The analysis noted that bombing has increased with time, peaking in June when coalition forces dropped 3,167 bombs on Iraq and Syria.

Although reports suggest Daesh is losing to ground forces in the region, the conflict still has no clear end in sight. And despite U.S. government denials, Kavanaugh reported it’s become increasingly clear that civilians are frequently killed by bombs dropped by the U.S. and coalition forces:

“Airwars estimates that at least 1,422 civilians have been killed by weapons deployed by coalition warplanes through July 18, a figure far greater than the 41 civilian deaths acknowledged by the Pentagon to-date.”

Antiwar.com reported Tuesday that hundreds of civilians may have been killed in coalition airstrikes on villages occupied by Daesh near the northern Syrian city of Manbij. Jason Ditz wrote:

“U.S. and coalition airstrikes against the northern Syrian villages of Tokhar and Hoshariyeh have killed at least 56 civilians, including 11 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Other groups claimed the civilian toll was as high as 200.”

“The Pentagon rarely accounts for civilians killed in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, occasionally issuing statements with dramatic undercounts of the number of civilians they’ve killed since the war began,” Ditz noted. “U.S. attacks in and around Manbij alone have killed over 150 people in the past two months.”

In addition to the loss of human lives, the ongoing war on Daesh has a high financial toll. On Tuesday, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, wrote,

“With each bomb costing on average somewhere around $50,000, those bombs have cost U.S. (for the most part) taxpayers at least two and a half billion dollars.”

And in February, The Hill reported that the cost of the war had already surpassed $6 billion by the end of January.

“A defense spokesman says that, as of January 31, the total cost to U.S. taxpayers of anti-ISIS operations that began on Aug. 8, 2014, is $6.2 billion,” reported Kristina Wong, defense reporter for The Hill.

“That’s an average of $11.5 million per day, for 542 days of operations. The average daily cost of operations has gone up from $11.4 million per day, as of late December.”

Since the real goal for this war has more to do with controlling the region’s energy resources and overthrowing Syrian President Bashar Assad than actually defeating Daesh, McAdams noted that profits for the military-industrial complex will continue to roll in even after the bombing finally ceases.

“Imagine how much damage to infrastructure, environment, etc. will have been done by 50,000 bombs,” he wrote. “The U.S. taxpayers will pay once to blow the place up and then pay again to build it back up.”

So, more than 50,000 bombs later, are the U.S. and coalition forces any closer to eradicating Daesh? Official government sources under-report civilian death tolls, and the number of Daesh fighters killed so far is even harder to calculate, with the Pentagon and other official sources offering conflicting, biased reporting.

In October, The Atlantic’s Kathy Gilsinan reported that the U.S. military claimed it had killed 20,000 Daesh fighters in about a year. “Somehow, though, ISIS’s ‘overall force’ is the same size as it was when the U.S. air campaign expanded into Syria over a year ago,” she wrote.

Gilsinan argued that this inaccurate body count could help extend the war indefinitely, concluding:

“And if the United States can’t know when it has won—or lost—it can’t know when the killing will stop. Nor, apparently, exactly how much it has already done.”

Russian warplanes  reportedly bombed a secret US military base in Syria last month.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday that Russian warplanes bombed a secret military base in Syria used by US and British special forces last month. The WSJ argued that the Russian strike targeted the base located at the Syrian-Jordanian border on June 16 and at least four Western-backed militants (apparently belonged to the New Syrian Army) were killed in strikes. According to the Western media outlets, US and British special forces help the New Syrian Army to maintain a buffer zone and assist the militant group in its struggle against the Islamic State.

Citing U.S. military and intelligence officials, the  WSJ added that the Russian strike on the CIA-linked site was aimed to pressure the White House to agree to closer cooperation with Russia in the Syrian skies. The report added that nearly a day before the strike, over 20 British special forces pulled out of the base, avoding Russian air raids.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that Russia is not aware of incidents reported by the US media.

“We have no knowledge [of the incident] and in this case I have nothing to comment on this newspaper article. Again, this is an issue that should be addressed to the Ministry of Defense,” Peskov said.

France is still in shock over a horrible truck rampage in Nice this past week that left scores dead and many wounded.

