The Threat of World War III: The Great Unmentionable in the 2016 Campaign

September 19th, 2016 by Patrick Martin

The most important issue in the US presidential election is the one neither of the two main capitalist candidates, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, is talking about: the increasing likelihood that the next US president will order direct military action against Russia, China or North Korea, all countries that possess nuclear weapons.

The mounting danger of such a war was underscored by the US bombing of a Syrian government military post on Saturday, killing dozens of Syrian army soldiers. The US claim that this was done accidentally—against a major, well-known Syrian military installation, the Deir ez-Zor Air Base—has no credibility. A similar US “mistake” could easily lead to the death of Russian soldiers and escalate into a full-scale military confrontation between the two powers that control 93 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

The corporate-controlled American media is complicit in maintaining a blackout on the mounting danger of war. While US forces conduct almost daily dress rehearsals on the Russian border with Eastern Europe, in the coastal waters adjacent to China, and on the Korean peninsula, the media diverts public attention to such comparatively trivial questions as Clinton’s bout with pneumonia, Trump’s brazen lying about his role in the anti-Obama “birther” campaign, and endless speculation on which candidate is gaining an edge in their mutual mudslinging.

One of the few exceptions to the silence on the question of war was an op-ed column by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—who held the position under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama—published in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, under the headline, “Sizing Up the Next Commander-in-Chief.”

Gates criticizes Clinton for (purely verbal) concessions she has made to popular anti-war sentiment, mainly her statement during a September 7 forum in New York City ruling out putting US ground forces into Syria and Iraq, which he calls “a politically driven categorical declaration of a sort no president (or candidate) should make…” He warns Clinton to “speak beyond generalities about how she would deal with China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, the Middle East” in order to earn his support.

He is far harsher, however, towards Trump, flatly declaring him “beyond repair. He is stubbornly uninformed about the world and how to lead our country and government and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform. He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief.”

In this assessment, Gates reflects the consensus within the military-intelligence apparatus, which views Trump as unreliable on Russia, given his flattering references to President Vladimir Putin, and regards Trump’s militaristic bluster against ISIS as more bark than bite. Clinton, on the other hand, has been tested over a protracted period of time and gave her backing to a whole series of military actions, including US wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Libya, as well as the ongoing intervention in Syria.

But the most important element of the Gates column is his basic premise that the United States is heading inexorably towards war. He writes: “You wouldn’t know it from the presidential campaigns, but the first serious crisis to face our new president most likely will be international. The list of possibilities is long—longer than it was eight years ago.” He then ticks off a list of potential military crises: with China in the East and South China Sea, with Russia in Ukraine, the Baltic states or Syria, with North Korea and Iran, and with “a Middle East in flames,” including Syria, Iraq and Libya.

“Each of these challenges may require the use of the American military, the most powerful the world has ever seen,” the former Pentagon chief writes. In other words, Gates envisions the next president ordering US military action against either Russia or China, the nuclear powers with the world’s second- and fourth-largest arsenals. Beyond that, there is potential for US military action against North Korea, which possesses nuclear weapons, and against Iran, a country of 70 million people, more than the size of Iraq and Syria combined.

Here Gates gives a glimpse of the discussions that are taking place throughout the US military and foreign policy establishment. It is largely taken for granted in these circles that US forces will soon be engaged in large-scale military operations, not guerrilla warfare or counterterrorism, involving some combination of land, sea, air, cyberwarfare and even nuclear forces.

These discussions are taking an increasingly reckless form, expressed in another commentary published this weekend, on the web site of Newsweekmagazine, under the attention-grabbing headline, “Should we nuke Kim Jung Un before he nukes us?”

The author, Michael O’Hanlon, is a longtime foreign policy operative at the Brookings Institution, a major think tank for the Democratic Party. O’Hanlon supported the Iraq war and now backs Hillary Clinton. He notes that when the Obama White House briefly considered announcing a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons, it was opposed by those at Brookings “who argue that Northeast Asia might be a special case, given North Korean nuclear weapons.”

While O’Hanlon himself professes to oppose a US first-strike with nuclear weapons against North Korea—purely on the grounds of expediency, because of the superiority of US and South Korean forces in conventional armaments—the very fact that such a debate is taking place within the US national security establishment is significant.

Not one in a thousand Americans is aware that those who direct US foreign policy, in both the Democratic and Republican parties, are actively discussing nuclear war, not hypothetically, but as a practical question, arising out of escalating confrontations with Russia and China. This is the inexorable result of the development of American imperialism over the past quarter century, when it has been engaged in nearly continuous warfare.

As the World Socialist Web Site has continually explained, the war danger arises out of the very nature of capitalism as a world system. US imperialism is the most dangerous force on the planet, as it seeks to offset its declining position in the world economy by using its military superiority. The only force which can avert a catastrophe for humanity is the international working class, fighting on the basis of a socialist program.

