Global Research

We bring to the attention of our readers the research conducted under the auspices of BioInitiative 2012 on the health impacts of environmental exposure to low intensity electronic radiation.

This is a global concern. Potentially the  entire planet is affected. The health impacts of EMF and RFR radiation has been the object of media cover-up despite the results of scientific research.  Wireless communication is everywhere.  The public must be informed. 

Below is an introductory summary followed by the Preface of the Bioinitative 2012 Report entitled A Rationale for Biological Exposure Standard for Low Intensity Electromagnetic Radiation

Debate on this issue is of crucial significance in view of the introduction of the multibillion 5G network, and its potential health impacts. There is so much money involved. That is why nobody wants to address the health issues. 

The 5G network will be the object of subsequent articles. 

“With some industry giants predicting 50 billion connected devices by 2020 and with the employment of much higher transmission frequencies proposed for the 5G rollout, it is essential to determine how the future of telecommunications will affect the health of its users,”

Michel Chossudovsky.  Global Research Editor, July 13, 2016

*     *     *

A Rationale for Biological Exposure Standard for Low Intensity Electromagnetic Radiation

Summary

Why We Care. The Stakes are Very High

Human beings are bioelectrical systems. Our hearts and brains are regulated by internal bioelectrical signals. Environmental exposures to artificial EMFs can interact with fundamental biological processes in the human body. In some cases, this may cause discomfort, or sleep disruption, or loss of wellbeing (impaired mental functioning and impaired metabolism) or sometimes, maybe it is a dread disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease.

It may be interfering with ones’ ability to become pregnant, or carry a child to full term, or result in brain development changes that are bad for the child. It may be these exposures play a role in causing long-term impairments to normal growth and development of children, tipping the scales away from becoming productive adults. We have good evidence these exposures can damage our health, or that of children of the future who will be born to parents now immersed in wireless exposures.

In the United States, the deployment of wireless infrastructure (cell tower sites) to support cell phone use has accelerated greatly in the last decades. The spread of cell towers in communities, often placed on pre-school, church day-care, and school campuses means that young children can have thousands of times higher RF exposures in home and school environments that existed even 20-25 years ago.

CTIA estimates that in 1997 there were only 36,650 cell sites in the US; but increased rapidly to 131,350 in June 2002; 210,350 in June 2007 and 265,561 in June 2012 (CTIA, 2012). About 220,500 cell sites existed in 2008. These wireless antennas for cellular phone voice and data transmission produce whole-body RFR exposures over broad areas in communities that are an involuntary and unavoidable source of radiofrequency radiation exposure.

Further, the nearly universal switch to cordless and cell phones, and away from corded landline phones means close and repetitive exposures to both EMF and RFR in the home.

Other new RFR exposures that didn’t exist before come from WI-FI access points (hotspots) that radiate 24/7 in cafes, stores, libraries, classrooms, on buses and trains, and from personal WI-FI enabled devices (iPads, tablets, PDAs, etc). The largest single source of community-wide, pervasive RFR yet rolled out is the ‘smart meter’ infrastructure. This program places a wireless device (like a mini-mobile phone base station) on the wall, replacing the electromechanical (spinning dial) meter. They are to be installed on every home and classroom (every building with an electric meter).

Utilities from California to Maine have installed tens of millions already, despite health concerns of experts and enormous public resistance. The wireless meters produce spikes of pulsed radiofrequency radiation 24/7, and in typical operation, will saturates living space at levels that can be much higher than already reported to cause bioeffects and adverse health effects (utilities can only say they are compliant with outdated federal safety standards, which may or may not always be true – see http://sagereports.com/smart-meter-rf).

These meters, depending on where they are placed relative to occupied space in the home or classroom, can produce RFR exposure levels similar to that within the first 100 feet to 600 feet of a mobile phone base station (cell tower).

The cumulative RFR burden within any community is largely unknown. Both involuntary sources (like cell towers, smart meters and second-hand radiation from the use of wireless devices by others) plus voluntary exposures from ones’ personal use of cell and cordless phones, wireless routers, electronic baby surveillance monitors, wireless security systems, wireless hearing aids, and wireless medical devices like implanted insulin pumps all add up.

No one is tallying up the combined exposure levels. Billions of new RFR transmitters from the smart meter rollout alone will raise the baseline RFR levels, and will significantly add to the existing RFR background.

Sometimes, science does not keep pace with new environmental exposures that are by-products of useful things we want to buy and use in society. So, the deployment runs ahead of knowledge of health risks. It is an old story. This is the case for EMF and RFR, and this Report underscores the critical need to face difficult questions, make mid-course corrections, and try to repair the damage already done in this generation, and to think about protecting future generations.

Preface

To consult the complete report click here

Today, the BioInitiative 2012 Report updates five years of science, public health, public policy and global response to the growing health issue of chronic exposure to electromagnetic fields and radiofrequency radiation in the daily life of billions of people around the world.

The BioInitiative 2012 Report has been prepared by 29 authors from ten countries*,  ten holding medical degrees (MDs), 21 PhDs, and three MsC, MA or MPHs.  Among the authors are three former presidents of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, and five full members of BEMS.  One distinguished author is the Chair of the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation.   Another is a Senior Advisor to the European Environmental Agency.  As in 2007, each author is responsible for their own chapter.

The great strength of the BioInitiative Report (www.bioinitiative.org) is that it has been done independent of governments, existing bodies and industry professional societies that have clung to old standards. Precisely because of this, the BioInitiative Report presents a solid scientific and public health policy assessment that is evidence-based.

The BioInitiative Report was first posted in August 2007.  It still has a significant international viewing audience.  Each year, about 100,000 people visit the site.  In the five years since it’s publication, the BioInitiative website has been accessed over 10.5 million times, or four times every minute.  Every five minutes on the average, a person somewhere in the world has logged on.   More than 5.2 million files and 1 million pages of information has been downloaded.  That is equivalent to more than 93,000 full copies of the 650+ page report (288.5 million kbytes).

The global conversation on why public safety limits for electromagnetic and radiofrequency fields remain thousands of time higher than exposure levels that health studies consistently show to be associated with serious health impacts  has intensified since 2007.   Roughly, 1800 new studies have been published in the last five years reporting effects at exposure levels ten to hundreds or thousands of times lower than allowed under safety limits in most countries of the world.  Yet, no government has instituted comprehensive reforms.  Some actions have been taken that highlight partial solutions.  The Global Actions chapter presents milestone events that characterize the international ‘sea change’ of opinion that has taken place, and reports on precautionary advice and actions from around the world.

* Sweden (6), USA (10), India (2), Italy (2), Greece (2), Canada (2), Denmark (1), Austria (2), Slovac Republic (1), Russia (1)

The world’s populations – from children to the general public to scientists and  physicians – are increasingly faced with great pressures from advertising urging the  incorporation of the latest wireless device into their everyday lives.  This is occuring even while an elementary understanding the possible health consequences is beyond the ability of most people to grasp.   The exposures are invisible, the testing meters are expensive and technically difficult to operate, the industry promotes new gadgets and generates massive advertising and lobbying campaigns that silence debate, and the reliable, non-wireless alternatives (like wired telephones and utility meters) are being discontinued against public will.  There is little labeling, and little or no informed choice.   In fact there is often not even the choice to stay with safer, wired solutions, as in the case of the ‘smart grid’ and smart wireless utility metering, an extreme example of a failed corporate-governmental partnership strategy,  ostensibly for energy conservation.

A collision of the wireless technology rollout and the costs of choosing unwisely is beginning and will grow.  The groundwork for this collision is being laid as a result of increased exposure, especially to radiofrequency fields, in education, in housing, in commerce, in communications and entertainment, in medical technologies and imaging, and in public and private transportation by air, bus, train and motor vehicles.  Special concerns are the care of the fetus and newborn, the care for children with learning disabilities,  and consideration of people under protections of the Americans With Disabilities Act,   which includes people who have become sensitized and physiologically intolerant of chronic exposures. The 2012 Report now addresses these issues as well as presenting an update of issues previously discussed..

David Carpenter, M

Co-Editor

BioInitiative Report

Cindy Sage, MA

Co-Editor

BioInitiative Report

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Sanders is part of the problem, not the solution, a longtime self-serving betraying his supporters for 30 years.

I predicted defection to Clinton months earlier, both candidates likeminded on most issues – differing largely in rhetoric and style.

On Tuesday at a Clinton Portsmouth, New Hampshire campaign event, he proved it by endorsing a legally-challenged neocon, war criminal  and racketeer, her email scandal one of many on her rap sheet.

Throughout the campaign Sanders said one thing. In the end, he sold out to wealth, power and privilege, betraying loyal supporters – more evidence of America’s debauched one-party state with two right-wings.

Deplorably Sanders said “I have come here to make it as clear as possible as to why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton, and why she must become our next president.”

Fact: He’s endorsing what demands committed opposition, ending with Clinton in prison serving hard time – along with husband Bill for his involvement.

Sanders: “Hillary Clinton understands that we must fix an economy in America that is rigged and that sends almost all new wealth and income to the top one percent.”

Fact: Hillary is a Wall Street/war-profiteer’s tool – exclusively supporting monied interests, popular ones be damned.

Sanders: “(W)e produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic (sic) party.”

Fact:  Democrat New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society programs are disappearing, targeted for elimination.

Fact: The Democrat party platform is hugely regressive, not progressive – dirty business as usual pretending otherwise.

Nothing in it about opposing corporate coup d’etat trade deals. Nothing meaningful about reigning in Wall Street or war-profiteering.

Nothing about ending wars of aggression. Nothing about rescinding police state repression, holding killer cops accountable – putting people above privilege and profits.

Not a dime’s worth of difference separates Democrats from Republicans on issues mattering most.

Endorsing Clinton shows where Sanders really stands – contemptuous of world peace, rule of law principles and democratic values – equity and justice mere meaningless words.

Sanders is coopted.

In November, vote independent or stay home. Above all reject Clinton, America most recklessly dangerous presidential aspirant in history – WW III perhaps likely on her watch.

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 Ustasha and the Rising Tide of Neo-Nazi Politics in Croatia

By Nenad Dumanovic and Daniel Jankovic, July 13 2016

Over the past several years, analysts have noticed a rising tide of domestic support for the Croatian homegrown Nazi movement of the Second World War, the Ustashe, which actively exterminated Serbs, Jews, and Roma in the territory it controlled from 1941-45.

War and Destabilization: NATO Expansion and the European Union Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, July 13 2016

Obama attends summit in Warsaw amid a national outbreak of racial unrest in the United States A meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member-states in Warsaw, Poland agreed to expand the presence of western-allied troops in the region further intensifying tensions with the Russian Federation.

Gestapo America: “Warrantless Access to All Your Internet Activity”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, July 13 2016

FBI Director James Comey got Hillary off the hook but wants to put you on it.  He is pushing hard for warrantless access to all of your Internet activity, tells Congress that the United States is not safe unless the FBI knows when every American goes online, to whom they are sending emails and from whom they are receiving emails, and knows every website visited by every American.

After the Court Decision: A New Era in China ASEAN Cooperation?

By Chandra Muzaffar, July 13 2016

The decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague on the China- Philippines territorial dispute announced on the 12th of July 2016 may well emerge as a turning-point in the long-standing wrangles over islands in the South China Sea.

Human Psychology: The Delusion ‘I Am Not Responsible’

By Robert J. Burrowes, July 13 2016

One of the many interesting details to be learned by understanding human psychology is how a person’s unconscious fear works in a myriad of ways to make them believe that they bear no responsibility for a particular problem.

So-called ‘Compromise’ Bill Only Compromises the Consumers’ Right to Know

The growing calls by consumer rights groups and concerned citizens for clearly labeling foods produced with genetically modified ingredients suffered a major — potentially grievous — setback Thursday when the Senate passed a so-called compromise bill. Critics say the compromise legislation, originally passed by the House last summer and then tweaked in the Senate, is actually a giant favor to the deep-pocketed pro-GMO-food lobby.

In stark contrast to a robust bill enacted in Vermont on July 1st, which stipulated that genetically-modified foods must be labeled in clear language, the federal law will allow food companies to present the same information in much less accessible forms: on their website, or via a 1-800 phone number, or embedded in a so-called QR Code, basically a barcode that a curious consumer will have to access through a specially designed smart-phone app.

US Capitol Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Navin Rajagopalan / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

If signed by the president, the federal bill, H.R. 1599 — cleverly renamed by GMO-critics as the DARK Act (Deny Americans Right to Know) — will negate the Vermont law, along with similar labeling laws developed in Connecticut and Maine.

“This is blatantly not a labeling law,” Patty Lovera, assistant director of DC based NGO Food & Water Watch, told WhoWhatWhy. “It’s a poor substitute for actual words on a label, which is what Vermont does.” Indeed, it was designed to block the Vermont initiative, she adds.

“It’s also very elitist, you have to have a smartphone, you have to have an app, you have to have a signal in the grocery store, you have to know how to use it,” she said, joking that a consumer would need another hand to shop, perhaps hold on to their child, while moving down the aisle checking QR codes on a to-be-designed app.

Back in June, ABC News reported that “Nearly everyone, moreover — 93 percent — says the federal government should require labels on food, saying whether it’s been genetically modified, or bio-engineered.”

Since what ABC called such “unanimity of public opinion” is extremely rare, why would the Senate risk voting (65-32) so strongly against a near-consensus of its own constituents?

“It’s also very elitist, you have to have a smartphone, you have to have an app, you have to have a signal in the grocery store, you have to know how to use it,” she said, joking that a consumer would need another hand to shop, perhaps hold on to their child, while moving down the aisle checking QR codes on a to-be-designed app.

Lovera said “quite a few bad guys” worked against the popular will in this instance, but points especially to Agricultural Committee chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, and his ally, Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat. Chemical and seed giant Monsanto and the anti-labeling Grocery Manufacturer’s Association were allowed to drive the debate in the committee. Their most consistent gripe, purportedly accepted as fact by Roberts and Stabenow, is that a patchwork of state-by-state regulation would have been economically unsustainable.

“There’s tremendous pressure from these industries; they don’t want to comply with the Vermont law,” Lovera told WhoWhatWhy, raising her tone for emphasis. “They want this taken care of.”

US Senators Pat Roberts and Debbie Stabenow  Photo credit: US Department of Agriculture / Flickr and US Department of Agriculture / Flickr

The pro-business Senate vote surprised even some hardened anti-GMO activists. “I can’t say I am shocked, but I am — shocked! It seemed as if they had finally given up and little Vermont had won,” Bob Klein of Safe & Healthy School Food Coalition toldWhoWhatWhy. He explained that there is just too much money globally at stake to let the people in a small state beat US agribusiness.

If the House of Representatives follows suit, as expected, the bill will go to the White House for President Obama’s signature. Anti-GMO advocates aren’t optimistic that the president will veto such obviously pro-business legislation.

“Back in the day when he was campaigning he had good language that GMOs should be labeled, but in office his administration has been pro-GMO,” Lovera said. “He could have made the FDA require these labels but he never did, so he did not live up to that campaign promise.” She added, almost as an afterthought, “We’ll have to work on him.”

Klein is less guarded in his assessment. “I have no hope in Obama at all. He is a fake on populist issues.”

The next big battle on this front may bring US agribusiness into conflict with the 28 European countries plus Australia that already require disclosure of genetically modified ingredients on food labels.

Both Lovera and Klein speculated that big-agricultural corporations like Monsanto will look to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a pending international trade deal that would allow corporations to sue sovereign governments for any actions that threaten profits.

“European regulations drive US agribusiness bonkers and they’d love to go after them,” Lovera said.

Obama has been a strong proponent of TTIP from day one.

Americans have been trained by decades of Cold War propaganda to look for any confirmation that ‘socialism means poverty.’ But in the case of Venezuela and other states not governed by the free market, this cliche simply doesn’t ring true.

The political and economic crisis facing Venezuela is being endlessly pointed to as proof of the superiority of the free market.

Images and portrayals of Venezuelans rioting in the streets over high food costs, empty grocery stores, medicine shortages, and overflowing garbage bins are the headlines, and the reporting points to socialism as the cause.

The Chicago Tribune published a Commentary piece titled: “A socialist revolution can ruin almost any country.” A headline on Reason’s Hit and Run blog proclaims: “Venezuelan socialism still a complete disaster.” The Week’s U.S. edition says: “Authoritarian socialism caused Venezuela’s collapse.”

Indeed, corporate-owned, mainstream media advises Americans to look at the inflation and food lines in Venezuela, and then repeat to themselves clichés they heard in elementary school about how “Communism just doesn’t work.”

In reality, millions of Venezuelans have seen their living conditions vastly improved through the Bolivarian process. The problems plaguing the Venezuelan economy are not due to some inherent fault in socialism, but to artificially low oil prices and sabotage by forces hostile to the revolution.

Starting in 2014, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia flooded the market with cheap oil. This is not a mere business decision, but a calculated move coordinated with U.S. and Israeli foreign policy goals. Despite not just losing money, but even falling deep into debt, the Saudi monarchy continues to expand its oil production apparatus. The result has been driving the price of oil down from $110 per barrel, to $28 in the early months of this year.The goal is to weaken these opponents of Wall Street, London, and Tel Aviv, whose economies are centered around oil and natural gas exports.

And Venezuela is one of those countries. Saudi efforts to drive down oil prices have drastically reduced Venezuela’s state budget and led to enormous consequences for the Venezuelan economy.

At the same time, private food processing and importing corporations have launched a coordinated campaign of sabotage. This, coupled with the weakening of a vitally important state sector of the economy, has resulted in inflation and food shortages. The artificially low oil prices have left the Venezuelan state cash-starved, prompting a crisis in the funding of the social programs that were key to strengthening the United Socialist Party.

Corruption is a big problem in Venezuela and many third-world countries. This was true prior to the Bolivarian process, as well as after Hugo Chavez launched his massive economic reforms. In situations of extreme poverty, people learn to take care of each other. People who work in government are almost expected to use their position to take care of their friends and family. Corruption is a big problem under any system, but it is much easier to tolerate in conditions of greater abundance. The problem has been magnified in Venezuela due to the drop in state revenue caused by the low oil prices and sabotage from food importers.

The Bolivarian experience in Venezuela

Americans have been trained by decades of Cold War propaganda to look for any confirmation that “socialism means poverty.” A quick, simplistic portrait of the problems currently facing Venezuela, coupled with the fact that President Nicolas Maduro describes himself as a Marxist, can certainly give them such a confirmation. However, the actual, undisputed history of socialist construction around the world, including recent decades in Venezuela, tells a completely different story.

Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1999. His election was viewed as a referendum on the extreme free market policies enacted in Venezuela during the 1990s. In December, when I walked through the neighborhoods of central Caracas, Venezuelans spoke of these times with horror.

Demonstrators gather in Bolivar Square to show their support of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela. The demonstrators gathered as the Organization of American States is meeting to discuss a report from Secretary General Luis Almagro denouncing violations of the Venezuela’s constitution.

Venezuelans told of how the privatizations mandated by the International Monetary Fund made life in Venezuela almost unlivable during the 1990s. Garbage wouldn’t be collected. Electricity would go off for weeks. Haido Ortega, a member of a local governing body in Venezuela, said: “Under previous governments we had to burn tires and go on strike just to get electricity, have the streets fixed, or get any investment.”

Chavez took office on a platform advocating a path between capitalism and socialism. He restructured the government-owned oil company so that the profits would go into the Venezuelan state, not the pockets of Wall Street corporations. With the proceeds of Venezuela’s oil exports, Chavez funded a huge apparatus of social programs.

After defeating an attempted coup against him in 2002, Chavez announced the goal of bringing Venezuela toward “21st Century Socialism.” Chavez quoted Marx and Lenin in his many TV addresses to the country, and mobilized the country around the goal of creating a prosperous, non-capitalist society.

In 1998, Venezuela had only 12 public universities, today it has 32. Cuban doctors were brought to Venezuela to provide free health care in community clinics. The government provides cooking and heating gas to low-income neighborhoods, and it’s launched a literacy campaign for uneducated adults.

During the George W. Bush administration, oil prices were the highest they had ever been. The destruction of Iraq, sanctions on Iran and Russia, strikes and turmoil in Nigeria — these events created a shortage on the international markets, driving prices up.

Big oil revenues enabled Chavez and the United Socialist Party to bring millions of Venezuelans out of poverty. Between 1995 and 2009, poverty and unemployment in Venezuela were both cut in half.

After the death of Chavez, Nicolas Maduro has continued the Bolivarian program. “Housing Missions” have been built across the country, providing low-income families in Venezuela with places to live. The Venezuelan government reports that over 1 million modern apartment buildings had been constructed by the end of 2015.

The problems currently facing Venezuela started in 2014. The already growing abundance of oil due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was compounded by Saudi Arabia flooding the markets with cheap oil. The result: massive price drops. Despite facing a domestic fiscal crisis, Saudi Arabia continues to expand its oil production apparatus.

The price of oil remains low, as negotiations among OPEC states are taking place in the hopes that prices can be driven back up. While American media insists the low oil prices are just the natural cycle of the market at work, it’s rather convenient for U.S. foreign policy. Russia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and the Islamic Republic of Iran all have economies centered around state-owned oil companies and oil exports, and each of these countries has suffered the sting of low oil prices.

The leftist president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, has already been deposed due to scandal surrounding Petrobras, the state-owned oil company which is experiencing economic problems due to the falling price of oil. Although much of Brazil’s oil is for domestic consumption, it has been revealed that those who deposed her coordinated with the CIA and other forces in Washington and Wall Street, utilizing the economic fallout of low oil prices to bring down the Brazilian president.

The son of President Ronald Reagan has argued that Obama is intentionally driving down oil prices not just to weaken the Venezuelan economy, but also to tamper the influence of Russia and Iran. Writing for Townhall in 2014, Michael Reagan bragged that his father did the same thing to hurt the Soviet Union during the 1980s:

Since selling oil was the source of the Kremlin’s wealth, my father got the Saudis to flood the market with cheap oil.

Lower oil prices devalued the ruble, causing the USSR to go bankrupt, which led to perestroika and Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

The history of socialist construction

Prior to the 1917 revolution, Russia was a primitive, agrarian country. By 1936, after the completion of the Five-Year Plan, it was a world industrial power, surpassing every other country on the globe in terms of steel and tractor production. The barren Soviet countryside was lit up with electricity. The children of illiterate peasants across the Soviet Union grew up to be the scientists and engineers who first conquered outer space. The planned economy of the Soviet Union drastically improved the living standards of millions of people, bringing them running water, modern housing, guaranteed employment, and free education.

There is no contradiction between central planning and economic growth. In 1949, China had no steel industry. Today, more than half of all the world’s steel is produced in China’s government-controlled steel industry.

Cuba has wiped out illiteracy, and Cubans enjoy one of the highest life expectancies in Latin America.

People hold up images showing Fidel Castro, second from right, Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez, center, and Cuba’s revolutionary hero Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, bottom left and right, during a May Day march in Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, May 1, 2013. The image of Chavez carries the words in Spanish “Chavez : Our best friend.” (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

When the Marxist-Leninist governments of Eastern Europe collapsed in the early 1990s, economists like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, who can be counted among capitalism’s “true believers,” predicted rapid economic growth. Since the 1990s, conditions in what George W. Bush called the “New Europe” have becomefar worse than under socialism. The life expectancy has decreased and infant mortality has risen. Human and drug traffickers have set up shop. In endless polls, the people of Eastern Europe repeatedly say life was better before the defeat of Communism.

Russia’s recovery from the disaster of the 1990s has come about with the reorientation of the economy to one centered around public control of its oil and natural gas resources — much like Venezuela. The Putin government has also waged a crackdown on the small number of “oligarchs” who became wealthy after the demise of the Soviet Union. Once strong state to control the economy was re-established, Russia’s gross domestic product increased by 70 percent during the first eight years of Putin’s administration. From 2000 to 2008, poverty was cut in half, and incomes doubled.

Neoliberal capitalism has failed

It is only because these facts are simply off-limits in the American media and its discussions of socialism and capitalism that the distorted narrative about Venezuela’s current hardships are believed.

American media has perpetuated a cold-war induced false narrative on the nature of socialism.

When discussing the merits of capitalism and socialism, American media usually restricts the conversation to pointing out that socialist countries in the third world have lower living standards than the United States, a country widely identified with capitalism. Without any context or fair comparison, this alone is supposed to prove the inherent superiority of U.S.-style capitalism.

If the kind of neoliberal “free trade” advocated by U.S. corporations was the solution to global poverty, Mexico, a country long ago penetrated with the North American Free Trade Agreement, would be a shining example of development, not a mess of drug cartels and poverty. The same can be said for oil-rich countries like Nigeria, where exports are massive but the population remains in dire conditions.

The governments of Bangladesh, Honduras, Guatemala, Indonesia, and the Philippines have done everything they can to deregulate the market and accommodate Western ”investment.” Despite the promises of neoliberal theoreticians, their populations have not seen their lives substantially improve.

If one compares the more market-oriented economy of the U.S., not to countries in the global south attempting to develop with a planned economy, but to other Western countries with more social-democratic governments, the inferiority of the “free market” can also be revealed.

The U.S. is rated 43 in the world in terms of life expectancy, according to the CIA World Factbook. People live longer in Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Sweden, Australia, Italy, Iceland — basically, almost every other Western country. Statistics on the rate of infant mortality say approximately the same thing. National health care services along with greater job security and economic protections render much healthier populations.

Even as the social-democratic welfare states of Europe drift closer to the U.S. economic model with “austerity cuts,” the U.S. still lags behind them in terms of basic societal health. Western European countries with powerful unions, strong socialist and labor parties, and less punitive criminal justice systems tend to have healthier societies.

The American perception that socialism or government intervention automatically create poverty, while alaissez faire approach unleashes limitless prosperity, is simply incorrect. Despite the current hardships, this reality is reflected in the last two decades of Venezuela’s history.

A punishment vote, not a vote for capitalism

The artificially low oil prices have left the Venezuelan state cash-starved, prompting a crisis in the funding of the social programs that were key to strengthening the United Socialist Party.

It is odd that the mainstream press blames “socialism” for the food problems in Venezuela, when the food distributors remain in the hands of private corporations. As Venezuelan political analyst Jesus Silva told me recently: “Most food in Venezuela is imported by private companies, they ask for dollars subsidized by the government oil sales to do that; they rarely produce anything or invest their own money.”

According to Silva, the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the U.S., in addition to the oil crisis, have made it more difficult for the Venezuelan government to pay the private food importing companies in U.S. dollars. In response, the food companies are “running general sabotage.”

“Venezuela’s economy depends on oil sales. Now that oil prices are dropping down, the challenge is to get other sources of economic income,” he explained. “Meanwhile, the opposition is garnering electoral support due to the current economic crisis.”

When the United Socialist Party and its aligned Patriotic Pole lost control of Parliament in December, many predicted the imminent collapse of the Bolivarian government. However, months have passed and this clearly has not taken place.

While a clear majority cast a voto castigo (“punishment vote”) in December, punishing the government for mismanaging the crisis, the Maduro administration has a solid core of socialist activists who remain loyal to the Bolivarian project. Across Venezuela, communes have been established. Leftist activists live together and work in cooperatives. Many of them are armed and organized in “Bolivarian Militias” to defend the revolution.

Even some of the loudest critics of the Venezuelan government admit that it has greatly improved the situation in the country, despite the current hardships.

In December, I spoke to Glen Martinez, a radio host in Caracas who voted for the opposition. He dismissed the notion that free market capitalism would ever return to Venezuela. As he explained, most of the people who voted against the United Socialist Party — himself included — are frustrated with the way the current crisis is being handled, but do not want a return to the neoliberal economic model of the 1999s.

He said the economic reforms established during the Chavez administration would never be reversed. “We are not the same people we were before 1999,” Martinez insisted.

The United Socialist Party is currently engaging in a massive re-orientation, hoping to sharpen its response to economic sabotage and strengthen the socialist direction of the revolution. There is also talk of massive reform in the way the government operates, in order to prevent the extreme examples of corruption and mismanagement that are causing frustration among the population.

The climate is being intensified by a number of recent political assassinations. Tensions continue to exist on Venezuela’s border with the U.S.-aligned government of Colombia. The solid base of socialist activists is not going to let revolution be overturned, and tensions continue to rise. The Maduro and the United Socialist Party’s main task is to hold Venezuela together, and not let the country escalate into a state of civil war.

Bernie Sanders’ expected endorsement of Hillary Clinton today at a joint event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire is the culmination of a weeks-long effort by the candidate, who calls himself a “democratic socialist,” to convince supporters that his “political revolution” has shifted the Democratic Party and Clinton herself to the left.

The joint campaign appearance follows a weekend of political theatre in Orlando, Florida, where the Clinton-controlled Democratic Party platform committee agreed to a number of amendments to the party’s 2016 platform proposed by the Sanders camp. The 35-page document, which will be finalized and ratified at the Democratic Party national convention in Philadelphia later this month, is nonbinding and of zero significance in terms of the policies of the next president.

It has been decades since the official platforms adopted by the two parties of American big business, the Democrats and Republicans, were seen by the parties themselves or the political and media establishment as a whole as anything more than window dressing. This year, however, Sanders has sought to portray the document and the convention itself as having great political import. He is doing so in furtherance of his effort to divert the popular disgust with the political system and desire for an anticapitalist alternative that was reflected in the broad support for his campaign back behind the Democratic Party and its right-wing candidate.

Having won more than 20 state primaries and caucuses and 13 million votes based on his denunciations of the economic and political domination of the “billionaire class,” Sanders faces the difficult task of convincing his supporters to back a candidate who speaks for Wall Street and the Pentagon war machine.

“We have made enormous strides,” Sanders said of the weekend platform committee meeting. “Thanks to the millions of people across the country who got involved in the political process—many for the first time—we now have the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.”

This ridiculous claim was echoed by various news outlets, from Fortune (“How Bernie is Flexing his Muscles on the Democratic Party”) and Slate (“The Democratic Platform Is a Monument to Bernie Sanders’ Campaign”) to NBC News (“Democrats Advance Most Progressive Platform in Party History”).

Even if one assumed that the platform had some bearing on the actual policies to be pursued, one would look in vain for anything remotely hinting at socialism or even serious social reform. Even by the standards of Democratic platforms spanning the decades between the Great Depression and the 1960s, when the Democratic Party, under pressure from militant mass struggles of the working class, oversaw a series of social reforms, the document approved over the weekend is right-wing.

A Sanders-backed amendment, for example, calling for an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15, itself a completely inadequate measure that would leave workers in poverty, is diluted and qualified by language stating that it “should” be implemented “over time.”

Another Sanders proposal that was approved calls for the Department of Justice to investigate all shootings involving police officers. The Obama Justice Department has investigated a number of recent police killings of unarmed workers and youth and failed to indict a single killer cop. These token investigations are designed to contain popular anger over police violence and divert attention from the ongoing militarization of police departments across the country.

On those issues where even a token statement would have actual political consequences, such as criticism of Israel’s savage policy toward the Palestinians or opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the platform committee squelched amendments from the Sanders camp and the Vermont senator quickly acquiesced.

A Sanders proposal to include a statement in the platform calling for an end to Israel’s “occupation and illegal settlements” in Palestine was shot down by the Clinton-controlled committee. When Sanders supporters in the public galleries protested, the police were sent in to shut them up.

Even though such mild criticism of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land is standard fare for most European governments, the Democratic Party can brook no such gesture of disapproval. This in itself exposes the right-wing and militarist character of any administration headed by former secretary of state Clinton, who already has the blood of hundreds of thousands of victims of American imperialism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia on her hands.

Last March, Clinton delivered a bellicose speech to a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where she pledged to increase military and economic aid to Israel and threatened war with Iran. She denounced Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis while defending Israeli invasions, bombings and targeted assassinations that have killed tens of thousands, including the 2014 invasion of Gaza. She equated criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and backed efforts by Zionist organizations to ban anti-Israel protests on US college campuses.

A Sanders amendment to block the Trans-Pacific Partnership from coming up for a vote in Congress was similarly rejected. Even though Clinton has come out against TPP, in an effort, like Sanders, to divert social anger over plant closings down the path of economic nationalism, the trade pact enjoys the consensus support of the corporate and financial elite and the Obama administration, and is seen as a means of advancing Washington’s economic and military offensive against China.

Sanders did not challenge other sections of the platform critical to the needs of American imperialism. The document hailed by Sanders as the most progressive in the party’s history states: “Democrats believe America must continue to have the strongest military in the world.” It calls for an escalation of the wars in Iraq and Syria, the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and further provocations against Russia and China. It sanctions the Obama policy of perpetual warfare as well as increasing domestic spying and repression in the name of the “war on terror.”

Sanders pointed to Clinton’s adoption of two proposals following backroom negotiations between the two camps as evidence that his “political revolution” was working and Clinton was moving to the left. One was a call for people over 55 to be given the option of buying into Medicare. Another was support for the addition of a “public option” to Obamacare, and a third was a proposal to make public colleges and universities tuition-free for students from families with annual incomes up to $125,000. These proposals, which would do nothing to halt the assault on working people’s health care and little to make college more affordable for working-class youth, would have virtually no chance of being passed by Congress and implemented.

The final act of the platform committee meeting revealed the widespread hatred of Clinton among Sanders supporters and workers and youth more generally, and the difficulties both Sanders and Clinton face in convincing those who rallied behind the supposedly “socialist” senator to vote for the Democratic nominee. The two camps had agreed in advance on an amendment naming Clinton as the Democratic candidate, but when the proposal was announced, the resulting uproar among Sanders backers in the audience forced the platform committee to withdraw it.

 Six Russian strategic bombers (Tupolev Tu-22M3) have conducted air strikes against a major ISIS camp and ammunition depots in Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) reported on July 12.

The strategic bombers passed through Iranian and Iraqi airspace and delivered concentrated high-explosive ammunition airstrikes on targets east of the towns of Palmyra and As Sukhnah, and the village of Arak.

The MoD said a large militant field camp, three depots of arms and munitions, three tanks, four infantry combat vehicles and eight vehicles fitted with heavy machine guns were destroyed and a large number of ISIS fighters neutralized.

July 11 evening, joint forces of al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham launched fresh attacks in southern Hama, attempting to cut off the government controlled Hama-Salamiyah road at Tall Adara. However, the militant forces were not be able to break the defenses of pro-government forces.

Meanwhile, the militants have made a series of attempts to cut Aleppo Citadel off from the rest of the government-controlled areas of the city.

The Syrian army repelled all of them. In the area of Castello Road, the Syrian army has been advancing in Layramoun industrial area while the Kurdish YPG has tried again to seize Youth Housing and Jandoul, without any results yet.

According to ground sources, in and around Aleppo city, tactical and strategic planning is made by al Nusra while manpower is provided by Jaish al Fateh and Fatah Halab. This corresponds with earlier reports about Turkish military advisers in the Al Nusra general staff.

Amid clashes in the Aleppo city, the Syrian Army has launched a fresh advance in the militant stronghold of Darayya, southwest of Damascus. Pro-government forces already seized all farms surrounding Darayya and at least 15 buildings on the south-west side of Daraya.

In Manbij, the Syrian Democratic Forces, supported by the US-led coalition airpower and special forces, almost cut the western part of the city from the rest of ISIS-controlled areas, surrounding Al Basel Hospital. The SDF also seized the school South of Sheik Ali district and advanced on Bakery near the city center and almost secured Hazawani Neighborhood. Clashes are ongoing.

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Wednesday, two shocking videos of police officers fatally shooting civilians (Alton Sterling and Philando Castile) surfaced. The day before, many were appalled to hear the Director of the FBI announce that Hillary Clinton would not be charged for mishandling classified information. The two events may seem unrelated, but at bottom, they concern the same fundamental problem: impunity.

Impunity is the essence of power. What, after all, is power? Is it simply the capacity to exert unjust force? The ability to impress one’s will upon the flesh or belongings of another? No, it’s more than that.

Most anyone can wield unjust force. Anyone could walk out onto the street right now and exert their will on somebody weaker: say, pushing over an old lady or stealing candy from a baby. And the toughest, or most heavily-armed guy in town can strong-arm just about any other single person.

But isolated incidents of aggression do not constitute power. The “reign” of the rogue rampager is generally short-lived. It only lasts until the community recognizes him as the menace to society that he is and neutralizes him.

Power isn’t simply about the exertion of unjust force. It is about what happens next, after the exertion. Does the perpetrator generally get away with, or not? Systematically getting away with it – or impunity – is where power truly lies. And that is what makes agents of the State different from any other bully. State agents can violate rights with reliable impunity because a critical mass of the public considers the aggression of state agents to be exceptionally legitimate. Impunity is power, and as Lord Acton said, power corrupts.

State impunity is at the root of the problem of police violence. As agents of the exalted State, the police are seen as paladins of public order. The populace grants cops a special dispensation to commit violence that would be considered criminal if perpetrated by anybody else. This privilege is enshrined in law most clearly as the doctrine of “qualified immunity.” As Evan Bernick of the Institute for Justice wrote:

In the 1967 case of Pierson v. Ray, the Supreme Court held that police officers sued for constitutional violations can raise ‘qualified immunity’ as a defense, and thereby escape paying out of their own pockets, even if they violated a person’s constitutional rights.

When victims of police violence or their heirs seek redress and are awarded monetary payments, it is taxpayers, and not the cops, who pick up the tab. Police officers are rarely even prosecuted for violence inflicted while they’re on the clock. The worst that an offending officer can generally expect to face is getting fired, but he will more likely just get a paid suspension.

Thus insulated from responsibility, officer treatment of “mundanes” is predictably often grossly irresponsible. Confident in being sheltered from consequences by their “blue privilege,” officers are far more prone to indulge in lethal cowardice: to place “officer safety” so far above civilian rights that they are willing to gun down a stranger at the slightest whiff of potential danger. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile each carried a gun, as they have the natural right to do. Neither threatened the officers with his weapon, or even brandished it. Yet in both cases, merely becoming aware of the guns sent a cop into a murderous panic. Both Sterling and Castile were fatally shot multiple times in the chest.

The Impunity of High Office

State impunity not only corrupts the regime’s low-level enforcers, but its elite policy makers as well. The FBI let Hillary Clinton off the hook for secrecy violations she committed as Secretary of State, even though these were much more egregious than violations that have earned lower-level personnel decades in prison. She used technology that was more open to being compromised by spies and hackers, while at the same less open to legal and public scrutiny.

But the kinds of activities she was hiding are far more criminal than the fact that she hid them. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton played a key role in bringing war to such places as Libya, Syria, and Honduras, and in escalating the war in Afghanistan. She is complicit in causing untold death and misery.

Yet, thanks to her connections and her position in the state power apparatus, she faces no consequences for her crimes, and is free to acquire even more immunity and power as a likely President of the United States.

It is the “sovereign immunity” she enjoys as an officeholder that has made Hillary Clinton so reckless and cavalier about the havoc she has wreaked around the world. If she thought she might ever be held accountable for upending entire countries, she would have likely been far less warlike in her policies.

From policing to foreign policy, impunity corrupts, and absolute impunity corrupts absolutely.

Dan Sanchez is the Digital Content Manager at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), developing educational and inspiring content for FEE.org, including articles and courses.