The nation united to mourn the victims of the third terror attack in the country in less than two years.

The ISIL terror network [allegedly] has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the French people made it clear who should be held responsible for the vulnerable security situation in the country.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has been booed and jeered in Nice as he attended a memorial service for the victims of last week’s deadly terror attack in the city. He was also greeted with calls for resignation.

The administration of French President Francois Hollande is under mounting criticism for its inability to prevent three major terrorist attacks in the past 18 months. Hollande is facing what many believe is a growing lack of confidence by his own nation in his leadership abilities to protect them.

Interview with Michel Chossudovsky

 

With the Republican and Democrat party conventions in progress or upcoming, it has now become clear that the 2016 USA presidential election is unlike preceding elections in recent decades. Large percentages of those who consider themselves members of either party do not approve of their presidential candidates, for one thing. That includes more than a third of both Republican and Democrat voters. For another, both candidates have assumed positions on issues that in previous elections would have been considered anathema to the dominant ruling economic and political elites. For example, both candidates have been highly critical of US trade and free trade policies—especially Trump.

Trump’s more vehement criticism of US trade policies in particular has US elites concerned, to put it lightly. Almost hysterical might more accurately express their emotional state when the subject of Trump and trade is raised.

US Elites Nervous About Trump & Trade

For example, the president of the biggest and most influential US business lobbying group, the Business Roundtable’s John Engler, a former governor of Michigan, in a recent interview stated “There’s a great sense of frustration here”. Trump’s views on trade are ”diametrically opposite” and a “cause for great concern” to the Roundtable, whose corporate members collectively represent more than $7 trillion in annual revenues and employ 16 million workers. “Everything has been upended”, according to Engler.

Chicago billionaire, Penny Pritzker, current US Commerce Secretary, has voiced similar concerns, as has Obama—i.e. Pritzker’s protégé since his early days in the Illinois state legislature. While Obama the candidate in 2008 promised to rewrite the NAFTA free trade treaty if elected, as soon as he was elected he morphed into the biggest presidential advocate of free trade in US history—thus coming around to the view of Pritzker’s Chicago corporate clan of free traders. Most politically well-connected economists, and media mouthpieces in and out of academia—like Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, and a host of others—all defend free trade and therefore have joined the growing army of pundits attacking Trump’s positions on the subject. Christine Lagarde, director of the Washington-based and US dominated International Monetary Fund, IMF, has chimed in recently as well, labeling Trump’s trade proposals “disastrous” for the world economy. The presidents of the NAFTA economies—the USA, Canada, and Mexico—recently met in their ‘three amigos’ NAFTA summit in Ottawa, Canada recently and jointly reaffirmed their elites’ view of the benefits of free trade, and the dangers of ‘Trump-like’ trade protectionism.

According to the academic theory of free trade all countries involved benefit from trade. But do they? Free trade theory says nothing of how the benefits get distributed and to whom—i.e. to corporations, investors, and shareholders or to wage earners. If corporations and investors benefit on both ends of the trade exchange, the same is not necessarily so their respective working classes. Free trade theory conveniently ignores income distribution effects. However, that doesn’t deter mainstream economists treating it like a ‘holy grail’ of neoliberal economics nonetheless.

Trade and Working Class Incomes

The record of US free trade policies for working and middle class America reveals devastation, not benefit. For example, total US employment since NAFTA and China trade the past two decades has witnessed a loss of more than 6 million US manufacturing jobs. Perhaps as many as two thirds of which have been due to free trade alone, according to studies. Additional millions of jobs have been lost in communications, professional services, and other non-manufacturing industries. For the jobs that remain, moreover, wages in US companies that export more have risen less than wages have fallen in companies harmed by the rise in imports. The net result is that both jobs and wages—and therefore median working class incomes—are both negative. And that’s due to direct export-import effects. There’s more.

Free trade is also about money and investment flows, as well as goods and services net export-import flows. Read the provisions of NAFTA. It’s as much about terms and conditions for US corporations ease of US money investing into Mexico as about goods and services. With free trade enabled money and investment outflows from the US have come US investment offshoring and consequent US job offshoring. Job offshoring is thus an indirect, and no less significant, consequence of free trade. In the past 15 years, US households’ median wages and incomes have declined by more than 10%–much of that due to the above free trade direct and indirect job and wage effects.