*     *     *

It is to advance the struggle for such a program that the Socialist Equality Party is running our candidates in the 2016 US elections, Jerry White for President and Niles Niemuth for Vice President. The SEP has called an emergency conference November 5 in Detroit, under the heading “Socialism vs. Capitalism and War.” We urge all our readers to support and donate to the SEP campaign, attend election meetings being held throughout the country, and make plans to attend the conference in Detroit.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Threat of World War III: The Great Unmentionable in the 2016 Campaign

“Romanticism and War”: Contextualising a Theory of Interpretation. Jacques Pauwels’ Book on World War I

September 19th, 2016 by Dr. T. P. Wilkinson

In 2014 I reviewed what was promoted as a significant revision in the interpretation of what in Britain and continental Europe is called “The Great War” and since 1945 has been popularly called the “First World War”.1 

The revisionary aspect was the author’s contention — expressed in his title The Sleepwalkers — that the cause of the great slaughter between 1914 and 1918 was far less the intentions of the belligerents than their general incapacity to grasp the full consequences of their actions. The argument is explicitly a challenge to the narrative still taught in most school history books, as far as I can tell, that the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent in Sarajevo triggered a chain reaction culminating in the German invasion of France via Belgium (the pretext by which Britain joined France in battle against the German Empire). This chain reaction is usually attributed to the quasi-automatic operation of overt and covert diplomatic agreements—in commercial terms, the unfortunate mechanisms of “fine print”. As I argued in my review The Sleepwalkers promised far more than it could have fulfilled since the author’s relatively sympathetic treatment of Germany almost entirely omits the role of the British Empire, then certainly the world’s supreme economic and military power.

51yjgiwl3il-_sx332_bo1204203200_Jacques Pauwels new book The Great Class War 1914-1918 on the other hand is genuinely revisionary. Like his earlier book, The Myth of the Good War, this book examines the prevailing stories as to why and how the First World War started.2 However, unlike The Sleepwalkers, The Great Class War actually offers an explanation for the common—yet rarely analysed in mainstream scholarship—assertion that the war was foremost an imperialist war—a war between empires and also a war for empire. The fundamental problem with the common assertion is that generally no serious discussion of imperialism is offered. The obvious reason for this omission is that to discuss imperialism would undermine the entire narrative by which it is maintained that imperialism essentially collapsed in 1918—with the exception of a brief, if exceedingly bloody interlude between 1939 and 1945.3 The collapse of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the impending collapse of the remaining European world powers which resulted from the great catastrophe of August 1914, obscured the triumph of the American Empire which by 1945 had become the Anglo-American Empire, an ostensibly new form of power projection rebranded since 1989 as “globalisation”.

Of course, there was a serious analysis of the causes of World War I written by Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism,4 but this essay receives scant attention in mainstream historical writing, especially in the genuinely important segment—popular history. This is Dr Pauwels’ forte. In The Myth of the Good War, Dr Pauwels presents a concise examination of the central myth of the American Empire, namely, that to the extent it even exists it was disinterested and in that sense also “exceptional”—as all things American are generally considered “exceptional” (especially by Americans themselves). In his earlier book Dr Pauwels reviews the extant writing and documentation on US involvement in World War II and shows that it is entirely possible to interpret the official stories and record in such a way that one is compelled to see the second world war as a war against the Soviet Union waged by the US and its overt as well as covert allies. In this way he follows an argument made by the American historian Carroll Quigley.5 Quigley concluded from his study of the Anglo-American elite (focusing on the legacy of Cecil Rhodes) that the British ruling class and their US cousins pursued policies, which were, in fact, consistent with the British understanding of imperial domination and the manipulation of continental European politics to further the ends of the British Empire. This view coincides largely with the concept of the “vertical” and “horizontal” wars that form the centre of Jacques Pauwels’ study of the Great War.

The Great Class War ought to be read first and hopefully will receive broad attention so that his earlier book will be read too. Unlike the massive work of popular history produced by Eric Hobsbawm, The Great Class War and The Myth of the Good War provide a concise challenge to the Anglo-American narrative, which Hobsbawm, despite his Marxist orientation, never quite abandons. This may be because such books cannot be published by people who are employed at the pinnacle of elite academic institutions—without at least jeopardising one’s career. It also might be because while Hobsbawm’s work is comprehensive and certainly critical, the preoccupation with the defeat of Nazism (as opposed to fascism) made the triumph of Britain and the US seem quite benign—especially since the Soviet Union survived the Second World War, if at the cost of over 20 million dead and the demolition of most of its economy.

Hobsbawm’s treatment of the period from 1914 until 1991 is tellingly calledThe Age of Extremes.6 This nicely encapsulates the still prevailing notion that 1989 was a return to an age of normality, an end to the extremes in politics, economics or violence.

To understand the term “extremes” one has to locate something called “normality” (or to borrow an American political term “normalcy”). Perhaps the “age of extremes” is best understood by reference to what has been called “the long 19th century”—the period between 1789 and 1914. That is the time between the French Revolution and the start of World War I. Hobsbawm divides this long century into three thick volumes. It is an odyssey from the overthrow of Bourbon absolutism to the outbreak of world war in Europe. If one assumes that Hobsbawm saw the victory of the Soviet Union over the forces of Nazi Germany as the victory of the October Revolution, then one can forgive Hobsbawm’s less critical view of the US triumph. He could not have anticipated the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-90, although he did live to see it. His explanation for its collapse is surprising—that no one believed in it, not even those who governed the country. It is hard to see the determination with which the people of the Soviet Union fought their revolution and defended their country against the largest massed armies in history, armed to the teeth and bent on annihilation and say that “no one believed in it.” This platitude begs the question—what “it” was? But that is a question that cannot be addressed here. This is where the stories diverge.