Obama attends summit in Warsaw amid a national outbreak of racial unrest in the United States

A meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member-states in Warsaw, Poland agreed to expand the presence of western-allied troops in the region further intensifying tensions with the Russian Federation. In addition to a broader presence in the European theater there was a decision to escalate the deployment of imperialist forces in Afghanistan after a nearly fifteen year occupation led by the United States.

During the course of the summit a string of police killings of African Americans in the U.S. forced President Barack Obama to address the situation in a press conference. While the administration made plans to escalate its military presence in Europe and other regions of the world, a war was escalating inside the founding country of NATO where tens of millions of African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color communities live under a virtual police-state.

These manifestations prompted by the brutal law-enforcement extrajudicial executions from Mississippi to Louisiana and Minnesota sparked protests and civil disobedience resulting in the closing down of major thoroughfares and expressways. The demonstrations were largely organized over social media where a storm of facebook postings and twitter feeds revealed that the masses of youth and workers were fed up with these unjustified acts of lethal force.

On July 7 five police officers were killed and seven wounded when they were struck by sniper fire in downtown Dallas, Texas. Subsequent reports of shootings involving civilians firing on law-enforcement agents took place in several states including Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia and Michigan. The alleged gunmen in Dallas, Micah Xavier Johnson, had expressed dismay and anger over the police killings of African Americans.

Johnson, a former U.S. army reservist, served in Afghanistan as part of the Pentagon-led NATO occupation which has continued for a decade-and-a-half. Over the period of time since the invasion of Afghanistan, thousands of U.S. and NATO troops have been killed on the battlefields of this country along with Iraq and the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia.

Pentagon and NATO forces bombed the North African state of Libya for seven months in 2011 killing an estimated 50,000-100,000 people and displacing at least two million. The infrastructure of Libya was destroyed during the 2011 war. Libya once the most prosperous state on the continent has been rendered to abject poverty becoming a principle source of instability and human trafficking throughout Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean region spreading into Southern, Central and Eastern Europe itself.

Even short-term prospects for a shift in U.S. imperialist policy are not apparent. The presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders provided an alternative to voters who were alienated from both the racism of billionaire Donald Trump for the Republicans and the equally racist-militarist Wall Street legacy of former Secretary of Hillary Clinton. The previous New York Senator, and wife of the 1990s President Bill Clinton, advocated policies which escalated Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) destabilization efforts in Africa and other parts of the world. The administration of Obama enhanced and expanded the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) while the exponential growth in the prison industrial complex overseen by the Clinton administration of the 1990s, reinforced national oppression and imperialism domestically and internationally.

Nevertheless, with Sanders’ endorsing Clinton on July 12, millions of young, working class and nationally oppressed voters are left angry and disappointed that all of their efforts are being encouraged to enter a presidential campaign that will maintain the status-quo. Consequently, it is not surprising that so many people are marching through the streets and defying state law-enforcement agencies. There appears to be no alternative except taking to the streets in mass demonstrations against the racist and economically exploitative system.

NATO Plans Further War and Destabilization

In a press release issued by NATO it says: “On Friday (July 8), leaders decided to strengthen the Alliance’s military presence in the east, with four battalions in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on a rotational basis – to be in place starting next year. They also agreed to develop a tailored forward presence in the south-eastern part of the Alliance. Allies also declared Initial Operational Capability of NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defense, pledged to strengthen their own cyber defenses, and recognized cyberspace as a new operational domain.” (July 9)

Moreover, the press release says, “on Saturday, leaders took decisions on projecting stability through support for partners – including an agreement to start training and capacity building inside Iraq. Leaders also decided that NATO AWACS surveillance planes will provide information to the Global Coalition to counter ISIL, and agreed to an expanded maritime presence in the Mediterranean Sea….. Allies and partners contributing to NATO’s Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan met with President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah. They agreed to continue the Resolute Support Mission beyond 2016, and confirmed funding commitments for the Afghan forces until 2020. The last session of the Summit was a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, where Allied leaders reviewed the security situation with President Poroshenko, welcomed the government’s plans for reform, and endorsed a Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine.”

Nonetheless, in order for these projects to be effective the question of EU unity and functionality is essential. The current turmoil inside EU bloc with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom on June 23 bringing to the fore mounting tensions over a number of fundamental issues including the mass migration of Africans, Middle Easterners, Asians and even East Europeans to Britain, has brought about a political crisis of leadership within both the ruling Conservative and opposition Labor Parties. Despite widespread propaganda to the contrary leading EU member-states including Britain, France, Italy and Germany are experiencing economic problems related to the persistence of unemployment and the rise in the rates of poverty.

The Brexit vote has plunged the British and western capitalist ruling circles into fears of another major recession perhaps even of greater magnitude than the events of 2007-2009, where millions were thrown out of work. In addition to job losses, there was the crisis of home foreclosures and evictions dislocating millions more mainly within the U.S. however not limited to the world largest economy. Low-wage employment has become the norm for many youth and older workers with no program by the ruling class to raise salaries and provide security to working families and communities.

France has been the scene of weeks of labor unrest with clashes between protesters and security forces. Garbage has piled up in the streets of Paris while the European Parliament is attempting to figure a way to minimize the political and financial damage caused by the divisions in Britain along with the growth in right-wing governments and political parties from France to Hungary and Poland.

On July 11, the fractured Conservative Party of Britain announced that Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will take over the leadership of the ruling group hastening the exit of David Cameron who announced that he will step down on July 13. Although May says she will hasten the exit from the EU and unify the Conservative Party, the road to her ascendancy was muddled by a five-way factional struggle for the leadership of the Tories.

The opposition Labor Party is also split with the leader Jeremy Corbyn ignoring a vote of no-confidence by an overwhelming majority of parliamentarians demanding his resignation. Corbyn, who is considered to be to the left of many Members of Parliament (MPs), labeled as Blairites, has pledged to call a membership vote in order to maintain his position.

An article published over the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on the split within the Labor Party, by political correspondent Chris Mason says: “Here is the row for Labor over the next few days: The rules for leadership elections. And here is the row for Labor after that: What does its future look like? Crucially, one could determine the other, but there are no easy answers whatever happens. If Jeremy Corbyn wins again, what do the 80% of Labor MPs who think he is a loser do? If Mr. Corbyn is beaten, or not able to stand, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Labor supporters will feel cheated, even robbed. That is why there is now open talk of Labor splitting in two: A party whose history can be traced back to the dawn of the 20th Century, ceasing to exist as we have long known it to.” (July 10)

Adding to the tensions within the Labor Party, Corbyn’s challenger Angela Eagle had her office vandalized. Corbyn in a public statement called for calm. Eagle suggested that Corbyn should restrain his supporters implying that they were involved in the breaking of her office window.

Corbyn’s statement stressed in regard to the “attack on Eagle’s office, ‘It is extremely concerning that Angela Eagle has been the victim of a threatening act and that other MPs are receiving abuse and threats. As someone who has also received death threats this week and previously, I am calling on all Labor Party members and supporters to act with calm and treat each other with respect and dignity, even where there is disagreement. I utterly condemn any violence or threats, which undermine the democracy within our party and have no place in our politics.’”

In specific reference to the role of the EU in the forward going plans of NATO this same press release notes that “In the margins of the meeting, the Secretary General signed a Joint Declaration with the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission, taking partnership between NATO and the European Union to an ambitious new level. The Declaration sets out areas where NATO and the EU will step up cooperation – including maritime security and countering hybrid threats.”

The Use of “International Law” to Rationalize Imperialist Expansion in Asia-Pacific

Beyond the provocations and military encirclement of the Russian Federation, the Pentagon and State Department “pivot to Asia” is a major aspect of imperialist foreign policy. The July 11 decision by an International Tribunal in Holland at The Hague, which rejected all claims by the People’s Republic of China to sovereignty over the South Seas, provides a pseudo-legal cover for further military intervention in the Asia-Pacific region. This purported impartial court system has always been biased in favor of the United States and its imperialist and neo-colonialist allies around the world.

The Chinese leadership responded immediately to the decision saying that it was not bound by this court. Although the imperialist system claims the decision is legally binding, there is no mechanism for enforcing it, and Beijing, which declined to participate in the tribunal’s proceedings, said again on July 12 that it would refuse to abide by its arbitrary claims.

New York Times coverage of the Netherlands decision and China’s position, notes that Beijing’s leader

“Speaking at a meeting with European leaders, President Xi Jinping was defiant, reasserting China’s claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea ‘since ancient times,’ the state-run People’s Daily reported. His remarks echoed a statement from the Foreign Ministry. The tribunal’s decision ‘is invalid and has no binding force,’ the ministry said. ‘China does not accept or recognize it.’”

Beijing also said in the full statement:

“China is always firmly opposed to the invasion and illegal occupation by certain states of some islands and reefs of China’ s Nansha Qundao, and activities infringing upon China’ s rights and interests in relevant maritime areas under China’ s jurisdiction. China stands ready to continue to resolve the relevant disputes peacefully through negotiation and consultation with the states directly concerned on the basis of respecting historical facts and in accordance with international law. Pending final settlement, China is also ready to make every effort with the states directly concerned to enter into provisional arrangements of a practical nature, including joint development in relevant maritime areas, in order to achieve win-win results and jointly maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.

China respects and upholds the freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by all states under international law in the South China Sea, and stays ready to work with other coastal states and the international community to ensure the safety of and the unimpeded access to the international shipping lanes in the South China Sea.”

(http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-07/12/c_135507754.htm)

“Thank you very much. It’s a great honor and pleasure for us to have a man I’ve admired – most of us have admired – for many years, a man who – U.S. Naval, served in Vietnam, won the Purple Heart – I mean, three Purple Hearts, the bronze medal, the silver medal, has been a senator, candidate for president, and now our Secretary of State.”

These accolades were the opening salvo from Walter Isaacson in a conversation with US Secretary of State, John Kerry.  A conversation held in front of an audience, June 28th 2016, at the Aspen Ideas Festival held in Colorado and recorded by the US State Department.

What John Kerry said in this conversation effectively demolishes the foundations of US “regime change” policy in Syria and its support of the so called “moderate rebels”.

Background on Ahrar al Sham ~ The Favourite US Terrorists

Many of you may remember the 21st Century article US Smoke and Mirrors to Protect Terrorist Proxies in Syria.  In this article Yalla la Barra explained the US State Department policy of shielding their “moderate rebel” gangs under the Ahrar al Sham umbrella which served to detach them from the Al Nusra/Al Qaeda body of terrorism and to designate them a branch of US friendly “opposition” conveniently “intermingled” with Al Nusra thus prohibiting Russian targeting of Al Nusra just in case they hit one of the moderates in the process.

Throughout the two and a half months that have passed since the start of the Cessation of Hostilities (CoH), the State Department has refused to acknowledge that the US backed rebel factions  are fighting in Aleppo and elsewhere alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria.

There has not been a single press briefing where the spokesman has not accused Russia and Syria of targeting US backed rebel factions and civilians.

Whether it’s John Kirby or Mark Toner, the spokesman keeps talking about intermingling between the “moderates” and the Al-Qaeda affiliate and that the Russians/Syrians need to be able to separate the two. At the the press briefing of April 25, 2016 Mr Kirby said:

So again, I go back to what I said before. We want to see the cessation observed by all parties. As I said in my answer to Said, we’re not blind to the fact that it’s a very dynamic situation in Aleppo and that there is intermingling. We’ve said that for a while now… ~ US Smoke and Mirrors to Protect Terrorist Proxies in Syria

As a further reminder here is the video of Mark Toner’s painful explanation of the “intermingling” of terrorist factions:

In July 2015, former US Ambassador to Syria and suspected death squad creator, Robert Fordhad this to say about Ahrar al Sham in an article penned by Ford and Ali el Yassir, entitled appropriately, Yes, Talk with Syria’s Ahrar al Sham.

Moreover, lumping Ahrar and Nusra together is intellectually sloppy, especially when they exhibit ideological and political differences…. Our refusal even to talk with groups like Ahrar further reduces the little influence Americans still have in Syria. As the Assad regime steadily weakens, the administration keeps trying to lead the opposition from behind, hoping for an opposition white knight to appear. Instead, because Islamist groups like Ahrar strongly influence decisions about the fate of Syria, Washington will be left behind.

Ford insisted on dialogue with Ahrar al Sham, he also attempted to divorce them from Al Nusra/Al Qaeda, somehow whitewashing their brutality by highlighting their nationalism, a claim that is bizarre in the extreme when one considers how few Syrians, if any, actually belong to the group which consists predominantly of foreign mercenaries as do 90% of the “armed opposition” inside Syria.

UK educated leader of Ahrar al Sham, Labib Al Nahhas, has even been given a platform on theWashington Post:

The group to which I belong, Ahrar al-Sham, is one example. Our name means “Free Men of Syria.” We consider ourselves a mainstream Sunni Islamic group that is led by Syrians and fights for Syrians. We are fighting for justice for the Syrian people. Yet we have been falsely accused of having organizational links to al-Qaeda and of espousing al-Qaeda’s ideology.

The Telegraph:

By Labib Al Nahhas, Foreign Affairs Director at Ahrar Al Sham: Ahrar Al-Sham, as a mainstream Sunni Islamist group deeply rooted in the revolutionary landscape, is forging that alternative. But those expecting a “perfect” Sunni alternative according to Western liberal standard are sure to be disappointed.

As we should all know by now, political systems and models of government cannot be imported into the Middle East and expected to flourish where historical experiences, political cultures and social structures are so radically different. There needs to be a major role for religion and local custom in any political arrangement that emerges out of the debris of conflict, and it should be one that corresponds with the prevailing beliefs of the majority of Syrians.

The Guardian:

A Spanish citizen who studied in Birmingham and headed a tech company based in a London suburb is leading efforts to rebrand one of Syria’s most prominent armed Islamist opposition groups. Labib al-Nahhas is the “foreign affairs minister” for Ahrar al-Sham, agroup that has fought in alliances with al-Qaida’s Syrian franchise, and aims to establish a Sunni theocracy in Syria.

One of its original leaders also had personal connections with Osama bin Laden. After graduating he spent time in France, the Netherlands and the US, as well as the UK, where official documents list him as director of a company based in a west London suburb. But in 2010 he moved back to Syria, finding a job in the telecoms industry.

Ahrar al Sham as a group have had their virtues extolled by other prominent mainstream media outfits.

BBC:

“The Ahrar al Sham is part of a broad coalition of Syrian opposition groups, the Islamic Front. And it is among the most powerful force and better organized,” says the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Jim Muir.

Professor Scott Lucas at EA Worldview:

Recent efforts by Ahrar al-Sham to portray itself as a moderate group may be linked to the increasing number of assassination attacks. According to Syrian journalist Akil Housain, the movement is in the process of purging its traditional leadership, which is considered more radical, and replacing it with younger leaders. This process has apparently angered Ahrar al-Sham ally and Al Qa’eda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

Charles Lister: Supreme “Moderate” Myth Creator:

The editorial’s author was someone I have come to know very well personally amid Syria’s conflict. Labib al-Nahhas is Ahrar al-Sham’s “head of foreign political relations.” Better known as Abu Ezzeddine, Nahhas is an ordinarily clean-shaven young man from Syria’s central city of Homs. Originally a political official in the Homs-based faction Liwa al-Haq, Nahhas has risen in stature since his group merged with Ahrar al-Sham in December 2014.

A fluent English speaker and a seat-holder on the Executive Council of Syria’s Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), his ability to combine an understanding of both Western (he has spent time in both the United States and Europe) and Syrian mindsets has demonstrated a level of political capacity often lacking in Syrian armed revolutionary circles. ~ writing for the Qatarifunded Brookings Institute

Al Nahhas was even allowed to enter the US on a European passport in May 2016 even though the US State Department claimed it “didnt know”.

Labib al Nahhas, who calls himself “a chief of Foreign Political Relations at Ahrar al-Sham,” arrived in the US capital for a visit lasting a few days in December, according to McClatchy DC news. The report cites “four people with direct knowledge of the trip.

As one of them told the network’s reporter, Nahhas arrived in the US to speak with “third parties” even though he would not elaborate further. The other speakers revealed a few more details about the visit, saying that Nahhas had been in Washington to meet with lobbyists and Middle East researchers.”~ RT

Ahrar Al Sham the bloodthirsty “moderates”

Ahrar al Sham as a stand-alone “moderate” US backed group has been responsible for some of the most hideous ethnic cleansing of Syria’s minorities.  It has mercilessly and brutally terrorised the Shia villages of Kafarya and Foua, placing them under partial siege since 2011 and full siege since March 2015.

Over 1700 civilians, many women and children, have been massacred by these self-proclaimed “free men of the Levant” and Kafarya and Foua continues to suffer daily shelling and sniping.  I was told by a resident of al Foua that Ahrar al Sham do not even behave like Muslims, the bodies of their own dead are put on display to drive fear into the hearts of the villagers already starving and imprisoned.

The UN has failed to deliver humanitarian aid to Kafarya and Foua on numerous occasions deterred by the threat of the Ahrar al Sham checkpoints which are considered too serious a security risk.

Read more on Kafarya and Foua:  The 21st Century Wire Syria Files

In May 2016, Ahrar al Sham massacred scores of Alawite villagers in Al Zara and kidnapped others.  Claims that they did not harm anyone who did not resist were cited by Reuters and other western media outlets but witness and survivor statements told a different story. One photo that circulated after this horrifying mass murder showed Ahrar al Sham fighters standing over the dismembered and bloodied corpses of women.

Ahrar al Sham made no effort to deny this image, they merely stated that these women had taken up arms and as such were legitimate victims of their bloodlust, a claim seemingly endorsed by western media pundits who staunchly stood by their “moderate” killers.

“Strangers came to our village. Most of them were foreigners, we understood that they weren’t from Syria from the way they looked. They attacked our village, many were killed. My brother is among the dead, his children were wounded. They killed entire families,” said Ahmad Muhammad al Qasem.

“They perpetrated a massacre,” said another villager, Munzer Qasem. “I heard of two or three entire families killed. Abu Naval’s family was killed. He was an old man and was killed together with his daughters. They were slaughtered in their own house.” ~ Syrian Free Press

Ahrar al Sham were also implicated in the mass suicide bombing, May 2016,  that claimed the lives of over a hundred civilians and severely injured many more in the coastal towns of Jableh and Tartous that are also refuge to huge numbers of internally displaced Syrian refugees.  The western and gulf media was quick to claim ISIS responsibility for the attacks but local residents and TV Channels informed us that Ahrar al Sham had already taken responsibility.

The western protection of its assets was again demonstrated by its eagerness to distance these crimes and mass murder of civilians from its terrorist forces operating under the Ahrar al Sham umbrella.

Ahrar al Sham has been complicit in a multitude of crimes against humanity in Syria, according to many it is actually even more brutal than ISIS in its extremism and targeting and ethnic cleansing of minorities such as the Alawites and Shia muslims.  The US defense of Ahrar al Sham as a “moderate opposition” and its platforming of Ahrar al Shams desire for an Islamic state has underpinned their “regime change” policy in Syria.

The John Kerry Grenade

Lets now return to the discourse between Walter Isaacson and John Kerry.  During this conversation, Kerry makes two astounding statements that completely overturn the US dialectic regarding Ahrar al Sham.

1: “Everybody knows the threat. We’ve all awakened to the news that I just announced to you. How many times have you awakened to it? Vicious attacks perpetrated by a lone wolf or by a group, inspired on the internet or otherwise. From Orlando to San Bernardino to the Philippines and Bali, we’ve seen pictures and we’ve heard testimony of shocking crimes committed by al-Qaida, by Boko Haram, by Jaysh al-Islam, by Ahrar al-Sham, by al-Shabaab, Daesh, other groups against innocent civilians, against journalists, and against teachers particularly.”

http://21stcenturywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/kerry-cock-up-2.mp4?_=1

2: “But the most important thing, frankly, is seeing if we can reach an understanding with the Russians about how to, number one, deal with Daesh and al-Nusrah. Al-Nusrah is the other group there – Jabhat al-Nusrah. They are a designated terrorist group by the United Nations. And there are a couple of subgroups underneath the two designated – Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusrah – Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham particularly – who brush off and fight with that – alongside these other two sometimes to fight the Assad regime.”

http://21stcenturywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Kerry-cock-up.mp4?_=2

Thanks to @Walid970721 for the videos.

In one fell swoop, Kerry has demolished the US State Department argument for not targeting their pet killers in Syria. Is this a deliberate shoe in the face of the US and by default, Saudi interests and operatives in the region? Was it a genuine moment of honesty for the usually duplicitous and hypocritical Kerry?

The Washington Post reaction certainly seems to point to the latter as they swung into damage limitation mode:

But then Kerry, perhaps accidentally, threw two other Syrian rebel groups under the bus by calling them “subgroups” of the terrorists.

“There are a couple of subgroups underneath the two designated — Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra — Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham particularly — who brush off and fight with that — alongside these other two sometimes to fight the Assad regime,” he said, referring to two rebel groups that the United States has not named as terrorist groups until now…..

Two administration officials who work on Syria told me that Kerry’s naming of the Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham as “subgroups” of the terrorist organizations was not only inaccurate but potentially harmful to U.S. government efforts to convince the Russians and the Syrian government not to attack them.

“For months, we’ve been arguing to make sure the Russians and the Syrian regime don’t equate these groups with the terrorists,” one senior administration official told me. “Kerry’s line yields that point.

Another U.S. official simply emailed, “Baffled. SMH[Shaking my head]. ~ Washington Post

Probably unwittingly the author Josh Rogin ends the article on a comedic note:

“Kerry muddied the waters. That’s typically Moscow’s job.”

Perhaps we are seeing a genuine face saving exercise on behalf of the Americans under Russia’s tutelage and the Washington Post has not been informed?

Undeniably, among those responsible for muddying the water on the Syrian narrative and advocating the murder of its people are the western media who have formed a battalion of war harpies and sectarian propagandists intent upon facilitating the mass slaughter of the Syrian people in service of NATO’s oil and geo-political interests in Syria and the region.

Certainly Kerry’s “slip of the tongue” should not go unnoticed and should be used to remind the media of their accessory to murder when they are finally brought to justice for their role in the “dirty war on Syria”.

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

Syrian rebel groups backed by the U.S. and its allies “have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including abductions, torture and summary killings,” according to Amnesty International.

A report by the leading human rights organization details how extremist rebel groups have taken over large parts of major Syrian cities, in which they have created repressive theocratic regimes where critics are violently silenced and where religious and ethnic minority groups fear for their lives.

“‘Torture Was My Punishment’: Abductions, Torture and Summary Killings Under Armed Group Rule in Aleppo and Idleb, Syria” shows how the Syrian people have been caught between a rock and a hard place — with extremist rebels on one side and a brutal regime on the other.

The report focuses primarily on the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib, in the north of the country. Aleppo is Syria’s largest city, and the Aleppo governorate is the most populous.

Amnesty documented abuses committed by five armed groups that have controlled parts of Aleppo and Idlib since 2012. These rebels have been supported by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the U.S.

In Aleppo, Amnesty investigated the actions of the Levant Front, the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement and Division 16, factions in the Aleppo Conquest rebel coalition.

In Idlib, it looked at the crimes of the rebel groups Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, both of which are extremist Islamist militias that are party of the Army of Conquest coalition.

Jabhat al-Nusra is Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate. The U.S. officially considers it a terrorist group, although Western allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar have supported it.

Amnesty noted that al-Nusra “has a significant presence” throughout the Idlib governorate. Ahrar al-Sham is present in the major cities Idlib, Aleppo, Damascus and Hama.

Executions and strict Shari’a

Armed groups have repressed many Syrians who were themselves once supportive of the rebels.

“I was happy to be free from the Syrian government’s unjust rule but now the situation is worse,” a Syrian lawyer told Amnesty.

Rebel groups have established “courts” (the report uses the term in scare quotes) in Aleppo and Idlib based on strict interpretations of Shari’a (Islamic law).

Extremist Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham have harshly punished Syrians who disobey their theocratic laws, the report notes.

It cites numerous cases of summary killings carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra, the Levant Front and rebel “courts.” Some have been “execution-style killings in front of crowds.”

Jabhat al-Nusra has publicly executed civilian men it accused of homosexuality and civilian women it accused of adultery.

In Aleppo, the “Supreme Judicial Council” run by the Levant Front told Amnesty that the punishment for apostasy is execution. “Death sentences are carried out in the detention center according to Shari’a principles,” the deputy director said.

According to the Carnegie Endowment, most of the rebel groups in the Levant Front coalition likely receive support from the Military Operations Center, a Turkey-based rebel facility that the U.S. helps operate with its allies.

Most of the “courts” run by these rebel groups, Amnesty says, are based on the Unified Arab Code, a set of Shari’a-based legal codes that were endorsed by the Arab League between 1988 and 1996 but were never implemented anywhere.

This legal code demands harsh corporal punishments for hudud crimes (violations of Islamic law), including stoning, amputations and flogging.

“I publicly criticized Jabhat al-Nusra on Facebook accusing them of committing worse human rights abuses than those perpetrated by the government. The next morning, Jabhat al-Nusra forces took me from my home,” a Syrian lawyer told Amnesty.

An interrogator told him he was not a real lawyer because he did not know Islamic law. The Syrian rebel threatened him, telling him he had to give up his profession or his family wold never see me again. After 10 days of abduction, hearing men screaming from torture, the lawyer agreed.

“I left Syria as soon as I was released,” he added.

A female activist who had just been released from detention by the Syrian government told Amnesty she was subsequently arrested and interrogated by Ahrar al-Sham rebels for not wearing a veil.

“They forced me to wear a veil and cover my face. They brought a religious man who made me kneel to confess my wrongdoings. The interrogator repeatedly threatened to conduct a virginity test,” she recalled.

Torture

Amnesty documented cases of armed factions torturing journalists, activists and other civilians who do not share their ideologies.

“I heard and read about the government security forces’ torture techniques. I thought I would be safe from that now that I am living in an opposition-held area. I was wrong. I was subjected to the same torture techniques but at the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra,” explained a Syrian man who was abducted by the extremist rebel group.

Syrian lawyers who have spoken out against rebel groups’ use of torture have themselves been abducted and threatened.

In several of the cases of abduction, journalists, political activists and a humanitarian worker told Amnesty that they were tortured by either Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement. Some were violently forced to sign a statement of confession.

“The methods of torture described are disturbingly similar to some of the ones used by the Syrian government,” Amnesty wrote.

Numerous journalists and activists were kidnapped and tortured by al-Nusra for “promoting secular beliefs,” the rights group reported.

One journalist who works for an international media outlet was tortured by al-Nusra rebels for “offending the jihad and mujahidin [rebel fighters] and for working with a media channel that opposes al-Qa’ida.”

The release form given to the tortured journalist by his interrogator said that he had been “acquitted of the charges after pledging that he would only report on issues that support the Islamic faith.”

Another activist was told he was being tortured for being secular.

Even groups Syrian activists described as “moderate” have abducted and tortured Syrians. Activists told Amnesty the Levant Front, the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement and the 16th Division also tortured and mistreated detainees.

A humanitarian worker was abducted and tortured by the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement for complaining about the misuse of funds in a hospital in Aleppo.

The Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement is a CIA-approved rebel group that has received TOW anti-tank missiles.

Amnesty said Syrian lawyers and activists told it of cases of abduction and torture carried out by other rebel groups in Aleppo and Idlib, but it was unable to independently verify these claims.

Targeting of minority groups

The Amnesty report also shows how rebel groups have targeted ethnic and religious minorities.

Like prestidigitation, while we’re all watching the media circus that is our presidential election, the House of Representatives is being usurped using the most sophisticated mapping and digital software.

It’s a process the Republicans started back in 2010 with only 30 million dollars. The net result has been to lock up congressional control for at least a decade. The Democrats are now trying, perhaps too little too late, to compete. If they can’t, control may be locked up until at least 2031.  The goal set by the GOP was a landside-proof House and we may soon see if they succeeded.

In this week’s WhoWhatWhy Podcast, David Daley, the digital media fellow for the Wilson Center for the Humanities and the Arts at the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia, and the author of Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy, talks to Jeff Schectman about this powerful new tool that has dramatically undercut the electoral process — the very foundation of democracy itself.

Click HERE to Download Mp3

Full Text Transcript:

Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to Radio Whowhatwhy. I’m Jeff Schechtman.

We all know that magic is about misdirection. Look here while I do something else over there that you’re not looking at. In some ways, politics is the same way. While we’re all busy watching the media circus that is our presidential elections, political operatives, particularly Republicans have been working hard for many years to gain control of statehouses, and in turn have the legislature draw the Congressional District boundaries, enhancing and securing their control of the House. The way they’ve done this, the money they’ve spent doing it, and the insidious way they’ve taken the practice of gerrymandering to new levels has resulted in both a secure Republican Congress, but also in many ways lies at the heart of the polarization that has paralyzed our politics. My guest today on Radio Whowhatwhy David Daley gives us an overview on what’s going on.

David Daley is the digital media fellow for the Wilson Center for Humanities and the Arts. He’s also the author of the new book Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy. David Daley, thanks so much for joining us here on Radio Whowhatwhy.

David Daley: A real pleasure, Jeff. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Schechtman: It’s great to have you here. First of all, explain what it is that Republicans set out to do, when they decided to do it, and what they were trying to accomplish.

David Daley: Absolutely. I think Democrats celebrated in 2008, after Barack Obama wins the presidency and it takes a super majority in the Senate. Republican operatives however realized that the more important election was coming up the following year in 2010. And they set their sights on a really aggressive and audacious plan centered around the next census and redistricting. We redraw every district in the country every ten years after the census, so elections in years that end in zero have a little more power and can reverberate throughout the next decade. Republicans raised 30 million bucks, which is all it took, and they spent that money targeting control of state legislative chambers across the country, and very carefully strategized to be sure that they would control every seat at the table when it came to redistricting the following year. So in blue states and purple states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, they take control of the entire state legislative process. They draw in amazingly tilted maps favoring their side, and in 2012, when the first elections are held on these maps, it’s another Democratic year, but the Republicans have built themselves a firewall in the House so stout that 1.4 million more voters go for Democratic House candidates than Republicans, and yet the House stays under Republican control. It’s the first time in 40 years, only the second time in about 100 that the party with the most votes does not win the most number of seats; it’s a real crisis of democracy.

Jeff Schechtman: In doing that though, weren’t they doing something that harkens back even to the founders, even to Hamilton and Madison and to Patrick Henry in terms of drawing congressional districts to serve the purposes of one particular party or another?

David Daley: You’re absolutely right. I mean gerrymandering in some ways is the oldest political trick in the book. It goes back to Patrick Henry in 1788, to Elbridge Gerry who takes the historical shame of having a name for him in 1790. But from 1788 through save in 2000, that is the horse and buggy era of gerrymandering. That is the pen and parchment paper and maybe primitive computers, but in 2010, the technology has changed to such an extent that you can draw lines that you know exactly how they will respond. They use a program called Maptitude, which comes preloaded with all the census information, so it’s amazing demographic detail on ethnicity and economics and religion, everything you might imagine. And then you can add all the public record datasets into this; so voter registration numbers, voter turnout numbers, election results, precinct by precinct, census block by census block, when you see these maps and they look really strange and they turn in odd ways, all of those lines have a reason because they know who lives there, they know who these people are and they know how to draw maps now that can remain in a district and keep a party in control for the entire decade.

Jeff Schechtman: Of course one of the things you point out is to a certain extent, this has backfired even on some Republicans because the districts have become too pure and in many cases, too extreme as Eric Cantor might attest to.

David Daley: Well, John Boehner would probably tell you the same thing, even someone as conservative as Renee Ellmers lost her seat in North Carolina. She was a real Tea Party favorite not that long ago, now she’s not even pure enough. But I think what has happened is we’ve created so many uncompetitive seats; about 400 or 435 seats are non-competitive, and when that happens, the only election that matters is the party primary, and that is a race for purity between “I’m crazy” and “Oh no, no, no, no. Let me tell you how much crazier I am than you!” And the Republicans as a result, have pushed out any of the moderate voices, there aren’t many of them left, and it makes our politics extreme. It sends a different kind of legislator to Washington. One who’s not interested in compromise. One who in fact knows that compromise is the one thing that might actually earn a primary challenge, and it empowers the angriest piece of the base, and it creates the conditions, not only under which we don’t have to actually talk and persuade each other about the correctness of our cause anymore because you don’t need the other side to win in these districts, but it creates the conditions under which a strongman type like Donald Trump can step in and take control of the party.

Jeff Schechtman: What do we learn from looking at the antithesis of this? When we look at California today which, one: has open primaries, two: is looking at ways to draw district lines outside of the party structure, really is rebelling in many ways to these ideas that we’re talking about, what do we learn in your view from that experience?

David Daley: Well, I think that the California experience has made elections here more competitive. You have certainly seen more turnover in your congressional delegation as a result of this. I mean I believe the numbers are between 2002 and 2010. There was exactly one incumbent who lost, something like 500 House races over that time. When you draw new lines, you immediately see 14, 15 incumbents departing or losing. So it matters. Commissions have mixed results across the country, in part because it’s hard to take all of the politics out of something that’s inherently political as drawing lines. I mean even in California, you see how there’s secret efforts behind the scenes by party leaders, here on the Democratic side too; trying to influence the members of the commission. If you look at Arizona, it’s the same thing. In Florida, where voters insist on a constitutional amendment in 2010 on nonpartisan redistricting. Republicans actually go to the effort of setting up a shadow sham redistricting process and have some of their smartest consultants designing maps any way and feeding them into the system under phony email addresses set up under the names of former interns. It goes to show how important these lines are and all of us think of gerrymandering as politics as usual, or we think of it as something that made our eyes glaze over in eighth grade civics class, but the politicians spend this much time on it because they know it is the essence of control and if we as citizens don’t step back in and take back the basic building blocks of our democracy here, it’s going to be a dangerous problem for a long time.

Jeff Schechtman: And finally, talk about what Democrats are doing about this with an eye towards the next census in 2020.

David Daley: Sure. The Democrats really got their clocks cleaned in 2010. They were not ready for this play. It was different than any one that had been run before, they didn’t have the vision to come up with it themselves. It was really a catastrophic strategic failure and it’s locked in the public control of the House for the rest of the decade and also state legislatures around the country, which in some ways is just as important. The Democrats are trying to run a play called Advantage 2020, and they’re trying to get ready to do the same thing that the Republicans did with the red map plan in 2010 as far as trying to win in state legislative races. The problem is they’re already underfunded compared to what the Republicans are doing. They’re not going to have the same element of surprise, and they still have to win on these tilted maps. Until the Democrats can figure out how to win on these maps that have been designed to withstand a landslide, they’re going to lose and if they can’t figure this out before 2020, you’ll have another redistricting in 2021. The technology has only gotten better, and the Republicans could lock in control of the House for another decade then, and then you’re talking about the 2030 one.

Jeff Schechtman: Has there been a lesson though in something that we were talking about before in terms of the purity that is required; what’s happened to Cantor and Boehner, what’s happened with Trump and the impact that it’s had on the traditional Republican establishment?

David Daley: It certainly hasn’t changed the fact that Republicans are putting 125 million into a new red map 2020 program, and they’re going after the states they didn’t pick up last time. They’re going after Colorado and New Mexico, and they’re going after Kentucky and they’re trying to tip the districts in these states. I think that they have probably not quite learned their lesson. They still believe that they’re a different party, but when you empower the extreme base, that’s who you are.

Jeff Schechtman: David Daley, the book is Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Planto Steal America’s Democracy. David, I thank you so much for spending time with us here on Radio Whowhatwhy.

David Daley: I really appreciate it, thanks again.

Jeff Schechtman: Thank you. And thank you for listening and joining us here on Radio Whowhatwhy. I hope you join us next week for another Radio Whowhatwhy podcast. I’m Jeff Schechtman.

There can be few examples of political cynicism as naked as yesterday’s launch of Angela Eagle’s challenge for leadership of the Labour Party.

Eagle is the candidate chosen by Labour’s right wing to front its efforts to depose Jeremy Corbyn, who was elected by 60 percent of the party’s membership and supporters last September.

The campaign to remove him by 172 MPs pits the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), unelected grandees such as former leader Neil Kinnock, and above all former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his inner coterie of war criminals, against the vast majority of the party and those who vote for it.

Supposedly acting in order to make the party electable, they are intent on either a putsch to insulate it from any popular pressure and a takeover of its assets, or its destruction in order to give birth to a new right-wing formation. Even as Eagle was declaring her candidacy, the media was filled with reports of high-level discussions with senior Tories on a potential new party of the “centre” and a yet more likely possibility of a merger with the Liberal Democrats to provide Labour’s 170 plus anti-Corbyn MPs with a party machine to share with the eight Lib Dems.

Eagle is a typical representative of the forces involved in this attempt at political engineering. Her launch meeting made great play of her being a woman and a lesbian, with a gaudy pink backdrop consisting of the word’s “Angela” super-imposed on a union flag that was also cast in pink hues in an appeal to identity politics and patriotism at the same time.

She said of herself, “I’m not a Blairite. I’m not a [former labour leader Gordon] Brownite. I’m not a Corbynista. I am my own woman. A strong Labour woman.”

“I can bring our Party together again,” she concluded.

Eagle has voted in favour of the party’s right-wing, pro-business and militarist agenda on every central issue. She famously voted in favour of the Iraq war in 2003. But in addition, according to the They Work For You website, she has “consistently voted against an investigation into the Iraq war,” in September 2014 voted in favour of air strikes in Iraq, in December 2015 voted in favour of air strikes in Syria, supports the retention of the Trident nuclear weapons programme, has “generally voted for a stricter asylum system,” voted in favour of increased university tuition fees, supported the Blair government’s 2006 plan to detain terrorism suspects for up to 90 days without charge, and abstained on the vote on the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s 2013 workfare programme and on the vote for the 2015 Welfare Bill.

Her candidacy was planned in secret by the Blairites and Brownites weeks before it was announced. She had even commissioned a website, “Angela for leader”, days before she announced her resignation from Corbyn’s shadow cabinet with tears in her eyes for the cameras.

She spoke of uniting the party just one day before Labour’s National Executive Committee rules on whether Corbyn will even be allowed on the ballot. Corbyn insists that he should automatically appear on the ballot, but his opponents are marshalling a legal case that he needs the support of 20 percent of the PLP, 51 MPs—knowing that he only has the support of 40.

Eagle’s claim is that ditching Corbyn and electing her will enable Labour to win a general election. However, just six minutes before she was accepted as a leadership challenger, Jon Trickett, Labour’s election coordinator and a member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, greeted news that pro-Brexit Tory Andrea Leadsom had abandoned her own leadership challenge to Theresa May by stating, “It now looks likely that we are about to have the coronation of a new Conservative prime minister. It is crucial, given the instability caused by the Brexit vote, that the country has a democratically elected prime minister. I am now putting the whole of the party on a general election footing.”