In the past two decades, and especially since 2009, US workers have become more informed and conscious of the negative impact of trade on their jobs, incomes, and living standards. They see the wealthiest 1% of household take 95% of all the net income gains since 2010, while their wages and incomes decline. They see high paying manufacturing jobs disappear to other countries, while more than half of the jobs that have been created in the US since 2010 have been low paying, part time, temp jobs averaging less than $36k a year. And they sense even less opportunity for their children. Recent reports project that more than 90% of new jobs created in the next decade will earn about the same $36k a year. Due to all this, they are, legitimately, pissed off.

Trump has identified and played to this discontent. That Trump is popular and leading in polls in states with a high concentration of white, middle age and up, male, non-college educated working class voters is not surprising, given his aggressive criticism of US trade policies and their devastating effects. Trump has embraced the trade issue in no uncertain terms, and his attack on US trade policies have resonated deeply with this working class segment—i.e. a voting bloc in key swing states and a group that cares little what Trump says on other non-economic issues, however outrageous, whether on race, ethnic, gender, foreign policy, or other subjects. Trump speaks to their ‘rage’ at being ignored by US political and economic elites now for decades, and especially since the 2008-09 recession, the recovery from which has mostly passed them by, as well as to their fears for future prospects for their children. The more that US economic elites, in whichever party, attack Trump the more this working class bloc is convinced he, Trump, must be for real because they’re attacking him.

Donald Trump: Populist or Panderer

The important question, however, is whether Trump is honestly serious about changing US free trade policies, or whether he is just cleverly pandering to the discontent of this bloc of working class voters. He has called for ‘tearing up’ the NAFTA treaty; imposing tariffs on imports from China and Mexico of 45% and 35% respectively; stopping China from manipulating its currency; and building a fence to stop immigration flows from central and Latin America.

But he won’t say what he means by ‘tearing up’, which therefore appears more a rhetorical appeal than a proposal. If he means it literally, treaties cannot be ‘torn up’ by Presidents in the US system. That’s potentially grounds for impeachment. Nor has any president legal authority to unilaterally raise tariffs, except temporarily for 150 days and no more than 15%, after which Congressional legislation is required, according to the 1974 trade act. Nor is Trump correct that China is a currency manipulator, since for more than a decade now China has pegged its currency, the Yuan to the dollar in a narrow trading band. Its Yuan has risen and fallen in synch with the US dollar. If any countries are currency manipulators, they are Japan and the Eurozone—both having made their currencies more competitive by 20%-30% to the dollar by monetary means in recent years in order to gain exports at US expense. But one hears nothing from Trump (or US elites) complaining about Japan or Europe currency manipulation. And Trump has said nothing about changing US tax policies that subsidize US multinational corporations offshore investing and therefore promote job offshoring. And he conveniently ignores the impact of hundreds thousands of high paying tech jobs being given every year to tech workers imported to the US on H1-B and L-1 visas, most of whom come from Asia and not Latin America. Asian tech workers take high paying jobs Americans want; Latin American immigrants mostly assume ultra-low pay service jobs that US workers generally don’t want. Does Trump maybe want to build a wall along California beaches and pacific coastline as well?

Certainly Trump and his advisers know all this. One can only conclude, therefore, that Trump is not really serious about attacking free trade. He is pandering to those with a legitimate and serious real concern who have been deeply harmed by US trade policies. Trump is in that great US presidential candidate tradition, promising voters what they want to hear and then, if elected, doing whatever the economic elites want them to do. US presidential candidates, of either wing—Republican and Democrat—of the Corporate Party of America, are habitual liars and cannot be trusted. We had our pseudo-populist from the ‘left’, Barack Obama, elected eight years ago promising to reform free trade treaties. And he became the biggest free trade advocate in US economic history. In Trump, we have our Obama analog, a pseudo-populist this time from the ‘right’, promising the same. And who then will do the same. To paraphrase an ancient saying, US voters now considering voting for Trump based on his anti-trade views would do well to ‘Beware of Billionaires Bearing Gifts’.