The Great Class War is divided into three parts. The first part “The Long Nineteenth Century: ‘Mother’ of the Great War” describes in detail what can be called the “causes” of the war. Roughly these are democratisation (and opposition to it), nationalism/imperialism, and escalating class conflict. The second part “The Great Class War 1914 – 1918” discusses the war itself and how it was fought both as a “vertical” war and a “horizontal war”. Pauwels combines the record of the war as a military engagement with the variety of documents, including literary sources that depict its social (class) character. In part three, Pauwels describes “The Long Shadow of the Great War”—that is to say the consequences of the war. He agrees with other historians that World War II was essentially a continuation of World War I but in contrast rejects the argument that fascism was a response to the end of World War I. Pauwels also rejects therefore the assertion that fascism was a response to the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik victory.

Unlike conventional historical narrative, Pauwels maintains that the conflicts that led to the Great War were not resolved with the end of World War II. He does not share the benevolent view of World War II as the brutal, bloody but nonetheless final disposition of the questions left unsolved in 1918 or the subsequent peace agreements. The United Nations does not constitute the maturity of the naïve League. The Great Class War fundamentally changed the nature of politics and society. In other words, we are still suffering the consequences of those four years of previously unparalleled mass murder.7Class wars continued after 1945 and are being waged today.

If the long 19th century was the century of progress implied in official narratives and the defeat of Nazi Germany the pinnacle of that process, then we are still left with an interpretive dilemma. Did the French Revolution ultimately succeed? Or more generally from a world historical perspective did the ideology of that Revolution prevail? The answer to those questions depends very much on how one defines the essence of the French Revolution and what ideology one ascribes to it.

This is where Pauwels’ account begins. It is certainly the most provocative portion of the book and yet the most problematic, too. While it is uncontroversial to point out that the French Revolution failed no later than when Napoleon Bonaparte seized power and established the First Empire and equally uncontroversial to recognise the Congress of Vienna as the central event in the restoration of monarchy in Europe, it is a substantial departure from received interpretation to say that the European ruling class was driven all the way to 1914 by the desire to reverse the political, social and economic developments of the 19th century, especially its democratising features. Such an assertion requires a concept of interpretation that is explicitly denied in popular history and orthodox scholarship.

Quigley’s contention that the Milner Group, a relatively small clique in the British imperial elite who gathered under the auspices of Cecil Rhodes and were supported by his legacy; e.g., the Rhodes Trust, is relegated to the margins of so-called theories of “conspiracy”. For instance, Quigley claims that the infamous “appeasement” by Neville Chamberlain in Munich was not a weak faith placed by the British prime minister in a duplicitous Hitler but the occasion for a tactical agreement not to act against Germany in Czechoslovakia (or later in Poland) in order to make a Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union as easy as possible. He then argues that the reversal of this policy—which resulted in Churchill replacing him—was due inter alia to dissent and power struggles within the British ruling class which aimed to displace the Milner Group from its privileged position in British imperial policy.

The objection to this description of events relies primarily on the apparent absence of evidence deemed legitimate but more importantly on the defence of the official narrative that aside from the wayward Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) and the visible British fascists (e.g. Mosely)8 there could not have been any official policy that would have supported Hitler’s occupation of countries with whom Britain had mutual defence or assistance pacts. In other words, it is not the plausibility of such an interpretation, given widespread ruling class support for Hitler and Mussolini (the latter being generously funded by British SIS from the time Italy joined the Entente against Germany in the First World War),9 that is at issue but the acceptability or better said the coherence of the interpretation with the entire World War II narrative.

Quigley certainly demonstrates the plausibility—not only on the basis of his history of the Milner Group to which Chamberlain was at least connected. He offers his interpretation—although neither a communist nor a supporter of the Soviet Union—based on the actual course of events. In fact, this interpretation was implicitly shared by Joseph Davies, while serving as US Ambassador to the Soviet Union.10 Davies explicitly observed that right-wing interests prevailing in the British and French governments of the day were adamantly opposed to the Soviet Union and were just as adamant in their hopes that Germany would solve the “problem” of Bolshevism in Europe. However, the interpretation of World War II—at least in the West—focuses, almost counterfactually, upon the opposition to Nazi Germany and at least until 1945 the view of the Soviet Union as an ally against Nazism. I say counterfactually because until 1944 the only country waging serious war against Nazism in Europe was the Soviet Union.11

If it is virtually impossible to establish either in scholarship or popular history that the actions of the Allies until 1944 were primarily directed against the Soviet Union (as they had been since 1917) and not against Nazi Germany—that is to say popularise an interpretation of a period spanning approximately twenty years, then Pauwels’ attempt to show that one of the major aims of the Great War was to reverse the French Revolution must meet even more resistance.

This brings us to the central issue of the first part of Pauwels’ book: the function of interpretation. In other words, why does an interpretation of the First World War make a difference? In fact, Pauwels gives some very good reasons for taking his interpretation seriously in the third part of his study but I prefer to postpone discussing those for now.

As in Quigley’s book and to a certain extent in The Myth of the Good War, it is not alone the objective evidence that is persuasive. The arguments are only persuasive if one is first of all prepared to recognise that the narratives they challenge are somehow incoherent or, to put it another way, simply do not provide an adequate explanation for phenomena the reader is interested in explaining, that is interpreting. Here it is useful to recall Thomas Kuhn’s proposition that scientific theories are not disproven, they are simply abandoned.12 The circumstances under which they are abandoned according to Kuhn involve a preponderance of data, which the prevailing theory cannot adequately subsume. Kuhn’s proposition has meanwhile been normalised so that his term “paradigm shift” has become a cliché. However, it is not the preponderance of data that forces the observer—in Kuhn’s book the scientific investigator—to abandon a given theory. There is always more data than any theory can subsume. Rather it is a change in the interests of the observer—which may be random but may also become conventionalised—such that the data to which it is deemed appropriate to respond changes or the response to that data itself changes (e.g., by the introduction of a new instrument). Scientific theories are formula for controlling scientific behaviour. They are means by which scientists decide what to do—how to be scientists, so to speak.