The Blairites have no intention of challenging the Tories at such a time of national emergency. In the Daily Telegraph, one Labour MP described Corbyn’s demanding a snap election as equivalent to “running full pelt off the edge of a cliff.” Once again they hid their collusion with the Tories behind claims that Corbyn had made Labour unelectable, even portraying calls for an election as an attempt to “exploit the instability in Westminster to cling to power” by sacrificing up to 100 Labour MPs who would lose their seats!

Corbyn is still determinedly opposing any struggle to drive these forces out of the party, which he would have to do if he were to honour a single one of his pledges to oppose austerity and militarism. Speaking on his behalf, Diane Abbott MP told the BBC’s “Today” programme that the “best hope” of getting a good result at the general election was for people to unite and “get on with taking the fight to the Tories.”

She reassured Labour MPs that, “There will be no split.”

Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite trade union, again urged Labour to step back from what he described as a “squalid coup” that has “snowballed into a wrecking operation against the Labour Party itself, destroying it at least temporarily as a parliamentary force.” After which he urged, “There needs to be reconciliation with the Parliamentary Labour Party. We must re-establish mutual respect and unity and address real concerns over campaigning, policy, image and the rest. That is what I was working for over the last week—to try and hold our party together, as the trade unions have done so many times in the past when politicians have let us down.”

Some fear that the best efforts of Corbyn’s supporters and the trade unions will not be enough to save Labour as a vital instrument for policing the working class and defending the interests of British imperialism—under conditions in which Eagle herself faces a vote of no confidence in her local Wallasey Constituency Labour Party, which has swelled from 900 members before June 24 to 1,200 today.

The Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire warned that his experience at last week’s Durham Miners Gala convinced him that “The masses of decent Labour voters I met in Durham, enthused by Jezza’s [Corbyn’s] anti-austerity alternative platform, would feel cheated by a procedural fix. And that would strengthen, rather than weaken, the Cult of Corbyn. It would also leave the party ungovernable and a split certain.”

Writing in the Independent in support of Corbyn’s removal, Louis Staples wrote that it was “unfortunate that Eagle isn’t up to the job… In the aftermath of Chilcot, rallying around Eagle as a potential leader shows how deeply out of touch Labour MPs are with their membership and the public mood.”

Staples suggest that someone who is not widely seen as “Blairite scum” should stand.

Also in the Telegraph, Tony Blair’s former director of political operations, John McTernan, indicated that Eagle is viewed by at least some Blairites as little more than a stalking horse. “We should expect the NEC to confirm that Corbyn needs nominations,” he said. “Angela Eagle’s challenge will force the clarification of the rules—for which she should be praised—but if Corbyn is off the ballot she will not be standing alone for long… Expect Owen Smith to mount a serious challenge.”

Last night, Politics Home announced that Smith, the former shadow work and pensions secretary, would stand, and announce his candidacy as early as today.

A British parliamentary report released on Tuesday has concluded there is “historical evidence” the Islamic State (IS) group received funding from within Arab Gulf states.

In evidence submitted to the foreign affairs select committee, the Ministry of Defence said: “[There] is historical evidence of financial donations to Daesh [IS] from within Gulf states. Furthermore, it is understood that family donations are being made to Daesh, through the unregulated Alternative Value Transfer Systems (AVTS).”

AVTS include ways of globally transferring money that includes little information about the individuals involved in the transaction – examples include the open source online currency Bitcoin.

The MoD cited as evidence an incident in September 2014 when an IS official was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department after receiving a $2m donation “emanating from the Gulf”.

The MoD also said in its evidence that private donations to IS are “minimal” compared to its other revenue streams, which include oil and taxation.

The committee said in an assessment of IS finances that Britain should be able to “ask hard questions of close friends” when discussing how donations have reached the Syria-Iraq based militant group.

The report concluded that IS has been put under severe financial pressure after a sustained international campaign that has forced the group to turn to “gangsterism and protection rackets” for money.

The report argued that plunging oil prices and air strikes on IS in Syria and Iraq have reduced the group’s ability to operate, however, the most controversial part is undoubtedly the section on donations to IS.

While the government told the committee that it had no evidence any country had provided funding to IS as a “matter of policy,” concerns were raised in the report about how Gulf states responded to the group’s initial rise to prominence, before and around the time of its seizing of the Iraqi city Mosul in June 2014.

The MoD said Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have played an “important role” in the anti-IS coalition, but officials from the Foreign Office said “some governments in the region may have failed to prevent donations reaching ISIL (IS) from their citizens”.

Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood told the committee that after IS “first caught international attention,” the group “may have been perceived as a defender of Sunni Muslims in the wars in Iraq and Syria”.

Former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki – who was in office between 2006 and 2014 – was repeatedly accused of favouring his Shia Muslim sect and oppressing Iraqi Sunni Muslims.

In Syria, where a brutal civil war has raged since early 2011, President Bashar al-Assad has also been repeatedly accused of specifically targeting Sunni Muslims who desire his overthrow.

Ellwood said that the period of IS being viewed as a defender of Sunnis was “before 2014”. Dan Chugg, head of the Foreign Office’s ISIL Task Force, told the committee that “around two years ago” IS “may have been able to attract donations from sympathetic Sunnis, with the wealthiest states in the region – the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf – being the subject of particular concern”.

“[It] was certainly a problem in the early days of the Daesh organisation that there was funding coming in from Gulf countries and other places,” Chugg said, using an alternative acronym for IS.

The committee asked Ellwood for his opinion on reports speculating that donations may have been sent to IS by individuals close to royal families in the Gulf.

Ellwood said: “It is very opaque, it has to be said. When somebody who is close to the top of a royal family is a very rich individual donor and chooses to do so, that is very likely to happen.”

On the same issue of the royal families being somehow involved – either directly or indirectly – in the funding of IS, Chugg told the committee: “It is difficult with some of these countries to know exactly what is government funding and what is not when you are dealing with royal families, wealthy princes and those kind of things.

“Our strategy was not to try to ascertain whose problem and whose fault it was, but to stop the funding going to Daesh. That was what was important. And that is what our efforts have been focused on.”

Turkey, Gulf deny funding IS

The Gulf states and Turkey have repeatedly denied allegations of funding IS and defended their actions by pointing to their role in the international coalition which is attempting to defeat the group.

However, Chugg said that while he is “not aware of hard evidence that those countries were funding Daesh” two years ago, there “was a lot of speculation that those countries were not playing a terribly helpful role” in taking on the group.

The report did say that regional states have since established legal and institutional infrastructure to stop the ability of IS to raise funds. But it added that some regional states have been “slow” to implement these measures.

The report cited the fact Saudi Arabia only made it illegal for its citizens to fund IS in March 2015, while Britain had designated the group terrorist by June 2014.

The report concluded its section on donations to IS by calling for Britain to work with its regional allies “to ensure that they have the capacity and resolve to rigorously enforce local laws to prevent the funding of ISIL, so that the group cannot benefit from donations in the future”.

FBI Director James Comey got Hillary off the hook but wants to put you on it.  He is pushing hard for warrantless access to all of your Internet activity, tells Congress that the United States is not safe unless the FBI knows when every American goes online, to whom they are sending emails and from whom they are receiving emails, and knows every website visited by every American.

In other words, Comey wants to render null and void the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution and completely destroy your privacy rights.

The reason Washington wants to know everything about everyone is so that Washington can embarrass, blackmail, and frame on felony charges patriots who stand up in defense of the US Constitution and the rule of law, and dissidents who criticize Washington’s illegal wars, reckless foreign policies, and oppression of American citizens.

Washington’s demand for power has nothing to do with our security. It has to do with destroying the security that the US Constitution gives us.

The security that Comey wants to protect is not our security or the national security of the United States.  Comey’s intent is to make Washington secure despite its violations of statutory law and the US Constitution.  The way Comey intends to do this is by intimidating, harassing, and arresting Washington’s critics.

Comey wants the unconstitutional power to demand from the providers of telephone and Internet services all records and information about you. These demands are not to be subject to oversight by courts, and the communication companies that serve you are prohibited from telling you that all of your information has been given to the FBI.

US Senators rushed to stick their swords into the Fourth Amendment. John Cornyn slapped an FBI-written amendment on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2015. This caused the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International to withdraw their support for the act, which caused the act to be withdrawn.

Senator John McCain rushed to the aid of the FBI.  This Constitution-hating senator proposed an amendment to a criminal justice appropriations bill that would use a provision in the unconstitutional PATRIOT Act to grant the unlimited unaccountable power to the FBI to totally destroy your privacy.

McCain’s amendment failed, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R,KY) changed his vote so that he could negate the Senate’s vote with a vote to reconsider.

The FBI’s senators will continue with amendments to legislation, related or not, until they deliver to the FBI the power it wants.

Unfortunately, most Americans today, unlike their forebears, are too ignorant and uneducated to know the value of the privacy rights that our Founding Fathers put in the US Constitution. The imbeciles say nonsense such as: “I haven’t done anything wrong. I have nothing to fear.”  God help the imbeciles.

If the American people were sufficiently sophisticated, they perhaps would wonder why such a large chunk of the US Senate had rather represent the FBI than the American people, their constituents who elected them to represent the people in the state, not a police power in Washington.

Why are so many US senators more responsive to the FBI’s desire for Gestapo police power than they are to the civil liberties embodied in the US Constitution?

As the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the Defending Dissent Foundation show, the Orlando shootings, the Dallas shootings and whatever shootings, real or staged, next occur have nothing to do with the FBI’s demand to completely destroy all privacy rights of the American people.

http://bordc.org/news/senate-rejects-amendment-expanding-fbi-surveillance-powers-by-narrow-margin/

What’s that I hear?  You say you knew nothing about this?  Little wonder. Your media consist of people well paid to deceive you and to deliver you into a Police State. To strip you of all constitutional protection and deliver you unprotected to a police state is the function of the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox “News,” CNN, the rest of the presstitute print and TV media and many Internet sites.

Adolf Hitler is alive and well in the United States, and he is fast rising to power.

The “liberal” party establishments in the U.S. and UK, within the Democrats and Labour, are united in their distaste for party member opinions. They alone want to decide which positions the party has to take. They want to make sure that there is no alternative to their rule. It is elitism at its worst which no longer bothers with the pretense of democracy. Does it count as “shared values”?

Bernie Sanders folded. This without gaining any significant concession from Hillary Clinton on programmatic or personal grounds. (At least as far as we know.) He endorsed Clinton as presidential candidate even as she gave no ground for his voters’ opinions. This disenfranchises the people who supported him.

Trump’s attack lines on this are spot on:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 7:01pm · 12 Jul 2016
Bernie Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs.

and

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 7:03pm · 12 Jul 2016
Bernie sanders has abandoned his supporters by endorsing pro-war pro-TPP pro-Wall Street Crooked Hillary Clinton.

Those are valid statements. I find it hard to to argue with these.

Abstaining from any endorsement or running as independent or Green party candidate would have been more honorable ways for Sanders to admit defeat. It would have pressed the Democratic party to stop its movement to the right of the Republican party.

I expect the “Not Hillary” protest vote to be very strong in the November election. There is still more significant dirt to be dug up about her and her family foundation. Trumps current lows in the polls will recover when the media return to the “close race” mantra that makes them money. He still has a decent chance to win.

Then again – its the first time now that I have to concede that Clinton may well win. But that would be with a record low turnout, and record low legitimacy. There would be no wins for the Democrats in the Senate and House. She would be another Republican President who would represent only a record small slice of the electorate.

The election shambles on the other side of the Atlantic are no less depressing. “Corbyn can not win votes,” is the claim of the anti-Corbyn Blairites. That is why they have to resort to dirty tricks to disenfranchise Corbyn voters. His supporters are not allowed to count in a Labour leadership election because they support him. How can such “logic” and this step be legal?

Jeremy Corbyn was jubilant after the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) decided his name should automatically appear on the ballot paper in the leadership contest triggered by Angela Eagle.
…
However, in a separate decision taken after Corbyn had left the room, the NEC ruled that only those who have been members for more than six months will be allowed to vote – while new supporters will be given two days to sign up as registered supporters to vote in the race, but only if they are willing to pay £25 – far higher than the £3 fee many Corbyn backers paid in the contest last year.

If that ruling stands nearly 100,000 new party members who have joined in support of Corbyn will either have to immediately pay a poll-tax of £25, or will not be allowed to vote. Here is what the Labour website promised them when they joined:

Corbyn may need some lawyers to set the NEC straight.

One can only hope that he wins the new Labour leadership election. The Labour establishment stinks like an Augias stable and the party needs a thorough house cleaning.

President Obama and NATO leaders signed on to the false narrative of a minding-its-own-business West getting sucker-punched by a bunch of Russian meanies, a storyline that suggests insanity or lies, reports Robert Parry.

It’s unnerving to realize that the NATO alliance – bristling with an unprecedented array of weapons including a vast nuclear arsenal – has lost its collective mind. Perhaps it’s more reassuring to think that NATO simply feels compelled to publicly embrace its deceptive “strategic communications” so gullible Western citizens will be kept believing its lies are truth.

But here were the leaders of major Western “democracies” lining up to endorse a Warsaw Summit Communiqué condemning “Russia’s aggressive actions” while knowing that these claims were unsupported by their own intelligence agencies.

President Barack Obama walks from Marine One on arrival on the White House’s South Lawn, July 5, 2016, a few days before leaving to attend the NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland. Official White House photo by Lawrence Jackson

The leaders – at least the key ones – know that there is no credible intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin provoked the Ukraine crisis in 2014 or that he has any plans to invade the Baltic states, despite the fact that nearly every “important person” in Official Washington and other Western capitals declares the opposite of this to be reality.

But there have been a few moments when the truth has surfaced. For instance, in the days leading up to the just-completed NATO summit in Warsaw, General Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, divulged that the deployment of NATO military battalions in the Baltic states was a political, rather than military, act.

“It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing,” Pavel told a news conference.

What Pavel blurted out was what I have been told by intelligence sources over the past two-plus years – that the endless drumbeat of Western media reports about “Russian aggression” results from a clever demonization campaign against Putin and a classic Washington “group think” rather than from a careful intelligence analysis.

Ironically, however, just days after the release of the British Chilcot report documenting how a similar propaganda campaign led the world into the disastrous Iraq War – with its deadly consequences still reverberating through a destabilized Mideast and into an unnerved Europe – NATO reenacts the basic failure of that earlier catastrophe, except now upping the ante into a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.

The Warsaw communiqué – signed by leaders including President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron – ignores the reality of what happened in Ukraine in late 2013 and early 2014 and thus generates an inside-out narrative.

Instead of reprising the West’s vacuous propaganda themes, Obama and the other leaders could have done something novel and told the truth, but that apparently is outside their operating capabilities. So they all signed on to the dangerous lie.

What Really Happened

The real narrative based on actual facts would have acknowledged that it was the West, not Russia, that instigated the Ukraine crisis by engineering the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the imposition of a new Western-oriented regime hostile to Moscow and Ukraine’s ethnic Russians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014, celebrating the 69th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian government photo)

In late 2013, it was the European Union that was pushing an economic association agreement with Ukraine, which included the International Monetary Fund’s demands for imposing harsh austerity on Ukraine’s already suffering population. Political and propaganda support for the E.U. plan was financed, in part, by the U.S. government through such agencies as the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

When Yanukovych recoiled at the IMF’s terms and opted for a more generous $15 billion aid package from Putin, the U.S. government threw its public support behind mass demonstrations aimed at overthrowing Yanukovych and replacing him with a new regime that would sign the E.U. agreement and accept the IMF’s demands.

As the crisis deepened in early 2014, Putin was focused on the Sochi Winter Olympics, particularly the threat of terrorist attacks on the games. No evidence has been presented that Putin was secretly trying to foment the Ukraine crisis. Indeed, all the evidence is that Putin was trying to protect the status quo, support the elected president and avert a worse crisis.

It would be insane to suggest that Putin somehow orchestrated the E.U.’s destabilizing attempt to pull Ukraine into the association agreement, that he then stage-managed the anti-Yanukovych violence of the Maidan protests, that he collaborated with neo-Nazi and other ultra-nationalist militias to kill Ukrainian police and chase Yanukovych from Kiev, and that he then arranged for Yanukovych to be replaced by a wildly anti-Russian regime – all while pretending to do the opposite of all these things.

In the real world, the narrative was quite different: Moscow supported Yanukovych’s efforts to reach a political compromise, including a European-brokered agreement for early elections and reduced presidential powers. Yet, despite those concessions, neo-Nazi militias surged to the front of the U.S.-backed protests on Feb. 22, 2014, forcing Yanukovych and many of his officials to run for their lives. The U.S. State Department quickly recognized the coup regime as “legitimate” as did other NATO allies.

On a personal note, I am sometimes criticized by conspiracy theorists for not accepting their fact-free claims about nefarious schemes supposedly dreamed up by U.S. officials, but frankly as baseless as some of those wacky stories can be, they sound sensible when compared with the West’s loony conspiracy theory about Putin choreographing the Ukraine coup.

Yet, that baseless conspiracy theory roped in supposedly serious thinkers, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who conjured up the notion that Putin stirred up this trouble so he could pull off a land grab and/or distract Russians from their economic problems.

“Delusions of easy winnings still happen,” Krugman wrote in a 2014 column. “It’s only a guess, but it seems likely that Vladimir Putin thought that he could overthrow Ukraine’s government, or at least seize a large chunk of its territory, on the cheap, a bit of deniable aid to the rebels, and it would fall into his lap. …

Recently Justin Fox of the Harvard Business Review suggested that the roots of the Ukraine crisis may lie in the faltering performance of the Russian economy. As he noted, Mr. Putin’s hold on power partly reflects a long run of rapid economic growth. But Russian growth has been sputtering, and you could argue that the Putin regime needed a distraction.

Midwifing This Thing

Or, rather than “a guess,” Krugman could have looked at the actual facts, such as the work of neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland conspiring to organize a coup that would put her hand-picked Ukrainians in charge of Russia’s neighbor. Several weeks before the putsch, Nuland was caught plotting the “regime change” in an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

Regarding who should replace Yanukovych, Nuland’s choice was Arseniy “Yats is the guy” Yatsenyuk. The phone call went on to muse about how they could “glue this thing” and “midwife this thing.” After the coup was glued or midwifed on Feb. 22, 2014, Yatsenyuk emerged as the new prime minister and then shepherded through the IMF austerity plan.

Since the coup regime in Kiev also took provocative steps against the ethnic Russians, such as the parliament voting to ban Russian as an official language and allowing neo-Nazi extremists to slaughter anti-coup protesters, ethnic Russian resistance arose in the east and south. That shouldn’t have been much of a surprise since eastern Ukraine had been Yanukovych’s political base and stood to lose the most from Ukraine’s economic orientation toward Europe and reduced economic ties to Russia.

Yet, instead of recognizing the understandable concerns of the eastern Ukrainians, the Western media portrayed the ethnic Russians as simply Putin’s pawns with no minds of their own. The U.S.-backed regime in Kiev launched what was called an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” against them, spearheaded by the neo-Nazi militias.

In Crimea – another area heavily populated with ethnic Russians and with a long history of association with Russia – voters opted by 96 percent in a referendum to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, a process supported by Russian troops stationed in Crimea under a prior agreement with Ukraine’s government.

There was no Russian “invasion,” as The New York Times and other mainstream U.S. news outlets claimed. The Russian troops were already in Crimea assigned to Russia’s historic Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol. Putin agreed to Crimea’s annexation partly out of fear that the naval base would otherwise fall into NATO’s hands and pose a strategic threat to Russia.

But the key point regarding the crazy Western conspiracy theory about Putin provoking the crisis so he could seize territory or distract Russians from economic troubles is that Putin only annexed Crimea because of the ouster of Yanukovych and the installation of a Russia-hating regime in Kiev. If Yanukovych had not been overthrown, there is no reason to think that Putin would have done anything regarding Crimea or Ukraine.

Yet, once the false narrative got rolling, there was no stopping it. The New York Times, The Washington Post and other leading Western publications played the same role that they did during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, accepting the U.S. government’s propaganda as fact and marginalizing the few independent journalists who dared go against the grain.

Though Obama, Merkel and other key leaders know how deceptive the Western propaganda has been, they have become captives to their governments’ own lies. For them to deviate substantially from the Official Story would open them to harsh criticism from the powerful neoconservatives and their allied media outlets.

Even a slight contradiction to NATO’s “strategic communications” brought down harsh criticism on German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier after he said: “What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering. … Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.”

Excoriating Russia

So, at the Warsaw conference, the false NATO narrative had to be reaffirmed — and it was. The communiqué declared, “Russia’s aggressive actions, including provocative military activities in the periphery of NATO territory and its demonstrated willingness to attain political goals by the threat and use of force, are a source of regional instability, fundamentally challenge the Alliance, have damaged Euro-Atlantic security, and threaten our long-standing goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace. …

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg opens the NATO Warsaw Summit in Poland, July 8, 2016. NATO heads of state agreed to send reinforced, multinational battalions to the eastern part of the alliance’s border with Russia. “These battalions will be robust and multinational,” Stoltenberg said. (NATO photo)

Russia’s destabilising actions and policies include: the ongoing illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, which we do not and will not recognise and which we call on Russia to reverse; the violation of sovereign borders by force; the deliberate destabilisation of eastern Ukraine; large-scale snap exercises contrary to the spirit of the Vienna Document, and provocative military activities near NATO borders, including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean; its irresponsible and aggressive nuclear rhetoric, military concept and underlying posture; and its repeated violations of NATO Allied airspace.

In addition, Russia’s military intervention, significant military presence and support for the regime in Syria, and its use of its military presence in the Black Sea to project power into the Eastern Mediterranean have posed further risks and challenges for the security of Allies and others.

In the up-is-down world that NATO and other Western agencies now inhabit, Russia’s military maneuvers within it own borders in reaction to NATO maneuvers along Russia’s borders are “provocative.” So, too, is Russia’s support for the internationally recognized government of Syria, which is under attack from Islamic terrorists and other armed rebels supported by the West’s Mideast allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and NATO member Turkey.

In other words, it is entirely all right for NATO and its members to invade countries at will, including Iraq, Libya and Syria, and subvert others as happened in Ukraine and is still happening in Syria. But it is impermissible for any government outside of NATO to respond or even defend itself. To do so amounts to a provocation against NATO – and such hypocrisy is accepted by the West’s mainstream news media as the way that the world was meant to be.

And those of us who dare point out the lies and double standards must be “Moscow stooges,” just as those of us who dared question the Iraq WMD tales were dismissed as “Saddam apologists” in 2003.

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

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

The decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague on the China- Philippines territorial dispute announced on the 12^th of July 2016 may well emerge as a turning-point in the long-standing wrangles over islands in the South China Sea.

China expectedly has rejected the decision. It has reaffirmed its claim of territorial sovereignty and maritime rights over almost all of the South China Sea (SCS) particularly the contested Spratly Islands. It argues that its claim is rooted in history. Nonetheless, China has once again reiterated that it is committed to a peaceful resolution of all territorial squabbles pertaining to the SCS that involve, apart from the Philippines, three other ASEAN states, namely, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, and Taiwan.

The new Philippines government has lauded the Arbitration Court’s decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the SCS. Foreign Secretary, Perfecto Yasay, has expressed his government’s determination to “pursue the peaceful resolution and management of disputes with a view to promoting and enhancing peace and stability in the region.” He asserted that the decision upheld international law, particularly the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.(UNCLOS)

This is what is commendable about the Court’s decision. By spelling out clearly that China has violated the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by interfering with its petroleum exploration in the zone, by constructing artificial islands and by allowing its fishermen to fish in the zone, the Court has emphasized the significance of upholding the UNCLOS. In an increasingly globalised world where trade among nations, the quest for natural resources and the pursuit of economic activities that transcend boundaries will lead inevitably to inter-state disputes and tensions, a law such as the UNCLOS is indispensable. This is why all governments especially in ASEAN should express publicly their support for a decision that has underlined the significance of international law.

The Court’s decision also repudiates China’s 1947 “nine-dash line” argument that since China has historical records to show that its navigators had explored the islands in the SCS for centuries it could exercise proprietary rights over them. As I had pointed out in an article on the 29^th May 2012, “for hundreds of years before the 13^th century the ancestors of present-day Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians, known for their superb maritime skills were in fact the masters of the seas in the entire region, including what is now known as the South China Sea.”  The Court rightly reminds the Chinese that “there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or their resources.”

In light of the Court’s decision it would be in China’s own interest to put aside the “nine-dash line “argument and begin negotiations with all the other claimants to the SCS. The new Philippines government under President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed its willingness to talk to the Chinese authorities. The governments of Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei are also positively inclined towards negotiations. Negotiations could be bilateral or multilateral. There is perhaps a basis for multilateral discussions since some of the territorial claims are overlapping. Whatever it is, China’s sweeping claim to the whole of the SCS enshrined in its “nine-dash line” theory was a huge barrier to any quest for a just and equitable solution. Now that it has been unambiguously rejected in international law, the Chinese should move ahead and try to re-energise relations with its neighbours on a stronger foundation.

What that stronger foundation could be has already been hinted by China itself and some of its neighbours in recent remarks. China and ASEAN as a whole could collectively explore the purportedly huge wealth that the South China Sea offers. It is established that the SCS has abundant fisheries and could be one of the major sources of protein for the world in the decades to come. It is believed that it also contains vast quantities of oil, gas and other minerals. Agreements could be forged among ASEAN states and China that would enable them to work together on harnessing this wealth for the good of the millions of people who live in this region.

At the same time, if China and ASEAN are prepared to work together they could also protect the freedom of navigation in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world. The South China Sea is vital to world trade and will become even more important in the future as global economic power shifts from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

To put it in a nutshell, let the Arbitration Court’s decision in The Hague yesterday set the stage for a new era in China-ASEAN cooperation for a better tomorrow.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Militarization And Police Violence in America

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, July 12 2016

Hardly a day goes by without news of a police killing.  And each time we hear from scholars and observers that the police is too militarized.   No doubt!

US Racist Repression Exposed, Nationwide Protests against Police Brutality and Killings

By Abayomi Azikiwe, July 12 2016

Police killings of African Americans fuel urban unrest Five law-enforcement officers were killed and 7 others were wounded when they were ambushed in downtown Dallas on July 6.

“Genocide by Prescription”: Drug Induced Death in America

By Prof. James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya, July 12 2016

The white working class in the US has been decimated through an epidemic of ‘premature deaths’ – a bland term to cover-up the drop in life expectancy in this historically important demographic.

Britain’s Iron Lady 2.0?

By Stephen Lendman, July 12 2016

Described by a former associate as “hard as nails,” perhaps Theresa May is the second “iron lady of the Western World” designate, what former prime minister Margaret Thatcher once called herself.

“Washington, the War Criminal Capital of the World is Driving the World to Nuclear War”: Paul Craig Roberts

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, July 12 2016

A Reuters news report by Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold shows how devoid the West is of honest, intelligent and responsible journalists and government officials. First we will examine the dishonesty or incompetence of the reporters and then that of Western government officials.

Police killings of African Americans fuel urban unrest

Five law-enforcement officers were killed and 7 others were wounded when they were ambushed in downtown Dallas on July 6. The shooting took place during the course of nationwide demonstrations against a rash of police killings in various regions of the United States.

Marches have been held in Baton Rouge, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, New York City, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and across the U.S. In Dallas thousands have taken to the streets in solidarity with the struggle to end police brutality against African Americans.

During the evening of July 6 shots rang out in the downtown area of Dallas resulting in the multiple deaths of both transit police and patrolmen. The corporate media attempted to take this incident and use it against the burgeoning movement against racist violence. These demonstrations and other protest actions are representative of the rising intolerance and commitment to eradicate the use of racial profiling leading to lethal force against African Americans.

The following morning in Dallas there were hundreds of people who marched through the streets maintaining their position against police brutality chanting slogans in support of the victims of these forms of state violence. It was announced that as of early July 11 some 312 people had been arrested in demonstrations around the U.S. (CNN)

Over the weekend of July 8-11 thousands of people demonstrated around Baton Rouge demanding justice in the death of Alton Sterling who posthumously has been charged by corporate media with engaging in some form of “illegal commerce” as an alleged street vendor of CDs. Even if this was to be substantiated, and it has not, does this warrant extrajudicial execution by the police?

Protests continue as well in Minnesota where a local newspaper emphasized that “What began as a peaceful protest in St. Paul Saturday over the police killing of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights turned into a riot, officials said Sunday (July 10). Demonstrators shut down Interstate 94 for about six hours. People threw rocks, fireworks and other objects at officers, leaving 21 injured, according to the St. Paul police chief. Between the highway protest and a march that followed on St. Paul’s Grand Avenue early Sunday, police arrested 102 people. The protests were spurred by the killing on Wednesday of Castile, of St. Paul, but also encompassed other officer-involved shootings of African-American men. In the Castile case his girlfriend livestreamed on Facebook the aftermath of his shooting by a St. Anthony police officer.”

The Jackson Sun in southwest Tennessee said of demonstrations and civil disobedience activities in Memphis that “A crowd of more than 1,000 shut down the Interstate 40 Bridge for several hours Sunday (July 10) night as part of a protest over recent killings of black men by police officers. Traffic finally began moving again about 10:30 p.m. Traffic was backed up for miles in both Tennessee and Arkansas as drivers sat idling on the bridge, wondering what was going on. This has become a common tactic with some Black Lives Matter movements around the country. In response to two fatal police shootings of black men this past week in Louisiana and Minnesota, groups in both those states have attempted similar shutdowns.” (July 11)

Police in response to some of the demonstrations carried out repressive tactics to clear activists from the streets and expressways. The British Daily Mail noted “Black Lives Matter protesters have been sprayed with tear gas in Phoenix after a march against police brutality spiraled out of control. Police also fired bean bag rounds and pepper spray at the protesters, who were seen running away and shielding their eyes. One image showed a white man holding a Donald Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ placard interrupting the protest on Friday night. Less than three hours after the demonstration began at 8pm, police declared the protest an ‘unlawful assembly’ and ordered people to leave after objects were thrown at officers, the Arizona Republic reported. In Rochester, New York, the SWAT team arrived and police arrested 74 protesters who were blocking the streets. One organizer, Ashley Gantt, said they sat down because they did not want any movement to be misinterpreted as violence after the shootings in Dallas. Other protests were calmer, with an estimated 5,000 people marching peacefully along a highway in Atlanta as they demanded justice for black men killed by police officers in recent days. There was a heavy police presence at the Atlanta rally as protesters halted traffic, with officers on high alert following Thursday’s massacre in Dallas.” (July 9)

These manifestations forced U.S. President Barack Obama to make a statement while attending a NATO conference in Warsaw, Poland where discussions were held aimed at expanding the European and North American military presence in Eastern Europe. In addition, the Pentagon occupation of the Central Asian state of Afghanistan will continue to be a focus of Washington’s foreign policy. The successive administrations inside the U.S. have all supported this militarism despite its repeated failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Palestine and other geo-political regions.

The resources both human and material which have been wasted during the course of the last quarter-century of invasions, bombings, occupations and blatant interference in the internal affairs of other nation-states could very well have been utilized to maintain quality housing, the stabilization of communities, educational reform, universal healthcare for all residents of the U.S. along with a concerted campaign to halt and dismantle the repressive law-enforcement apparatus which systematically targets African Americans, Latinos and other oppressed peoples as well as the elimination of the racist prison industrial complex that houses millions of inmates along with those who are under judicial and law-enforcement supervision.

Over the last three years anti-racist demonstrations have accelerated. The vigilante killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida in 2012 gained attention exposing the fact that the lives of African Americans mean very little in a country that professes to be a paragon of human rights globally.

Killings That Drew National Attention

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old African American, was shot numerous times even after he was tackled to the street by two white Baton Rouge Police Department officers. Police claim they were there in response to a report that a man dressed in red and selling CDs used a gun to threaten someone outside a convenience store.

This police shooting was captured on video by multiple people at the scene. These videos illustrate the police attack and shooting done at very close range. The killing immediately sparked demonstrations in Baton Rouge. Consciousness around this killing prompted other demonstrations in the region and nationally.

After a second shooting in Minnesota the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would conduct a federal investigation. Nonetheless, several probes conducted by the DOJ in recent years have not resulted in civil rights or criminal charges being filed against the police and racist gunmen.

Later on July 7, 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot to death sitting in his automobile by an as yet unidentified police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. His companion Diamond Reynolds live streamed the entire incident over Facebook. This was a major contribution to the struggle against police brutality. Reynolds and her daughter remained calm despite the traumatic and outrageous attack.

Even though it was reported that the video was soon taken down from Facebook it had already been downloaded and then shared on scores of other sites. In a matter of minutes and hours, Reynolds figuratively became the Ida B. Wells-Barnett of her day. Wells-Barnett, a school teacher and journalist, in the 1880s and 1890s, through her newspaper publications exposed the hypocrisy of the white racist rationales for the mass lynching of African American men.

In the 21st century these assumptions about the African American people remain intact. Police agencies obviously train their personnel to view the oppressed African nation in the U.S. as a threat to the supremacy of American capitalism and imperialism. These killings are by no means isolated incidents but occur on a frequent basis.

Varying reports related to police use of lethal force in 2015, indicates that anywhere between 975 and 1100 or more people died at the hands of law-enforcement in the U.S. Many others were injured and wounded as well as cited and taken into custody without probable cause.

Earlier in the month of June, the New York Times reported that “The blue lights flashed in the rearview mirror of the Ford Focus. The man behind the wheel, a 37-year-old African-American, pulled over, opened the door and sprinted into the Mississippi night. Soon, a white police officer was giving chase on foot, accompanied by his police dog. The officer would eventually find and fatally shoot the man, Antwun Shumpert, here on the evening of June 18, plunging this small city — famous globally as the birthplace of Elvis Presley, but known regionally as a beacon of relatively progressive racial attitudes — into what has become a tragically common American morass of anger, racial division and hard questions about the treatment of black men at the hands of the police. “(July 4)

The police killing of Antwun Shumpert initially did not attract as much national attention as the violent acts committed against Sterling and Castile in Louisiana and Minnesota respectively. Nonetheless, in light of the protests sweeping hundreds of cities, more people have become aware of this development.

African American advocates for Shumpert, particularly his family and attorney, linked the police killing to the history of racist violence in Mississippi. This southern state was considered one of the most notorious in regard to the highly exploitative system of slavery and the extra-judicial executions of Black men during the 19th and 20th centuries.

This same New York Times article says that the attorney for the Shumpert family, Carolos Moore, “last week displayed photos of Mr. Shumpert’s corpse in a news conference, including one that appeared to show a yawning tear where his scrotum met his inner thigh. Mr. Moore invoked the lynching of Emmett Till and the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan, and criticized the city for not taking down the Mississippi state flag, which incorporates the Confederate battle flag.”

“They have declared open season on us, and they are killing us with impunity,” Moore declared. Moore is African American and also asked “the question is: Are you going to sit there and allow them to do it?”

This is War Being Waged on the African American People by the Capitalist-racist State

Of course this statement by Atty. Moore echoes the mass sentiment of African Americans and others who are militantly opposing police brutality. The rapid wave of significant protests merely reflects the “tip of the iceberg” in regard to the groundswell of frustration and anger so prevalent among broad sections of people.

There are trends within the political sentiment and demonstrations which suggest a renewal of the struggle for national liberation and self-determination. The re-emerge of hundreds of people waving the flag of the African American liberation movement (the red, black and green), suggests a rise in national consciousness which has revolutionary potential.

No genuine transformation of U.S. society can effectively take hold without the acquisition of full equality and self-determination for the oppressed nations. Attempts to obscure this question by the ruling class through the presidency of Obama have not been successful.

The lack of enthusiasm among African Americans during the Democratic primary and caucus process is a reflection of a mounting disenchantment among many with the two-party capitalist political system. Both the Democrats and the Republicans perpetuate the exploitative systems of national oppression and economic exploitation.

In order for a broader and deeper movement against racist violence to solidify in the U.S. independent political organizations must emerge which challenge the ruling class right to rule over the working class and the oppressed throughout the country. Political change must not be merely cosmetic but real and the material force of this revolutionary movement must manifest a level of force and ideological orientation that has the capacity attract millions committed fundamental change.

The ISIS terrorist group has downed a military helicopter in the province of Homs, killing 2 Russian pilots onboard. The initial reports that Mi-25 crashed east of Palmyra late on July 8 were denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).

However, on July 9, the Russian MoD reported that Russian military pilot-instructors Evgeny Dolgin and Ryafagat Khabibulin were conducting a calibration flight on a Syrian Mi-25 when they received a request from the Syrian command group to help defeat the advancing terrorists and fire for effect. The MoD said that due to the skillful actions of the crew the terrorist attack had been thwarted. However, their helicopter was shot down by terrorists as it was turning to head back to the base. Russia’s Interfax news agency reported, citing a source in the MoD, that the helicopter had been downed with the aid of an American TOW antitank missile system. The both pilots will posthumously receive state awards.

The joint militant forces, led by Al Nusra, have been conducting mass shelling of the Aleppo city neighborhoods since late June 8. According to reports, only in al-Furqan and al-Sukan up to 100 civilians were killed and 300 others injured. In turn, pro-militant source blame the Syrian government and the Russian air force for civilians casualties in militant-controlled areas of the city. No numbers have been provided yet.

Separately, on July 11, the joint militant forces launched a fresh offensive, targeting the Police Headquarters and Souq Al-Hal area in Old Aleppo. Militants detonated a tunnel bomb near Aqabeh. Clashes are ongoing.

Controversial reports are appearing about the situation at the strategic Castello Road, heading to the militant-held areas of Aleppo city. On July 7, the Syrian Army’s Tiger Forces set a fire control of the road after taking control of the Mallah Farms and during next few days pro-government forces seized Tell Jabenia and Al Jurf Al Sagheer, deploying in only 400 meters from the road. Meanwhile, the Kurdish YPG launched an offensive on Youth Housing Complex, assisting the Syrian army. In turn, the united militant forces launched a series of counter-attacks in the area, repelling the Kurdish advance and trying to push the Syrian army back from the areas near the Castello Road. Pro-militant sources claim that Tell Jabenia has been re-sized and clashes are ongoing in the Mallah Farms. However, the recent video evidences show that the army still in control of the Mallah Farms and the Castello Road is hit by the government artillery.

The situation for militant groups is critical. If they are unable to draw the Syrian army attention to other frontlines and re-open the supply line to Aleppo, the Syrian government will continue steady gains in Aleppo, purging a major part of the militant chances to play any crucial role in the post war Syria.

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Below is the June 2016 interview in English published by Oriental Review of Hybrid Warfare expert Andrew Korybko with the Macedonian media “Vecer”  (Evening). Korybko addresses the US R-TOR (Regime Tweaking – Regime Change – Regime Reboot) strategy  in the Balkans, and efforts by Russia and China to stabilize Eurasia.

You’re in Skopje at the moment, where the so-called “Colorful Revolution” has been ongoing for two months already. What are the real reasons and the goals behind this in the context of the geopolitical constellations in the region?