Let’s start with the history of coups in Turkey. Traditionally, they have been conducted by the military, which modern Turkey’s founder Kemal Ataturk designated as the guardians of secularism, stability and integrity. Since WWII, there were military coups in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997, and the US was behind EVERY one.

During the first coup in 1960, they tried to prevent a rapprochement with the USSR, turning off credit, and Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes planned to visit Moscow to set up an alternative source of crediting and economic assistance. The military took over, and the politicians who wanted to repair relations with Russia were removed.

The coup in 1971 was similar to the one in Chile that happened a little later in 1973, and which was also organized by the CIA. The goal was to stop the country from sliding “to the left” under politicians who held social values. The 1980 and 1997 coups were also conducted with US blessing.

Did Turkey’s foreign policy change after the military came to power? No, Turkey was a faithful vassal of the US and remained pro-American, with all attempts to change that policy severely punished.

It’s important to understand that the US has been behind all Turkish coups, in order to understand that country’s evolution.

The Turkish army is an experienced coup maker. They can teach anyone. The idea that it is they who guarantee stability and secularism is imbibed with their mother’s milk. Military men in Turkey have never failed in a coup – until now. Why did this happen?

Perhaps the military men did something wrong, forgetting the playbook? It’s important to see that actually, they did just as well as their predecessors.

So why did the coup fail? It failed because it was expected. Erdogan was ready to deflect it.

To understand what just happened in Turkey, we need to remember little-known pages of our own history: the USSR, 1927. Trotskyists attempted to take power on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The plan for this “coup” by “Lenin guards” was to occupy “telegraph and telephone” and arrest Stalin and his supporters, taking advantage of the festive demonstrations on November 7. Stalin was aware of the plan and ensured the coup would fail, leaving the Kremlin with his supporters for a safe place; the major buildings were occupied in advance by loyal chekists, who barricaded themselves in.

As a result, when on November 7, 1927 gunmen broke into the leader’s apartments, no one was home. When they tried to force other major buildings, they also failed. As a result, the putschists found themselves on the street where workers were marching to celebrate the red-letter day. Attempts to stir up a rebellion on Red Square and other places failed, and the coup with them.

Why did Stalin, being aware of the coup, let it happen, lancing the abscess?

To show the Bolshevik Party that there really was a threat and begin purging it. If there had not been an attempted coup, Trotsky’s expulsion from the Party would have been considered by the rank and file as tyranny, a settling of scores with those who disagreed with Stalin. They could have different points of view, so why did he need to arrest old Party members? Lev Davydovich Trotsky was Lenin’s closest associate, founder of the Red Army. Stalin played with fire, showed his face to the “opposition”, and the whole party followed him. Trotsky was expelled from the party, and afterwards sent to Almaty, and then to…Turkey.

Something similar happened in July 2016 in Turkey. The coup failed because Erdogan knew beforehand what was being planned, and prevented it. Almost none of the buildings from which they could announce they had taken power (parliament etc.), were occupied, facing armed resistance. The response was so well prepared that they had to  bomb the parliament building. The resistance led to many casualties among the putschists. This had never happened in Turkey. The military had always successfully taken a defenseless power.

We must admit that Erdogan acted bravely. Aware of the coup, he let it happen, leaving Marmaris “just five minutes” before they came for him. If he had started arresting on today’s scale, his supporters would have overthrown him. Instead, they arrested people – not only military men but also judges. (By the way, it was the arrests of the judges that show that Erdogan knew about the coup in the making. Otherwise, why did he arrest thousands of judges during the first hours following the failure of the coup?)

The next question we need to ask ourselves is how the Turkish leader was informed about the the conspiracy in the making?

These are several possibilities:

1. Turkish special services. They would not warn anyone, and it’s unclear whose side they are on.

2. The US warned Erdogan. The United States is always behind the military who try to take power in Turkey. Turkey never tried to leave NATO, always remaining loyal to the US. To undertake a coup without Washington’s green light means failure.