The re-interpretation of the Great War as at least in part—I would agree a fundamental part—a war of restoration, of counter-revolution becomes possible once one is willing to re-examine the data of the past two centuries from the perspective innovated by Romanticism.

This is where Pauwels’ first part becomes problematic. He rightly locates the intense reactionary force cultivated and maintained in Europe’s ruling class since the French Revolution. However, he is mistaken in his interpretation of Romanticism. Thus he places Romanticism in the dock as a cultural phenomenon that helped to undermine the ideology of the French Revolution and thus nurtured the reactionary forces in European culture. This error arises because the ideology of the French Revolution is identified with the Enlightenment. While the Enlightenment certainly provided an ideological basis for the French Revolution and republicanism, it just as easily supplied a foundation for monarchy. The term “enlightened despotism” should not be understood cynically or as an oxymoron. Rather it needs to be recognised that what is called the Enlightenment was a secularisation of the prevailing ideology of Christendom. The terms “god” and “Church” were replaced by “nature” and “State” (and through the Revolution: “nation” or “people”). Nonetheless the ideology was one of hierarchical coherence between given order (whether from nature or the state) and human value (the idea that life is worth living). Its universality was a secularisation of the “city of god” and the universal church—that is to say it substituted Catholic-feudal order for a redemptive explanation in which the Church (and god) was no longer the apex.

Romanticism emerged because of the perception—by admittedly very few people—that the mere secularisation of Christendom could not solve the problem of human value, formulated, for instance, in such material questions as why does a system of universal equality fail to provide for the basic needs of all equal humans? The conflict of Romanticism was not with the universal value of humans, per se, but with the failure of the Enlightenment (secularised Christianity) to provide adequate answers to the questions Christianity obviously could not answer.13

The great insight of Romanticism was that all explanations are inadequate because language—the substance of explanations—is not, nor can it be, isomorphic with the world. The pessimism attributed to many of the Romantics was not based on the renunciation of human value or the desire for a sentimental restoration (although there were Romantics who did take this position) but due to the discrepancy between the human condition, as an organism, and the semiotic transformation upon which human survival depends. It was not that the Enlightenment was inadequate or that the French Revolution failed but that all redemptive—that is to say final solutions must fail—or end in death. The promise that all mankind would be redeemed, whether by Christ or the ultimate revolutionary triumph, was necessarily an illusion. There would always be work to do and there was no guarantee that those efforts would be successful. A revolution could fail and did. That was not necessarily an argument against revolutions—although for many people it was or and has become one.

While the French Revolution did fail in many ways, it is also true that a complete restoration of the ancièn regime also failed. That is, in fact, the point of departure for Pauwels. The ruling class recognised—as a class—that even the Congress of Vienna did not eliminate all the damage done by the French Revolution. In fact, as one scholar of pre-Marxian socialism once said to me, based on the state of working class organisation after the utter defeat of the 1848 revolutions, one could hardly anticipate the Paris Commune or its tenacity.14 So if one of the narratives of the 19th century is the development of working class consciousness—despite interruptions and serious setbacks—then it is entirely plausible to find ruling-class consciousness developing throughout the century. In fact, one ought to expect this given the far smaller and more closely knit groups involved: with common family and educational backgrounds as well as intense conventional interaction, especially the “interbreeding” of bourgeois and aristocratic families within realms and across borders.

Furthermore, there is little dispute that by the end of the 19th century the organisation of economic power—despite national boundaries—had become enormously concentrated. The indoctrination of the European elite may have differed in terms of religious confession or national identity but industrialisation led to standardisation in the forms of business and economic organisation throughout Western Europe. Hence the horizontal conflict in the Great War can only be ignored by wilful disregard of the prevailing class structures at the time. Such ideological uniformity is best seen in the stalemate to which the war ground—a symptom of the inability of either side to conceive of any other means of pursuing the conflict.

The “sleepwalking” theory of the Great War begins and ends with this ideological uniformity. All the belligerents think essentially the same and therefore act almost identically. The technical or tactical innovations are additive but in no way reflect critical insight. Slaughter continues because this is all the theory can explain or prescribe. The war only ends because both parties are exhausted and incapable of punching any more. It has become irrational. The boxers are both “punch drunk”. They collapse and the referee—in this case the US—drags the worn out antagonists into their respective corners and declares the match a draw. The purpose of this interpretation is to say “it’s over now, let’s move along”. I would also call it the psycho-pharmaceutical model of historical interpretation. The US put the somnambulists to bed after waking them from their sleep. The interpretation is somewhat more generous to the Germans because after losing two world wars, one still needs them at least to finance their share of the imperial wars since 1989.

Romanticism is important for understanding the conflicts that culminated in the Great War—but not for the reasons Pauwels gives. Romanticism resulted from the failure of the Enlightenment but it was certainly not the cause, nor was it even a popular response to that failure. On the other hand World War I was a response to a failure but a failure just barely perceived by the ruling classes. Romanticism taken as a whole was the recognition that neither the Enlightenment (in despotic or republican forms) nor a restoration to Christendom could resolve the problem for the ruling classes—namely, that their explanations for society and human value had collapsed.