The “Colorful Revolution” that’s presently ongoing in the Republic of Macedonia is nothing more than a Color Revolution masquerading as a “legitimate” civil society movement. It’s really a foreign-supported regime change attempt that employs state-of-art political technologies inspired by the teachings of Gene Sharp, the godfather of this stratagem. Some participants and international observers genuinely believe that what’s happening in Skopje is an organic initiative, but others are aware of its artificial nature and pursuit of ulterior motives. It doesn’t take much effort for any neutral observer to find out which forces are pulling the protesters’ strings, since much information has already been publicly released by the patriotic elements of the Macedonian media about thebinvolvement of the Soros OSI Foundation and the close coordination between the protesters and the US Embassy. Soros and his multitude of affiliated organizations provided the “seed funding” for organizing the wide assortment of “NGOs” that are leading the anti-government movement, and the billionaire philanthropist controls the finances that allow SDSM to pay protesters and bus them into Skopje from all across the country. These protesters, of course, are either “useful idiots” or willing conspirators like was already mentioned. They participate in these events for a few reasons, all of which could potentially overlap depending on the particular individual involved:

* the “Liberal-Democratic” ideology that Zaev and his handlers have been trying to brainwash people with through their control of various media apparatuses has succeeded in misleading a minority of the masses, a few of whom are attracted to the “romantic” idea of taking part in a “revolution” and egotistically relish the potential mainstream and social media attention that they could receive;

* some people have an immediate financial incentive to get paid a day’s wages for only doing a few hours of active or passive work, such as “protesting” or attending “workshops”, “training seminars”, etc., respectively, and see their paid participation in the Color Revolution as an easy job that could go on indefinitely;

* and others are simply career opportunists that want to capitalize on what they believe will be a successful regime change operation and use this chance to ingratiate themselves with the forthcoming powers-to-be, angling to ascend to the halls of power on the backs of the misguided fools and paid “protesters” that they hope will help them get there.

It’s important to point out at this moment that the US is pursuing three interlinked strategic objectives through its support of the Color Revolution. From the relatively mildest to the most extreme, these are:

*Regime Tweaking, or the enactment of governmental concessions without immediately changing the head of state and/or the ruling party;

* Regime Change, or the overthrow of the democratically elected and legitimate authorities through either “constitutional” (Brazil) or unconstitutional (Ukraine) means;

* and a Regime Reboot, or changing the constitution (such as through “Identity Federalism”, functioning in many current cases as an internal partition) in order to completely rewrite the ‘rules of the game’.

A Budapest-Belgrade-Skopje-Athens line would complement the EU’s TEN-T plan.

Beside Macedonia, we can see protests in Serbia, Montenegro, R.Srpska, Croatia… There are turmoils in the Balkan states precisely in the period when Moscow and Bejing promoted the two major economic projects the Turkish stream and the Chinese Railway from Budapest to Athens. What is the connection between the destabilizations and this projects?

Of course, the US’ ultimate fallback plan is to devastate the Balkans with another regional war if it can’t seize control of the geostrategic territory through which Russia’s Balkan Stream and China’s Balkan Silk Road are expected to pass, but if it could be led to believe that it could further its objective through the relatively inexpensive investment in long-term Regime Tweaking and “constitutional” Regime Change, then it will usually opt for this scenario. Repeating the earlier order from the relatively mildest to the most extreme goals, and understanding that in this particular context of prospectively unfolding violence that one step would simply phase into the other according to a predetermined timeframe, it can be expected that the US will try to promote:

* Regime Tweaking by ordering SDSM back into the government on Washington’s terms so that it can dismantle VMRO’s domestic and international achievements and gain control of key state institutions (judicial, intelligence, military, etc.), which in turn would help SDSM steal a future election as a means of “legitimizing” its ‘soft coup’;

* Regime Change by getting rid of VMRO completely and consequently instigating a civil conflict between the patriots and the SDSM coup supporters, predictably expanding into a multisided war that evokes strong shades of an externally manufactured “clash of civilizations’ by involving the terrorist supporters of “Greater Albania”;

* and a total Regime Reboot by forcing a “federal solution” onto the Republic of Macedonia that divides the country between Orthodox Macedonians and Muslim Albanians and leads to the eventual erosion of Macedonian identity, foreseeably culminating in the constitutional name being changed and the “federal” halves being internationally partitioned between Greater Albania and Greater Bulgaria.

This three-step approach is being pushed by the US out of the strong determination that its strategists have in disrupting, influencing, or controlling Russia’s (currently suspended) Balkan Stream gas pipeline and China’s Balkan Silk Road high-speed rail project from Budapest to the Greek port of Piraeus (and potentially one day as far afield as Warsaw, Riga, and Saint Petersburg).

A subservient VMRO government, which has now proven itself totally impossible for the US to achieve, was envisioned to act as an influencing proxy on giving the US an indirect presence along the vital chokepoint through which these two projects are expected to pass, potentially even allowing it to one day cancel or outright control these initiatives. Since this option is no longer feasible for the US, it instead wants to carry out direct Regime Change via a Color Revolution or phased Regime Change via pressured Regime Tinkering (brought about by the Color Revolution or potential Hybrid War) which would result in its SDSM agents taking control of the state on behalf of Washington. If this fallback plan can’t succeed, then the US might likely resort to instigating a “clash of civilizations” between Orthodox Macedonians and Muslim Albanians (whether as a coordinated part of the Regime Change operation or conducted separately thereof) in order to radically push through its Regime Reboot agenda in totally reconfiguring the Macedonian state and preparing for its eventual dismantlement by Albania and Bulgaria.

As for what’s presently being seen in the other Balkan states, that’s also very closely connected with the formula I spoke about earlier as regards to Regime Tweaking, Regime Change, and a Regime Reboot. In connection to Republika Srpska, the aim is to overthrow Milorad Dodik and install a compliant pro-Western surrogate who would go along with the dismantlement of the autonomous republic’s sovereignty and its neo-imperial absorption into a Brussels-dominated Bosnia. The confusing situation in Serbia is similar – what started off as patriotic anti-NATO protests designed to constructively pressure the government into reversing its pro-Western course were quickly diverted into suspicious manifestations that nowadays could be weaponized to do more in pressuring Serbia away from Russia and China than from the EU and the US. It’s beginning to look like the US’ hijacked the positive “Regime Tweaking” purposes of the anti-NATO protests and replaced them with its own pro-Western “Liberal-Democratic” proxies designed to be a “bottom-up” complement to the top-down coercion that Washington is now imposing upon Belgrade.

Serbia is a very desirable target for the US because of its position alongside Russia and China’s Balkan Megaprojects. Although further inland that the Republic of Macedonia, it still occupies a very important space, and in the event that Macedonia once more succeeds in repelling the Hybrid War threat against it, then it’s forecast that the US will redirect its destabilization efforts further down the line, in this case, towards Serbia. Therefore, what’s happening there nowadays is a sort of strategic ‘insurance policy’ that the US is preparing for just in case it needs to move forward with this scenario. Moreover, Serbia’s interest in joining the Russian-led Eurasian Union trading bloc scares the US and the EU, both of which understand that the most practical way for the non-contiguous states to interact with one another is via China’s forthcoming Balkan Silk Road, which in this case would take goods from Belgrade to Piraeus via rail and then ship them to Russia by sea. This further emphasizes the paramount importance that the multipolar world is placing on employing this high-speed rail route as its preferred access point into the continental hinterlands, beginning with Serbia and then extending throughout the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, though such a vision also conversely ‘justifies’ why the US could be interested in destabilizing Serbia once more in order to offset this project’s viability.

Additionally, there’s talk that Russia might build the so-called Poseidon Pipeline across the Black Sea and then through Bulgaria, Greece, and across the Adriatic Sea to Italy. Should this project ever see the light of day, then it’s likely that a branch would follow the South Stream blueprint and extend into Serbia, the envisioned hub of the original project. Assuming that there’s at least a potential that this could happen, then even if the Balkan Stream project remains indefinitely frozen, then Serbia would still be able to bring together the Chinese and Russian Megaprojects, thereby making it an irresistible target for the US. To complement the prospective internal destabilization of Serbia, the US looks ready to lure it into an international crisis in Bosnia, which is why it’s so adamant about creating turmoil in Republika Srpska. Washington knows that Belgrade’s security is directly connected to the stability of Banja Luka, and if its brotherly entity in Bosnia comes under threat, then all of Serbia indirectly affected by extent. Strategizing in advance of the fact that the internal disruptions in Serbia might fizzle out, the US is already preparing for the “Plan B” of focusing on Republika Srpska as a means of attracting Serbian attention and possible involvement, with the American-anticipated outcome being that this could disastrously entangle Belgrade in yet another regional conflict that ends up leading to large-scale strategic reversals.

Russian President Putin visited Serbia in 2015 and recently sat on the Byzantine throne in Athos, while Chinese President Xi Jinping also visited Belgrade one week ago. What’s your view on these events and what are the future political implications for the Balkan states?

It’s highly symbolic that both the Russian and Chinese leaders would find the Balkans worthy of their personal attention, and this just goes to reinforce the region’s strategic importance that I’ve emphasized in multiple interviews across the past year. The two nodes of the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership are actively cooperating in courting the Balkan states, with each side recognizing that they need the other in order to fulfill their joint vision of promoting multipolarity in the region and then further afield throughout the rest of Europe. Russia has the civilizational heritage and energy supplies necessary for gaining the goodwill of most of the region’s people and powering their industries, while China has the investment capital needed for large-scale development projects. Russia is also seeking to invest in the region and certainly has the capability to do so, but it’s just that China has the recent experience in constructing the type of trade corridors that would greatly benefit both Moscow and Beijing.

Russian and Chinese cooperative involvement in the Balkans shouldn’t be seen as a competition (though that’s precisely how unipolar-affiliated media outlets and NGOs will try to mischievously portray it), but rather as one hand washing the other. Other than Central Asia, there is no other region in the world that has as much of a potential for bringing these two Great Powers together than the Balkans, and there’s no doubt that the region will see a lot more Russian and Chinese involvement in the coming years.

In this sense, how important are the Balkans for the multipolar world and how does Macedonia fit into all of this?

The Balkans are the geostrategic ‘backdoor’ to Europe, or in other words, the access point that the leading multipolar powers of Russia and China want to use in avoiding the “cordon sanitaire” that the US and NATO are setting up in Eastern Europe and gaining direct access to the heart of the continent. The Balkan Megaprojects – Russia’s Balkan Stream and China’s Balkan Silk Road – are compatible plans that will power the region and make it the focal point of an entirely unprecedented north-south economic corridor linking together Central and Eastern Europe. With the passing of time and the proper planning, this could foreseeably liberate the region from unipolar institutional influence and steadily replace it with its multipolar counterpart, ideally a supercontinental free trade area between Lisbon and Vladivostok.

President Putin’s announcement during the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum that Russia is still interested in reaching a trade deal with the EU should be linked with Prime Minister Medvedev’s late-2015 proposal for multilateral integration between the Eurasian Union, the SCO, and ASEAN. Taken together, this hemispheric strategy amounts to what I at the time called the “Grand Eurasian Free Trade Area”, or GEFTA, but key to ensuring Europe’s participation in this revolutionary structure is to actualize the Balkan Megaprojects as a means of demonstrating the connective infrastructural viability of this plan.

It’s here where the Republic of Macedonia has an irreplaceable role in linking the East (Russia, China) and West (EU) just like Alexander did millennia ago, although in a completely different way of course. While Russia’s Balkan Stream project is indefinitely suspended for the time being and the recently discussed Poseidon Pipeline might bypass the country in favor of directly connecting to South Stream’s envisioned Serbian hub instead, Macedonia is still the bottleneck chokepoint through which China’s Balkan Silk Road high-speed rail project must pass, and it’s this component of the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership’s Balkan policy that’s the most substantially transformative in bringing multipolarity into Europe. After all, for as important as energy corridors are, they’re always trumped by developmental ones when it comes to the real-sector economy, which is what China’s project is aspiring to accomplish. In order for the Balkan Silk Road to evolve into a transregional north-south corridor connecting the broad space between Piraeus and St. Petersburg and facilitating Europe’s eventual accession into GEFTA, it must first go through Macedonia, thus making the tiny country disproportionately important in global strategic affairs and explaining why the US has dedicated so much time to destabilizing it.

If Macedonia can beat back this asymmetrical aggression and remain stable, then it would serve as the geographic foundation for the Balkan Silk Road and become the strategic cornerstone for bringing together the rest of Eurasia via the positive effect that it would have in attracting the EU to GEFTA. While this is a long-term strategy, it shouldn’t be forgotten that every far-reaching plan starts off humbly enough. Even though some observers may not yet recognize the global strategic significance of the Republic of Macedonia in the framework of the New Cold War and GEFTA, that doesn’t make it any less important in actuality, and the lack of awareness merely serves as a cover for distracting the public’s attention from the true intention behind the latest destabilizations.

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

A Reuters news report by Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold shows how devoid the West is of honest, intelligent and responsible journalists and government officials.

First we will examine the dishonesty or incompetence of the reporters and then that of Western government officials.

Emmott and Siebold describe NATO as a “Western defense alliance.” Since the Clinton regime NATO has been an alliance for waging offensive war, a war crime under the Nuremberg rules established by the United States. Under the NATO banner a number of countries have been bombed, invaded, and had their governments overthrown by Washington acting under the cover of NATO.

These destroyed countries posed no threat whatsoever to the countries of the NATO alliance and undertook no aggressive actions against NATO members. How is it possible that Reuters’ reporters and editors are not aware of this?

Why do they call an instrument of Washington’s aggression a “defense alliance”?

Emmott and Siebold report that “Russian aggression” is the reason NATO is deploying 3,000 to 4,000 troops in the Baltic states and Poland. In other words, something that does not exist–Russian aggression toward the Baltics and Poland–is assumed to be a fact that must be countered with military deployments.

The reporters do not question whether this insignificant number of NATO troops constitutes a defense or a provocation. The number of troops would have to be 100 times greater before the force even begins to approach a defensive force. What then is the purpose of the 3,000 or 4,000 NATO troops?

Every informed person knows that there is no need of a defense force against Russia in the Baltics and Poland. Aside from this fact, only an absolute idiot could think that three or four thousand troops constitutes a defense against the Russian Army.

In June 1941 Operation Barbarossa (image right) hit Russia with an invasion of four million troops, the majority German component of which were probably the most highly trained and disciplined troops in military history, excepting only the Spartans. By the time that the Americans and British got around to the Normandy invasion, the Russian Army had chewed up the Wehrmacht. There were only a few divisions at 40% strength to resist the Normandy invasion. By the time the Russian Army got to Berlin, the German resistance consisted of armed children.

The Reuters reporters raise no question about President Obama’s statement that 1,000 of this insignificant force will be Americans in order “to enhance our forward presence in central and eastern Europe.” Why does the United States need a “forward presence” in central and eastern Europe? What does a US “forward presence” in central and eastern Europe represent except an insane recklessness? One thousand US troops are good for nothing except a provocation.

Emmott and Siebold report with a straight face without laughter or question unverifiable accusations of Russian aggression by White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, President Obama, and head of NATO’s military committee, Czech General Petr Pavel.

Gen. Pavel “said Russia was attempting to restore its status as a world power, an effort that included using its military.”

Obama said it is necessary to “keep sanctions on Moscow in place until it fully complies with the ceasefire agreement in Ukraine.”

Waszczykowski said:

“We have to reject any type of wishful thinking with regard to pragmatic cooperation with Russia as long as Russia keeps on invading its neighbors.”

Rhodes threatened Russia with a NATO response to Russia’s “continued aggression.”

These statements are propagandistic. If those who made the statements actually believe them, they are too imbecilic to be trusted with public offices.

Is it possible that the Czech general does not know that Russia has used its military only to repel a Washington-inspired Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and against ISIS in Syria, which the US, UK, and France also claim to be doing? After repelling the Georgian invasion, Russia withdrew its forces. After dealing ISIS a setback in Syria, Russia withdrew and was forced to return by Washington’s resupply of ISIS.

Can the Polish Foreign Minister identify the countries that “Russia keeps on invading”?

Does the President of the United States really not know that Russia is not a party to the ceasefire agreement in Ukraine? This is an agreement between the breakaway republics and the government in Kiev. Washington has done everything possible to discourage Kiev from keeping the agreement Kiev signed.

Can National Security Adviser Rhodes tell us where “continued aggression by Russia” is occurring? What countries are being invaded and overrun?

How can there be so much Russian aggression and no evidence of it?

Recently, President Putin dressed down to their faces the Western media whores who are fanning the flames of World War III by repeating without question Washington’s propagandistic lies. These lies are reckless. They endanger all life on planet Earth.

During my lifetime, American presidents worked to reduce tensions between the two major nuclear powers. JFK worked with Khrushchev to defuse the dangerous situation arising from the placement of US missiles in Turkey and, in response, the placement of Russian missiles in Cuba.

President Nixon brought forth SALT I, the strategic arms limitation treaty, and the ABM Treaty.

President Carter crafted SALT II.

President Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev the end of the Cold War, the most promising achievement of the 20th century.

The Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have done everything possible to raise the tensions between nuclear powers to heights beyond those of the most dangerous days of the Cold War.

The evil Clinton regime broke the word of the government of the United States, thereby destroying the honor of the US government, by taking NATO to Russia’s borders.

The evil George W. Bush regime pulled the US out of the ABM Treaty and rewrote US war doctrine in order to elevate nuclear weapons from a retaliatory weapon to a first strike weapon. This insane act put the Russians on notice.

The evil Obama regime intends to place nuclear missiles on Russia’s borders in Poland and Romania and engineered a coup in Ukraine with the intent of depriving Russia of its Black Sea naval base in Crimea, Russia’s only warm water port.

Faced with a Russophobic Washington-installed government in Ukraine, the Russian population in Crimea, a Russian province since the 1700s, voted practically unanimously to rejoin Russia, where Crimea had resided until Khrushchev reassigned the Russian province to Ukraine in the mid 20th century. The Russian government’s acceptance of the wishes of its own people were propagandistically misrepresented by Washington and the presstitutes as “Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea.” This lie is where the myth of “Russian invasion” came from. Russian military forces were already present in Crimea, because when Russia granted independence to Ukraine, Russia retained a long-term lease on the Russian naval base in Crimea. As all international observers testified, the vote was independent of the Russian military presence.

The White House Fool said that the vote in Crimea was meaningless because all of Ukraine did not get to vote. The Fool was too ignorant to know that by this laughable charge he discredited the American Revolution because the British people didn’t get to vote. For the precise same reason that The Fool wants Crimea returned to Kiev, the US must be returned to Britain. I doubt that the British would have us. Who wants a war criminal nation drowning in its own hubris?

The world is now faced with the prospect that insouciant Americans will elect a crazed and incompetent criminal or semi-criminal as their president, a person who has declared the President of Russia to be “the new Hitler.” The stupid bitch’s statement is a declaration of nuclear war, and this dangerous, reckless, incompetent, careless person has been selected by the Democratic Party as the next POTUS !!!

The ignorance and stupidity of the American people will destroy the world.

Little wonder that Vladimir Putin, the only responsible world leader other than the president of China, is desperate that the Western media understand that their irresponsible negligence to the truth is helping Washington drive the world to nuclear war.

Putin does not want war. He is doing everything in his power to avoid it. But Putin is not going to surrender Russia to Washington. The trip-point of World War III will be the installation of Washington’s missiles in Poland and Romania. As Putin recently made clear to the imbecilic Western journalists, these missiles can easily and secretly be changed from anti-ballistic missiles to nuclear attack missiles that can strike their Russian targets within 5 or fewer minutes of launch, thus depriving Russia of its retaliatory deterrent. Once these missiles are in place, Washington can issue orders to Russia.

Whatever the evil men and women in Washington who are gambling with the life of the planet think, Russia is not going to accept these missiles.

Where does world leadership reside? In Washington, the war criminal capital of the world that is driving the world to nuclear war, or in Russia whose leadership accepts countless affronts and provocations in an effort to avoid war?

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

Political scientists could work out the correlation between the downright hostile media coverage and official measures by the U.S. and allied governments.

Some Hillary Clinton backers now downplay the then-Secretary of State’s role in what has become a disastrous “regime change” war in Libya, but that was not what her sycophants were saying four years ago, recalls Larry C. Johnson.

I am going to share with you four devastating emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton on the subject of Libya. You can find these posted at Wikileaks. It is clear in reading these exchanges that, in the glow of the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, Hillary embraced the call to spike the football and clearly was planning to use Libya as evidence of her leadership and skill that qualified her to become President.

The attack on our diplomats and CIA officers in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 however, destroyed that dream. The dream became a nightmare and Hillary has scrambled to pretend that she was not the mover-and-shaker that destabilized Libya and made it a safe haven for ISIS, aka radical Islamists.

Let me take you through these chronologically. First up is an email from James “Jamie” Rubin, the husband of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. (You might want to have an air sickness bag handy.) Jaime wrote on 18 July 2011:

Again, congratulations are in order for Friday’s recognition of the Transitional National Council in Istanbul. It is a pleasure to see the State Department again leading the administration on this. Syria, too, but that is a subject for another. day.

I suspect that you have been pushing very hard within the administration on Libya. From the outside, the White House doesn’t seem like it cares very much. In general, the NSC seems uncomfortable with creative applications of American power and influence. And we all know the military and the Pentagon resist limited military operations, especially airpower-only engagements. So, it must be you and your colleagues at State. Well done. . . .

First and foremost, this is winnable. The killing of Bin Ladin aside, the administration really needs a solid, substantial success. . . .

Second, unlike in the Balkans or Afghanistan, Paris and London are fully committed, as are most Europeans, with the exception of Germany, which is a disgrace but not really relevant in the end. . . .

Third, beyond the moral component of preventing a slaughter, defeating Qaddafi is one of the few concrete and unique ways the West can contribute to the Arab Spring. . . .

Fourth, even a small success like the one that is coming in Libya will turn around the steady decline in American influence in the region and around the world. I suspect that you know this, but European elites, Gulf elites, East Europeans and many others regard the Administration as weak.

What you need is a rationale for a new strategy and an internal argument for the Pentagon to change its position. If the Pentagon moves and a new rationale alters the politics on Capitol Hill, the White House will have to go along. . . . But I would suggest the following strategy:

First, without acknowledging that it was a mistake to let the British and French lead the operation to begin with, you can simply argue that circumstances have changed to the extent that leaving Qaddafi in power is now a national security risk. . . .

Second, for civilians in the Pentagon and the military, you can simply state that the U.S. and NATO’s deterrent power is now at risk. . .

Third, the threat of Qaddafi organizing terrorist threats against Europe and possibly the United States is an argument that most Republicans will be forced to accept. (At a private meeting with Tim Pawlenty, he put forward the idea that framed as a threat from a former terrorist leader, most Republicans would change their view.) McCain and Lindsey Graham are already there and with this new rationale it should be possible to win political support from Republicans that would not support the moral case alone.”

I am sure you picked up the themes here – Obama is weak ass, U.S. policy needs to shift to get on board with the Europeans and Hillary is the one to do it. Hillary loved this note from Jamie. She directed her staff to print it.

A little more than one month later (in fact, the day after rebels entered Tripoli), Hillary’s old friend and confidant, Sid Blumenthal, weighed in (barf bag suggestion still recommended):

First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it. When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation house. You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment. The most important phrase is: ‘successful strategy.’

Just a few points: *The US has pursued a successful strategy in Libya. We did not know how long it would take, but we knew it would not be easy, and that it would require steadiness and persistence. This was the right course, based on our interests and principles. And it has worked.

Do not skimp on the reasons in the US interest behind the successful strategy: We prevented a humanitarian tragedy on a vast scale. Qaddafi, who had already killed 2,000 people in April, threatened to massacre the residents of Benghazi, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. We worked closely with our NATO allies, proving that cooperation within the Western alliance can achieve our mutual goals.

The US has demonstrated its principled belief in the rule of law and acted on the basis of the United Nations resolution. We have supported the legitimate aspirations of the Libyan people for democracy and freedom. We have ousted a murderous dictator who has been a source of terrorism, civil war throughout Africa and a prop for dictators elsewhere. By acting in Libya we have helped advance the cause of democracy and freedom throughout the Arab world. We have provided an important support for neighboring Egypt. We have put Assad on notice that the sands of time have run out for him as well. Our successful strategy in Libya stands as a warning that our strategy will work again. Etc.

 

Be aware that some may attempt to justify the flamingly stupid ‘leading from behind’ phrase, junior types on the NSC imagining their cleverness. To refute this passive construction on US policy and help remove it as an albatross from the administration as it enters the election year, do not be defensive but rather simply explain that the US had a clear strategy from the start, stuck with it and has succeeded.

Then you can say whatever on future policy — but only after asserting the historic success and explaining the reasons why. *This is a very big moment historically and for you. History will tell your part in it. You are vindicated. But don’t wait, help Clio now.” (Blumenthal’s reference to “Clio” is to the Greek muse of history.)

Yes sir. “Big moment” indeed. Hillary helped thousands die but, as Sid emphasized, the glory, at least part of it, belonged to her. This was not because of anything that the weak-ass President Obama did. Nope. It was Hillary’s baby.

On 3 September 2011, Hillary directed her staff – Jake Sullivan in particular–to document the case of Hillary’s “brilliance.” Remember. This is how Hillary and her staff were taking credit for what transpired in Libya:

Secretary Clinton’s leadership on Libya HRC has been a critical voice on Libya in administration deliberations, at NATO, and in contact group meetings as well as the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya. She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.

February 25 — HRC announces the suspension of operations of the Libyan embassy in Washington.

February 26 — HRC directs efforts to evacuate all U.S. embassy personnel from Tripoli and orders the closing of the embassy.

February 26 HRC made a series of calls to her counterparts to help secure passage of UNSC 1970, which imposes sanctions on Gaddafi and his family and refers Qadhafi and his cronies to the ICC

February 28 — HRC travels to Geneva, Switzerland for consultations with European partners on Libya. She gives a major address in which she says: ‘Colonel Qadhafi and those around him must be held accountable for these acts, which violate international legal obligations and common decency. Through their actions, they have lost the legitimacy to govern. And the people of Libya have made themselves clear: It is time for Qadhafi to go — now, without further violence or delay.’ She also works to secure the suspension of Libya from membership in the Human Rights Council.

Early March — HRC appoints Special Envoy Chris Stevens to be the U.S. representative to Benghazi

March 14 — HRC travels to Paris for the G8 foreign minister’s meeting. She meets with TNC representative Jibril and consults with her colleagues on further UN Security Council action. She notes that a no-fly zone will not be adequate.

March 14-16 — HRC participates in a series of high-level video- and teleconferences B5 She is a leading voice for strong UNSC action and a NA TO civilian protection mission.

March 17— HRC secures Russian abstention and Portuguese and African support for UNSC 1973, ensuring that it passes. 1973 authorizes a no-fly zone over Libya and ‘all necessary measures’ – code for military action – to protect civilians against Gaddafts army.

March 24 — HRC engages with allies and secures the transition of command and control of the civilian protection mission to NATO. She announces the transition in a statement.

March 18-30— HRC engages with UAE, Qatar, and Jordan to seek their participation in coalition operations. Over the course of several days, all three devote aircraft to the mission.

March 19— HRC travels to Paris to meet with European and Arab leaders to prepare for military action to protect civilians. That night, the first U.S. air strikes halt the advance of Gaddafi’s forces on Benghazi and target Libya’s air defenses.

March 29—HRCt ravels to London for a conference on Libya, where she is a driving force behind the creation of a Contact Group comprising 20-plus countries to coordinate efforts to protect civilians and plan for a post-Qadhafi Libya. She is instrumental in setting up a rotating chair system to ensure regional buy-in.

April 14—HRC travels to Berlin for NATO meetings. She is the driving force behind NATOadopting a communique that calls for Qadhafi’sdeparture as a political objective, and lays out three clear military objectives: end of attacks and threat of attacks on civilians; the removal of Qadhafi forces from cities they forcibly entered; and the unfettered provision of humanitarian access.

May 5 — HRC travels to Rome for a Contact Group meeting. The Contact Group establishes a coordination system and a temporary financial mechanism to funnel money to the TNC.

June 8 — HRC travels to Abu Dhabi for another Contact Group meeting and holds a series of intense discussions with rebel leaders.

June 12 — HRC travels to Addis for consultations and a speech before the African Union, pressing the case for a democratic transition in Libya.

July 15 — HRC travels to Istanbul and announces that the U.S. recognizes the TNC as the legitimate government of Libya. She also secures recognition from the other members of the Contact Group. Late June — HRC meets with House Democrats and Senate Republicans to persuade them not to de-fund the Libya operation.

July 16 — HRC sends Feltman, Cretz, and Chollet to Tunis to meet with Qadhafi envoys ‘to deliver a clear and firm message that the only way to move forward, is for Qadhafi to step down’.

Early August — HRC works to construct a $1.5 billion assets package to be approved by the Security Council and sent to the TNC. That package is working through its last hurdles.

Early August — After military chief Abdel Fattah Younes is killed, S sends a personal message to TNC head Jalil to press for a responsible investigation and a careful and inclusive approach to creating a new executive council

Early August — HRC secures written pledges from the TNC to an inclusive, pluralistic democratic transition. She continues to consult with European and Arab colleagues on the evolving situation.”

Hillary and her posse were not content to sit back and hope that others would recognize here “brilliant leadership.” Nope. They embarked on a full propaganda campaign to ensure that the media and the public got that message. Sid Blumenthal helped coordinate this effort and turned to fellow Hillary sycophant, Jamie Rubin, to help push the meme. His email to Hillary is dated 10 September 2011.

Jamie, using his position as an editor at Bloomberg News, published the following op-ed. Please note the shrewd and deceptive use of the media. Nowhere in this piece does Jamie disclose that he is a friend of Hillary’s and had provided previous encouragement to pursue this policy. I am sure that Jamie was feeling very smug about his insider role. The average reader, however, had no clue. They simply assumed that this was an objective journalist taking note of the magnificence of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In an email, Blumenthal passed on word to Clinton: ” Subject: H: Per our conversation. Jamie writes editorial… Sid

“http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-09-o8/hillary-clinton-deseryes-credit-for-the- positive-u-s-role-in-libya-yiew.html

Hillary Clinton Deserves Credit for U.S. Role in Libya:

View By the Editors –

Sep 7,2011

The unsung hero of the Libya drama in the U.S. is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s actions were critical for several reasons. Most important, she overcame Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s caution about using military force in Libya and his reluctance to support an operation led by France and Britain. Clinton also personally managed the unorthodox partnership with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that proved so crucial to joint action to defeat the Qaddafi regime.

Despite the unusual arrangement in which the U.S. was a supporter rather than a leader of NATO’s military operation, she defended intervention before a skeptical Congress and performed the hard slog of daily diplomacy around the world, helping Arab countries, the Europeans and the U.S. work together with a minimum of friction and a maximum of determination.

Aside from the killing of Osama bin Laden, the decision to support NATO military action in Libya is probably the Obama administration’s most important achievement in international affairs. Although Muammar Qaddafi is still at large and the country is a long way from having a stable, representative government, there is little doubt that the Qaddafi regime has been defeated as a result of an internal revolt led by the Transitional National Council.

History will surely judge that, by intervening on the side of the rebellion, the West — primarily the governments of France, the U.K. and the U.S. — made a unique and invaluable contribution to the democratic aspirations of the people of the Middle East. That said, the Obama administration’s decision-making process remains opaque. The veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s next book, due out in the fall 2012, may shed some light on the question of whose voices were decisive this past March, when President Barack Obama decided to support a United Nations resolution and a NATO military operation for Libya.

Based on our discussions with administration officials, as well as the public record, some preliminary conclusions about the decision are possible. First, while we argued for a more active U.S. military role in NATO’s operation, it is now clear that Obama’s unprecedented approach — in which Washington supported, rather than led, a NATO operation — was successful in the end.

Second, by breaking with Gates, Clinton tipped the balance within the administration in favor of action. Without her strong argument to support the Europeans’ call for American help, Washington probably would not have acted. The president’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, was declaring freedom in Libya to be outside the U.S. national interest, and both military and civilian officials in the Pentagon were reluctant to endorse or even opposed U.S. intervention. But Clinton’s push for the U.S. to act in support of Britain and France appears to have been decisive.

In retrospect, the fears of Gates and other military officials that action in Libya would be a slippery slope, perhaps leading to U.S. involvement on the ground in a third war in the Middle East, seem wildly overblown. Obama said the U.S. would play a limited role by offering unique military assets, such as aerial refueling and air-defense suppression capabilities. Congress not only opposed sending in ground troops but mostly opposed any U.S. involvement. Obama wisely resisted.

For better or worse, the Libya model is not likely to be repeated anytime soon. This is not, as some say, because NATO will never again intervene in a situation like Libya’s. After the Kosovo war, many also said NATO would never again act against a dictator to save lives.

The Libya model is no guide for the future because such a unique set of circumstances in favor of military action is not likely to happen again. Think about the conditions: A despised dictator threatened mass murder; an open desert provided a decisive advantage for air power; a rebel army on the ground sought democratic change and espoused Western values; the UN at least loosely endorsed NATO air operations; the Arab League called for the West to intervene militarily in an Arab country; and U.S. allies prepared to do all the heavy lifting. Given those circumstances, it is still hard to explain why there were determined opponents, primarily in the Republican Party, to this mission in the first place.

Throughout most of Obama’s term in office, only a few administration officials have commanded respect and political power on national security matters: Clinton, Gates and General David Petraeus, the most decorated and admired officer of recent times. With Gates now gone and Petraeus in a non-policy role as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Clinton’s power will only increase as the president’s re-election campaign heats up. We hope she recognizes her opportunity and uses it well.”

Hillary told Sid the following in her email response to this op-ed: “It was very welcome and gave me reason to sit down and talk w Jamie who is such a good friend. Hope to talk soon–H”

This is how propaganda, press manipulation and lying to the public is manufactured in Washington, DC. Hillary and her crew, with the help of Jamie Rubin, pushed the meme that Hillary, not Obama, deserved the credit for the “success” in Libya.

Absolutely. Let her have it. Hang this festering turd of a policy around Hillary’s neck. To do so is only just. She is a power hungry thug who helped cause the deaths of thousands just to advance her own vile political ambitions.

Larry C. Johnson is a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department. [This article originally appeared at Larry Johnson’s blog No Quarter, http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/79194/hillarys-responsibility-libyan-disaster/]

L’una soluzione negoziata tra Repubblica Popolare Cinese e Repubblica e Filippine sulla disputa territoriale per il possesso delle isole Spratly (conosciute come isole Nansha in Cina) appare possibile con il cambio di governo a Manila. Il presidente filippino uscente Benigno Aquino III e il segretario degli Esteri filippino Albert del Rosario, che hanno respinto i colloqui bilaterali con Pechino, terminavano il mandato il 30 giugno 2016 venendo sostituiti rispettivamente da Rodrigo Duterte a Palazzo Malacanhan e da Perfecto Yasay Jr. al dipartimento degli Esteri. Il nuovo governo filippino ha fatto diverse aperture sui colloqui bilaterali con Pechino e il ministro degli Esteri Yasay annunciava che un inviato speciale sarà nominato per i negoziati con la Cina.

I rapporti tra Filippine e Cina divennero tesi sotto il governo di Aquino III, riaprendo la disputa territoriale con la Cina e con entusiasmo rivitalizzando la presenza militare degli Stati Uniti nel sud-est asiatico. Nel 2011 fu deciso da Benigno Aquino d’indicare il Mar Cinese Meridionale come Mar delle Filippine occidentale per sottolineare le pretese delle Filippine. Il governo Aquino III avrebbe anche ridenominato il Mar Cinese Meridionale per legge con un ordine amministrativo nel 2012. Aggregando ulteriori relazioni l’amministrazione Aquino III avviava un’azione legale sulla controversia territoriale con la Cina alla Corte permanente di arbitrato olandese il 29 ottobre 2015.

Il 5 luglio 2016, la settimana prima della sentenza della Corte permanente di arbitrato del 12 luglio 2016, il presidente Duterte avanzava l’offerta di colloqui con la Cina. Mentre sicuramente utilizzerà la Corte permanente di arbitrato come leva nei colloqui bilaterali sino-filippini, Duterte sembra deciso a un accordo con la Cina. Queste proposte rientrano nelle promesse elettorali del 2016 nelle Filippine.

Durante la campagna presidenziale, il discorso di Duterte sulla Cina inviava segnali contrastanti, passando da linguaggio antagonista a conciliante. Indubbiamente era una tattica da politicante del presidente Duterte; alterare il discorso sulla Cina era una tattica politica volta ad avere sia il supporto dei filippini con atteggiamenti nazionalistici sulle isole Spratly, che degli influenti affaristi filippini, anche di etnia cinese, che vogliono pace, cooperazione economica e commerciale con una Cina in ascesa.

A livello internazionale, Duterte potrebbe aver inviato tatticamente segnali contrastanti per soddisfare Stati Uniti e Cina. Le sue osservazioni antagoniste compiacevano Washington mentre quelle concilianti avevano lo scopo di non alienarsi Pechino e di segnalare la disponibilità a colloqui. Nonostante le critiche a Pechino, ha sempre indicato di volere dialogare con la Cina. È interessante notare che Duterte è anche l’unico politico che nelle elezioni generali filippine del 2016 ha ammesso pubblicamente di aver parlato delle Isole Spratly con l’ambasciata USA a Manila.

Durante la campagna elettorale Duterte osservò che avrebbe cercato aiuto dai cinesi per costruire la rete ferroviaria filippina che colleghi Luzon e Mindanao, e che se la Cina accettava di sostenere il gigantesco progetto avrebbe posto fine alle critiche sulla disputa territoriale di Manila con Pechino. In altre parole, Duterte diceva che un suo futuro governo filippino avrebbe negoziato con la Cina in cambio di concessioni economiche o aiuti da Pechino.

Dopo che Duterte ha vinto le elezioni presidenziali, il tono verso la Cina è cambiato divenendo molto più temperato e cordiale. Prima ancora che Duterte diventasse ufficialmente presidente, ebbe un incontro con Zhao Jianhua, l’ambasciatore cinese nelle Filippine, il 16 maggio 2016. L’incontro fu simbolico perché l’ambasciatore Zhao era uno dei tre soli ambasciatori, gli altri due erano i rappresentanti diplomatici di Israele e Giappone, che Duterte aveva incontrato da aspirante presidente delle Filippine. Da quel momento Rodrigo Duterte avrebbe incontrato l’ambasciatore Zhao altre tre volte, anche il 7 luglio, qualche giorno prima della sentenza della Corte permanente di arbitrato.

Le rivendicazione di Pechino sul Mar Cinese Meridionale

Pechino sostiene che la Cina aveva la sovranità sulla zona da migliaia di anni. L’impero cinese della dinastia Ming controllava le coste occidentali adiacenti alla zona, quando il Vietnam faceva parte della Cina. Anche il Vietnam avanza richieste sulle isole Spratly (note come Quan Dao Truong Sa dai vietnamiti) e le isole Paracel (note come Xisha dai cinesi e come Hoàng Sa dai vietnamiti).

A sostegno della richiesta cinese vi è il fatto che il Giappone annesse l’area nel 1938 acquisendo Taiwan dalla Cina e che la Cina continentale governata dal Kuomintang rivendicò l’area nel 1947, in virtù della demarcazione della “linea tratteggiata undici,” mentre Malaysia e Brunei erano ancora colonie inglesi e il Vietnam colonia francese. Le Filippine ufficialmente divennero indipendenti dagli USA un anno prima della pretesa del Kuomintang nel 1946.