Considering who else could help Erdogan, there are not too many intelligence services in the world – serious ones, that is. Mossad? It’s a branch of the CIA; besides, Israel does not pursue policies contrary to America’s. And why should Israel help the Islamist Erdogan? MI6? Again, it’s practically a branch of the CIA, given the common US-British foreign policy. France or Germany? The first cannot even defend itself. The second doesn’t really exist on a global scale. Who else? China? This is not its game at all and Erdogan is by no means “their type”.

Who is left? Who has the necessary power, and who is interested in a certain scenario in Turkey?

Only Russia. It was Russia that told Erdogan about the planned coup. We have many tourists who keep going there, afraid of nothing. We have been wiring Turkish land and space topography since Soviet times. The Crimea is also nearby.

The last question is why Russia decided to tell Erdogan about the coup. His behavior shows that he is grateful to Russia. He demands the US extradite Gulen (who isn’t involved at all), but has a peaceful attitude towards Russia.

Is Erdogan Russia’s friend? Of course not. He is our enemy. But today he is mad at the US. And “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. For Russia, an Erdogan who is mad at the US is much preferable to a pro-American, unpredictable military in the Syrian war. At least now, Erdogan owes us, and the putschists owe the CIA. This opens a new window of possibilities for us in the complex game of international politics.

As a “secular Muslim” (I use that term very loosely, as more of a cultural description because I do not practice organized religion) I am rather perplexed by the social fallout of the failed military coup in Turkey.

While it remains to be proven, Erdogan has officially blamed the coup attempt on the US-backed, self-exiled hard-line Islamist Fethullah Gulen. Gulen is a former political ally of Erdogan and is just as radical—if not more so—an Islamist as Erdogan and his AKP party. If Gulen (with help from the US) was indeed behind the coup attempt, then it is a case of Islamist vs. Islamist and not secular factions within the state trying to take the country back from Erdogan and the Islamists (as many initially thought).

Even though it may be a case of Islamists vs. other Islamists, it appears that the social fallout will be felt most among the secular, moderate and or non-religious people of Turkey. These are the reports I am reading in some media outlets and receiving from Turkish friends in Istanbul and Ankara, most of them artists, writers and intellectuals. While the secular demographic are not “to blame” for the coup, the failed coup has emboldened the local Islamists against them in frightening ways. As Patrick Cockburn reports, one female journalist and photographer felt scared to walk through Taksim Sqaure—Istanbul’s tourism and cultural hub—recently because of her non-religious attire:

“I was so scared because all the women there looked at me as if I was a demon. The men said that ‘if you go on dressing like that you deserve to die’. Most people there were carrying red Turkish flags, but there were some black flags with Arabic writing on them like you see in Daesh (Isis) videos” [1] [2]

This is markedly different than my experiences in Taksim Square in 2013. Back then what I experienced was two parallel countries that existed—albeit with some tension—side-by-side.

On popular Istiklal Caddesi (street), it was common to see a woman in shorts walking not too far from a woman in hijab (the head veil). And in Antalya I saw women in nikab (the face covering) in the same spaces as women in shorts and tank tops. While there was a palpable tension, both “types” of women were free to publicly dress as they pleased, and the social landscape was one of seculars and Islamists co-existing peacefully, or at the very least, non-violently. I fear that this is about to change drastically in the aftermath the recent coup attempt. As I mention previously, while the secular populations are likely not behind the coup attempt, they are poised to suffer the fallout of the increasingly emboldened radical Islamist populations running amuck in Turkey following the thwarted coup.

Dr. Ghada Chehade is an independent analyst, writer and performance poet. She holds a PhD from McGill University. She blogs at: https://soapbox-blog.com/

Notes

[1] http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/fear-and-doubt-among-istanbuls-citizens-in-wake-of-attempted-coup/

[2] This atmosphere of fear and intimidation against non-religiously dressed woman is similar to what I experienced in Cairo shortly after the ouster of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. While I was not directly threatened, there were particular situations and neigbourhoods in which I chose to put on the head veil (hijab) in order to feel safe and not be targeted by ardent Islamists, which seemed to be out in droves at that time.

The Coup in Turkey remains yet to be understood but the first consequences are starting to reveal themselves

To understand the coup in Turkey, we have to analyze the reasons that led the plot to fail. A premise: was there really an intention to overthrow and shut down Erdogan’s government? And who are those behind the coup? Starting from these questions and exploring the possible answers, we get a reasonable and authentic framework for a story still very confusing.