Individualism, a genuine innovation, was one Romantic response to the failure of both Christendom and its secular form, the Enlightenment, to provide coherent instructions for maintaining human value. The Romantic, faced with the destructiveness of the society, sought the capacity for valuation (for finding life worth living) in self-consciousness, in the awareness that the human organism, forced as it is to innovate, is capable of validating itself through initially artistic or creative activity. The Romantic did not invent the creative, it being an unavoidable consequence of human action, but asserted that the creative act itself—the ability of the individual to create was a source of value. In 1914 one could hardly suppose that Romanticism, understood as a response to explanatory collapse, was a mass phenomenon.

The fact that so many soldiers could be mustered for the first year or two of the war was evidence that, in fact, the Enlightenment values—albeit with varying degrees of insight and complexity—had been largely internalised by 1914. The moral compulsion to stay with one’s mates, not to let them die alone, was not governed by medieval consciousness. This was the result of a notion of brotherhood that certainly conformed to Enlightenment ideals as they had been transmitted through the labour movement. These ideals were incoherent with the hierarchical system into which the ruling class, whether or not in the military, had been born and which their institutions sought to maintain. Some of this incoherence became obvious within the military itself; e.g., the “temporary gentleman” and the cultural obsession with cavalry. It might be argued that it was the military, as the most heavily indoctrinated organisation, that gave the critical impetus to the subsequent revolutions. Radicalised soldiers were essential for the initial successes of the revolutions. Hence one of the best reasons for the ruling class to promote mass slaughter would have been to prevent the accumulation of armed, organised and disciplined masses capable of combating the Establishment. Winning the war at all costs—especially of manpower—was a sensible option, especially on the main fronts in Europe.

Pauwels’ argument that the ruling classes hoped to stop or roll back the successive waves of democratisation in European society and that this attempt was both partially successful and at least in Russia a dismal failure can also be phrased in terms of cultural history: namely, the contradictions between the compromised Enlightenment that emerged from the French Revolution and the widening range of responses to that ideology. The implicit conclusion that war would discipline the masses—another way of saying stabilise their response to the Enlightenment order that the ruling classes sought to impose—is by no means extreme. The mass organisation necessary to wage the war would intensify the industrial production of goods, not only weapons. It also gave birth to new technologies of mass propaganda. At the same time this mass culture further undermined the structures that had hitherto separated the ruling elite from the “dangerous classes”.

Not unlike the Haitian Revolution’s impact on the slaveholding class—the spectre of a Black nation capable of waging war against whites—only the crass physical separation of officers from ordinary soldiers could—and only barely—maintain the fiction that the officer class was composed of superior humans and superior soldiers.15 In other words, although the war was also seen as a means of rolling back democratic aspirations, the very conditions of mass “democratic” violence meant that officers had to be sacrificed to machine guns along with private soldiers or risk that those soldiers would no longer fight. Thus the superiority of the mounted officer class was undermined by the very conditions of warfare that should have confirmed it. The increasing violence and the insane slaughter persisted with each further attempt to stabilise the ideological situation. In that sense the later justification, popularised by American propagandists, that the Great War was “a war to end war” is highly ambiguous.16 Does an end to war mean the exhaustion of the belligerents’ capacity to wage war or the pacification of the dangerous classes so that further war against them becomes unnecessary?

In any event the Great War was a product of the explanatory collapse that rendered both the pre-Enlightenment and Enlightenment redemptive strategies of the ruling classes insufficient to preserve the order that had emerged in the late-19th century, let alone restore the feudal-clerical order desired by their most reactionary elements. The Romantics merely recognised the impending collapse. They did not aid or abet it. Nietzsche and Hegel are wrongly maligned for supporting a rejection of Enlightenment humanism. Nietzsche is treated as nothing other than an enemy of mass democracy and hence also a prophet of the reaction. Nietzsche’s personal problems, cursed both by bad health and a viciously anti-Semitic sister, who increasingly controlled access to him and his work, make it advisable to distinguish Nietzsche’s insights as to the ideological incoherence of the Enlightenment (and its Judeo-Christian foundations) and the public image his sister was determined to maintain—undoubtedly fascist and anti-Semitic as her own biography demonstrates.

The Enlightenment was a rebranding of the redemptive strategy enforced by Christendom—in which human value lay solely in salvation and salvation was attainable solely through the Church. Since the Romantics recognised that this salvation was based upon a worship of death, they rejected it. Furthermore the attempt to maintain the same salvific model but substitute “nature” for “god” was rejected too—at least by the most radical Romantics. The rejection of “science” arose from the recognition that there were no “laws of nature” to be discovered. In other words, it was not scientific investigation and discovery that was challenged but the idea that the purpose of science was to exemplify the natural order. In fact, until the mid-19th century “science” was generally understood as a discrete body of self-contained knowledge and not the process of discovering (i.e. innovating) new responses to the data found in the world. The Romantics were not anti-science but anti-theology. Enlightenment science—including the opportunistic work of people like the clerical grain speculator Thomas Malthus—was a polemic for principles. Adam Smith was writing “moral philosophy”—which is all economics is even today. Malthus was a charlatan on a par with Milton Friedman. These writers were neither scientists in the modern sense nor were they significant for Romanticism. They were polemicists for the emergent bourgeoisie but not the Romantics or the late Enlightenment. While it is true that there were Romantics whose response to the collapse of the Enlightenment was reactionary, it was the recognition of this collapse and not any particular response to it that continues to characterise Romanticism.