Vi sono importanti fatti storici e giuridici che dovrebbero essere considerati. Prima che gli Stati Uniti entrassero in guerra con i giapponesi, non fu mai messa in discussione l’annessione giapponese della zona come occupazione del territorio delle Filippine, quando erano controllate dagli Stati Uniti. Né le isole del Mar Cinese Meridionale furono incluse nel territorio filippino preso alla Spagna dagli Stati Uniti nel 1898. Fu solo con l’appoggio degli Stati Uniti nel 1970 che le Filippine avanzarono le prime rivendicazioni sulla zona.

Washington: terzo intruso

La Cina è interessata a stabilire ciò che Xi Jinping chiama “comunità di destino”. Pechino vuole cooperazione e commercio, non guerra o conflitto con le Filippine o qualsiasi altro Stato dell’Associazione delle Nazioni del Sudest Asiatico (ASEAN). Suo scopo principale è espandere la Via della Seta, via terra e via mare, sostenendo l’integrazione regionale e la prosperità economica. A questo proposito ha in più occasioni concesso un trattamento di favore e offerto condizioni commerciali vantaggiose ai Paesi aderenti all’ASEAN.

Come il presidente Duterte, il governo cinese ha indicato di essere pronto a negoziati diretti sulla disputa territoriale nel Mar Cinese Meridionale. La Cina ha anche dichiarato di essere disposta a condividere ricchezze e risorse dell’area con progetti di sviluppo comuni. Questo è ciò che Pechino ha descritto come “approccio sostenibile.” In cambio Pechino ha chiesto che Manila rifiuti la sentenza della Corte permanente di arbitrato, che influenzerà anche le rivendicazioni territoriali di Brunei, Malesia e Vietnam.

Nello scenario in cui le Filippine ottenessero il controllo del territorio conteso nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, Manila si volgerebbe a USA e alleati, come Giappone, Corea del Sud e Australia, per sviluppare la regione. Le Filippine non possono sviluppare o estrarre le risorse energetiche del territorio da sole. Le compagnie energetiche provenienti da Stati Uniti ed alleati otterrebbero trattamento preferenziale e profitto da petrolio e gas. In cambio le Filippine ne avrebbero uno scarso ritorno economico.

Ma anche in tale scenario, se non principale consumatore, la Cina sarebbe ancora uno dei principali consumatori di eventuali risorse energetiche estratte dal Mar Cinese Meridionale. Alla Cina potrebbe anche anche essere chiesto dalle Filippine di sviluppare le riserve di energia regionali. Dato che Pechino sarà il principale cliente, nelle Filippine ci si rende conto che sarebbe effettivamente più redditizio collaborare con la Cina allo sviluppo congiunto delle riserve energetiche regionali. Perciò alcuni nelle Filippine preferiscono i colloqui bilaterali. L’ostacolo principale ai colloqui tra Pechino e Manila, però, sono gli Stati Uniti.

Ciò che è in gioco nella zona contesa non sono solo le grandi quantità di idrocarburi in quello che in Cina chiamano “secondo Golfo Persico” energetico, la pesca e uno dei più importanti corridoi marittimi e rotte commerciali del mondo. Ma anche gli interessi per la sicurezza nazionale cinese sono fortemente legati al territorio. I rifornimenti commerciali ed energetici cinesi verrebbero interrotti se il traffico marittimo venisse bloccato nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, motivo per cui le forze armate statunitensi si sono fortemente dedicate ad essere presenti nella zona. In parte, ciò rientra nel “Pivot in Asia” di Washington.

Washington, che (a differenza di Pechino) si è rifiutata di firmare anche la Convenzione delle Nazioni Unite sul diritto del mare, utilizza le Filippine come pretesto per un gioco sporco contro la Cina, solo perché vede Pechino come rivale strategico. Gli Stati Uniti intenzionalmente acuiscono le tensioni nel Mar Cinese Meridionale per giustificare la presenza navale statunitense a largo delle coste cinesi e la creazione di una rete di alleanze militari per circondare e fare pressione su Pechino. Usando diplomazia coercitiva, guerra economica, strategia della tensione e un duplice approccio confronto e cooperazione, gli Stati Uniti cercano di ridimensionare la Cina. Gli Stati Uniti fanno di tutto per creare un cuneo in Eurasia tra Cina e Federazione Russa.

Ironia della sorte, mentre demonizza la Cina come minaccia regionale, Washington invia messaggi contraddittori agli alleati regionali. Gli Stati Uniti diffamano Pechino mentre ordinano allo stesso tempo ai militari statunitensi di tenere esercitazioni militari multilaterali o bilaterali con i militari cinesi, come ad esempio l’esercitazione Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) (giugno-luglio 2016), l’esercitazione virtuale per il soccorso e l’assistenza umanitaria congiunta Cina-USA (novembre 2012) e l’esercitazione Cina-USA contro la pirateria nel Golfo di Aden (settembre 2012).

I leader regionali dovrebbero prendere atto del modus operandi degli Stati Uniti. I capi degli Stati Uniti non sono disposti a confrontarsi direttamente in Cina. Invece usano Paesi come le Filippine come pedine e gettoni per negoziar un patto od ostacolare una Cina sempre più assertiva ed economicamente prospera

Il professor Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya è sociologo e ricercatore associato del Centro per la Ricerca sulla Globalizzazione (CRG).

La ripubblicazione è gradita in riferimento alla rivista Strategic Culture Foundation, 11 luglio 2016.

Traduzione di Alessandro Lattanzio.

Hardly a day goes by without news of a police killing.  And each time we hear from scholars and observers that the police is too militarized.   No doubt!

In 2014, I was flattered to have been approached by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Shasta Chapter to be their keynote speaker to address Government Secrecy, Drones, and Militarization.  After each police involved death, I would revisit my notes and wonder why I never published them.   After watching this video clip on my FB page on July 10, 2016, I decided to share an excerpt from the ACLU address of April 13, 2014.

(Of note, at the time of the talk, “Black Lives Matter” had not appeared on the national stage, nor had the training of police in Israel been fully exposed; as such, these very important factors were not included in the talk/excerpt below.  The following is simply talking points stringed together and lacks the flow and flare of academic writing.)

Historians and political scientists have warned us about  dangerous war fever sweeping the United States. Today we have gone beyond that.

The “Global War on Terror”, a war indefinite in duration, against an ill-defined and shifting enemy, al-Qaeda, [ISIS did not exist in the official narrative at the time] is now being armed in Syria [“moderates”] without a clear explanation of American strategy or a specific definition of victory, or even a way to measure progress in the struggle has taken its toll on civil liberty.  The problem of militarization poses a danger to the very character of American government and society.

In his first public interview after retiring from active duty in 2003, General Tommy Franks identified the single most dangerous possibility offered by an endless war on terrorism: An attack with weapons of mass destruction “just to create casualties … to terrify” could lead “the western world, the free world” to forfeit its “freedom and liberty,” to lose its democracy, and “begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty event, … to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.”

Over half a century ago,  Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson concluded that  “by giving way to the passion, intolerance and suspicions of wartime, it is easy to reduce our liberties to a shadow, often in answer to exaggerated claims of security.”.

That day is here.  Not only are we under constant surveillance, but  take for example the kill list.  A list which began under the Bush administration as a rationale for murdering suspect citizens of countries with which the United States was not at war has become Obama’s kill list and the scope of the list has been expanded to include the execution, without due process of law, of U.S. citizens accused, without evidence presented in court, of association with terrorism. And this is accepted by the people. No protests.

The Framers of the Constitution recognized such dangers when they carefully subordinated the military to civilian authority and attempted to limit the power of the President to initiate war.

Gregory Foster, a former Army officer and West Point graduate who now teaches national security studies at the National Defense University in Washington said that principle of civilian control of the military—an early building block of American democracy-  has become the  civilian subjugation to the military.

Today, the degree to which  society’s institutions, policies, behavior, thought, and values are devoted to military power and shaped by war are alarming.

The incursion of military recruiters and teachings into the public school system is well known.  Presidents favor speaking to captive audiences at military bases, defense bases, and on aircraft carriers.  Lawmakers’ constant use of “support our troops” to justify defense spending.   TV programs and video games like “NCIS,” “Homeland” and “Call of Duty,” to reality show “Stars Earn Stripes,” demonstrate that Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas

Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged publicly in an October 24, 2003, interview in the Washington Times: “We are in a war of ideas, as well as a global war on terror. Ideas are important, and they need to be marshaled, and they need to be communicated in ways that are persuasive to the listeners.”

This was part of his Information Operations Roadmap.   As part of the plan,  public affairs officers were given the task of briefing journalists.  In 2005 it came to light that the Pentagon paid the Lincoln Group (a private company) to plant ‘hundreds of stories’ in Iraqi papers in support of U.S. Policies

But now, we see that this war has been internalized, whether you look at drones, kill list, or militarization of the police force.

During the Clinton administration, Congress passed what’s now known as the “1033 Program,” which formalized  Reagan administration’s directive to the Pentagon to share surplus military gear with domestic police agencies. Since then, millions of pieces of military equipment designed for use on a battlefield have been transferred to local cops—SWAT teams and others—including machine guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc.

The Pentagon’s 1033 program has exploded under Obama.

Bill Clinton also created the “Troops to Cops” program which offered grants to police departments who hired soldiers returning from battle, contributing even further to the militarization of the police force.

In a 2005 PBS documentary, David Grossman, a retired US Army Lt. Colonel spoke of training law enforcement groups worldwise to kill: “most of what I do is I train military and law enforcement in what I call the bulletproof mind.” “Prior preparation is that one variable in the equation that we can control ahead of time, and one of the key things is embracing the responsibility to kill.  So when I teach, one of the things I believe we need to do is embrace this word “kill.””

Is it any wonder that [Mayor] Bloomberg proudly bragged of “hav(ing) my own army in the NYPD” and who used that army to spy on peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors?

And what of “to protect and to serve”?

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy.  

We’ve noted for more than 5 years that the European crisis would spread in the following order … more or less:

Greece → Ireland → Portugal → Spain → Italy → UK

We also warned that the EU’s approach to economic problems in the periphery would lead the cancer to spread to the core. For example, we’ve repeatedly warned that:

• Bailing out the big European banks would just transfer the risk to the people

• Propping up stocks and asset prices won’t get Europe out of the crisis

• Covering up fraud by the European banks would sink the economy

Now, the IMF is forecasting that Italy could be in recession for two decades … and that it’s weakness could spread to the rest of the system.

Britain is – of course -in trouble.  But it’s not just Brexit …

Europe has been stuck in a downturn worse than the Great Depression for years.  The former Bank of England head Mervyn King said recently that the “depression” in Europe “has happened almost as a deliberate act of policy”. Specifically, King said that the formation of the European Union has doomed Europe to economic malaise.

He points out that Greece is experiencing “a depression deeper than the United States experienced in the 1930s”.

(Indeed, some say that the UK was smart to get out while it could.)

Even Germany’s largest bank, and the bank with the highest exposure to derivatives anywhere in the world – Deutsche Bank – is in big trouble.

Here’s its stock price:

And here’s its market capitalization:

In May, Moody’s downgraded Deutsche to a mere 2 notches above junk.

And credit default swaps – bets that a company is in risk of failing – against Deutsche have absolutely skyrocketed:

Deutsche Bank’s chief economist just said:

Europe is extremely sick and must start dealing with its problems extremely quickly, or else there may be an accident.

He’s calling for a $166 billion dollar bailout of European banks.

Similarly:

BlackRock Inc. Vice Chairman Philipp Hildebrand said earlier this month the European Commission should allow governments to take temporary equity stakes in their banks, similar to what the U.S. did with its Troubled Asset Relief Program during the 2008 crisis.

Europe has made bad choices since the 2008 crisis … so Europe’s economic crisis has spread from the periphery to the core.

That’s the first thing that comes to my mind when I remember my week on Kos earlier this summer. One week is clearly not a long time, but it was more than enough time to see that there has been no let up in the authority’s on going cruel behaviour towards all the refugees and migrants on the island. I read in the online newsnet of a popular swiss newspaper „Tagesanzeiger“ (Tagensanzeiger.ch/newsnet vom 30.10.2015), that even a middle-right-wing politician from Switzerland was able to recognise that the circumstances on the Greek island of Kos are deliberately made and wanted by the local politicians and state authorities. Deterrence, as they keep saying is necessary… it is the endless mantra you hear from the Greek state.

The Hotspot 

The hotspot on Kos is located outside of a small village called Pili which is about 15km out of Kos town. From the village there is a dusty road to the Camp. It is out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a high fence with a lot of nato-barbed wire…that’s the type with the razor blades…The people inside the Hotspot are allowed to go out, but no one besides UNCHR and Praksis ( a Greek NGO) have permission to enter the camp.

For the refugees and migrants it is unusual for a family to make a walk to the village for example, because they don’t have keys for their cabins and so they can not lock the doors. A friend from Syria who we met on the road to the camp, told us, that one day she asked one of the police guards at the entrance to give her the key for her family’s cabin, because there had been some thefts. Her family wanted go out of the camp together, like families do but they were scared to leave their belongings in an unlocked cabin. The answer of the policeman was no. And the reason for the no, was that he said ‘you will loose the key, and than I will have to pay 50 Euros to get another’. It was not enough that the policeman was treating her like a small kid. For even when our friend offered to sign an official paper that she would take full responsibility in case she lost the key, the answer was still no.

We wanted to visit this friend in the camp or at least in front of the entrance so that we could talk together. Our journey to the hotspot started with us asking locals where it is and how we can get there. They looked at us like we came from a different planet. Like why for god’s sake do you want to go there? Anyway, when we arrived at the camp, there was a policeman who told us to wait. He left and when he didn’t come back after 10 minutes one of us walked further up the road to ask at the main entrance. When my friend got to about 50 metres before the gates to the camp, there was a policeman who asked her not who she is, but what she is, thinking she has permission to come there. She replied that she is a human being and that she wants to visit a friend who was inside the camp. This was reason enough for another policeman to start shouting at her: ‘Go! Go away!’ My friend was coming back to us and the shouting policeman followed her in a car. In the meantime another friend and I, were just standing around in front of the fence. When the policeman saw this he continued shouting ‘go away’. I told him in a friendly way that it would be nice, if he could speak more kindly to us. Unfortunately this appeared to be impossible for him and he began to shout out his orders to me like ‘show me your passport! Tell me where you are from? What is your name?’ And so on. I decided not to show him my passport, because his only reason for this demand was ‘because I am a policeman“. I told him in a friendly way that this was not a good reason. Inevitably he then began to yell at one of my friends who was standing next to me. He is a refugee, and that’s why we needed to leave after I had told the policeman that it would be better for him if he looked for another job as he seemed unable to deal calmly with situations like this.

We finally met our friend from Syria in the middle of the route back to the town out in middle of nowhere.

The Food Situation 

The refugees and migrants inside of the hotspot are not allowed to handle any food by themselves. There is one woman, hired by the authorities, who is running the kitchen of the camp. As our friend told us, the food is often burnt and unfit for human consumption. Now, during Ramadan, the kitchen is not making any kind of arrangements for the people fasting. They distribute the food only once and when the sun is going down it is all cold, every day. One day, someone from Pili brought some special food for the fasting people to eat after sunset. The woman who runs the kitchen took all of it and our Syrian friend was complaining again and again, that it is not OK to steal the food which was specially brought for Ramadan. It was 2 days before she gave some of this food to the residents of the camp. Our friend also told us, that it is completely arbitrary who gets clothes or shoes from the hotspot warehouse. In the warehouse they have a lot of donated hygiene products, but the residents only get given a small bottle of shampoo, lotion or whatever which is needed for personal hygiene. Of course, people can buy their own stuff, if they have any money at all…

Painting from a Syrian refugee in the Kos hotspot, June 2016

Medical Care 

If you look from outside of the village to the hotspot you can see a huge white caravan inside the camp, on a hill. It is a real eye catcher, because there is a huge red cross on it. When I ask my Syrian friend how the medical care is working, she responded with a sad smile, ‘it is only a caravan, there is no medical-staff working at all…’.

If someone needs medical care, they must go to a doctor in Kos town. If it turns out, that they need special medical care, the doctor writes a medical certificate recommending that they need to go to Athens. It was like that, our Syrian friend told us, with a little child in the camp. The parents went to the police with the medical certificate, to be told by the police, that they are not allowed to travel, and anyway that the kid is fine. Do policeman in Greece have a high medical education as well? Or is it just more negligence which characterises the whole system?

Women and child protection 

In the hotspot all the residents are mixed. That means, that unaccompanied women, families, kids and single men are not separated. For all the refugees and migrants coming from Muslim majority societies where gender separation informs much of daily life and arrangements this is problematic. Women in particular, but also men find this mixing uncomfortable. But when we consider the situation inside the camp it poses a huge problem. People are bored, people don’t have any idea about their future life, they are not allowed to do anything, most of them don’t have any money left, are often traumatized from their escape or by war, and so on and so on. When we are aware of all these circumstances, it is not that hard to guess, that it could be difficult. Our friends in the camp were especially alarmed when some of the men started drinking alcohol which led to really inappropriate behaviour or even worse against women and children. Some of the family members went to the police, who are always around in the camp, to ask them for help in this situation. The answer of the police was: ‘Not our problem’. Abandoned and ignored yet again.

Our friend was not even allowed to take her young niece outside the camp, even when she showed the police, that she has the same family name as her niece. It was only possible, when the father and her brother, came to the gate, to prove that she is his sister and the kid’s aunt. The policeman said that he will allow it for one time only, but in the future, only her father can take her outside of the camp…

Our Syrian friend told us, that her only wish she has for her, her family and all the other refugees is, that someone is telling the world what is happening on Kos and on many of the other Greek islands at this time.

Police station in Kos Town

We came to Kos from Switzerland to help a refugee from Syria who was in prison there because he had been caught trying to travel without papers. We had met him earlier in Samos and then in Athens and he had become a friend. We wanted to support him with a lawyer and to get him out of prison. By the time we arrived, the police in the main police station in Kos town had finally decided to let him out. They told him to leave the island quickly, but how this could happen when he did not have papers nor money? As ever the police told him that this was not their problem.

We also wanted to visit the other refugees and migrants in the cell in the main police station in Kos town. When I walked into the station to request that I would like to see the prisoners, the police woman at the desk told me that ‘there are no prisoners here’. It was clear that she was lying straight in to my face. Even when I asked her again, that I wanted to visit the prisoners inside and that I know that there are some including a few who had already been in for month, she told me the same lie. The police woman then started yelling at me and asked me if I don’t understand. She said that people are held in the cell for just one day, then they are transferred to the hotspot. It was a very weird situation, because our friend who had just got out from prison had told us a lot about the horrible conditions inside and how many were held for weeks at a time. There are between 5 to 10 men in a cell with one hole in the floor as a toilet. He said they were not allowed their mobile phones, they had no privacy, the food was disgusting and they experienced inhumane and disparaging treatment by the police. For example, our friend told us that the most of the police address the prisoners inside only as « malacca » which means asshole.

The second time we went to the police station to visit the inmates, at least the policeman behind the desk did not lie, but he told us to leave in rough way. Two of us went behind the building to see the window where the people are in the cell and where some of them were waving and shouting. The policeman jumped up from his chair very quickly so we needed to leave, so not to put our Syrian friend in danger.

Our experiences have been very clear; that the actions by the police on Kos are totally arbitrary and their only concern is to show their power. They are rude, unfriendly and seem to deal with any attempt to show solidarity by shouting and yelling.

A Hotel for refugees and migrants 

In the centre of Kos town there is a hotel, run by UNHCR for refugees and migrants. People with special needs, illness, trauma or unaccompanied pregnant women with small kids are housed in this hotel. We met many wonderful refugees there and the hospitality they showed us in their small hotel rooms was really overwhelming. We spent a few hours with two families from Syria and a funny 17 year old boy.

One of the women who had escaped from Syria with her sister and her husband told us, that her sister has epilepsy. She and her husband are taking care of her, but a few days ago her sister tried to jump from the balcony on the 3rd floor of the hotel. It was clear to see that the woman was desperate and really afraid about what happened to her sister. She went to he UNHCR to ask for psychological support for her sister, but the only thing they told her was: ‘sorry, but we cannot do anything for you’. Seriously? The refugee agency of the UN cannot do anything? If not them, then who?

Conclusions

We came for a week but in those 7 days we yet again confronted the same cruelties we had seen before in Samos and in Athens. We saw police who were totally unsuited for working with vulnerable people, we saw agencies like UNCHR whose contributions were so limited and seemed incapable of offering what was needed. And we met refugees and migrants who despite all these humiliations struggled to stay sane and human and who showed us kindness and friendship which stood in the starkest contrast to the authorities. They knew they could expect little or nothing from the system and placed much hope in ordinary people who they thought could help if only they knew what was going on. Sadly, we are not so sure…….

Luisa Weber is a refugee activist based in Switzerland and worked  in the ‘Open Eyes Balkan Route Kitchen in Samos in 2016.

A quick Google news search for “Theresa May and “Abu Qatada” reveals over 2,000 mainstream media articles in the last three days combining both. This is hardly surprising, as in her speech announcing her candidacy for Tory leader (and thus PM) May dwelt on her deportation of Abu Qatada as evidence she was qualified for the job. The May supporting Tory MP who was put up for Sky to interview immediately afterwards managed to say “Abu Qatada” three times in a two minute interview.

Abu Qatada should indeed be a powerful symbol – but not the symbol he has become, a hate figure. He should rather be a symbol of the hate-filled and intolerant place Britain has become, and the dreadful injustice meted out to individuals both by the state and the media.

Abu Qatada spent, over a thirteen year period, a total of nine years in jail in England despite never being charged with any crime. It is not just that he was not convicted. He was never charged. Nine years, think about it. In all that time, neither he nor his lawyers were ever permitted to see the accusations or evidence against him.

Britain has draconian anti-terrorism laws that would make a dictatorship blush. It is an offence to “glorify” terrorism. It is specifically “terrorism” for me to write, here and now, that Nelson Mandela was justified in supporting the bombing campaign that got him arrested. I just knowingly committed “glorifying terrorism” under British law. It is specifically “terrorism” to deface the property in the UK of a foreign state with a political motive. If I spray “Gay Pride” on the Saudi embassy, that is terrorism. We also have secret courts, where “terrorists” can be convicted without ever seeing the “intelligence-based” evidence against them. We have convicted young idiots for discussing terror fantasies online. We have convicted a wife who “must have known” what her husband was doing (at least that one was overturned on appeal).

Yet even with the bar so low it is resting on the ground, from his first arrest in 2001 to his deportation in 2013, through innumerable arrests, police interviews, wiretaps, computer seizures and searches, no evidence against Abu Qatada was ever found which would stand up in court. It is worth noting that if almost any of the vast number of accusations the tabloids made against him had been true, for example if he had actually said in sermons the things he was stated to have said in the UK press, he could have been charged and convicted. But investigation by the police and security services found every single one of these claims to be false.

It is true that Theresa May did succeed in deporting him. To Jordan, where he faced charges of association with terrorist groups. In two trials, one before a military tribunal, Abu Qatada was found not guilty of association with terrorism and all other charges. It should be very plainly understood that the Jordanian monarchy is no friend at all to Palestinian salafist clerics like Abu Qatada, and he had good reason to fear being deported there. But even they found that the evidence Abu Qatada is a terrorist does not exist.

Now I have never met him, though I have met his lawyers and doctor. Abu Qatada holds views with which I do not agree; I dislike the bigoted in any religion. But his main crime appears to have been to be a Palestinian cleric with a perfect comic opera appearance for the right wing media to make up quotes and hate stories around.

This picture is taken from a hilarious Daily Telegraph article in which that author complains that Abu Qatada had “fooled us again” – by the dastardly expedient of not actually committing any crimes.

So if you are proud of a world in which people against whom there is not one shred of court-worthy evidence, who have never been charged, can be detained for nine years and then deported, vote for Theresa May as PM. I expect the Tories will, happily.

Abu Qatada should indeed be a symbol. He should be a symbol of the deepest national disgrace of unjustified imprisonment and of the foul place the United Kingdom has become under successive far right Labour and Tory governments. And I say far right with deliberation. In what other kind of country could the story of Abu Qatada happen?

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan and was critical of intelligence linking the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to al-Qaeda and stated it was unreliable, immoral and illegal, as it was thought to have been obtained through torture. He described this as “selling our souls for dross”. He was subsequently removed from his ambassadorial post. Go to Craig’s website HERE

If you’ve ever wondered why corporations seem to hold so much sway over our government, look no further than who’s making all the decisions in Washington – and more importantly, where many of these people worked before being handed comfy, high-level positions at top government agencies.

You might be surprised at the number of senior advisors, chiefs of staff, judges, commissioners and others employed at agencies like the Department of Justice (DoJ), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who all have one thing in common: they used to hold executive-level positions at multinational corporations like Monsanto.The infographic below depicts a revolving-door relationship between Monsanto and the federal government that dates back many decades. You’ll probably recognize many of the names on the list, but chances are you had no idea these folks used to work for Monsanto or advocate for its interests before taking key positions of power on the taxpayer dime.

Both conservative and liberal politicians share history of affiliation with Monsanto

Donald Rumsfeld is one of the more prominent names that probably jumps out at you, as this former Secretary of Defense under both Gerald Ford and George W. Bush is remembered as one of the key Bush administration warmongers who helped propel forward the “War on Terror” following 9/11. Rumsfeld also just so happens to have been a former CEO for G.D. Searle, a pharmaceutical company that has since merged with Monsanto.

Another prominent, and probably surprising, name on the list is Clarence Thomas, a U.S. Supreme Court justice who many conservatives respect for his supposedly far-right stances on most issues. Thomas is a former lawyer for Monsanto who cast the deciding vote to hand the contested 2000 election over to George W. Bush.

Michael Taylor, who recently resigned from his position as deputy commissioner of the FDA, is another former attorney for Monsanto who fought on behalf of the company’s interests for seven years. Taylor also served as head of Monsanto’s Washington, D.C., office, an obvious conflict of interest considering the FDA’s job is to regulate the activities of corporations like Monsanto.

The very first Chief Administrator for the EPA, William D. Ruckelshaus, is another Monsanto hack who served on the company’s Board of Directors. Ruckelshaus, who was appointed back in 1970, later went on to become the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and even held the position of Deputy U.S. Attorney General.

The EPA, as you probably already know, has a reputation for being lax in regulating chemicals manufactured by large corporations, and now you know why – from the beginning, the agency was steered by Monsanto operatives to push a very different agenda than environmental protection.

Described by a former associate as “hard as nails,” perhaps Theresa May is the second “iron lady of the Western World” designate, what former prime minister Margaret Thatcher once called herself.

Separately, she defiantly said

“(t)o those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the ‘U’ turn, I have only one thing to say. You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”

On Monday, Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation effective Wednesday, saying it’s “clear (Home Secretary) Theresa May overwhelming (has Tory) support (to become Britain’s) next prime minister.”

“And so…(o)n Wednesday, I will…go to the Palace and offer my resignation, so we will have a new prime minister…by Wednesday evening” – a change of heart after Cameron earlier announced he’d step down at the party’s October convention.

May now becomes UK prime minister designate – current home secretary since 2010, Maidenhead MP since 1997, former Conservative party chairman, House of Commons shadow leader, as well as active in other shadow ministerial roles.

After leading candidate to succeed Cameron, former London mayor Boris Johnson, pulled out of contention, May emerged as Tory leadership frontrunner.

From 1977 to 1983, she worked for the Bank of England – from 1985 to 1997 serving as an Association for Payment Clearing Services International Affairs financial consultant and senior advisor.

On Wednesday, she’ll become Britain’s second female prime minister, Binoy Kampmark earlier remarking she did “her invaluable bit to undermine privacy on the pretext of protecting security.”

She’s tough on immigration, favoring closed, not open borders – certain to continue partnering with Washington’s imperial wars.

Portraying herself as a unity leader stands in stark contrast to Labour MP Angela Eagle describing the political scene as “dangerous times for our country.”

Watch what May does, not what she says. Be dubious about her blustering “Brexit means Brexit, and we’re going to make a success of it.”

“There will be no attempts to remain inside the EU. There will be no attempts to rejoin it by the back door, no second referendum.”

“I will make sure that we leave the European Union.” What monied interests on both sides of the Atlantic want she’ll deliver, likely manipulating public sentiment to reject what was previously approved.

Delaying initiating the Brexit process by invoking Lisbon Treaty Article 50 until yearend begins the manipulative process to exert political over popular will.

It remains to be seen how May governs overall. Given Britain’s deplorable history since 1980s Thatcherism, reason for encouragement is absent. Dirty business as usual remains triumphant.

By mid-week, Britain will have a new prime minister, likely no different from the deplorable current one.

The Great Barrier Reef was a key talking point in the run up to Australia’s federal election as politicians promised billions to improve water quality, whilst talking down coral bleaching and report rigging. Ecologist writer, Maxine Newlands, reports…

Anyone planning a visit to Kuwait later this year may be in for a shock when they find they’ll have to give the government not just their passport, but also their DNA. A 2015 law requiring all citizens, residents and visitors to provide DNA to the government’s database will go into effect later this summer, according to Kuwaiti officials, making the small Gulf nation the first country in the world to legislate mandatory DNA collection.

The $400 million database will store the DNA samples of at least 3.3 million people—a mandate that international privacy and legal analysts are concerned is excessively broad.

“No other country in the world wants to include everyone,” said Barbara Prainsack, a professor of social science at King’s College London and an expert in bioethics and genetics. “This is a very significant step that has never been taken before.”

Almost everywhere else in the world, those who aren’t suspected criminals, terrorists or government employees are generally excepted from biometric data collection of this nature.

“A universal database would not hold in the case of human rights litigation because the idea that you could at some point commit a terrorist act would not be seen as proportional to the right to privacy,” Prainsack said.

Such indiscriminate collection violates the international standards for privacy established by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Kuwait ratified. The covenant requires DNA databases to be extensively regulated and proportionately narrow in scope.

In 2008, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that broad collections of non-criminal DNA likewise violated an individual’s right to privacy. The decision affected collection procedures in the United Kingdom, which had previously retained fingerprints and DNA from suspects not charged of any crime indefinitely.

Helen Wallace, the director of GeneWatch, a U.K.-based advocacy group, called the database “out of step” with an emerging human rights consensus that has emphasized narrowing DNA collections. The U.K. government, Wallace noted, destroyed millions of samples in its database after the 2008 ruling.

Kuwaiti authorities have not clarified the details of how they plan to implement the DNA database, according to several human rights advocates. The law forbids refusing or falsifying one’s DNA sample, but safeguards about how individual samples will be shared, stored and processed have not been made public.

“The law says that for anyone working with DNA improperly there will be criminal fines and potential prosecution,” Belkis Wille, Human Rights Watch’s Kuwait researcher, explained. “But that doesn’t get at the heart of the bigger issues, which are who gets access to the data and why. Judicial oversight is also currently not in the law as it been written.”

In response to a May 2015 ISIS suicide bombing in the country’s capital, the Kuwait National Assembly passed the mandatory DNA collection legislation as a counterterrorism measure that June. Kuwaiti officials told the Kuwait Times that the database would not only solve crimes more quickly in the case of terrorist acts, but also help to identify bodies in natural disasters.

But genetic experts, researchers and civil rights advocates fear that the government might expand the uses of the database beyond its original purpose—a concern known as “function creep.” In response to fears that the database might be used to reveal sensitive information about health or paternity, senior officials said that “the test is not done to diagnose any disease or obtain medical information because such information is part of individuals’ privacy and the law bans access to it.”

Bioethics advocacy organizations like GeneWatch have also raised concerns that DNA databases could be used to track individuals at scenes of protest, especially in regimes where freedom of speech is restricted. “Totalitarian regimes have often tried to build databases on all citizens to develop targets that they’d like to discriminate against,” Wallace said.

Wafa Ben Hassine, a legal analyst and former fellow with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the information revealed by DNA could further be “used to discriminate against people who are non-citizens.” In particular, human rights advocates fear that the database could be used to exclude the country’s stateless Bidoon population, which numbers around 100,000. Nationwide DNA testing could be used to establish genealogical markers of ancestry that would exclude Bidoon claims to citizenship. “People are worried this law is being said to fight terrorism, but is actually trying to eliminate as many bids for nationality as possible,” Willes explained.

The unprecedented scope of Kuwait’s plans, however, may make their implementation difficult. As databases increase in size, so do the potentials for false matches. Massive databases may actually prove less efficient in the case of terrorism, by increasing the amount of time spent on an investigation and possibly resulting in miscarriages of justice, according to Wallace.

Building such a massive database also takes time. Willes said that it appears “unlikely” that the program will be implemented in the summer timeframe suggested by authorities.

When Humans Rights Watch officials met with Kuwaiti officials in February, delegates from Kuwait had just returned from Washington where they had discussed managing their database with the FBI, Willes said. “The result of that trip,” she said, “was U.S. officials telling this Kuwaiti delegation they had no idea how you would manage something like this on a national level.”

The U.S. government has no doubt set an example: the FBI currently houses the world’s largest biometric database, storing DNA, fingerprints and other identifiers from a range of criminal and civilian settings. The U.S. also collects biometric information from travelers at national and international customs, which can be shared across federal and state law enforcement agencies.

Kuwaiti officials, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, told the Kuwait Times in January that their database would be “at par” with those in the U.S. and the U.K. If all goes as planned, they may even exceed the FBI’s capacious precedent.

The Warsaw NATO summit brought us many things. From another Obama hotel workout, including some nifty pink headphones, to more Russia is evil fear mongering, as NATO members continued to echo their undying support for a bankrupt, neo-nazi infested Ukraine…that no one really wants to touch.

What the NATO summit did bring the world, more than anything else, was the admission that NATO and the European Union will become one and the same.

OK so it was not exactly stated in such a fashion, but we all got the hint. It was telegraphed to us by Mr. NATO himself, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, when he said,

“It is a very successful summit because it is a summit with a lot of substance, and it is historic because it is a summit that takes place at a decisive time for our security…This summit is important because…[it] reflects that we are bringing the NATO-EU cooperation to a new level, and that is important for NATO, it’s important for the European Union and it’s important for all the people living in Europe and North America.”

The two behemoth super structures will begin their honeymoon period focusing on two issues together…cyber threats and EU migration.

The European Union and Nato said in a joint declaration that they will seek to expand their co-operation in responding to cyber threats and organise parallel and co-ordinated exercises starting early next year.

Remember that NATO, just a few months back, declared that a cyber attack on one member state would be seen as an attack on the alliance, and warrant a military response. All of this was later followed by a never ending media blitz on how Russian hackers were stealing everything under the sun (and in Hillary’s server basement), up until Guccifer 2.0 debunked the entire charade.

Likewise NATO declared that it is ready to use its military capabilities to help the European Union cope with the migrant influx.

Sputnik News has more on NATO’s migrant helping hand…

The European Union is currently struggling to manage a massive refugee crisis with hundreds of thousands of people leaving conflict-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty and seek asylum in Europe.

“What can NATO do about migration? Migration is a big challenge for the European Union and the European society. What is NATO as a military alliance has to contribute to that? And I think we have large military capabilities that could be applied alongside mainly the EU, which has the lead here, not supplant the EU, not to take over the job, but simply compliment the EU. And I think on Saturday you will hear some announcements of how NATO can get into that effort alongside the EU as a complimentary force,” Doug E. Lute said at the 2016 NATO Future Leaders Summit in Warsaw.

NATO is set to help remedy a migrant issue that they so handily created in the Middle East and North Africa, with their bombs, away no-fly zones, that removed stable leaders of stable countries, in exchange for chaos and tribal state conflicts.

We are sure that the NATO – EU super state will be a success. How could it not be…with the track record these two organisations have going for them.

In the wake of the NATO summit in Warsaw, western once again misinforms and mischaracterizes in the public forum. One headline speaks for all, “The Nato summit might just make Vladimir Putin think again”, via The Telegraph is all wrong, a partial truth to observe.

US President Barack Obama has put European satraps to good use once again. Acting tough, putting forth a supposed “united front” against the every mythical aggression of Putin, this hyperbole has been with us now some years. Only this time Mr. Obama and his little EU puppets betrayed the reality of America’s and Britain’s war on Russia. The Telegraph article, by Charles Crawford, one of Her Majesty’s former diplomats, is emblematic of the west’s psychotic drumbeating. The former diplomat, who now pecks out diatribe for the likes of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and other obviously subversive media, sums up Warsaw with this:

“If you want to play tough, we Nato folks can play tough too. We’re not as confused and divided as we look! Therefore what? Why not get back to all that dull dialogue?”

I am not sure I have ever heard anyone (even the criminally disturbed) refer to themselves as “NATO folks”. This slippage reminds me of something Barack Obama would chide over the teleprompter. No doubt Crawford must have identified with “We had to torture some folks”, back when Her Majesty was interested in busting up Yugoslavia. But that is another tale worth telling later on. The focus today should be on what really took place in Warsaw. And Putin and Russia running scared in the face of a notoriously inept NATO is not the moral of this story.

If Vladimir Putin is scared at all, if Russians have the slightest concern over NATO’s new battalions stationed in Estonia and elsewhere. Nato Secretary General Stoltenberg called the Warsaw decisions the “biggest reinforcement of Nato’s collective defense since the Cold War,” and with some idiotic pride, I might add. For those of you out there thinking though, Putin and Russia are afraid for the hapless soldiers Obama and the Brussels idiots have painted targets onto! Are you reading me now?

Romania has a big, red, bullseye painted onto the Aegis land based ABM system Obama just installed there. Poland gets one too, and Putin warned of consequences to these omni-strike weapons systems. But the real tragedy in all this misguidance from Washington is laser sighted onto those men and women in combat boots, on the ground at the borders of Russia. For the obtuse among you, Putin’s worry now is being forced to kill soldiers from tiny nations that might not even present a danger to Russia at all. NATO is putting hostages in front of the second most powerful military in the world, and daring the Russians to retaliate at all. This is the act of cowards, and I speak for veterans of a score of wars. Putin is accused of perpetuating “asymmetric warfare” on Eastern Europe already, but it is Washington and Brussels actually engaged in unconventional attacks.

American citizens, or even those in France and Germany, sit comfortably far away from Moscow. Comfortably, that is, as long as Russia does not mobilize fully as in World War II. Four battalions, under the leadership of US, UK, and German commands will reinforce Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on a rotational basis. Romanian and Bulgarian troops will lead Black Sea contingencies, and nations from Canada to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary have pledged token forces. Given the capabilities of the Russian military at present, one can only envision these forces as I have suggested, as multinational hostages of America, held out in front of an increasingly desperate new imperialism.