Let’s start from here. Assuming the existence of a manual of the ‘Perfect Coup’, it is very likely it would thoroughly explain the importance of the first goals to pull off for the success of a government overthrow:

1. The arrest of the head of State.
2. The nomination of a representative for the coup, presented through a press conference on national media to reassure the population.
3. Controlling all the information/communication sources.
4. The support of at least a substantial part of the police.
5. Control of ministries.
6. Taking under civil and military airports.
7. Controlling the parliament.
8. Full control of the skies.
9. Installing a Curfew.

The radar track of Erdogan in his Erdogan’s flight TK8456, the night of the coup

Failure to arrest Erdogan is a very important indication of the real intentions to overthrow the government. The president was on vacation in a resort on the Mediterranean, as soon as he learned about the coup, he immediately took off in his private jet and urgently released the famous message via FaceTime, echoed by CNN Turk where he called on people to take to the streets in order to defend democracy. While he continued to fly unobstructed in the Turkish skies, many mosques in Ankara and Istanbul began to convey similar messages calling on the population to take to the streets. A few minutes later around 1:00 AM, most of the Turkish people were receiving an SMS message that again urged the population to take to the streets and protest the ‘revolution’. Just when the situation seemed to be solved, around 3AM Erdogan landed in Istanbul.

Notably, more than four F-16s were flying over Ankara in the hands of rebel forces. It still remains incomprehensible, for the success of the coup, why the pilots did not try to at least intercept Erdogan’s flight (the transponder was on all the time, the plane was visible on Flightradar). It was precisely the vision of Erdogan on TV and the reassurance that he was still alive that triggered his supporters to pour into the streets. Moreover, the bombing of the presidential palace in Bodrum by rebel forces, while Erdogan was in an entirely different location, still makes no sense.

The failure to appoint a credible representative may be attributable to poor planning and experience, or something deeper, perhaps linked to a sabotage of the coup. Forces and political representatives probably withdrew at the last moment. We can continue speculating on this aspect, but for the meantime this decision remains simply a big mistake made by the military junta.

The third, fifth and sixth points are most likely related to a strong unwillingness of men and inexperience (only 3 generals and 29 colonels). The bulk of the troops, made up of simple soldiers and tanks were deployed around the parliament (the seventh point) and in the vicinity of two bridges very strategic in the city of Ankara. A lot of speculation still remains on the reasons regarding the enormous lack of availability in terms of resources. Probably this can be explained by withdrawal of some participants at the last moment. The same can be said about the statements of some soldiers arrested after the government overthrow who claimed in many cases to not know why they were there and claiming they had only obeyed the orders from above (it’s also a great excuse to put out during a failed coup). Another common excuse mentions soldiers believing to be part of an exercise.

Another decisive element is the one listed at fourth and ninth points. Erdogan, during the course of his years as a president, transformed the police into his personal guard thanks to impunity, wage increases and an American style of law enforcement militarization with the excuse of fighting terrorism (strictly Kurdish). The move paid off: it was the police who arrested and disarmed most of the military. Soldiers, defeated, simply laid down their arms without engaging in a shootout. The outcome is attributable to a lack of men and perhaps also to a lack of will in transforming a defeat into a civil war, with deaths on both sides. The more or less peaceful outcome of the failed coup is a strong argument against the hypothesis that Gülen and the CIA were behind it.

The eighth point is particularly interesting. Initially the NFZ was achieved by rebel forces but in the course of the evening a No-Fly-Zone was declared above Ankara by the loyalist forces, ending the government overthrow. The most spectacular aspect of the coup is 4 F-16 jets shown in numerous videos hitting the parliament, Erdogan’s presidential residence and shooting down of two police helicopters. Instead of using air power to neutralize the deposed president, they preferred to show a senseless use of force that did not help their cause at all.