Pauwels draws heavily on the historian Arno Meyer who rightly pointed out that the Russian Revolution had the character of a plan, to fulfil what the French Revolution had failed to deliver.17 In this sense the Russian Revolution was the first conscious attempt to realise the secular redemption of which there was only a hint in 1789. The World War aggravated the conditions under which the Russian Revolution, unlike its French predecessor, could not become an “international” revolution, despite the ambitions of its leaders. As Rudi Dutschke once said, there was the “idea” of world revolutionary solidarity in 1917 but the historical conditions were lacking its realisation.18 In 1789 the prevailing dynastic system in Europe forced the French to define the revolution nationally (as opposed to the Glorious Revolution in Britain which was dynastic).19 Britain and Austria then waged war not just against regicide but also to preserve the dynastic principle itself and oppose the very concept of “citoyen”. Nonetheless, by 1914 the notion of citizen was firmly anchored in those states that called themselves “constitutional monarchies” (even if the term “subject” was still in use) and republics.

Pauwels then explores the relevance of imperialism. On one hand the major European powers were competing for control over the world’s population, territory, resources and markets. Britain and France were the dominant imperial powers. Spain had lost nearly all its remaining empire either to wars of independence or to the US. Portugal had been an insignificant satellite of Britain since the Napoleonic Wars. Belgium owned the Congo—a territory as large as Western Europe. Germany was the leading industrialised country after Britain but almost entirely devoid of colonies and access to the cheap raw materials to make it competitive against Britain. The ambitions of Germany’s industrial elite were necessarily opposed to the maintenance of Britain’s position as hegemonic world power.

So we have the triggers in Austria-Hungary but the explosives and combustibles for the Great War are spread throughout the West.

At this point it is perhaps useful to draw attention to another work, published in 2014. Markus Osterrieder’s Welt im Umbruch (World in Upheaval) will probably never make it into English, not only because of its size but also because of its ostensible concern with the reaction of Rudolf Steiner and the Anthroposophy movement to the war.20 Osterrieder is a German historian. He takes Quigley’s description of the Anglo-American elite seriously and also argues that the British role in the Great War has been grossly understated and distorted. Osterrieder devotes enormous attention to the development of the “national question” in Europe and above all the collapse of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. One of Osterrieder’s arguments—especially given the current knowledge about so-called “colour revolutions”—is that the British Empire maintained an extensive clandestine network which infiltrated nationalist organisations throughout Europe, especially in Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. In other words, the British Empire was engaged in the same deep covert political manipulation of internal political and cultural movements in Europe before 1914 that became the specialty of the US Central Intelligence Agency after 1945.

To this day the precise circumstances surrounding the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne are shrouded in ambiguity. The ostensible trigger for the Great War is about as certain as the cause of the USS Maine. Yet schoolbooks—and these are important—continue to report that the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbour caused the US war against Spain (called the Spanish-American War in the US) and that an irate Serbian caused the Great War.

So the first and most important contribution of a Dr Pauwels’ book is to redefine the “cause” of the war and to remove it from the comic book narrative that dominates school and university depictions of this epic catastrophe.

Dr Pauwels’ second and theoretically as well as didactically most important argument is the substantive elaboration of two axioms (usually reduced to platitudes): firstly that of Clauswitz that “war is the pursuit of politics by other means” and secondly that “imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism”. The poverty of political science and history especially since people like Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and the fortunately late Samuel Huntington became the sacred cardinals of those disciplines has meant that these two insights have been reduced to imperial jargon.

The Great Class War shows precisely which politics were to be pursued by the war begun in 1914. He also shows precisely what imperialism meant in practice—not only for capitalists but for the co-optation of social classes without whose support neither empire nor the war could have been pursued. Dr Pauwels also performs a service to those who still believe in humanism and positive social change. He demonstrates that the apology for fascism—that it was a reaction to the Russian Revolution—is utter nonsense. Fascism is inherent in the ideological structure of clerico-capitalism. The fascism of Mussolini and Hitler was nurtured by the Roman Catholic Church and the emerging multinational corporate class well before the Great War and the certainly before Bolshevism appeared as the “great whale” for the capitalist Ahabs to kill. Thus The Great Class War is also a powerful rebuttal to all the nonsense that has been published ad nauseam since 1989—implying the end of history. In fact, The Great Class War demonstrates that for an alert generation today, it is necessary to return a century to discover the reasons for the war against the “99%” being waged today.

Dr T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket in Heinrich Heine’s birthplace, Düsseldorf. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa (Maisonneuve Press, 2003). Read other articles by T.P..