Lastly, the official NATO announcement from these Warsaw meetings absolutely brands leadership as liars. This is strong language, I know, but look at how the Romania ABM site was billed initially. Supposedly, the land based Aegis facility was sold to the Romanians and the world as a deterrent to non-existent Iranian ballistic missiles! According to the NATO pages, leaders also decided to declare Initial Operational Capability of NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defence. Stoltenberg bills the ABM capability now, as a package deal with the Baltics capabilities:

“This means that the US ships based in Spain, the radar in Turkey, and the interceptor site in Romania are now able to work together under NATO command and NATO control.”

The victims of any mix-up in western geo-strategy now in place, now we all see the warmongering psychopaths emerge triumphant. The war of wit versus the witless edges closer, to a real cataclysm only a sociopath could welcome. The west pokes steel bayonets disguised as the flowers of democracy at Moscow, and Putin’s rescue of Crimea is used as the rationale for war. America invades the world, twists arms, detains and snuffs out anyone in the way, and then pretends to ride the white horse.

The reality of this Warsaw summit is ludicrous. The people of Europe duped and betrayed again, but fascists and imperialists reincarnated. I hope when the war starts, some alien on another planet remembers some Earthlings tried to stop it. I know God knows.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

A recent report from the National Academy of Science of The United States, titled “Gene Drives on the Horizon: Advancing Science, Navigating Uncertainty, and Aligning Research with Public Values,” warns:

One possible goal of release of a gene-drive modified organism is to cause the extinction of the target species or a drastic reduction in its abundance.

Gene Drives have been called “mutagenic chain reactions,” and are to the biological world what chain reactions are to the nuclear world. The Guardian describes Gene Drives as the “gene bomb.”

The project of deliberately exterminating species is a crime against nature and humanity.

Kevin Esvelt of MIT exclaims “a release anywhere is likely to be a release everywhere,” and asks “Do you really have the right to run an experiment where if you screw up, it affects the whole world.” The NAS report cites the case of wiping out amaranth as an example of “potential benefit.” Yet, the “magical technology” of Gene Drives remains a Ghost, or the Department of Defense of the United States Government’s secret “weapon” to continue its War on Amaranthus Culturis.

“Amaranth, Amaranto, love-lies-bleeding, tassel flower, Joseph’s coat, or ramdana (gods own grain) is the grain of well-being,” Shiva writes. (Photo: Elizabeth Weller/flickr/cc)

The aforementioned study on ghost-tech was sponsored by DARPA (The Pentagon’s Research Ghost) and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (The ghost of the Microsoft Monopoly). DARPA has been busy. Interestingly, Microsoft BASIC was developed on a DARPA Supercomputer across the street from MIT, at Harvard. Where does DARPA end and MIT start? Where does Microsoft end and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation start. The orientation of our technologies has been dictated by the DARPA-Mind, a Mechanical Mind trained in War, and Gates continues to colonize meaning, just as gates had done to our lands, and the Green Revolution has done to our food.

Our planet has evolved, in balance, creating balance, for 4.6 billion years. Homo sapiens emerged around 200,000 years ago. About 10,000 years ago, Peasants developed the selection and breeding of seeds and domesticated agriculture began. Human creativity combined with nature to provide the abundance that allowed the evolution of societies and species. Humanity and Nature renewed each other, sustaining civilisation and providing the potential for the Industrial Revolution.

75 years ago DARPA-Mind began its Extermination Experiment, and sent humanity off-axis. The Chemicals, Materials, and Technologies acquired during “The War”, and patented (interestingly, the Internal Combustion Engine Patent belongs to Texaco), were forced on Amaranthus Culturis – The Cultures of Living Cycles. DARPA-Mind called it “The Green Revolution”, colonised the meanings of those two words, and began Stockpiling Chemicals of War in Our Fields; there is nothing “green” or “revolutionary” about Extermination, it must be a secret service code name for the assault that now has the names “Gene Drives”, “CRISPR”, or more accurately, Genetic Engineering.

CASE STUDY 6: CONTROLLING PALMER AMARANTH TO INCREASE AGRICULTURE PRODUCTIVITY

Objective

Create gene drives in Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri also called pigweed), to reduce or eliminate the weed on agricultural fields in the Southern United States.

Rationale

Palmer amaranth infests agricultural fields throughout the American South. It has evolved resistance to the herbicide glyphosate, the world’s most used herbicide (Powles, 2008), and this resistance has becomegeographically widespread.”

Amaranth, Amaranto, love-lies-bleeding, tassel flower, Joseph’s coat, or ramdana (gods own grain) is the grain of well-being.

Palmer Amaranth has emerged as one of the superweeds. Instead of seeing the emergence of Palmer Amaranth as a superweed, as a result of the failure of the misguided approach of Herbicide Resistant GMOs, Monsanto & Co – which includes investors, scientists, corporations, DARPA, and Gates, are now rushing to drive the Amaranth species to extinction through the deployment of an untested Tool. The tool of gene editing and gene drives – genetic “Copy-Paste”. Untested DARPAMind Tools have real impacts on our world. Intelligence requires that we stop, and assess why the tool of GMOs is creating superweeds, instead of controlling weeds, as it promised. Such assessment is real Science.

The DARPA-Mind report casually states potential harm:

Gene drives developed for agricultural purposes could also have adverse effects on human well- being. Transfer of a suppression drive to a non-target wild species could have both adverse environmental outcomes and harmful effects on vegetable crops, for example. Palmer amaranth in Case Study 6 is a damaging weed in the United States, but related Amaranthus species are cultivated for food in in Mexico, South America, India, and China.

A scientific assessment would tell us that plants evolve resistance to herbicides which are suppposed to kill them because they have intelligence, and they evolve. Denial of intelligence in life, and denial of evolution is unscientific. 107 Nobel Laureates – including two that have long passed on – “signed” a letter in support Genetic Engineering a few days ago. Clearly ‘Science’ did not prompt that “communication”. Amaranth’s root, the word amara—meaning ‘eternal’ and ‘deathless’ in both Greek and Sanskrit—connects two formidable Houses of the Ancient World. From the high slopes of the Himalayas, through the plains of north, central and south India, to the coastlines of the east, west and the south, Amaranth is a web of life in itself. Numerous varieties are found throughout the country. In fact, the Himalayan region is one of the ‘centres of diversity’ for the Amaranth.

Amaranth, Amaranto, love-lies-bleeding, tassel flower, Joseph’s coat, or ramdana (gods own grain) is the grain of well-being. It is rich in names, nutrition, history and meaning. There are records of Amaranth cultivation in South and Meso America as far back as 5,000 B.C. The sacred Amaranth criss-crosses the Ancient World, nourishing cultures from the Andes to the Himalayas. Amaranth is a sacred grain for the Indian Civilisation as much as it is for the Aztec Civilisation, civilisations in the shadow of time, yet very much alive. To force cultivation of cash crops that could be traded more easily, the cultivation of Amaranth was forbidden, and punishable by death. The “pagan” grain that built civilisations was outlawed, to pave the way for Cash Crops for traders.

amaranto.com reports:

Amaranth was also used as a ceremonial plant in the Aztec empire. In several days the religious calendar, Aztec or Inca women grind or roasted amaranth seed, mixing it with honey or human blood, giving it the shape of birds snakes, deer, or mountains and Gods, ate them with respect and devotion as Food of the Gods.

The leaves of the amaranth contain more iron than spinach, and have a much more delicate taste. If Popeye—“the sailor man”—had Amaranth on his “ship”, he wouldn’t have needed canned food to fight off his nemesis—“the bearded captain”. Besides rice bran, the grain of the amaranth has the highest content of iron amongst cereals. 1 kilogram of Amaranth flour, added to 1 kilogram of refined wheat flour, increases its iron content from 25 milligrams to 245milligrams. Adding amaranth flour to wheat/rice flour is a cheaper and healthier way to prevent nutritional anaemia; rather than buying expensive tablets, tonics, health drinks, branded and bio fortified flour, or canned spinach from the ship.

The poorest, landless woman and her children have access to nutrition through the generous gift of the Amaranth.

The Amaranth is extremely rich in complex carbohydrates and in proteins. It has 12-18% more protein than other cereals, particularly lysine—a critical amino acid. It also differs from other cereals in that 65% is found in the germ and 35% in the endosperm, as compared to an average of 15% in the germ and 85% in the endosperm for other cereals. When Amaranth flour is mixed 30:70 with either rice flour or wheat flour, the protein quality rises, from 72 to 90, and 32 to 52, respectively. The Amaranth grain is about the richest source of calcium, other than milk. It has 390 grams of calcium compared to 10 grams in rice, and 23 grams in refined flour.

The diversity of Amaranth Greens are incredible, edibles that grow uncultivated in our fields. They are a major source of nutrition. Per 100 grams, Amaranth greens can give us 5.9 grams of protein, 530 milligrams of calcium, 83 milligrams of phosphorous, 38.5 milligrams of iron,14,190 micrograms of carotene, 179 micrograms of Vitamin-C,122 milligrams of Magnesium, 0.18 Zinc, 230 Sodium, 241 Potassium. Amaranth is nearly 500% richer in Carotene than GMO Golden Rice – which is being promoted as a future miracle for addressing Vitamin A deficiency. Golden Rice has failed to materialise for 2 decades.

The poorest, landless woman and her children have access to nutrition through the generous gift of the Amaranth.

Industrial agriculture—promoted by United States Foreign Policy—treated amaranth greens as “weeds”, and tried to exterminate with herbicides. Then came Monsanto, with Round Up Ready crops, genetically engineered to resist the spraying of Round Up so that the GMO crop would survive the otherwise lethal chemical, while everything else that was green perished. As was stated by a Monsanto spokesman during the negotiations of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), Herbicide resistant GMOs “prevent the weeds from stealing the sunshine”.

This DARPA-Mind world view is distorted.

Firstly, what are weeds to Monsanto are food and nutrition for women of the South. Secondly, the sun shines with abundance for all. Sharing the sun’s blessing is a right of all species. In Amaranthus Culturis—the world of biodiversity and the sun, scarcity is alien, there is merely abundance. Sharing abundance creates abundance. It is not stealing. Stealing is a concept created by Monsanto & Co. When farmers save and share seeds, Monsanto would like to define it as “stealing”. When the sun shines on the earth and plants grow, Monsanto would like to define it as a plants “stealing” the sunshine, while Monsanto Co. privateers our biodiversity.

This is exactly how seed famine and food famine are engineered through a world view which transforms the richness of diversity into monocultures, abundance into scarcity. The paradigm of Genetic Engineering is based on Genetic Determinism and Genetic Reductionism. It is based on a denial of the self organized, evolutionary potential of living organisms. It treats living organisms as a lego set. But life is not lego, meccano, or stratego. It is life—complex, self organized, dynamic evolution—auto poetic.

The project of deliberately exterminating species is a crime against nature and humanity.

The right to food and nutrition of the people outside the US, and the right of the amaranth to continue to grow and evolve and and nourish people, can be extinguished by powerful men in the US because they messed up their agriculture with Round Up Ready crops, and now want to mess up the planet, its biodiversity, and food and agriculture systems of the world with the tool of gene drives to push species to extinction.

As in the case of GMOs, the rush for Gene Drives, and CRISPR-based Gene Editing are linked to patents. Bill Gates is financing the research that is leading to patents. And he with other billionaires has invested $130 million in a company EDITAS to promote these technologies. Bayer, the new face on Monsanto & Co, has invested $35 million in the new GMO Technologies, and committed $300 million over the next 5 years.

“Biofortification” has been given the world food prize of 2016, yet biofortification is inferior to the nutrition provided by biodiversity and indigenous knowledge.The same forces promoting biofortification are also promoting the extermination of nutritious crops like amaranth, as well as rich indigenous cultures of food.

The project of deliberately exterminating species is a crime against nature and humanity. It was a crime when Bayer and others, of IG Farben, exterminated Jews in concentration camps, and is a crime still. The very idea of extermination is a crime. Developing tools of extermination in the garb of saving the world is a crime. A crime that must not be allowed to continue any further.

We are members of an Earth Family. Every species, every race is a member of one Earth Community. We cannot allow some members of our Earth Family to allocate to themselves the power and hubris to decide who will live, and who will be exterminated.

The DARPA-Mind is obsolete.

A scientific assessment of the failure of herbicides and GMOs to control weeds, and the success of ecological agriculture in controlling pests and weeds without the use of violent tools will lead us to a paradigm-shift from industrial farming to ecological agriculture—to cultures of eternity.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She is the founder/director of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

El técnico renunció a encabezar el club italiano tras las promesas no cumplidas en términos de reclutamiento.

Tras varias semanas de negociaciones, dos días después de confirmar su llegada, el Lazio Roma anunció, a la sorpresa general, que Marcelo Bielsa había renunciado a ser el entrenador del club de la capital italiana. “Tomamos acto con estupor de las renuncias del Señor Marcelo Bielsa y de sus colaboradores, en violación flagrante con los compromisos contraídos en los contratos suscritos la semana pasada y debidamente entregados a la Liga y a la Federación Italiana de Fútbol”, enfatizó el comunicado, sin proporcionar más explicaciones.[1]

La prensa presentó esta inesperada decisión como una enésima excentricidad de quien el mundo del fútbol apoda El Loco. Según las distintas versiones difundidas, el técnico argentino habría cambiado de opinión de repente, a última hora, colocando el club del Lazio en una difícil situación deportiva y política. Otros rumores señalaban también la posibilidad para él de encabezar la selección argentina tras la renuncia de Gerardo Martino.

Ahora bien, la realidad es otra. En efecto, en el mundo del fútbol, pocos son los entrenadores tan racionales y meticulosos como Marcelo Bielsa. A pesar de su carácter volcánico nunca toma una decisión sin madura reflexión y siempre se ha mostrado fiel a sus compromisos cuando se respetan los principios establecidos. El comunicado que el rosarino hizo público permite arrojar luz sobre este asunto y los hechos presentados brindan un punto de vista revelador sobre la realidad de las negociaciones.[2]

De acuerdo con su rigor profesional, durante un mes, Marcelo Bielsa estudió en los menores detalles el club romano antes de tomar su decisión. Se informó sobre la ciudad, la historia del club y los hinchas. Visionó todos los partidos del Lazio de la temporada 2015-2016, elaboró fichas individuales de cada jugador del club listando las cualidades y los defectos, apuntó las fallas del grupo y estableció una lista de jugadores que fichar.

Así, estaba convenido que el Lazio fichara a un total de siete jugadores, entre ellos al menos cuatro antes del 5 de julio para que Marcelo Bielsa pudiera preparar la temporada en las mejores condiciones posibles. Estas llegadas eran tanto más vitales porque al menos 18 jugadores debían abandonar el club. Claudio Lolito, presidente del club del Lazio, certificó al técnico argentino que se respetaría escrupulosamente este compromiso. Sobre estas bases Marcelo Bielsa aceptó firmar el contrato. En un comunicado publicado el 7 de julio de 2016, el antiguo entrenador del Olympique de Marsella recordó este punto fundamental: “Estaba acordada, como condición indispensable para la ejecución del programa de trabajo, la contratación de al menos cuatro futbolistas antes del día 5 de julio, con el objetivo de que pudieran participar en el trabajo de pretemporada. No obstante esta situación, el Club hizo público el contrato que nos unía, aun sabiendo que este no era viable si no llegaban los refuerzos”.[3]

Ahora bien, el presidente Lolito no pudo cumplir su promesa, lo que de facto anuló el compromiso asumido por Marcelo Bielsa. El técnico argentino, afectado por la experiencia marsellesa cuando el presidente Vincent Labrune hizo promesas similares en 2014 sin jamás cumplirlas[4], decidió poner fin a su colaboración con el Lazio Roma. En efecto Bielsa, quien estudia minuciosamente todos los proyectos de colaboración deportiva, no deseaba encabezar la dirección técnica de una institución como el Lazio, con todas las responsabilidades que ello implica en términos de juego y resultados, si no se cumplían las condiciones definidas cuando se firmó el contrato.[5]

Intransigente con los principios, Marcelo Bielsa basa sus relaciones humanas y profesionales en la sinceridad. Para él la palabra empeñada es sagrada y todo fallo a un compromiso rompe irremediablemente el lazo de confianza. El rosarino sólo entiende y acepta un lenguaje: el de la verdad. Frente a los incumplimientos del Lazio, semejante desenlace era inevitable. Los hinchas del Lazio Roma, y más generalmente los amantes del fútbol, lamentarán este epílogo que los priva de un técnico adepto a un juego generoso y ofensivo.

Salim Lamrani

Doctor en Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos de la Universidad Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV, Salim Lamrani es profesor titular de la Universidad de La Reunión y periodista, especialista de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. Su último libro se titula Cuba, ¡palabra a la defensa!, Hondarribia, Editorial Hiru, 2016.

http://www.tiendaeditorialhiru.com/informe/336-cuba-palabra-a-la-defensa.html

Contacto: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Página Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SalimLamraniOfficiel

Durante la primera cumbre anual del Banco Asiático de Inversiones en Infraestructura (BAII), realizada en Pekín, los chinos revelaron sus intenciones de asumir el liderazgo mundial en el financiamiento de infraestructura. Para finales de este año, es muy probable que el BAII tenga más de 100 países de miembros, con lo cual, lograría convertirse en la institución multilateral de crédito bajo el control de los países emergentes más importante de la historia. Sin embargo, todavía está pendiente que el BAII se decida a abandonar el dólar, pues solamente de esta manera la hegemonía de Estados Unidos en las finanzas internacionales será herida de muerte.

China ya tomó la delantera frente a Estados Unidos en el financiamiento global de infraestructura. Las finanzas internacionales están en vías de transformación, pese a la fuerte oposición de la cúpula de poder norteamericana. El año pasado, desde Washington, funcionarios de alto nivel intentaron sabotear el lanzamiento del Banco Asiático de Inversiones en Infraestructura (BAII), pero no lo consiguieron.

De hecho, aquellos que eran supuestamente los aliados incondicionales del Gobierno de Estados Unidos, como Alemania, Francia, Italia y el Reino Unido, a la postre tomaron la decisión de incorporarse a la nueva institución multilateral de crédito promovida por Pekín. El presidente Barack Obama no pudo concebir que, en unos cuantos meses, el BAII haya conquistado el respaldo de más de 50 países.

Es indudable, China está precipitando el declive estadounidense en escala mundial. En abril de 2015, Larry Summers, quien fue secretario del Departamento del Tesoro durante el Gobierno de Bill Clinton, apuntó que la exitosa convocatoria del BAII representaba uno de los episodios más dramáticos para la hegemonía norteamericana: “El mes pasado puede ser recordado como el momento en que Estados Unidos perdió su papel como garante del sistema económico mundial”.

Pekín posterga la gran ofensiva contra el dólar

Con todo, hasta el momento China ha actuado con extrema cautela. Gracias a ello, casi todos los países del Grupo de los 7 (G-7, conformado por Alemania, Canadá, Estados Unidos, Francia, Italia, Japón y Reino Unido) han recibido con beneplácito la puesta en marcha del BAII. Sin embargo, si bien es verdad que la extraordinaria capacidad de convocatoria de Pekín socavó la influencia de Washington en el financiamiento mundial de infraestructura, el BAII se resiste a desechar el dólar. Aunque muchos especularon que los préstamos del BAII estarían denominados en yuanes, o quizás en monedas locales, hasta la fecha sus créditos han sido emitidos en la divisa estadounidense.

Por añadidura, cabe destacar que de los cuatros préstamos que fueron aprobados los primeros seis meses de este año por el BAII, por un total de 509 millones de dólares, tres de ellos están relacionados con proyectos de inversión en los que también participan las instituciones del viejo orden financiero mundial, ese que se construyó a imagen y semejanza de Estados Unidos tras la segunda posguerra. A mi juicio, los chinos quieren sacar provecho de las acciones que tienen invertidas en el Banco Mundial y el Banco Asiático de Desarrollo, así como de las excelentes relaciones que han sembrado con Europa.

Actualmente, el BAII financia un programa de mejora de vivienda en Indonesia junto con el Banco Mundial a través de un crédito de 216,5 millones de dólares; la construcción de una autovía en Pakistán, con un costo de 100 millones de dólares, se realiza en colaboración con el Banco Asiático de Desarrollo y el Departamento para el Desarrollo Internacional del Reino Unido; un préstamo de 27,5 millones de dólares, financiado junto con el Banco Europeo para la Reconstrucción y el Desarrollo, se utiliza para modernizar una carretera en Tayikistán; llevar energía eléctrica a las zonas rurales de Bangladesh, a través de un préstamo de 165 millones de dólares, es el único proyecto que el BAII ejecuta de forma independiente.

La vocación global del Banco Asiático de Inversiones en Infraestructura

Pese a todo, el nacimiento del BAII marca un punto de inflexión en la historia de las instituciones multilaterales de crédito por ser la primera (además del nuevo banco de desarrollo de los BRICS, integrado por Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica) en la que las economías emergentes son las principales accionistas.

Las aportaciones económicas de las tres potencias orientales de los BRICS son aplastantes: la de China es de 29,78%, seguida de la India con 8,36%, y en tercer lugar Rusia con 6,53%. En contraste, los 20 socios no regionales del BAII contribuyen solamente con una cuarta parte de los 100,000 millones de dólares del capital autorizado.

En un primer momento, el BAII se concibió bajo la idea de proveer financiamiento a los países de la región asiática principalmente, sin embargo, todo apunta a que China planea convertirlo en una institución con vocación global capaz de aglutinar las aspiraciones de todas las economías emergentes. Bajo esta perspectiva, en la ceremonia de inauguración de su primera cumbre anual, celebrada en Pekín el mes de junio pasado, el presidente del BAII, el chino Jin Liqun, anunció que en la actualidad están evaluando la incorporación de 24 países más.

En la región latinoamericana, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela son los candidatos; en cuanto a África, presentaron su postulación Argelia, Libia, Nigeria, Senegal y Sudán. También destaca la candidatura de Canadá, que junto con México y Estados Unidos forma parte del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN); en Europa, Chipre, Grecia e Irlanda están sumamente interesados. Si todo marcha tan bien como hasta ahora, es muy posible que para finales de este año el BAII cuente con más de 100 países miembros, es decir, tendría por lo menos 34 adherentes más en comparación con el Banco Asiático de Desarrollo, aunque todavía estaría lejos de alcanzar los 183 que posee el Banco Mundial.

Apostar por un mundo multipolar

El BAII tiene muchas tareas pendientes. Es que aunque la región asiática registró elevadas tasas de crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) durante las últimas dos décadas, no logró hacerse de un sistema de infraestructura de vanguardia. Sultán Ahmed Al Jaber, quien es el ministro de Gobierno de los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, reveló que en Asia-Pacífico casi 1,500 millones de personas carecen de servicios de saneamiento básico, 260 millones no tienen acceso a agua potable y por lo menos 500,000 no cuentan con electricidad en sus casas.

En conclusión, la primera cumbre anual del BAII puso de manifiesto la determinación de China para hacerse escuchar en las ‘grandes ligas’ de las finanzas internacionales. Por su compromiso con la construcción de la nueva “Ruta de la Seda” (‘Silk Road’), el BAII constituye un poderoso contrapeso frente a la influencia geoeconómica de Estados Unidos y Japón en la región asiática. Sin embargo, para acelerar la construcción de un orden mundial multipolar es decisivo que los directivos del BAII se decidan finalmente a desechar el dólar y, sobre todo, que nunca abandonen la promesa de mejorar las condiciones de vida de la humanidad.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez : Economista egresado de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

The West’s Establishment Lies and Crimes Are Leading Us to The Unthinkable

By Mark Taliano, July 11 2016

Corporate media messaging about the war on Syria is corrupt to an unprecedented level, despite years of sustainable evidence that contradicts the lies. The “West”, including U.S.–led NATO, the Persian Gulf Monarchies, and Israel, are waging a proxy war against Syria.

NATO, America’s “World Policeman”, An Instrument of US Imperial Conquest

By Stephen Lendman, July 10 2016

US-dominated NATO threatens world peace. It’s for offense, not defense. No threats exist except invented ones, lamely justifying the unjustifiable. Washington uses the alliance to advance its imperium, hanging a sword of Damocles over humanity.

The Paris Bataclan Terror Attack: Six French Military Were Present, Instructed Not to Intervene, People Died…

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 11 2016

They were instructed according to their rules of engagement not to intervene, not to come to the rescue of the people inside the Bataclan nightclub or those in the street in front of the Bataclan. More than 100 people were killed.

The New Immoral Age: How Technology Offers New Ways of Killing People and of Destroying the World

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, July 10 2016

“It turns out … that I’m really good at killing people.” President Barack Obama (1961- ), (as reported in Reed Peeples, ‘A President and his Drones’, June 29, 2016, —a review of the book ‘Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone’, S. Shane, 2015)

Police Murder Because They Are Trained To Murder. The Militarization of Law Enforcement

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, July 11 2016

In response to my request for information on US police training, readers have sent in a variety of information that seems to fit together. I am going to assemble it as best I can as a working hypothesis or provisional account.

The Bloodiest Ramadan Month on Record: ISIS Linked to Multiple Terror Attacks. But Who is Behind ISIS?

By Joachim Hagopian, July 11 2016

The bloodiest Ramadan month in modern times has just come to an end. With relentless, near daily attacks, the world’s largest terrorist organization has proudly and defiantly proclaimed full credit for committing heinous acts just to strike terror into the hearts and minds of the planet’s 7.4 billion humans.

They were instructed according to their rules of engagement not to intervene, not to come to the rescue of the people inside the Bataclan nightclub or those in the street in front of the Bataclan. 89 people were killed, more than 100 wounded.

According to a Belgian news report (July 5),  The night of the attack at the Paris Bataclan, November 13, 2015, six French military personnel of the Sentinelle Project (launched by France’s Ministry of Defense) were at the entry of the concert hall.

They did not intervene because the circumstances [pertaining to the Bataclan attacks] did not meet their “rules of engagement”, according to cdH [Political Party] Member of Parliament (Député) Georges Dallemagne in a Tuesday morning statement [July 5] on Belgium’s RTL TV.”

An early report by Nouvel Obs (May 6, 2016), confirmed that there were 8 military personnel. They outnumbered the four alleged terrorists inside the Bataclan. If they had intervened, this would have saved lives. It is unclear from the report as to time at which they were stationed in front the nightclub.

Military personnel invariably obey orders from higher up. The question is: Who instructed them not to come to the rescue of people inside the nightclub? Was it the Police or the Ministry of Defense? According to Nouvel Ops: The  military of the Sentinelle force did not have the green light to use their weapons.  “The victims will be rescued later, without the support of the Army” (translated from French).

According to the New York Times: “Most of the men who carried out the Paris attacks were already on the radar of intelligence officials in France and Belgium”,

 ‘Rules of Engagement’

There were 10,000 Sentinelle forces in France. They operate under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense. The “Rules of engagement” defined by the Ministry of Defense for the Sentinelle Forces on November 13 were clearly defined. They were mobilized and deployed throughout the country as part of a counterterrorism operation. Their mandate was to protect the French people against the alleged terrorists.

http://www.lalibre.be/actu/international/un-depute-belge-l-affirme-6-militaires-en-armes-devant-le-bataclan-ne-sont-pas-intervenus-le-soir-des-attaques-577b5d4735705701fd967b73

Below is the brief of the Ministry of Defense (French) defining the mandate of the Sentinelle Forces on November 13, 2015

Aujourd’hui, la force Sentinelle est constituée de 10 000 soldats – dont 6 500 en Ile-de-France et 3 500 en province. Au total, 50 unités de l’armée de terre ont été mises à contribution pourparticiper à cet effort. Retour sur cette montée en puissance. 

Dans la nuit du 13 novembre 2015, l’armée a immédiatement renforcé les dispositif sécuritaires des forces de sécurité intérieure (FSI) sur les sites frappés par les attentats terroristes. 

Dans les 48 heures qui ont suivis les attentats, 1000 hommes sont venus renforcer le dispositif Sentinelle d’Ile de France.

Puis en 72 heures, 2000 hommes supplémentaires portent les effectifs déployés en France à 10 000 hommes. En région parisienne, l’arrivée de ces renforts porte à 150 le nombre d’unités militaires déployées. Elles sécurisent plus de 350 lieux – en appui des FSI. En province, la vigilance reste maintenue et le 20 novembre, 500 hommes ont renforcé les 3 000 soldats déjà Lancée à la suite des attentats survenus à Paris les 7, 8 et 9 janvier 2015, l’opération Sentinelle vise à protéger les Français et sécuriser, en appui des FSI, les sites les plus sensibles à Paris et en province.

Despite claims made during NATO Summit Warsaw 2016, that “NATO remains a fundamental source of security for our people, and stability for the wider world,” it is clear that the threats and challenges NATO poses as existing to confront are in fact threats of its own, intentional creation and continued perpetuation.

From the ongoing refugee crisis triggered by NATO’s own global-spanning and ongoing military interventions, invasions, and occupations, to its continued expansion along Russia’s borders – violating every convention and “norm” that existed during the Cold War to keep it “cold,” NATO has proven that it is to the populations it poses as protector over, in fact, their greatest threat.

In particular, the summit in Warsaw, Poland centered on NATO’s expanding military presence along Russia’s borders, particularly in the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as in Poland itself.

The summit also covered ongoing NATO involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, two nations so far beyond the Atlantic states the alliance allegedly was founded to protect, it would be comical if the consequences of their far-reaching meddling weren’t so serious.

Belligerence Vs Balance 

Global peace and stability is tenuously maintained through a careful balancing act between conflicting centers of power. The story of human history is that of this balancing act being performed.

World War II, which gave way to the current international order we live in, came about because of a fundamental failure to maintain this balancing act.

Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of World War II’s genesis, was the German military build-up along the then Soviet Union’s borders characterized by Berlin at the time as a means of collective defense for Europe, when in fact it was the lead up to a full-scale invasion known now as “Operation Barbarossa.” It is troublesome particularly because NATO is currently building up its forces in almost precisely the same areas and in almost precisely the same manner Nazi Germany did in the 1930s.

When German forces crossed into Russia on June 22, 1941, a potential balance of power meant to preserve Germany and the rest of Europe against perceived Soviet menace turned into a war that devastated both Europe and Russia.

The subsequent Cold War is an example of a balancing act of power being performed mostly with success. However, despite many common misconceptions regarding the Cold War, the mere existence of opposing nuclear arsenals and the concept of mutually assured destruction was not why balance was maintained.

Instead, balance was maintained by an immense framework, painstakingly constructed by both American and Soviet leaders, at the cost of both nations’ egos, pride, and interests and involved everything from agreements about the weaponization of space, to the composition and deployment of their nuclear arsenals, and even regarding defense systems designed to protect against nuclear first strikes.

There were also specific and complex agreements arranged over the deployment of troops along each respective center of powers’ borders, including the borders of nations that existed within their spheres of influence.

It was clear during the Cold War that both Washington and Moscow vied to expand their respective reach over the rest of the world, resulting in proxy wars everywhere from the Middle East to South America, and from Africa to Asia in a “low-intensity” bid – relative to all-out nuclear war – to gain the upper-hand.

Preceding and in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, tentacles of Western influence had finally prevailed, and reached deep within Russia itself, eroding not only Russia’s own institutions and national sovereignty, but unsettling the global balance of power that had existed for decades after World War II.

It was only during the rise of Russian President Vladimir Putin that this trend was reversed and something resembling global balance reemerged.

It was clear that during the early 2000’s, whatever progress the US had made in dismantling the remnants of Soviet checks to its otherwise unlimited desire for global hegemony, would need to come to an end, and a new framework mirroring that of the Cold War, established to accommodate emerging global powers including the Russian Federation

But this is not what happened.

The New Build-Up 

Instead, under the administration of US President George Bush and continued under that of President Barack Obama, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty or ABMT) was unilaterally withdrawn from by the United States.

Additionally, the United States – beginning in the 1990s and continuing until today as seen in Ukraine – has funded and backed various political coups across Eastern Europe under the guise of “promoting democracy,” installing client states along Russia’s borders. Attempts to undermine and overthrow governments continues in nations like Belarus and Azerbaijan, as well as the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Nations successfully overthrown and co-opted by Washington have been systematically turned against Russia economically, politically, and militarily. These nations are almost immediately folded into NATO’s military alliance. In 2008 for example, the US client regime in Georgia would invade the Russian-backed republic of South Ossetia, precipitating a full-scale Russian response in what many believe was a NATO attempt to test Russian resolve. It is reminiscent of Nazi-Soviet geopolitical jousting in Finland just before Operation Barbarossa commenced.

Ukraine, overthrown in a NATO-backed putsch between 2013-2014, has also taken a hostile posture toward Russia, and again, Western military aggression, seeking Ukraine as a vector through which to strike deeper at Russia is a direct replay of events that unfolded during World War II.

The story of NATO post-Cold War has been one of confrontation, not of fostering security or stability.

Instead of working on a new framework to establish global stability by recognizing a new emerging balance of power between East and West, NATO has attempted to “race” in a reckless bid to expand its own influence as far and wide as possible before this balance of power establishes itself through the realities of military, political, and economic force

It appears that NATO may even be contemplating the destabilization and overthrow of the political order in Moscow itself with attempts to foster terrorism in Russia’s southern regions through massive NATO-backed conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as the funding and support of hostile political fronts all across Russia.

A Gradient of Balance Versus a New Cold War 

The Cold War was characterized by two distinct centers of power with little room for nations to deal in anything resembling an intermediary sphere of influence.

Today, very easily, a gradient of balance can be established between North America, Europe, Russia, and Asia – where the best benefits of dealing with each other could be enjoyed by all. The only requirements would be first allowing Europe to develop a foreign policy that reflected the best interests of its own governments, people, and industry, and second, the ability for Washington, London, and Brussels to abandon their unrealistic designs toward global hegemony and opt instead for a more realistic balance of multipolar power.

NATO precludes all of this – effectively coercing Europe into a zero sum game with Russia, just as it had done during the Cold War.

Europe faces many threats. But none of them from Russia. It is flooded by refugees fleeing NATO wars. It is weathering instability in nations like Ukraine, whose political order was upended by NATO-backed political violence. And Europe is plagued by the irresponsible, reckless actions of prospective NATO members like Georgia, run by incompetent regimes installed by and for Washington’s best interests, not the stability and long-term interests of the European people.

Europe’s leadership has clearly demonstrated no interest in recognizing these realities. It will be up to the European people themselves to demand a more rational shift away from the various, intentionally manipulative strategies of tension NATO has cultivated, and toward a more sensible and independent relationship with the world beyond the Atlantic alliance.

There has been much talk of Britain’s leaving of the European Union. Perhaps it is time for the European Union to leave the long and corrosive influence of Anglo-American interests and institutions.

Until then, the people of Europe should examine closely the lessons of history of aggressive expansion toward Russia’s borders, the lies such expansion was predicated upon, and the consequences those lies had on the security and stability of Europe when finally they were exposed through the unfolding conspiracy they were designed to obfuscate.

The wheel of history turns not because our hands are on it, turning it, but because our apathy and ignorance has prevented our hands from stopping it.

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

In response to my request for information on US police training, readers have sent in a variety of information that seems to fit together. I am going to assemble it as best I can as a working hypothesis or provisional account.  Perhaps a former or current police officer concerned about the change in the behavior of US police, or an expert on police training and practices, will come forward and verify or correct this provisional account.

First, we know that the police have been, or are being, militarized.  They are armed with weapons of war that hitherto have been used only on battlefields.  We don’t know why police are armed in this way, as such weapons are not necessary for policing the American public and are not used in police work anywhere except in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

There is an undeclared agenda behind these weapons, and neither Congress nor the presstitute media have any apparent interest in discovering the hidden agenda.

Nevertheless, the militarization of the police fits in with what we know about police training.

There are sourced reports that US police are receiving training from Israel, both from traveling to Israel and in the US from Israeli training firms or from US firms using Israeli methods.

See, for example, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/homeland.html

and  http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/us-police-get-antiterror-training-israel-privately-funded-trips

The training of American police by Israeli occupation forces is not an Internet rumor or “conspiracy theory.”  It is a fact acknowledged by the Israeli press:  http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-trains-us-law-enforcement-in-counter-terrorism/

Israeli police practices arose from decades of occupying a hostile Palestinian population while stealing the Palestinians’ land and isolating the population in ghetto enclaves.  Essentially, Israeli police practices consist of intimidation and violence.

https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-export-occupation-police-tactics/8485

We know from innumerable news reports over many years the behavior of the occupying Israeli Army toward the Palestinian population.  In four short words: it is extremely brutal.

For a soldier, especially a female soldier, to execute a child and his mother in the streets of Palestine or in the family’s home requires that soldier to have been desensitized to human life that is not Israeli.  This requires Palestinians to have been dehumanized, as the native inhabitants of what is today the United States and Australia were dehumanized by the European immigrants who stole their land.

On the basis of this information, we can infer that the Israeli training of US police teaches the police to see only police lives as valuable and the lives of the public as potential threats to police lives.  This is why American police often murder a wrongly suspected person and almost always an unarmed one.  The examples are numerous.  You can spend much of your life just watching on youtube the existing videos of wanton murders of US citizens by police.

The American police are being taught at public expense that only their lives are valuable, not our lives. Therefore, in any encounter with a citizen, the automatic assumption is that the citizen intends harm to the police and must be immediately forcefully subdued and handcuffed or, alternatively, shot dead.  The police are trained that the safest thing for the police to do is to terminate the suspect even if it is a soccer mom who forgot to signal a turn while driving her kids to a practice.

In other words, the American police have no more obligation to respect the lives and rights of US citizens than the Israeli occupying forces have to respect the lives and rights of Palestinians.

This does appear to be an accurate description of the situation.  Even the New York Times has blown the whistle on William J. Lewinski, who trains US police to shoot first and he will answer the questions for them in court, on the rare occasion that the wanton murder they committed lands them there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html?_r=1

What about racism?  Racism is the answer put forward by liberals, progressives, the putative leftwing, and by blacks themselves.

There are problems with the racist explanation.  One obvious problem is that the American police wantonly murder and brutalize white people also.  Just the other day the police murdered a 19 year old white American while he lay on the ground.  And the TSA abuses far more whites than it does blacks.  See my website for recent examples of both.

A former black police officer provides revealing insight into the real situation.  He says that about 15% of a police department consists of people who are there for the right reasons and represent a culture of public service. Another 15% are psychopaths who routinely abuse their power.  The remaining 70% of the department goes with whichever of the two cultures prevails.  Unfortunately, “the bad officers corrupt the department” and the Chicago police under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge proves the case.

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer

The former black police officer assigns blame to “institutional racism.”  However, based on what we have learned about Israeli police training, the police bias against black Americans might not be racist or totally racist.  Blacks in America have a history of dehumanization.  In the eyes of police trainers, American blacks fit the mold of Palestinians. It is easier to begin the training process by making American police indifferent to the lives of an already dehumanized element of the US population. Once the police are indoctrinated to see themselves not as servants of the people but as “exceptional, indispensable people” whose lives must never be at risk, it is a simple matter to generalize the feeling of police superiority over the white population as well.

I have always been suspicious of the racist explanation.  This is an explanation fed to the public in order to break the public into waring factions that cannot unite against their real oppressors. Indoctrinated as we are to hate and fear one another, those who rule and abuse us can do as they will.