The answer to one of the initial questions is therefore ‘Yes’, there was a real intention and will to overrun the government but many questions remain on how it was executed, prepared and the choices made during the coup. For these reasons and in light of all this information, it is important to state:

In all probability, someone pulled back at the last moment, sending out a small group, badly organized, unprepared and without adequate command structure or plan of action. It may have been a skillfully maneuvered tactic by Erdogan, starting the coup and then letting it fail, or even a disagreement inside the military. It is unlikely, however, that an external planner, such as NATO / CIA, after organizing the coup in a hurry would draw back. They would fight until the last Turk standing. However, the sensation remains that someone failed to appear at the crucial moment.

The plot was probably authentic in its intent and the words used by military in their press releases seem to confirm this impression. They attributed the coup to the lack of freedom in the country and a foreign policy conduct that has disintegrated the pillars on which Turkey relies. It’s a sensation and a feeling that has historically been very important within the Turkish military. This is not something that Erdogan discovered recently. It remains to be seen whether these impressions are correct. A good chance could present itself during the military trial of the coup leaders.

Bottom line is, there is no evidence that shows an external involvement of the United States as many speculate. Erdogan mentioned Gülen (his bitter rival) as the leader of the revolt demonstrating nothing, since everyone knows that the 75-year-old is linked to the CIA. His accusations do not automatically imply that he is right or is telling the truth.

Soldiers surrendering, beaten up by supporters of Erdogan

Combining the previous points with a simplistic explanation that Erdogan would have foiled a CIA coup organized by Gülen for his recent change of opinions on Syria and Putin is wrong, in my view, for the following reasons:

A. A coup organized by the CIA resembles what we have sadly seen in Ukraine: death and the incessant chaos until the collapse of the nation. Nothing comparable to what we saw in Istanbul or Ankara. The military in this case laid down their arms, they didn’t kill the population with snipers as seen in the Maidan square, wreaking havoc.

B. Erdogan’s plane was in the air for hours, undisturbed. If this had been organized by Gülen/CIA, with 4 F-16 available, it is incomprehensible why not to shoot down the plane or take Erdogan into custody.

C. A coup cannot be organized in two weeks. And it’s far-fetched to assume that Washington created this situation within a few days, to stop a rapprochement between Erdogan, Putin and Assad.

D. Erdogan has every incentive to get the best outcome from this situation. He immediately closed the American air base in Incirlik and asked Washington that Gülen be returned. He said that any country that hosts Gülen, directly mentioning Obama and the United States, is an enemy of Turkey.

E. As soon as he took back his office, he began to arrest thousands of judges and military, starting an internal purge that had to be in the preparations for months. This would explain the possible meddling of Erdogan in the coup. He could have allowed, ignored, or even encouraged the preparation of the coup in order to call out all the “traitors” and then act even harder and with impunity, arresting them all.

F. If the coup had been created overseas, the media and Western governments would have immediately sided with the military. Even Erdogan himself used with great effectiveness a FaceTime connection and Turkey CNN to talk to the population. CNN, a pillar of the US soft-power strategy. Something that Washington could have easily been prevented, if wanted.

So what is the most likely scenario, excluding an external intervention?

Erdogan’s political decisions have split Turkeys society in two parts. Although AKP is the first party and the president himself enjoys strong popularity among his followers, social tensions have only increased recently. The sense of dissatisfaction within the armed forces is something real, tangible and historically consistent with events in the country since the 60s’. Erdogan is aware that an Islamization of the country though Muslim Brothers (Qatar more than Saudi Arabia) has led the nation’s choices in terms of foreign policy to a dead end in both Syria and Iraq. Another big issue is the total impunity of many elements inside his government and security forces towards Daesh (if not complete complicity). All these elements have exacerbated rivalry with Syria, Iran, Russia and even with some Western and European partners.

The real balance of power shifted when the largely hostile policies kicked in against Damascus and Tehran initially, Moscow later (the shooting down of the SU-24 and the consequent sanctions imposed by Russia). These situations quickly escalated reaching a tipping point. It’s more than likely that a coup had been in preparation since long time ago and it’s safe to say, that Erdogan probably discovered the initiative and perhaps used it to his own advantage (in what manner and how remains pure speculation at this time). Another plausible explanation for his recent statements in favor of Moscow and Damascus could be a direct consequence of an impending coup and time running out for him.