Notes

  1. T.P. Wilkinson. “Peculiar Omission in Award Winning Book,” Dissident Voice, July 21, 2014. []
  2. Jacques Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War, 2002. []
  3. In fact, the Second World War is almost never discussed in terms of imperialism but only in terms of an exceedingly superficial and misleading contest between “democracy and dictatorship” or occasionally “democracy and fascism”. []
  4. Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1917. []
  5. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, 1981. []
  6. See Eric Hobsbawm, his trilogy on the “long 19th century”: The Age of Revolution (1962), The Age of Capital (1972) The Age of Empire (1987) and of “the short 20th century”: The Age of Extremes(1994). Although a Marxist historian, Hobsbawm ended his academic career as a Companion of Honour (1998), having also served in prestigious academic posts. []
  7. The machine gun had been refined for use against “natives” in the colonial wars as a means of compensating for their numerical superiority. The fact that such weaponry was routinely used against non-whites with devastating effect could only have escaped the notice of field commanders because of the inherent racism governing the use of military force against non-whites. []
  8. Sir Oswald Mosley (1896-1980), founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists. []
  9. Mussolini was receiving GBP 100 per week (approx. GBP 6,000 today) from the British secret service starting in 1917. []
  10. Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow, 1941. []
  11. It is commonly believed that the US war aims were directed against the Axis powers as a whole. This is mistaken. The US war in the Pacific was a logical extension of its Manifest Destiny and territorial ambitions enhanced by its conquest of Spain’s Pacific colony, The Philippines. Tokyo was seen by Washington as a serious obstacle to US expansion. On the other hand, the US only became a belligerent in Europe when Hitler declared war on the US after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The promised “second front” against Hitler was only opened once it became clear to the US regime that the Soviet Union would defeat Germany. For a discussion of US imperialism in the Pacific, see Bruce Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea, 2010. []
  12. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962. []
  13. The validity of any claims that the ideology of Christianity supports human value is dubious at best. “Christian humanism” is for all intents and purposes a genuine oxymoron. []
  14. Waltraud Seidel-Höppner.  Her main work has been on the German revolutionary Wilhelm Weitling. Waldtraud Seidel-Höppner: Wilhelm Weitling (1808-1871). Eine politische Biographie. Parts 1 and 2Peter Lang Verlag (Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Bern/Brussels/New York/Oxford/Vienna) 2014. She made this observation in a private conversation with the author. []
  15. See C L R James, The Black Jacobins (1938) and the work of Gerald Horne, esp. Confronting Black Jacobins and The Counter-Revolution of 1776. []
  16. Originally attributed to H.G. Wells, The War That Will End War (1914) and subsequently popularised by US President Woodrow Wilson. []
  17. Arno J Meyer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the Russian Revolutions, 2002. []
  18. Alfred Willi Rudolf (“Rudi”) Dutschke, German student radical and sociologist (1940-1979), speaking in a TV interview with Günter Gaus on Zur Protokoll (3 December 1967). In April 1968 he was shot in the head while riding his bicycle in Berlin. He died in an epileptic fit, the consequence of the brain damage incurred by the assassination attempt. []
  19. The so-called Glorious Revolution (1688-1689) replaced James II with William III of Orange and Mary II of England. In 1689 the Bill of Rights was promulgated, deemed one of the cornerstones of Britain’s constitutional monarchy. For a discussion of other wide-reaching implications of the Glorious Revolution see Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776 also reviewed by this author. []
  20. Markus Osterrieder, Welt im Umbruch: Nationalitätenfrage, Ordnungspläne und Rudolf Steiners Haltung im Ersten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart 2014. []

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on “Romanticism and War”: Contextualising a Theory of Interpretation. Jacques Pauwels’ Book on World War I

Syria: No “Dusty Boy” Outrage for Seven Year Old Haider, Sniped by NATO Terrorists in Idlib Village of Foua

September 19th, 2016 by Vanessa Beeley

On the 15th September, 7 year old Haider Ammar Al Hamoud, was shot through the stomach by an Ahrar Al Sham sniper, the US backed terrorist group besieging the Idlib villages of Kafarya and Foua. Haider was ignored by western media. 

His life-threatening injury did not merit any outcry from human rights organisations or the NATO-aligned media who ignore the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of children in Syria because it does not serve their agenda to demonize the Syrian President, Bashar al Assad or the national armed forces.

On the same day, we have been told that two other villagers were also wounded by sniper attacks. Akkak Ahmed Hassan, 25 and Jawad Sofan, 18 in the neighbouring village of Kafarya.  Ahrar Al Sham are a heavily protected US asset conducting assassinations on behalf of their donors and backers, operating across Syria, but nowhere more viciously than against these two besieged, starving villages living under threat of a full scale ethnic cleasning.

haider

Photo of 7 year old Haider Ammar Al Hamoud, shot by US backed “moderate rebel” snipers. Photo: Supplied to 21st Century Wire

Their situation can easily be compared to that of Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave, blockaded from all sides and under a long term siege by another US backed terrorist entity, the illegal state of Israel.

This incident highlights yet again, the farce that is the US intention, or lack of it, to adhere to a US-Russian brokered ceasefire.  The US has no intention of muzzling its terrorist entities that are breaking the ceasefire on a daily basis, as they have done during all previous ceasefire deals.

Ceasefire agreements that are nothing more than a smokescreen for the replenishing of arms and equipment of US and NATO member state terrorists, under any rebrand or name change that is employed to obscure their connections to Washington and her allies.

Please refer to the Syrian Arab News Agency report on all ceasefire breaches on the 15th September:

The armed groups breached the truce regime 55 times on Thursday in Damascus, Damascus Countryside, Hama, Lattakia countryside, Homs, Quneitra, and Daraa, according to a military source.

In Idleb, a child was injured as the armed groups opened sniper fire towards the besieged town of al-Foua, in the northern countryside of Idleb province, in another breach of the truce regime.

Local sources told SANA that the armed terrorist groups that hole up in Binnish town targeted with sniper fire citizens’ houses in al-Foua town, causing the injury of 7-year-old child.