It is as clear as a clear day that only a tiny percentage of white Americans belong to the One Percent.  The rest of us are of no more consequence to those who rule than are blacks. Yet, we are divided, fearful of and opposed to one another.  What a success for the One Percent !

Let me be clear.  Just as we oppose the mentality of violence that is being inculcated into the police who live on our earnings, numerous Jews and Israelis themselves oppose the settler mentality that the Israeli government has come to represent. Jews are among the most ardent defenders of human rights of our time. Think of Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky Ilan Pappe, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Think of the brave Israeli organizations that oppose the theft of Palestinian lands and villages.  We cannot damn an entire people for the sins of their political masters.  If so, then after Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, all Americans are damned.

The two greatest threats to the world are American and Israeli exceptionalism.  It is the success of the indoctrination of this Nazi doctrine of exceptionalism that is the source of the violence in the world today.

The problem of American police violence is that the police are now defined as exceptional and unaccountable. They can kill the rest of us without accountability, just as Washington slaughters untold numbers of peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan. Unexceptional peoples are dispensable.

It is paradoxical that training US police in the violent methods of the Israeli occupying forces is justified with the argument that it is necessary to save American lives from terrorists when the actual result is far more Americans killed by police than by terrorists.

Clearly the police training is counterproductive.

It would seem that the families of those murdered and abused by police have good grounds for suing mayors, city councils, county commissioners, governors and state legislators for negligence in police oversight.  The evidence is in.  The police are taking lives, not saving them.  The training is a total failure.  Yet it persists.  This is a high order of negligence and failure by public authorities.

For all intents and purposes, the establishment GOP has dumped Donald Trump and joined Hillary Clinton’s corporate presidential campaign. Trump “shows all the signs of being headed for defeat,” but the Democrats hope to pile up huge majorities by pretending that he’s a threat. Anti-Trump hysteria gives Bernie Sanders cover to “sheep dog” his supporters to Clinton. The only sane choice is to reject both corporate parties.

Only Trump asks why the United States spends billions of dollars patrolling the planet and why enmity against Russia is viewed as being sacrosanct by foreign policy ‘experts.’

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, did not intend to be in the position that others coveted so badly. According to one former campaign staffer, he planned to finish no higher than second place behind one of the establishment candidates. Little did he anticipate that his appeal to white nationalism would mean more to the Republican rank and file than proposals to cut taxes for rich people or defund Planned Parenthood.

Now we hear the incessant demand, “Stop Trump!” These words are used as a club to beat anyone who considers rejecting Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy or even posing questions or offering critique. The warning is a phony one because Trump shows all the signs of being headed for defeat.

Trump is a picture perfect bogeyman for the Democratic Party. If Trump isn’t calling Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers or promising to ban Muslims from travel to the United States he is making misogynistic remarks. In 2011 he spent months claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. When he isn’t talking about the “the blacks” he says a judge presiding over the Trump University lawsuits is biased because of his Mexican heritage.

But he has touched a chord with millions of mostly white Americans in part because he frees them to express their racism and also because his policy positions would benefit them. Only Trump questions the trade deals like NAFTA that send millions of living wage jobs out of the United States. Only he asks why the United States spends billions of dollars patrolling the planet and why enmity against Russia is viewed as being sacrosanct by foreign policy “experts.” At a certain point it is illogical to support the “white people’s party” if it doesn’t actually help white people.

“Republicans would rather lose (*lose) than see him in the White House.”

When it comes to serving corporate interests the Democrats and Republicans happily bury the hatchet and act in concert. But Trump’s questioning of this orthodoxy has made him persona non grata among his own. No further proof is needed after looking at Trump and Clinton fundraising results.

As of June, Hillary Clinton had $42.5 million in campaign funds on hand and Trump had only $1.3 million. He explained the predicament himself. “But we have a party that, I mean, I’m having more difficulty, frankly, with some of the people in the party than I am with the Democrats because they’re just, they don’t want to come on.”

The enormous fund raising discrepancy makes one thing crystal clear. The Republicans who raised more than $100 million each for Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio don’t want Trump to be the president. They would rather lose than see him in the White House. The heavy hitter funders didn’t suddenly lose wealth or any interest in politics. Instead they have decided to take a pass on the 2016 presidential contest because the nominee opposes what they support the most. They will not take a chance and end up with a president who risks the continuity of international globalization and the imperialism needed to keep it afloat.

So desperate is Trump’s campaign that it is purchasing email lists just two weeks before the Republican national convention. Elected officials who usually sharpen their elbows to get national exposure are finding excuses not to appear at the RNC convention at all.

“Bernie Sanders is going along with the charade as a means of saving face.”

Donald Trump isn’t likely to be president and the Democrats know it. Hillary Clinton will not only have Barack Obama’s campaign and marketing team at her disposal but she will have millions of dollars more than Trump does. The Obama Justice Department surprised no one with the announcement that she won’t be investigated for comingling personal and State Department emails on a private server. The elimination of any legal problems gives her a clear path to the Democratic nomination and victory.

One wouldn’t know the pathetic state of the Trump campaign because Democrats and the corporate media act as though he can win. They are flogging anti-Trump fears as if he is a serious candidate and it isn’t hard to figure out why.

Democrats will keep progressives silent and passive only if they whip up hysteria about the prospect of a Trump presidency. Bernie Sanders is going along with the charade as a means of saving face. Like Trump he didn’t expect to be a credible challenger and he is using Trump as an excuse to bow out and endorse Hillary Clinton as he planned to do all along. Before he executes his final “sheep dog” herding maneuver he will keep saying that he wants to join in the fight against Trump, even though Trump would have to pull off a political miracle in order to win.

Donald Trump will surely get millions of votes, but Hillary Clinton will get more and in the states that really count towards the total needed in the Electoral College. She will use Trump to move to the right and pick up votes from Republicans uneasy with his candidacy. The only risk to her is not from Trump, but from Bernie Sanders supporters who for the moment are unsure of how to respond to their leader’s impending betrayal.

The worst thing they can do is believe in the almost non-existent risk of a Trump presidency. His party doesn’t want him and the “Stop Trump” clique know it. If millions of Democrats would say they don’t want Hillary Clinton either then the fracturing of the two parties will continue and the American people will have a hope of real democracy.

Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. 

Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

When NATO was founded, that was done in the broader context of the US Marshall Plan, and the entire US operation to unify the developed Atlantic countries of North America and Europe, for a coming Cold War allegedly against communism, but actually against Russia – the core country not only in the USSR but also in Eastern Europe (the areas that Stalin’s forces had captured from Hitler’s forces).

NATO was founded with the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington DC on 4 April 1949, and its famous core is:

Article 5: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

However, widely ignored is that the Treaty’s preamble states:

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty.

Consequently, anything that would clearly be in violation of «the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments», or of «the rule of law», would clearly be in violation of the Treaty, no matter what anyone might assert to the contrary. (As regards «the principles of democracy», that’s a practical matter which might be able to be determined, in a particular case, by means of polling the public in order to establish what the public in a given country actually wants; and, as regards «individual liberty», that is often the liberty of one faction against, and diminishing, the liberty of some other faction(s), and so is devoid of real meaning and is propagandistic, not actually substantive. Even the «rule of law» is subject to debate, but at least that debate can be held publicly within the United Nations, and so isn’t nearly as amorphous. Furthermore, as far as «individual liberty» is concerned, the Soviet Union was a founding member of the UN and of its Security Council with the veto-right which that entails, but was never based upon «individual liberty»; and, so, whatever «rule of law» the UN has ever represented, isn’t and wasn’t including «individual liberty»; therefore, by the preamble’s having subjected the entire document of the NATO Treaty to «the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations», the phrase«individual liberty» in the NATO Treaty isn’t merely propagandistic – it’s actually vacuous.)

The NATO Treaty, therefore, is, from its inception, a Treaty against Russia. It is not really – and never was – a treaty against communism. The alliance’s ideological excuse doesn’t hold, and never was anything more than propaganda for a military alliance of America and its allies, against Russia and its allies. Consequently, the Warsaw Pact had to be created, on 14 May 1955, as an authentic defensive measure by Russia and its allies. This had really nothing to do with ideology. Ideology was and is only an excuse for war – in that case, for the Cold War. For example, a stunningly honest documentary managed to be broadcast in 1992 by the BBC, and showed that the US OSS-CIA had begun America’s war against «communism» even at the very moments while WW II was ending in 1945, by recruiting in Europe ‘former’ supporters of Hitler and Mussolini, who organized «false flag» (designed-to-be-blamed-against-the-enemy) terrorist attacks in their countries, which very successfully terrified Europeans against ‘communism’ (i.e., against Russia and its allies). As one of the testifiers in that video noted (at 6:45), «In 1945 the Second World War ended and the Third World War started».

 The ‘former’ fascists took up the cause against «communism» but actually against Russia; it wasn’t democracy-versus-communism; it was fascists continuing – but now under the ‘democratic’ banner – their war against Russia. This operation was, until as late as 1990, entirely unknown to almost all democratically elected government officials. The key mastermind behind it, the brilliant double-agent Allen Dulles, managed to become officially appointed, by US President Eisenhower in 1953, to lead the CIA. Originally, that subversive-against-democracy element within the CIA had been only a minority faction. Dulles had no qualms even about infiltrating outright Nazis into his operation, and his operation gradually took over not only the US but its allies. His key point man on that anti-democracy operation was James Angleton – a rabid hater of Russians, who was as psychopathic an agent for America’s aristocracy as was Dulles himself. But the CIA was only one of the broader operation’s many tentacles, others soon were formed such as the Bilderberg group. Then, the CIA financed the start of the European Union, which was backed strongly by the Bilderbergers. This was sold as democratic globalism, but it’s actually fascist globalism, which is dictatorial in a much more intelligent way than Hitler and Mussolini had tried to impose merely by armed force. It relies much more on the force of deception – force against the mind, instead of against the body.

Mikhail Gorbachev failed to recognize this fact about NATO (its actual non-ideological, pure conquest, orientation) in 1990, when he agreed and committed to the dismemberment and end of Russia’s established system of alliances, without there being any simultaneous mirror-image termination of America’s system of alliances – including NATO. He wasn’t at all a strategic thinker, but instead tried to respond in a decent way to the short-term demands upon him – such as for immediate democracy. He was a deeply good man, and courageous too, but unfortunately less intelligent than was his actual opponent at that key moment, in 1990, George Herbert Walker Bush, who was as psychopathic as Gorbachev was principled.

Alessandro Bianchi from the Anti- Diplomatico in Italy interviewed distinguished author and economist Peter Koenig on Democracy and the Future of the United States. The Interview was published in Italian. Global Research brings the English version of this important interview to the attention of  its readers. 

Alessandro Bianchi: I would start from a brutal question: what kind of country has become one that offers Donald Trump as the best candidate?

Peter Koenig: The United States is a country, almost hermetically closed to the rest of the real world, brainwashed to the core with lies and propaganda – and every day being told how great America is. This propaganda is not new, though. It has been going on for as long as the US exists, but has rapidly intensified after WWII and especially during the Cold War – and then again after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And thus, Americans, meaning North Americans – not mixing them up with Latin America which is also part of the Americas – the vast majority of the US citizens cannot see what is really going on. They are blinded by propaganda – and immobilized by their comfort. They love comfortable lives, many of them – and although they do realize that something is not as it should be, it would give them an uneasy feeling searching for the truth. The truth they suspect is too hard to swallow.

In such an ambiance someone like Donald Trump can flourish. He is different and he has a personality the populace in general lack. The populace is unhappy with what’s going on in their country, though they are ‘comfortable’ how they live and how they lived all their lives. Change is uncomfortable. Trump personalizes their change, without having to do anything. And Trump reconfirms their values – of a great country – supremacy above all. – Trump is an ‘old Nazi’, while Hillary, better called ‘Killary’ is a new Nazi, or a neo-Nazi.

You see – fascism is difficult to escape in the US of A.

But what’s the alternative to Trump? – Killary? –

With her you know whom she is working for – the Zionists, of whom she is actually part; neoliberals, of whom she is part; corporate and financial elites by whom she is paid; Israel, as the Israeli influence through AIPAC in the US and the US Congress is unparalleled and unbeatable to the point of the going saying that “the tail (Israel, the Zionists) wags the Dog (US)”. They, the Zionists support her, she supports them. The circle is perfect. And both go to war. They want the total chaos in the Middle East, to be dominated by the Israel of Netanyahu and Washington. Killary is the war candidate – perfect for the Pentagon and the Military Industrial Complex.

So – I believe, the ‘system’ – the ‘elite system’ behind the mysterious Lucifer eye on top of the pyramid on the dollar bill, this system will make Killary their next president. She is perfect for them. She and trump are but two sides of the same coin. Therefore, no chance that anything will change towards peace in the US of A in the coming years. Change may come only if people at home wake up and take politics in their own hands – seeking peace, seeking true unification – not dominion – with the rest of the world.

Peoples of the world do not need a sledgehammer, a dictator – one that enslaves them, robs them, rapes and exploits them, kills them if they don’t behave as the Masters in Washington deem necessary. People in the US suffer the same from a Trump or Killary as would the rest of the world. Poverty and injustice, the advancement of the police- and military dictatorship in the US is alarming, depriving citizens of their rights, their livelihood, their freedom. But they must wake up to stop this process.

AB: In a recent survey over 53% of Americans were against both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. How long will we continue to consider the United States a democracy? And why, in your opinion, abstention is the only form of “rebellion” of a completely excluded from the decision-making stage population?

PK:  I don’t know anyone, other than the mainstream media (MSM), that considers the US a democracy. Indeed, the last form of ‘rebellion’ – of active protest that no military can stop, is abstention from voting, not going to the polls – staying home. In a system where the people are given the candidates that the evil eye pre-selects for them – and where none of theirs would stand a chance – in such a system NOT voting may be the only solution, the only way to send a strong message of disagreement. It would, however, take an organization of campaigning much harder than folding into the mood of every four years, listening to the same lies and propaganda over and over again – and what’s worse, taking the candidates seriously. Debating Killary and Trump is already taking them too seriously, giving them credit they don’t deserve. They are both criminals – with Killary being a murderer.

AB: Bernie Sanders was really the change that many in Europe have described?

PK: Not at all. Bernie is a fake. He was and I guess, still is a test case for the system. Lucifer wants to see how far he can go – and what is it that the people want to hear. Accordingly, will be adjusted the discourse of the two candidates. Sanders has a (Senate) voting record which does not portray what he pledges to stand for. He is someone who when it suits him to be politically correct, calls Chavez a dead dictator, distancing himself from this great mentor of a free world.

What kind of a worthy candidate would do that?
Sanders, early on has said that if he should not succeed, he would support Killary. Hello! what message does that convey? – That he would support a warmonger par excellence? – Europeans like many Americans have been fooled by Bernie’s charm and rebellious appearance. All fake!

AB: What would happen to the world with a Hillary Clinton’s presidency?

PK:  The short answer – WWIII – if it hadn’t already started as one of Obama’s last agenda item to be achieved before leaving office. Killary and Israel – they would certainly not stop from annihilating the Middle East on the way to achieve The PNAC’s (Plan for a New American Century) sole objective – Full Spectrum Dominance – controlling the world. To do so, wars with Russia and China are unavoidable. I still hope – Hope dies last! – that Presidents Putin and Xi, the real visionaries and excellent chess players in this geopolitical game, will be able to gently pull out all the plugs from the monster octopus, deflating the beast economically – so as to spill as little blood as possible -and, so as the rest of the world can continue living with a peaceful economic and monetary system, the one being designed by Russia, China, India (the BRICS, now without the ‘B’), the central and eastern Asian countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and those also belonging to the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union) covering some 50% of the world population and controlling about a third of the world’s economic output.

AB: What did you feel when you saw Obama speaking recently at Hiroshima not apologizing for what was done by his country and declaring almost sarcastically – as the head of the world’s first atomic power – to hope for a world without nuclear weapons?

PK: Utter disgust – a hypocrite on top of his class.

AB: Will the growing US expansionism come to a breaking point and collision with China?

PK: As I said before, let’s hope China and Russia will be able to deflate the monster’s steady aggressions through encroachment of Russia by NATO and China by the US Navy fleet in the South China Sea. They are a constant provocation. But so far Russia and China haven’t fallen into the trap.
What is more worrisome – the European vassals, especially Germany, France and the UK, they are totally enslaved- or bought? – by Washington. They let the expansion of NATO going on, even pay for it!!! – while not realizing – are they really so blind? – that the next war, WWIII, would play out again in Europe? – Europe the third time in 100 years the theatre of war, destruction and annihilation. This time to the end of life – very likely.

AB:Although it is NATO that is bringing his installations more and more to the east, in Europe our information feeds a danger of an aggressive Russia. Who benefits feed this feeling of Russophobia?

PK: The information in Europe and elsewhere in the western world is controlled to literally 90% by 6 giant Anglo-Zionist media corporations. Every piece of propaganda news – LIES – is repeated at nauseatum by all the MSM outlets. It’s an old doctrine, Hitler and many before him knew, when you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. That’s happening to an agonizing degree in Europe – a sheer continent of vassals. – They harm themselves most – and, of course, support Lucifer behind his clandestine eye on top of the pyramid.

AB: Since the advent of the so-called Arab Spring, which began with the famous Obama’s speech at the University of Cairo in 2009, the Eastern Mediterranean has become a powder keg. Was it an external plan planned destruction of states hostile rulers in Washington, Libya and Syria in particular, or real quest for democracy and freedom?

PK: Well, my friend, you know that it had and has nothing to do with democracy. The ‘Arab Spring’ was as planned by the CIA, Mossad and other secret services of the evil powers as were the so-called Color Revolutions in the former Soviet Republics – and of course, the last one we have witnessed to the extreme, Ukraine, where Washington didn’t relent before a pure Nazi Government was installed; a Nazi Government – for which such (in)famous newspapers like the Swiss NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) seek support by asking the west to go to war against Russia. Can you imagine!

None of the destroyed states were ‘hostile’ to Washington. It is, as always, the other way around, hostility is instigated by Washington, to provoke wars and ‘regime change’ that’s precisely what has happened in the Middle East – and continues to happen until all those countries that have to fall – as it is planned in the PNAC – will eventually fall. The only ones that can stop that merciless killing machine are Russia and China.

AB: Is right to define today Aleppo as the “Stalingrad of Syria” and “the cemetery of the dreams of fascist Erdogan” as stated by the Syrian President Assad?

PK: Yes, President Assad may be right. This is an interesting allegation and association. But then again – Aleppo still stands today and Mr. Putin will not let it fall.

AB: What do you think will be the final scenario for Syria. It risks a crystallization like Cold War-style situation between the two blocks – Damascus, Russia and regional allies, on the one hand, and Kurds with the United States on the other – with Raqqa which will become a new Berlin?

PK: It’s very difficult to predict the outcome of the Syria conflict – a US instigated conflict, let me make that very clear. In any case, as it stands now, the axis Syria-Iran is still alive and well. China, the single largest client of Iran’s hydrocarbons, will not let Iran fall. Mr. Putin, likewise, will, in my opinion, not let Mr. Assad be overthrown by Lucifer and his minions. And let’s hope that they prevail. To prevail, however, Washington would have to take some major blows, some weakening blows. This is currently the case. The empire is on its last legs, as many say – breathing heavily, like an angry beast in agony – it lashes around itself and kills indiscriminately whatever it can, so nobody may survive its demise. This could well happen. The US triggering WWIII – a nuclear annihilation. But let’s hope it will NOT happen.

AB: What role, in your opinion, the human rights NGOs play in the current international context?

PK: What Human rights NGOs? – There is none left that deserves the term. They are all bought. Have you ever seen, for example, Amnesty international accusing the empire of whatever human rights abuses they have carried out – the most flagrant human rights abuser in the universe is never mentioned by AI? – What a joke! – Same with Human Rights Watch and others. They are all subdued, even Green Peace – probably all financed by the dollars of which the FED has taken on its own the power to create unlimited quantities from thin air.

AB: 14 years ago, the coup in Venezuela against the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez failed and began the US exit from Latin America. Shortly after, the US invaded Iraq. Today that the hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean wobbles, Washington uses all its weapons known to return in Latin America. Was in your opinion the President Rafael Correa right when he says that we are facing a new Plan Condor in the region?

PK: Of course, President Correa is right, when he refers to a new Plan Condor. It is happening very fast. Thinking of it makes one sick. We – those who foster hope to the end – have been hoping that at least one important part of the world, Latin America, or especially South America, will withstand the pressure of Washington. But no. These governments, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, they seem to be too honest – maybe not astute enough – to use the same weapons the neoliberals do. For example, it goes beyond me that Dilma Rousseff did not stop the propaganda media, kick them out, declare Martial Law to reinstate the rule of Law, of the democratically elected Government. Macri, as you know, closed immediately TeleSUR, the only media that brings the truth to South America. He got away with it. He is the neo-Nazi leader of Argentina.

The same with Mr. Maduro. Why does he not order the military to distribute food to the stores and assure that the electricity grid functions? We know that food is available, but the distribution is interrupted by the local rightwing forces supported and trained by Washington. The same that the CIA did in Chile to organize a coup against President Allende – they interrupted the food chain, and people took to the streets. It’s all orchestrated from Washington. Old methods in new clothes. Especially if it worked the first time, why wouldn’t it work a second and third time? – People have very short memories.

AB: And if so, considering also what happened in Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia, which techniques are used today?

PK: The techniques of infiltration. Vulnerable, buyable locals from the opposition are bought, trained in the US or even sometime on location, by the CIA and other foreign and western forces – some in the form of foreign do-gooder ‘NGOs’, to create and instigate peoples’ unhappiness – through strikes, blockages, as mentioned before, interruptions of food chains. The media propaganda. In all these countries the foreign media is by far domineering. And the local media are in the hands of oligarchs, the elite, and of course want any left-leaning government to disappear as fast and lasting as possible. And they get the steady support from Washington. The ‘election coup’ in Argentina was orchestrated largely by the media. Although there was some fraud going on during and after the elections. But most of it was done by the western rightwing media.

The ‘parliamentary coup’ in Brazil, and before in Paraguay in 2012, were remote-guided from Washington. That is not surprising. But what is surprising to me is that people just let it happen, that Dilma Rousseff just looked on as her government was being destroyed – by corrupt scoundrels who themselves should be and will eventually be in prison. Michel Temer, Brazil’s interim President, is constitutionally not allowed to stand for public office for the next at least 8 years, as he is convicted for corruption in the ‘Car Wash’ scandal. Yet, he heads Brazil’s interim government. What a farce. It’s like kids’ play – they – Lucifer’s vassals – go as far as they can, until somebody stops them. Nobody, inside or outside Brazil has had the guts to say ‘stop’ and take the necessary actions.
Never forget, money is plentiful. May it cost whatever ridiculously astronomic amount is needed to influence and buy people, money is just being produced by the empire which still has the dollar monopoly – that the rest of the world – except Russia and China – adheres to. So, that’s how everything is financed – weapons, including a destructive media bulldozer. Other, ‘normal’ countries do not have access to unlimited amounts of money. Therefore, they will not win a media war. Unless, they do what they are allowed to do: stop a slander and lie-driven media campaign, by force. This has nothing to do with free-press or freedom of expression. The Government has a democratic and constitutional right to stop lies and slander. Dilma did not use her power to stop the media lies and slander.

AB: The future of the world offers at the moment two possible tracks: a US unilateralism, particularly in the event of Clinton’s presidency, made up of areas of “free” trade treaty around the world on the NAFTA model (such as the TTIP in Europe), with millions the desperate poor products, profits only for multinationals and the planned destruction of all countries who rebel against this vision in Libya and Syria style; or, second hypothesis, a period of multilateralism, respect for sovereignty, self-determination and peace if to prevail is the alternative project to the Washington Consensus of the Brics and the regional integration in Latin America designed and built by Chavez, Lula and Kirchner. Are we a lot far from reality? And which of the two views will prevail in your opinion?

PK: US unilateralism, or a free world of sovereign countries, peacefully trading with each other… well, you know which one should prevail, and I must say that a positive outlook has a lot to do with what eventually will happen. The ‘power of the mind’ effect of human thinking and will-power is amazing. But, indeed, it may take a long time until we will be living in a world of peace, justice and equality. Foremost, it will take awakening of the “We, the People” to a different consciousness. Even if darkness will prevail for a while longer – light will overwhelmingly outshine darkness, eventually.

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. 

Corporate media messaging about the war on Syria is corrupt to an unprecedented level, despite years of sustainable evidence that contradicts the lies.

The “West”, including U.S.–led NATO, the Persian Gulf Monarchies, and Israel, are waging a proxy war against Syria. ISIS or Daesh is the designated enemy, but it has long been (publicly) acknowledged that the real enemy is President Assad of Syria, not ISIS.  All of the invading, un-islamic mercenary terrorists are the West’s “strategic assets,” including ISIS. Engineered islamophobia is all part of the Western psy- op to demonize all Muslims, to create fear, to create racism, and to create hatred — vital components for illegal wars of aggression.

Empire seeks to replace the democratic, pluralist, progressive government of President Assad with a Wahhabi-inspired, compliant, stooge government.

We have witnessed Empire’s genocidal handiwork in Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and beyond – all part of a neo-con project for global dominance, globalized war, and globalized poverty, but Syria and its allies, including Russia and Iran, have seemingly drawn a red-line with Syria. Empire’s unipolar ambitions are being frustrated on Syrian soil.

The war is not a “clash of civilizations” as some warmongers might profess; it is a clash of one civilization, Syria’s, against Western barbarism.

Criminal mainstream messaging, however, has created a state of mass political imbecilization amongst Western media consumers.  In a classic case of “reverse-projection”, people’s engineered perceptions present President Assad and Syrians as the “bad guys”, while the invading terrorists are viewed as the “good guys”.

Repeated messaging of these false narratives, coupled with sophisticated confusion-mongering, continues to weld these lies into the collective political consciousness of Western media consumers.

How did the “Establishment” orchestrate such a coup?

Ostensibly “neutral” information sources are not neutral at all. So-called “Non-Governmental Organizations” (NGOs), including very governmental sources such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) the CIA, Mossad etc. as well as oligarch (ie Soros) funded foundations, are all embedded with the terrorists, and these are the sources that are the foundation for corporate/mainstream media (MSM) “news” stories.

The White/al Qaeda Helmets, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), and Avaaz are just a few of the many corrupt NGOs lying about the War on Syria. Add to this Qatari -based Al Jazeera, and Western media’s modus operandi of trotting out “experts” who have conflicts of interest  but who nevertheless pose as “neutral” sources of information, and we see that the media serves as an agency for imperial war, rather than as an agency for truth and justice.

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  *NEW*: The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance

Meanwhile, voices of truth, justice, and peace are suppressed.  Writer/Professor Tim Anderson, an expert on the war, and author of The Dirty War on Syria (click right image to order directly from Global Research), recently posted these words:

In my country (Australia) we have seen five years of a near monolithic war narrative on Syria, and associated wartime censorship of dissenting views. Although I have probably written more than any other Australian academic on the conflict in Syria, I have been effectively black-listed from the Australian corporate and state media, because what I say does not fit the official line.

Not only are the lies enabling the siege of Syria and its peoples, but they are also propelling us blindly towards a possibly cataclysmic nuclear war against Russia and its allies.  The stakes are high, and there are ominous forebodings that Washington-based warmongering circles – namely, the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) – are intent on provoking the unthinkable — cataclysmic nuclear warfare.

The “Strategic Deterrent Coalition”, a non-profit organization, with funding from war-profiteering companies such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Orbita AK, and BAE systems, is one such “circle”.  It aims to “educate” decision-makers and “build a consensus” in favour of the “pre-emptive”/first strike use of nuclear weapons.

The jargon sounds almost benign, but the premise upon which the fear-mongering is based is patently absurd.  Prof Michel Chossudovsky explains in “ ‘The Doomsday Forum’: Senior Military, Nuclear Weapons Officials Convene… America’s ‘$1 Trillion Nuclear Weapons Plan’. Take out Russia, Iran and North Korea? “ :

Theater of the absurd: the US is intent upon using nuclear weapons as a means of self defense against Al Qaeda and ISIS under the Administration’s counter-terrorism initative:

And the United States is part of an international campaign against violent extremist organizations groups ‘seeking to destroy our democratic way of life.’

To effectively keep adversaries and potential adversaries in check, America must maintain ‘a safe, secure, effective and ready nuclear deterrent.’

Lest we forget, Al Qaeda was created by the CIA and the ISIS is supported and funded by two of America’s staunchest allies: Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

In fact, the entire “War On Terror” constitutes the “Theater of the Absurd”, since it is well- documented that the stated enemies of the “West” (ie al Qaeda/al Nusra Front, ISIS, and all the terrorists invading Syria) are supported by the West, the Gulf Monarchies, NATO, and Israel.

Instead of building a consensus for war, and first-strike nuclear attacks, we need to build a consensus for truth, justice, and peace.

As a first step, we would do well to boycott toxic mainstream media (MSM) messaging, which favours lies, injustice, and war.

(This is an expanded, edited version, of an article which appeared at Russia Insider)

 Notes

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-doomsday-forum-senior-military-nuclear-weapons-officials-convene-americas-1-trillion-nuclear-weapons-plan/5534549

Gloria La Riva, the presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), was targeted and arrested around 6:30 p.m. on July 9, along with 13 others, while filming a peaceful community demonstration and the actions by the police. Gloria was one of the first people arrested in a night marked by repeated police attacks. By midnight, more than 100 people were arrested as the police moved toward shutting down the city and suppressing any form of peaceful protest. Gloria and the others remain in detention at the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.

Gloria La Riva came to Baton Rouge to show her support for the family of Alton Sterling and the Black community, which has faced continuous violence and repression from the police. Alton Sterling’s vicious, cold-blooded murder on July 5 by police while he lay prone on the street was captured on video by activists. Sterling was selling CDs outside of a convenience store. He was held down by police and killed at point blank range for no reason. The release of that video ignited a new round of nationwide protests against the epidemic of murders carried out by the police against civilians in the United States. Now, the police in Louisiana are trying to crush any protests against their racist and murderous conduct.

“Louisiana and especially the African-American community is today facing a reign of terror and intimidation from police and law enforcement agencies,” Gloria La Riva stated from the prison where she and the others are detained. “Even though it was the police who murdered Alton Sterling in cold blood, they have gone on the offensive against those in the state who desire to exercise their First Amendment right to protest.”

What happened

Two demonstrations had been called on Saturday, July 9 to demand justice for Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and all victims of police murder. The first demonstration was called at the Triple S store where Alton Sterling was executed by a Baton Rouge police officer after two officers held him on his back and then shot him four times in the chest.

Demonstrators at the Triple S store came to join others in front of the Baton Rouge Police Department on Airline Highway at 6:00 p.m. last night. Several hundred people from the local community were gathered to demonstrate and take to the streets to demand justice. The police, in military formation and dressed in riot gear, moved in a line toward the peaceful demonstration, targeting any individual who was playing a leading role or documenting the demands of the people.

The demonstration was completely peaceful, composed of people from the surrounding community just minutes away from the Triple S store where Alton Sterling was murdered. People made and carried homemade signs and brought supplies of water that were distributed to their fellow community members to withstand the Baton Rouge summer heat. The people were dispersed after the police pushed back the demonstration onto the four corners in front of the police department.

The Circle K immediately became a center of people’s organizing, where demonstrators from the community coordinated others to go back to surround the police department, holding homemade signs and leading chants.

Gloria La Riva and the others arrested were brought to East Baton Rouge Parish Prison located at Brig. General Isaac Smith Avenue.

At 10:22 p.m. the police again lined up in a military formation taking back all the corners, pushing people into the last area of the demonstration at the Circle K gas station and store. By this time police helicopters loomed over the remaining demonstrators with the threat of the final move against those who remained. Then police, wielding batons, chased protesters in all directions, dispersing the demonstration.

By midnight Baton Rouge was under a virtual lockdown, with restaurants and other businesses all closing down early in response to the repression that the police were carrying out. The police had clearly received the go-ahead to suppress any organizing in the community to demand justice. There continues to be a heavy police presence throughout the city.

As of this afternoon, July 10, the police have not filed charges or bail amounts for the release of the those arrested. In front of the Parish Prison loved ones of those arrested over the past two nights gathered to receive word on those in the prison.

Gloria La Riva has been in communication with teams assisting with the release of those in the Parish Prison. La Riva is urging the people to continue to fight for justice and to attend the demonstration planned today at 4:00 p.m. at 445 East Washington Street, Baton Rouge, La.

Millions of people around the world have reacted with shock, outrage and revulsion at the latest videos and images of police murder in the United States. Thousands of people took part in demonstrations throughout the US Thursday, with more scheduled today.

The final horrific moments of Alton Sterling, 37, and Philando Castile, 32, have been watched and shared millions of times on Facebook and other social media. On July 5, Sterling was shot by police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at least three times at point-blank range as he was pinned down to the ground. The next day, Castile was shot at least four times during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, as his girlfriend and child watched helplessly. Both Sterling and Castile were African American.

Less publicized in the media were two other killings that underscore the pervasiveness of police violence in America, and the fact that it is not only African Americans who are targeted. On Thursday, a cell phone video was published by the Fresno Bee showing the police killing of 19-year-old Dylan Noble in Fresno, California on June 25. Noble, who was white and unarmed, can be seen lying on the ground motionless as police fire multiple bullets downward into his motionless body. This past weekend, police in Fullerton, California shot and killed 19-year-old Pedro Erik Villanueva, a Hispanic youth who was also unarmed, after a car chase.

The killing of Sterling and Castile, like almost all of the other 600 police killings that have taken place so far this year, and the thousands since the Obama administration took office, would have been “swe[pt] in the dirt” (to use the phrase of Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of one of Mr. Sterling’s children) had they not been recorded by bystanders on cell phone cameras.

It is now nearly two years since the killing of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 sparked nationwide protests against police violence. However, despite the pledges of “reform” and cynical professions of concern from the political establishment when one or another killing sparks protests, the reign of violence continues unabated. Indeed, the number of killings so far this year exceeds the number of Americans killed up to this point in 2015.

Certain conclusions must be drawn. It is impossible to understand the epidemic of police violence without understanding the reality of American capitalism. The United States is characterized by vast and growing social inequality, in which mass poverty and joblessness coexist with the almost unfathomable enrichment of a financial oligarchy. While one in seven Americans falls below the official poverty line, 400 individuals control $2.34 trillion dollars.

The same ruling class that is waging a relentless war on the working class is engaged in unspeakable violence all over the world. Domestic and foreign policy are not separated by an iron wall. The methods used abroad are increasingly being deployed to deal with the social crisis at home. Within the overall apparatus of state repression, the police, armed to the teeth with the most modern weaponry, play a central role.

Police violence is essentially a class question. Understanding that opposition to police violence threatens to become the catalyst for a broader mobilization of the working class, politicians and the media have rushed to present the killing of Sterling and Castile as motivated exclusively by racism.

Racism no doubt plays a role in many police killings. However, the claim that police violence can be solely explained in racial terms is self-contradictory and untenable. While African Americans are disproportionately victimized by of police violence, half of those killed by police are white, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. In many cases, such as in the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, the officers themselves are black or Hispanic. In some cities with the worst police violence, such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, a majority of police officers are minorities, and local governments are headed by black police chiefs, black city council members and black mayors.

Perhaps most significantly, the unending stream of police murders has taken place under the presidency of Barack Obama, an African American. The Obama administration has used federal investigations to whitewash police killings, has sided with the police in every use-of-force case brought before the Supreme Court and continues to oversee the transfer of military weaponry to local police forces throughout the country.

The Obama White House presided over the deployment of militarized police and National Guard to crack down on demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and Baltimore, Maryland last year following the killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray.

Speaking in Warsaw, Poland on Thursday, Obama defended the police while seeking to present the killings in racial terms. He pointed to “biases across the criminal justice system” that make it so, “black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents.” He added, “If communities are mistrustful of the police, it makes the officers—who are doing a great job—that’s making their jobs harder.”

Obama’s statements came the same day that the New York Times, which has in recent weeks stepped up its campaign to bury the issues of social inequality in the United States, ran a column entitled “Alton Sterling and When Black Lives Stop Mattering,” presenting the killings as the result of a “world where too many people have their fingers on the triggers of guns aimed directly at black people.”

Another column, posted on the Times’ web site Thursday night, insisted that “white America” will “never understand” the experience of “a nation of nearly 40 million black souls inside a nation of more than 320 million people.”

Such statements are aimed at undermining the instinctive feelings of solidarity felt by workers of all races to the events of this past week, while at the same time channeling opposition along channels that pose no threat to the ruling class and the economic system that it defends.

The United States is on the verge of major social and political convulsions. Over the past year, the growing political radicalization of workers and young people has found reflection in the support for Bernie Sanders, who presented himself as a socialist and focused his campaign on questions of social inequality and the power of the “billionaire class.” As Sanders moves to endorse Clinton and seek to convince his supporters to back the candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, the media and Democratic Party are seeking to change the subject: from social inequality to race and identity politics.

The speed with which the media and political establishment have sought to present police killings as merely a matter of race reflects the fear that widespread opposition to police violence might be linked up with the growing social and political radicalization of the working class.

But this is precisely what is required. The fight against police violence, like the defense of all democratic rights, can only be taken forward on the basis of a struggle to unify the working class of all races and ethnicities in a common struggle against the capitalist system.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad blamed some Western leaders for the terrorism and refugee problems facing Europe.

During a meeting on Sunday with the visiting delegation of the European Parliament headed by Vice-President of the Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs Javier Couso, the President discussed the situation in Syria, the terrorist war waged on it and the growing destructive impacts of the spread of terror to world regions.

Assad said that what is happening in Syria and the Arab region would greatly affect Europe given the geographical vicinity of the two regions and the cross-cultural communication.

He held the leaders of some Western states responsible for the problems of terrorism and extremism and the refugee flows currently facing Europe for having adopted policies that are against the interests of the peoples of these states.

The President slammed those Western leaders for providing the political cover and support to the terrorist organizations in Syria.

Striking a relevant note, President al-Assad said the European parliamentarians could play a significant role to correct the wrong policies of their governments that have caused terrorism to spread and led to worsening the living conditions of the Syrian people due to the economic blockade they imposed on them, forcing many Syrians to leave their country and seek refuge in other states.

For their part, the European delegation members said their visit to Syria and the suffering of the Syrian people they have seen firsthand would make them put effort to the effect of correcting the policies of the European governments and pressuring them into lifting the sanctions.

The European parliamentarians affirmed the need to keep Syria’s sovereignty intact, stressing that the Syrians alone should decide their country’s future without any foreign interference.

On March 27th, President al-Assad received a French delegation that included parliamentarians, intellectuals, researchers and journalists and said during the meeting that such visits by parliamentary delegations and having these figures inspect firsthand the situation in the Syrian cities could be useful for them to efficiently work to correct the wrong policies adopted by some governments, including that of France, towards what is happening in Syria.

On the 7th of July, 2016, Civil Union Public Benefit Foundation, a leading Hungarian NGO, submitted a petition to Cecilia Vikström, Chair of the Petitions Committee, calling for the dismissal of Jean-Claude Juncker and the European Commission.