Cause and effect of the failure coup

Regional and international repercussions are all to decipher. There are several testimonies of authoritative sources who indicate a quick escape of Turkish military instructors from Aleppo, under direct orders coming from Ankara. A major coincidence remains, while Turkey was in the midst of a coup, Friday night, in Moscow Kerry and Putin were discussing Syria. Curious fact. The Russian president was one of the first heads of state to call Erdogan to show his support, as reported by the Kremlin. A few minutes before this conversation, and almost simultaneously, the Arab Syrian Army sealed, apparently permanently, Aleppo, isolating it from external supplies in what could prove to be a decisive event in the beginning of the end of Syrian conflict.

Even with many uncertainties that remain uncovered, we can already conclude that the Turkish political aims on the region have changed significantly and realign now with more common interests with Moscow, Tehran and Damascus, rather than Riyadh, Doha and Washington.

The words of the Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif have been supporting Erdogan since the beginning of the coup and blamed the petro monarchies, implicitly highlighting once again the absurdity of Ankara alliance with Riyadh and Doha. It’s likely that the Kurdish issue will become, with the domestic political sweep, Erdogan’s primary focus and that the unity of Syria will be the perfect expedient to prevent the unification of the Kurdish territory in the south of Turkey. A clear strategic commonality with Assad that would explain the renewed dialogue with Damascus. An attitude on a collision course with the United States that has always protected, armed and financed the Kurds.

Moscow is becoming more and more a leading partner in this situation. The Sultan can give the impression of living in a situation of apparent strength (the domestic sweep was inevitable), but the truth is that in terms of international relations he has the absolute need to cooperate with nations that until recently he considered his sworn enemies.

How regional tensions could have influenced or led up to the coup remain to be measured and undiscovered. The immediate certainty are the consequences that the coup will have on the future of the Middle East. That the coup in Turkey accelerated certain events in the region is yet to be understood, what is already clear though is the incoming victory of the Syrian-Iranian-Russian axle in Syria.

Erdogan got lucky this time, maybe he knew how to make the most out of the situation. This still does not change the price he will have to pay for protecting his power. News coming from Aleppo indicates that he is bargaining his strategic advantages to remain in charge of his country, whatever the cost be. What repercussions this will have on the relationship between MIT (secret service) and Daesh is to be seen. His promises to focus on preventing the rise of a Kurdish unified state is another core issue. Also in this case, we will see how this may influence a serious future dialogue with Damascus.

Ultimately, the coup failed and has left us with an Erdogan that to survive as president is obligated to decide on changing his policy towards Syria and the region. Unfortunately for him, the only way to do so is to say goodbye to his glorious dreams, shared with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Will the Sultan put aside his ego and obey the new rules?

Neither wing of America’s duopoly system has acceptable choices for any public office.

Trump running mate Mike Pence is a neocon Tea Party hardliner, an imperial war cheerleader, an evangelical supporter of Israel.

Clinton’s VP choice, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, is cut from the same mold – pro-war, pro-Wall Street, pro-corporate favoritism, pro-neoliberal harshness, pro-regressive trade deals like TPP, anti-labor rights, pro-serving wealth and power interests at the expense of most others.

A survey of Sanders’ delegates found him 88.5% unacceptable, less than 3% acceptable. Norman Solomon calls him “a loyal servant of oligarchy.”

Progressive Democrats of America executive director Donna Smith said “Kaine does not inspire those many millions of energetic voters…to work for a Clinton-Kaine ticket.”

According to economist William K. Black, “Kaine, like Clinton herself, is a quintessential ’New Democrat’ – meaning they are allies of Wall Street. They embrace a neoliberal, pro-corporate outlook that has done incredible damage to the vast majority of Americans.”

Announcing her choice, Clinton lied calling Kaine “a lifelong fighter for progressive causes and one of the most qualified vice presidential candidates in our nation’s history.”

His voting record shows otherwise, revealing a right-wing party loyalist, an anti-populist establishment figure, a thumb in the eye to progressive issues.

Two anti-populist tickets give voters no choice in November, each for policies harming the interests of ordinary people.

One observer tweeted “(s)uggested Clinton/Kaine campaign slogan: ‘Status quo…with lots more wars.’ “

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.

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