According to the NGO,  the EC president and the EC as a whole have failed to address the critical political and economic issues facing the EU, fundamentally mismanaged the migrant crisis, and have ignored public sentiment in their decisions that have consistently gone against the will of  a large and ever-increasing number of EU citizens.  The outcome of the recent Brexit vote is a clear indication of public dissatisfaction with the way the EU is run, its lack of vision, and the strategic mistakes it has committed.  Jean-Claude Juncker and the European Commission have failed to maintain the unity of the organization. According to the Civil Union, they have endangered the stability of the European Union, and Europe as a whole. In its petition, the Hungarian NGO calls for the European Parliament to investigate the irresponsible activity of Jean-Claude Juncker and the European Commission.

The full, official translation of the petition submitted by the Civil Union Public Benefit Foundation can be read here: http://civilosszefogas.hu/petition-for-the-dismissal-of-the-european-commission-led-by-jean-claude-juncker/

The petition comes in the wake of previous efforts by the Civil Union, in which it called for measures to restore democracy to the EU, and to invite the electorate of the EU to express their opinion on key issues, including the handling of the migration crisis.

Civil Union Public Benefit Foundation is a Hungarian NGO funded exclusively from Hungarian sources, including donations by individual Hungarian citizens, small domestic enterprises and  it also competes for funding by the Foundation for a Civic Hungary. Civil Union has hundreds of partner organizations within Hungary, totaling over 1000 partner organizations throughout the Carpathian Basin, and has a broad based partnership with Polish civic organizations. It also has 15,000 registered individual supporters in Hungary. Its mission is to hold the political leadership – in Hungary and in the EU – accountable to the electorate, by voicing the interest and opinion of the majority of the electorate, as well as to act to safeguard the rights and interest of minority groups. Civil Union stands up for the common good in non-disruptive ways, and seeks to develop the theoretical background and the general practice of civic culture.

Anita Faust, a communications researcher and media analyst, is an activist of Civil Union.

Analysis of data released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) shows that British air strikes in Iraq and Syria in the first half of the year increased by an enormous 85% over the previous six months.

FoI data as well as updates published on the MoD’s website show that 249 strikes were launched from British aircraft and drones between July and December 2015, while 464 strikes were launched in the first six months of 2016.

As of the 30 June, the UK has carried out a total of 944 air strikes in Iraq and Syria since September 2014 and it’s likely that the UK will reach the significant milestone of 1,000 air strikes this month.  More than 13,500 strikes have been launched by the Coalition as a whole, the vast majority by the USAF.  However it should be remember that the term ‘air strike’ can cover a variety of attacks, ranging from a single weapon launched at one target, to multiple weapons launched at different targets within the same area.  In July 2015 the UK changed the way it traditionally calculated air strikes adopting instead the US methodology.  This resulted in around a 30% drop in the recorded number of strikes.  See this letter from the MoD explaining the different methodologies.

Strikes Surge, bigger bombs

The surge in strikes over the past six months can partially be attributed to the increase in the number of British aircraft taking part in bombing raids. An additional 2 Tornado and 6 Typhoon aircraft were despatched to the region following the House of Commons vote to undertake strikes in Syria in December 2015.  In addition, the Iraqi and Kurdish advance on Ramadi at the turn of the year and more recently the advance on Fallujah has also meant an upswing in the number of strikes.

As well as an increase in the number of strikes, the UK has also begun to fire much large weapons in the last three months.  On six occasions since mid-April, the UK launched multiple loads of the 1,000 lb Enhanced Paveway II and 2,000 lb Paveway III bombs, while on the 26 June, British Tornados launched 4 Stormshadow Cruise Missiles.  All these larger strikes were pre-planned in contrast to the vast majority of strikes which are dynamically targeted – that is launched ‘on the fly’.

Drone use 

Within the overall figures, it can be seen that the number of strikes carried out by British drones dipped between Jan and April 2016 (see graph below).  It is not clear why this happened but possible explanations include that the drones were being used primarily for surveillance; that they had been taken out of service to be re-fitted with new equipment (a news report showing footage of  British Reapers was blurred in May 2016 due to the addition of classified equipment); or even that some of the drones had been deployed on operations elsewhere.

Since April however there has been a marked increase in the number of strikes carried out by British drones. According to our analysis, with a total of 31 separate strikes, June 2016 has seen the highest ever number of strikes carried out by British drones in one month since the RAF began using drones in October 2007.

British air strikes in Syria 

While MPs voted in December 2015 to undertake strikes in Syria as well as Iraq, the number of British strikes that have taken place in Syria continues to be small in comparison to strikes in Iraq. Despite Michael Fallon’s argument that it was “morally indefensible” for the UK not to bomb in Syria and David Cameron’s insistence that the UK had to “crush the head of the snake”, just 51 strikes – 11% of the strikes that have taken place since the December vote –  have occurred in Syria with the majority of those occurring in December 15/January 16.

British air strikes in Syria (Dec 15 – Jun 2016)

Towards Chilcot #2?

This week the Chilcot Report will finally be published and a little more light may be shed on the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  The rise of ISIS and the roots of the current conflict in Iraq and beyond can be traced back to the disastrous decision of Bush and Blair to undertake what they euphemistically called ‘regime change’.

Blair and Bush believed that military force could remove Saddam’s regime, create peace and security for people in Iraq and the wider region, and open up huge commercial opportunities for Western corporations. They were spectacularly wrong.  Though Bush and Blair have long departed centre stage, the same faith in the effectiveness of military force to ‘take out the bad guys’ and lay the basis for lasting peace and security through flying daily bombing missions over Fallujah and Mosul is alive and well.

Meanwhile, casualty recorders continue to count the growing number of civilian dead from the air strikes. Airwars latest estimate is that a minimum of 1,358 civilians have died in the coalition bombing. The US admit to only 42 civilians having “likely” died, in their thousands of strikes, while the UK insist there is no evidence that any civilians have been killed or even injured in any of its strikes.

In many ways the hubris displayed by Bush and Blair, as well as its awful legacy, lives on.

The long-anticipated Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War released Wednesday contains stinging indictments of Britain’s role in the U.S.-led invasion, detailing failures starting with the exaggerated threat posed by Saddam Hussein through the disastrous lack of post-invasion planning. An element conspicuously missing from the report, however, are allegations of systemic abuse by British soldiers — accusations that are currently being considered by a domestic investigative body as well as the International Criminal Court.

The claims center on alleged violations committed against Iraqis held in detention by British soldiers between 2003 and 2008. Based on the receipt of a dossier outlining numerous incidents, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in 2014 reopened a preliminary examination into abuse allegations. The same examination, a step below an official investigation that could yield court cases at The Hague, had initially been closed in 2006 for lack of evidence.

Presented to the court by the British firm Public Interest Lawyers and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the January communication was followed up by a second batch of cases in September 2015, submitted by Public Interest Lawyers. By November of last year, the ICC reported that it had received 1,268 allegations of ill treatment and unlawful killings committed by British forces. Of 259 alleged killings, 47 were said to have occurred when Iraqis were in U.K. custody.

Both Public Interest Lawyers and a separate firm, Leigh Day, which has helped plaintiffs bring hundreds of parallel civil cases, have a long and tangled history with the British government. They face ongoing criticism for employing agents in Iraq to gather clients in the country and have them sign witness statements, and have been confronted with possible penalties for alleged improprieties during previous British inquiries.

According to a December Freedom of Information release, the government has already settled 323 cases, totaling some 19.6 million pounds. Citing confidentiality clauses, the British government did not in that response offer breakdowns by type of complaint — for instance, the number of settlements for deaths or serious injury.

“The MOD [Ministry of Defense] doesn’t settle unless there’s good cause — that’s the fairest assumption,” said Andrew Williams, professor of law at the University of Warwick. “One would think that with almost 20 million pounds and 300 cases you are settling some significant allegations.”

Warwick is the author of an account of the killing of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel receptionist who died while in the custody of British soldiers in September 2003. That case led to the sole prison sentence handed to a British soldier for war crimes during the occupation of Iraq. Skirting charges of manslaughter, Cpl. Donald Payne pleaded guilty to the inhumane treatment of Mousa — who suffered 93 injuries while in custody before his death — and served just one year in prison. All other members of the British military tied to the case were acquitted.

Domestically, an investigative mechanism called the Iraq Historic Allegations Team has fielded 3,363 cases since it was founded in 2010, including 325 that involved unlawful killings. According to recent figures obtained by The Guardian, a further 1,343 stem from allegations of ill treatment. Public Interest Lawyers says all the cases sent to the ICC have also been provided to IHAT.

In a rare interview, given to The Independent in early January, the investigative unit’s chief, Mark Warwick, said his team was reviewing “serious allegations,” including homicide, “where I feel there is significant evidence to be obtained to put a strong case before the Service Prosecuting Authority to prosecute and charge.”

But it remains unclear how long those investigations will take, or how many British nationals may eventually face charges. A more important question, said Clive Baldwin, senior legal analyst at Human Rights Watch, is whether high-ranking officials will face charges. As Baldwin estimates, no senior British politician or military officer has been put on trial for the crimes of their subordinates since 1651.

“Commanders who know or should have known and failed to take measures to prevent abuses can be criminally liable,” said Baldwin. “None of the criminal investigations in the UK have attempted to address this.”

The Iraq Inquiry, led by chairman John Chilcot, decided it was unequipped to tackle individual cases of abuse. The inquiry wrote that it “did consider whether it might examine systemic issues related to the detention of military and civilian prisoners” but ruled against that in light of continuing “inquiries and investigations,” including those being conducted by IHAT.

“Government will consider its findings carefully, and there will be a chance to study and debate the findings in depth,” the Ministry of Defense said in a statement. “We will ensure that lessons are learnt and acted on.”

It is precisely that systemic nature that human rights officials fear could be brushed under the rug, as it has been historically. On November 18, shortly after the ICC released its annual report on preliminary examinations, Catherine Adams, the legal director at the U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, told a meeting of ICC member states that the British government “rejects the allegations that there was any systemic abuse by British forces in Iraq.”

Bensouda, the ICC prosecutor, has said she would consider the contents of the report, as well as the results of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team. In line with its mandate, if domestic accountability measures are determined to be lacking, the ICC could begin an official investigation. But that has always been seen as a distant possibility for powerful Western countries like the U.K.; in its history, the court has never brought charges against any individual outside of Africa. The ICC has no jurisdiction over alleged American abuses committed in Iraq, as neither the U.S. nor Iraq is a member. The U.K. is, however.

On Monday, Bensouda issued a statement in response to a Telegraph article that claimed only soldiers, and not former Prime Minister Tony Blair, could be prosecuted for war crimes. That interpretation was “inaccurate,” said Bensouda; while the court does not yet have jurisdiction over “the crime of aggression” and “the specific question of the legality of the decision to use of force in Iraq in 2003,” it does have remit over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, she wrote, and refused to rule out prosecuting anyone, including Blair, for such violations.

The evidence presented to the ICC by Public Interest Lawyers includes allegations that likely would constitute war crimes. In one case, British forces arrived late at night at the home of a 43-year-old man in Basra. According to the claim, the man was separated from his family, including his wife; his 17-year-old son was “taken into a separate room, beaten, and handcuffed.” Soldiers then allegedly spent half an hour searching the house, destroying furniture and belongings. When his wife returned to the room, she found her husband “dead and covered with a blanket. He had been shot in the head.”

Other allegations include prolonged beatings by soldiers, stabbings, and sexual assaults. One detainee account recounts being raped by British personnel, who forced themselves into his mouth. “Each time he was raped he was hooded but he saw the soldiers before they raped him and each time it was different soldiers,” wrote lawyers summarizing the claim. Another man, arrested just after the invasion in March 2003, said during some periods of detention “he was raped or sexually assaulted every two hours.”

It’s uncertain if claims like these can be proven more than a decade after they allegedly took place. In its most recent quarterly update, IHAT reported that it had closed or was near to closing investigations into 59 allegations of unlawful killing. In 56 of those cases, the complaint was deemed “not sustainable” and unfit for referral to prosecutors. In May, the British Supreme Court threw out the claims of 600 Iraqis who alleged they had been unlawfully detained or mistreated by U.K. armed forces during the occupation. Citing Iraqi law, the court ruled that too much time had passed since the incidents in question.

With so much up in the air and eight years since the departure of British troops, Williams said the inquiry might have done better to at least address the question of systemic abuse.

“If you’re looking at accountability in terms of any abuses that took place against Iraqi civilians during the U.K. engagement in the occupation, the Chilcot inquiry has nothing to say,” said Williams. “They never asked those questions, so it’s not surprising that they didn’t offer any answer.”

The bloodiest Ramadan month in modern times has just come to an end. With relentless, near daily attacks, the world’s largest terrorist organization has proudly and defiantly proclaimed full credit for committing heinous acts just to strike terror into the hearts and minds of the planet’s 7.4 billion humans. This unprecedented month of holy terror that commenced at sundown on June 5th through July 5th witnessed an enormous spike in terrorist attacks like no other before it, violently marring the 30 days of religious fasting, charity and prayers for over 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide joining their families and friends in celebration. ISIS made a clear, in-our-face statement that all the globalized antiterrorist efforts to end the scourge of Islamic State terror are both too feeble and too futile to stop the carnage. Terrorists’ ultimate objective is to inflict fear and terror into people’s daily lives so that in no corner of the globe can feel safe.

Back in May a full three weeks prior to the start of Ramadan month, ISIS spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani pronounced the rally cry to warn the world:

Ramadan, the month of conquest and jihad. Get prepared, be ready to make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers, especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America.

In the twisted Islamic State terrorist version of Ramadan, Allah favors martyrdom sacrifice during the holy month and opens the gates of heaven to those who die for their Muslim cause. On the 27th day of Ramadan, celebrated as the Day of for Mohammed’s first writing of the Koran the worst attacks occurred

A brief timeline of the lethal damage caused by their month long attacks:

* June 5^th Afghanistan: MP murdered by bomb near home in Kabul also wounding 11 just hours after Taliban stormed courthouse south of capital killing 7 and injuring 21
*June 12^th US: ISIS took credit for alleged lone jihadist gunman, an Afghan American who perpetrated America’s deadliest mass shooting in history and worst terrorism on US soil since 9/11 during early morning hours at Orlando, Florida gay nightclub allegedly killing 49 and wounding 53 according to official false narrative
* June 13^th France: Islamic jihadist stabs police officer and then later his wife in a Paris suburb in front of their son
* June 13^th Philippines: ISIS linked terrorist group beheads a second Canadian citizen being held hostage
* June 20^th Kenya: Islamic terrorists from Somalia’s al-Shabaab group attacked a police vehicle with a rocket grenade launcher killing 5 policemen wounding 4 others
*June 20^th Afghanistan: Waves of multiple attacks in Kabul 14 deaths claimed by ISIS and 11 by the Taliban that include police cadets as well as Nepalese security guards; interior ministry stated 30 total dead and 58 injured
* June 21^st Jordan: A suicide truck bomb exploded at an army post killing 7 soldiers wounding 13 near refugee camp along Syrian border, the worst act of terrorism in Jordan in years
* June 27^th Lebanon: Two waves of suicide bombers attack and kill 5 men and injure dozens in a Christian town
* June 28^th Malaysia: Suicide bomber launches a grenade attack injuring 8 patrons watching a soccer match on the nightclub bar television, marking first known ISIS attack in Malaysia
* June 28^th Turkey: 3 suspected ISIS suicide bombers opened fire then blew themselves up at Istanbul airport killing 45 and wounding more than 250
* June 29^th Yemen: 43 are killed by four bombs going off at checkpoints in a southern Yemeni city claimed by ISIS
* July 2^nd Bangladesh: 7 gunmen kill 20 hostages and 2 police officers at a bakery in capital Dhaka frequented by foreigners
* July 3^rd Iraq: IS truck bomb goes off destroying multiple shops in upscale, relatively “safe” Shia neighborhood killing 250 and injuring  as the deadliest bombing in Iraq since 2003
* July 4^th Saudi Arabia: Series of three ISIS suicide bomber attacks strike sacred mosque in Medina where Prophet Mohammed is buried killing 4 security guards and a Shia mosque in Qatif while earlier another bomber attacked US Embassy in Jeddah
* July 5^th Indonesia: ISIS suicide bomber detonated a bomb outside a central Java police station injuring one police officer, marking the second ISIS attack in Indonesia after incident on January 14^th in Jakarta killed 4

Virtually all of the above violence is linked to the Islamic State caliphate.

Hitting multiple targets spread around the globe in so many countries is designed to send the message that no person on earth is safe or can be protected from terrorism. It also defiantly demonstrates that regardless of how advanced or sophisticated international counterterrorism measures may be or become, no national state authority can adequately defend its own citizens, be they Muslims or infidels alike. The holy month’s final global body count is 421 dead and 729 wounded. If murdered civilians and police in such war torn nations as Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq (in addition to the 250 killed in the one incident) are also included in the tally, over 800 innocent victims of terrorism were slaughtered in 15 different countries from the US to the Philippines. Every group became victims, Westerners, Christians, Asians, Sunnis, Shias and Arabs.

Mainstream consensus is quick to report that ISIS terrorists are attempting to make up for their recent battlefield defeats resulting in 47% lost ground territory in Iraq and 20% in Syria by unleashing its global war on infidels through stepping up terrorist attacks around the world. With Russian air support, the Syrian military has made steady progress defeating the ISIS stronghold in northern Syria and Aleppo, moving in for the kill in the ISIS de facto capital Raqqa. And Iraqi and Kurdish forces with help from Iran have made strides beating back terrorists in Falluja and holding Mosul under siege. IS leaders have been killed by coalition airstrikes and growing numbers of defectors in the ISIS ranks have fled the war zones. The recent terrorist payback in Baghdad killing 250 Iraqi citizens is no doubt a direct consequence of those battlefield losses. And now that Ramadan is over, ISIS is still going at it. After a mortar attack on a Shia shrine near Baghdad on Thursday, three suicide bombers entered the mausoleum to blow themselves up and killed 36 and injuring 40 more Iraqis. By going on the offensive with multiple deadly acts of global terrorism, ISIS hopes it can rebound its sagging recruiting numbers as well.

Some MSM articles and commentators suggest that Orlando, the Istanbul airport and most recent Saudi attacks are all acts of revenge towards the US-Turkish-Saudi coalition’s “renewed” fight against ISIS dubbed “Operation Inherent Resolve.” But it’s more apt to be a camouflaged smokescreen designed to convince former doubters that these nations long promoting and protecting Islamic State terrorists are now actually uniting with sworn enemies Russia, Iran and Syria to destroy them. That notion seems at best a farfetched joke.

What remains different over these last 30 days is, on its month long rampage, ISIS apparently decided to bite the very hand that feeds it the most, namely the US-Turkey-Saudi alliance. More than any other countries on earth, these three nations have proven to be the prime financiers, trainers, suppliers and lifeblood maintainers of this Wahhabi Takfirist brand of terrorism. Turkey’s President Erdogan has long dreamed of leading a second Ottoman Empire and the House of Saud for decades has envisioned ruling over an Islamic Sunni caliphate extending to every continent. ISIS fits well into their delusions of grandeur. After all, the royal Saudi family sees itself as the “custodians of Islam,” defending the two most sacred mosques in its backyard in Medina and Mecca. But the Medina attack delivered the royals their wakeup call, letting them and the world know they’re not doing such a swell job. Yet as a ground force alongside AQAP, ISIS terrorists and the Saudi air force fight hand-in-glove committing Yemen war crimes. And of course with the US Empire secretly deploying militant Islamic jihadists as its go-to proxy war allies in over half dozen countries for nearly a half century now, the biggest staged bloodbath [albeit no visible evidence] in US history is still using ISIS to wage its forever war on terror (and let’s not forget regime change Assad).

Yet the Islamic State made it an exclamation point this Ramadan 2016 by specifically targeting its foremost pseudo-secret allies – the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Only Israel as a secret ISIS admirer continues to escape Islamic State’s deathly wrath (although a few Palestinians were active over Ramadan shooting or stabbing a few Israelis trying to make up for the genocide against them). So why now have the trio of biggest covert supporters of global terrorism suddenly become Islamic State’s biggest targets? This presentation explores a plausible, if not probable explanation by peeling away the mainstream propaganda.

Solving any crime mystery always starts by answering the critical question who stands to gain the most from such widespread, seemingly indiscriminant slaughter of innocent human beings around the world. Answering that question addresses basic motives for committing such lethal atrocities. Another question is, beyond the local militants committing the crimes and their leaders allegedly sending orders from the Syrian battlefield, who or what organized entity has the international means and resources of carrying out such heinous actions over such a wide geographical area of the world? ISIS may be the biggest terrorist group on earth, but the vast international security-surveillance apparatus spanning the globe possesses the technological capability withfacial recognition and biometrics breakthroughs to track virtually every electronic and phone communication on the planet as well as the known whereabouts of virtually every ISIS member.

In the past law enforcement intelligence always seems to be overly familiar with the jihadists that invariably are identified soon after their dirty deed, often accidentally on purpose leaving their terrorist calling card by way of passport or ID at the crime scene, which in and of itself more than invites suspicion wafting a foul smelling false flag. If deep state actually wanted to apprehend these terrorists prior to their acting out, with both the means and the will, deep state could. But deep state continues allowing, or more aptly orchestrating from behind the curtain an ever-rising number of these terrorist attacks.

Every national and international intelligence agency in the world was well aware of the advanced three week notice calling for this year’s Ramadan month to be the most violent month of holy terror on record. Combine that fact with existing irrefutable evidence that global terrorism is a direct manifestation of the US, its Western allies along with Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf State monarchies, engineered by invisible handlers from the international intelligence community – most often the CIA, FBI, Mossad, MI6 and others, and you have the bloodiest Ramadan month on record.

By linking the skyrocketing incidence of terrorism to Islam’s holy month perpetrated by yet more Muslim extremist patsies, the powers-that-shouldn’t-be have effectively reinforced worldwide Islamophobia and religious hatred, driving a terrorized global population into yet more distrust and bigotry against 1.6 billion Muslim scapegoats. Secondly, fear of future violence from more murdering Muslims rises while justifying deep state’s increasing security lockdown and authoritarian enslavement over the global masses with yet more surveillance and draconian measures of absolute control. Thirdly, in the eyes of the world, murdering their fellow innocent Muslims only vilifies the ISIS terrorists even more. Fourth, its effect on terrorized citizens will compel a growing percentage of them to be more accepting in seeking safety and security through centralized global governance, which falls right into the New World Order agenda. Deep state wins, humanity loses, all due to the hired thugs deployed by the ruling elite.

Taking all this into account while destabilizing geopolitical events and developments continue unfolding worldwide at the accelerated breakneck pace throughout 2015 and 2016, a clearer glimpse of the bigger picture should begin to emerge. Polarizing militarization is dividing the Western and Eastern alliance into facing off as separate enemy camps driven by over-the-top US-NATO belligerence presently lined up in unprecedented numbers at the Russian border flanked by missiles aimed at Moscow, while mounting hostilities and tensions are building in the Asian Pacific around China, all demonically and premeditatedly provoked by increasing Western aggression, and we now find ourselves but a matchstick away from igniting World War III. Simultaneously, deep security state oppression and tyranny through divide and conquer-induced fragmentation of both American and Western populations is intentionally instigating growing mass civil disturbance, spreading violence and police state brutality at an alarming, war zone rate.

Meanwhile, the paper printing funny money out of thin air can only kick the house of cards can down the road so long before all of these disastrous converging developments implode on each other to totally collapse the fast crumbling global economy. Finally, growing evidence of a large celestial body creating havoc throughout our solar system is impacting every planet with far-reaching effects and changes never before observed. The gravitational and electromagnetic disturbances caused by this massive intruder into our solar system that some call Nibiru/Planet X is casting an ever-darkening shadow foretelling a potential mass extinction level event with high probability of enormous meteors and comets as hurtling projectiles toward earthly collision. This of course is one possible doomsday event that NASA and the federal government have refused to warn Americans about. Meanwhile preparing for the worst, both Russia and China have been building subterranean respite for sizeable portions of its populations with either a possible nuclear Armageddon or earth knocked off its axis scenario while US elites have only selfishly readied their underground luxury dwellings for themselves, damning the rest of us above ground as sitting duck targets. Thus, this bloodiest Ramadan appears to be just a microcosm of the macro-disasters to come. As Betty Davis would say, “Hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/.

Micah Xavier Johnson, an Afghan War veteran who spent six years in the Army Reserves, opened fire Thursday night on Dallas police who were escorting a demonstration of hundreds of people protesting the police killings of unarmed black men. He killed five police and wounded seven. Two protesters were also wounded as gunfire erupted between police and Johnson, who was heavily armed and wearing military-style body armor.

Despite initial police and media reports describing as many as half a dozen snipers “triangulated at elevated positions in different points in the downtown area” and shooting in a coordinated crossfire, all the damage was inflicted by a single gunman armed with an SKS semi-automatic rifle using .223 caliber ammunition, the civilian equivalent of the bullets with which Johnson was equipped while in Afghanistan.

As described by eyewitnesses and confirmed by cell phone videos, Johnson approached the line of police, who were in regular uniforms rather than riot gear, and opened fire with his assault rifle at nearly point-blank range. Some police returned fire, inflicting at least one wound, and they followed his blood trail as he fled into a nearby parking structure.

The gunman alternately exchanged gunfire with police and negotiated with them for several hours. These talks ended after Johnson threatened to kill more police, claimed that he had planted bombs in the parking structure and throughout the city, and declared that “the end is near.” The police deployed a remote-controlled bomb delivered by a robot, which approached Johnson and then exploded and killed him.

Johnson, a 25-year-old African-American, had told police negotiators during the lengthy standoff that he was angry over the killings of Alton Sterling on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile on Wednesday in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. “He said he was upset about the recent police shootings,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said. “The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

The police killings this week were only the trigger, however, for racial hostility and an inclination towards violence that evidently predated them. Johnson was a regular at a local gun range and had been seen by neighbors training on an obstacle course in his back yard with a heavy pack and in camouflage. His online postings reportedly include declarations of support for black nationalist groups and expressions of hatred for whites in general.

Friends who spoke with the media said Johnson was not the same man after he returned from a nine-month tour of duty in Afghanistan that ended in July 2014. He enlisted in the Army Reserves in 2009 at the age of 18, becoming a carpentry and masonry specialist in an engineering unit, and was deployed to Afghanistan in November 2013. While never officially in combat, he was well trained in the use of weapons and received five medals and a ribbon for his overseas deployment.

The murderous assault by Johnson was actually the second shooting spree on Thursday allegedly motivated by the police killings in Louisiana and Minnesota. Some 19 hours before the events in Dallas, in Bristol, Tennessee, 37-year-old Lakeem Keon Scott, who is African-American, began shooting from a motel room at cars passing on a nearby highway, killing one woman driver and wounding two other people.

When police arrived at the motel, he shot one officer in the leg before being shot himself, wounded and arrested. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued a statement reporting, “Scott may have targeted individuals and officers after being troubled by recent incidents involving African-Americans and law enforcement officers in other parts of the country.”

These events, for all their gruesome and tragic character, must be understood as political acts carried out in a definite political context.

First, the killing of the five policemen by Micah Johnson was a crime, an act of individual violence that by its very nature is politically reactionary. As an Afghan war veteran, an eyewitness to, if not a direct participant in, the brutality of American imperialism, Johnson was evidently led to draw the conclusion that mass murder was a legitimate response.

The immediate consequences of the attack underscore its right-wing character: it legitimizes police violence, beginning with the killing of Johnson himself; it aids efforts to smear those protesting against police violence; more fundamentally, it reinforces a racialist perspective that obscures the basic class contradictions of American society.

Second, the killing of Johnson by a robotic device was itself a crime, an action by which the police served as judge, jury and executioner. There is no precedent in modern US history, although bomb-disposal robots have apparently been used to deliver bombs on an ad-hoc basis by US forces in Iraq. With the robot available, why did the police not use it to deliver tear gas? Or simply wait until the wounded man, surrounded and without access to food or water, surrendered?

The police decision to kill Johnson is all the more extraordinary given their claim at the time that he might have been part of a larger conspiracy. His elimination removed the one person who could have shed light on any such plot. At the time the bomb was exploded, three people were in custody as possible accomplices in the attack. They have all since been released.

Third, the Dallas events take place in the context of an unrelenting campaign to portray the police killing of unarmed men in exclusively racial terms, even though whites comprise the largest number of those murdered by the police and in many cases the police involved include African-Americans or Hispanics and top officials such as mayors and police chiefs are black.

There is a systematic effort, promoted especially by sections of the Democratic Party and their academic and pseudo-left mouthpieces, to treat police killings not as class violence by the state against the poorest sections of the working class—white, black and Hispanic—but as race violence against blacks alone, flowing from the racism and “whiteness” of the police. It is evident that Micah Johnson had absorbed this racialist narrative and based his actions on it.

Over the last several weeks, this promotion of a racialized view of police violence and American society in general has reached the point of frenzy, particularly in the New York Times, the house organ of the Democratic Party and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. The Times publishes a major commentary on the supposedly unbridgeable racial divide in America almost daily. The most noxious recent outpouring came in an op-ed column Friday by Michael Eric Dyson, a prominent media commentator and professor of sociology at Georgetown University.

Under the headline “Death in Black and White,” he describes America as divided into two nations. “We, black America, are a nation of nearly 40 million souls inside a nation of more than 320 million people,” he begins. “It is clear that you, white America, will never understand us.”

He says of white Americans: “At birth, you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over.”

Actually, according to figures compiled by the Washington Post, there were more than 500 “white folk” who did not enjoy that “privilege” in 2015, dying after encounters with the police. There have been another 200-300 white victims so far in 2016.

What Dyson promulgates most crudely is taken up in myriad forms by Democratic Party politicians, from President Obama to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on down. They channel the legitimate, justified anger among black youth and workers over police brutality into a racialist narrative, which ends, as in Dyson’s column, with expressions of demoralized helplessness.

The logic of this approach is to subordinate workers and youth to the Democratic Party and, in particular, to the campaign to elect Hillary Clinton as Obama’s successor. In television interviews Friday and in an appearance before the convention of the African Methodist Episcopal church in Philadelphia, Clinton expressed her sympathy for the families of the two African-American men killed by police and for the families of the five police gunned down in Dallas.

In each instance, she presented the question of police violence as exclusively a matter of race and racial prejudice, declaring that white people (“people like me”) have to purge themselves of prejudice. The truth is that Clinton has nothing in common with working people, white or black or Hispanic. She represents the capitalist class and the military-intelligence apparatus of US imperialism.

The back-to-back killings of two unarmed black men, dramatized by cell phone video in the Baton Rouge case and the heart-rending live-stream Facebook posting by Diamond Reynolds, Castile’s fiancée, have provoked widespread outrage, not only among African-Americans, but more broadly among the American people as a whole.

Within the US ruling elite and both of its political parties, Democrats and Republicans, there is evident concern that such exposures of murderous police violence will spark an uncontrollable movement from below. At a rally called by the Congressional Black Caucus on Capitol Hill Friday, the group’s chairman, Representative G. K. Butterfield of North Carolina, warned, “If we fail to act this will be a long hot summer.”

But the ruling class relies on the promotion of racialist politics to divide the working class and divert the anger among youth and workers into a blind alley. It is the task of socialists to denounce these racialist lies and fight for the solidarity of the working class—black, white, Hispanic, Asian, native-born and immigrant—against the capitalist system and its political defenders.

Worst. Coup. Ever.

As the Chilcot Inquiry report is released to the public, those MPs attempting to depose Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn—their leading lights inescapably sullied by having supported the war—are suing for peace. Over a week of high-profile resignations, statements, demands, pleas and threats have seemingly done little but consolidate Corbyn’s position. In record time, it has gone from being a coup to a #chickencoup to a #headlesschickencoup.

This could be the biggest own-goal in the history of British politics. Journalists steeped in the common sense of Westminster, assumed that it was all over for Labour’s first ever radical socialist leadership. How can he lead, they reasoned, if his parliamentary allies won’t work with him? This, in realpolitik terms, merely encoded the congealed entitlement and lordly presumption of Labour’s traditional ruling caste. Even some of Corbyn’s bien-pensant supporters went along with this view. They should have known better.

Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. | Photo: Reuters

The putschists’ plan, such as it was, was to orchestrate such media saturation of criticism and condemnation aimed at Corbyn, to create such havoc within the Labour Party, that he would feel compelled to resign. The tactical side of it was executed to smooth perfection, by people who are well-versed in the manipulation of the spectacle. And yet, in the event that Corbyn was not wowed by the media spectacle, not intimidated by ranks of grandees laying into him, and happy to appeal over the heads of party elites to the grassroots, their strategy disintegrated. This was not politics as they knew it.

The befuddlement was not for want of preparation. From even before his election as Labour Party leader, there were briefings to the press that a coup would be mounted soon after his election. And in the weeks leading up to the European Union referendum, Labour Party activists reported that they were expecting a coup to be launched after the outcome was announced, regardless of what the result was. This seemed like a half-baked idea—there was still no overwhelming crisis justifying a coup attempt—and so it turned out to be.

Undoubtedly, part of the rationale for hastening the attempted overthrow was the looming publication of the findings of the Chilcot Inquiry, which was expected to be harshly critical of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, of the justification for the invasion of Iraq, and of the relationship with the Bush administration. Given the role of the Parliamentary Labour Party in leading Britain into that war, against fierce public and international opposition, and given its role in supporting the subsequent occupation, this was a bad moment to have Corbyn at the helm. In the event, Corbyn survived to make a dignified statement apologizing for Labour’s role in the disaster and promising to embark upon a different foreign policy—one quite at odds with that supported by the pro-Trident, pro-bombing backbenchers.

As the grim analysis of Chilcot spooled out into the public domain, backbench Labour MPs stood by their fallen leader. Ian Austin, a Blairite MP from Dudley, heckled during Corbyn’s speech to exhort him to “sit down and shut up”. As for others, “good faith” was the cri de coeur: Mr. Blair never acted in anything but the best of faith. Indeed, no one ever does. Blair, for his part, criticised what he described as an “addiction” to believing the worst about everyone. Here, indeed, is a man who has been able to see the good not only in President Bush, but also in Mubarak, Putin, Nazarbayev, even Qadhafi for a while. Under other conditions, Saddam Hussein would undoubtedly have been “a force for stability.” This is the problem with “good faith”: it can justify any contortions of morality or logic, and any body count. But there is little doubt that Blair emerges hugely damaged from the Inquiry which, in stressing that the invasion of Iraq was a war of choice, opens the possibility for a war crimes prosecution. And by the same reasoning, all of those MPs who supported the war, or voted to prevent the Inquiry from taking place, are discredited.

To understand how the coup failed so badly, finally screeching to a halt under the shadow of Chilcot, is to understand something about the crisis of politics. The puzzle, when Corbyn was first elected leader, was how could it possibly be that Labour would choose a hard left leadership for the first time in its history, at a time when the British Left was historically weak? On every count, the Left was doing badly. It had been eviscerated during the Thatcher years, losing in numbers and organisation, its publications folding, and had entered a dismal diminuendo thereafter. The organized labor movement, the bulwark of the Left’s hopes, was in a similar bad way, as union density and strike rates had declined year-on-year.

However, the decline of the Left’s fortunes and the rampant success of the neoliberal centre was also concurrent with a growing crisis of representative democracy, as more and more of the state’s functions were taken out of democratic control and handed over to Quangos, businesses, and unelected bodies. Millions of people, no longer seeing much real choice on offer, began to boycott the electoral system. Party elites retreated into the state and into the manipulation of news cycles, having less and less to do with mass politics.

In the context of the Labour Party, the result of this was that a generation of political leaders emerged who were experienced as special advisers, think-tankers, policy wonks and spin doctors, but had little real understanding of how to motivate activists and communicate with the broad public. In government, they were all too often advocates of state policy against their own popular base—tendency peaking with the Iraq war. And after years of having been embedded in the failed New Labour experiment, they were badly discredited among Labour members and among young people radicalizing in response to post-credit crunch austerity. Corbyn emerged in 2015 as the only leadership candidate who still understood how Labour politics was done, while also having a sense of how to fuse these methods with social media communications. And so it has proved again. The coup plotters knew all about how to manipulate old media, but they were at a loss when Corbyn stood firm, ignited his base, and thousands hit the streets in his defense, from London to Hull.

What a strange time in British politics. The outcome of the attempted overthrow of Jeremy Corbyn is thus a hugely improbable and unexpected strengthening of the Left. Since the EU referendum result, 200,000 people have joined the Labour Party, the great majority of them supporting Jeremy Corbyn. Total membership is now approximately 600,000. The shadow Cabinet has become more left wing, more multiracial, and more female. Corbyn’s own standing, having withstood the extraordinary barrage of attacks and even some friendly fire, has emerged greatly strengthened. The coup plotters, weak and disorganized by their own miscalculations, disgraced by their links to and affinity with a discredited past, are an undignified mess.

Worst. Coup. Ever.

Richard Seymour is a London-based author and broadcaster, most recently author of Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. He has a PhD from the London School of Economics, and is online editor of Salvage

John Prescott served from May 2, 1997 until June 27, 2007.

In a Sunday Mirror op-ed, he called John Chilcot’s report “a damning indictment on how the Blair Government handled the war,” adding he shares blame.

Apologizing to families of scores of British servicemen perishing in conflict dismissively ignored millions of Iraqi deaths from war, related violence, preventable diseases, starvation and overall deprivation – hundreds to thousands more dying monthly, a Western-instigated holocaust for power, privilege, dominance and all that oil.

Prescott saying he now believes war on Iraq was illegal ignores fundamental international law principles proving it all along. No nation may attack another except in self-defense – Security Council members alone permitted to authorize it, not sitting governments.

Prescott knows the law along with Blair, Bush, their ministers, other bureaucrats and anyone literate enough to look it up online, minimal effort required.

Britain partners with all US wars – all illegal since WW II, acts of premeditated naked aggression against nonbelligerent countries threatening no others.

Prescott’s mea culpa is far too little, too late – weak-kneed and insincere. He was number two to Blair during NATO’s rape of Yugoslavia, aggression on Afghanistan, a nation having nothing to do with 9/11, Iraq 2003 following the Gulf War and years of genocidal sanctions – killing on average 5,000 Iraqi children aged five or younger monthly.

Why was he silent when it mattered most? Why hasn’t he denounced Britain’s partnership with Washington in raping and destroying Libya, Syria and Yemen, supporting Israeli occupation harshness and slow-motion genocide against a defenseless Palestinian people, replacing democrats with Nazis running Ukraine, and various other high crimes?

Prescott is like all the rest, supporting lawless aggression. Then when it’s too late to matter, expressing sorrow, claiming an error of judgment based on faulty intelligence, or some other feeble excuse ringing hollow.

Meanwhile, throughout multiple war theaters involving America, Britain and their rogue partners, noncombatant civilians are being slaughtered daily, victims of imperial lawlessness.

Who mourns for them? Who cares about their suffering? How many Americans, Brits and others in Western countries know what’s going on in their name?

How many show concern and compassion enough to find out? What’ll it take to stop endless human carnage? Must we all perish to prove the horror of endless 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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