Why is Haider’s suffering worth less than that of Omran, the child allegedly pulled from the rubble of a bombed building in Nusra Front occupied eastern Aleppo?

Why is Haider swept under the carpet of disinterest? Why is Haider’s face, his eyes closed in silent pain, not appearing on the BBC, Fox News, CNN, Channel 4? Why does Haider’s fate not provoke the same degree of government outcry and beating of chests against the brutality of the world inhabited by the children of Syria?

omran-pencil-bw2
Because Haider symbolizes the daily mass murder being perpetrated against the children of Syria, directly, by US, NATO, EU, Gulf State and Israeli governments [via their terrorist proxies],  and indirectly, by these media outlets who criminally obfuscate the truth of the dirty war on Syria.

Haider exposes these governments for the war criminals they truly are and for that, his suffering must be suppressed and silenced while Omran who serves their “regime change” agenda must have his story propagandized and amplified. Omran, unwittingly, becomes a poster boy for war while Haider is muted into insignificance by those who allocate only the images & stories that promote the “need” for war to their editors and news desks.

Thus, the US and NATO-aligned media and their state sponsors have criminally weaponized children in the march towards an escalation in the genocidal war on Syria.

The suffering of Kafarya and Foua does not end there..

k-and-f-3
Ali Sheikh Hamed, 60+ years old, starving, in Kafarya and Foua (Photo: Supplied to 21st Century Wire)

This is Ali Sheikh Hamed, over 60 years old and he is starving. Genuinely starving, unlike the fake images that have also flooded social media and mainstream media of the Madaya “starvation”. I have been told that Hamed is exhausted, his body, lacking esssential nutrients, has wasted away to shrunken flesh and brittle bones. He has lost over 30 kgs in weight and is now down to a meagre 45kg.  He is suffering from severe anemia and his body has no resistance against the diseases that are spreading through the two villages due to the lack of clean water, medicines and polluted living conditions.

When I was in Syria, I met with a young man who had managed to escape from Kafarya and Foua under cover of darkness and was now working with various Syrian state organisations, based in Damascus, to get aid and vital supplies of food and medicine into the two villages.  He explained how the US backed Ahrar Al Sham gangs would intercept the aid convoys and steal all the contents, promising to pass them on to the residents of Kafarya and Foua.  Of course they never did.

This is a familiar story when the various NATO gangs and counter gangs are imposing an external siege or internal occupation upon the towns and villages of Syria. Any aid that does enter or is sent through, is requisitioned by these terrorists and either sold at inflated and extortionate prices to the Syrian people or simply stolen and given to the terrorists themselves and their families.

k-and-f-2
Ahmed Birqadr, 13, starving, in Kafarya. Photo: Supplied to 21st Century Wire

Ahmed is thirteen years old. He weighs less than 30kg and he is 110 cm tall.  Again, the lack of essential nutrients in his diet have stunted his growth and physical development.

As one Syrian campaigner for the lifting of the siege on Kafarya and Foua told me:

“We appeal to the UN and human rights organisations to lift this inhumane siege and to allow humanitarian aid including food, urgently needed medical supplies and water to enter the besieged villages. The maintenance of this siege is a crime against humanity and this detention of civilians as hostages of war is a crime, of the utmost gravity”

21st Century Wire previously published the official statement that was issued to the UN by the medical staff in Kafarya and Foua: UN Allied with Terrorism over Deliberate Malpractice in Kafarya and Foua

As Eva Bartlett stated in a recent 21st Century Wire article, The Children of Kafarya and Foua are Crying in the Dark:

A true humanitarian crisis of malnutrition, starvation, and untreated diseases has been occurring for over a year in Syria far from cameras and headlines, and has been steadily worsening under the total siege, imposed since March 2015 by terrorists of the Jaysh al-Fateh (Army of Conquest) coalition on the two northern Syrian villages of Foua and Kafarya, completely isolated and surrounded by Western-backed terrorists.

The Syrian poster child of suffering is not the ‘Aleppo boy‘ whose image was recently splashed on front pages and social media in a coordinated act of propaganda. The Syrian poster children of suffering—starvation, murder, maiming, and denial of medical care, thanks to Western-backed terrorists—are many, but perhaps the most severe and continued examples these days come from Foua and Kafarya.

The NGO Complex Weaponisation of Children

Human Rights Watch and other similarly state or deep state funded pseudo NGOs have run a number of historical campaigns protesting the use of “children as weapons of war” highlighting the conversion of children into child soldiers which is the physical manifestation of a worrying trend towards the use of children as instruments of war.

This ignores and distracts from the more cynical weaponisaton of children via the exploitation of their suffering as the propaganda that propels us towards war after war,  a state of perpetual conflict whose primary beneficiary is the military industrial complex.

Children are used to sell war, which sells weapons, which kill the children in those campaign posters.

None is more guilty than the NGO complex or the mainstream media of the misuse of any number of propagandized gender issues , minority persecution or children of war issues as justification for military escalation and intervention inside prey nations ripe for regime change or resource plundering by the governments running these imperialist NGO outreach operations.

Mainstream media has developed into nothing more than a PR agency for NATO’s perpetual war campaign, producing one slick advertising campaign after another to promote militarism and justify mass murder in the geopolitical interests of the governments they work for.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The infamous Amnesty International 2012 campaign: “Human Rights for Women and Girls in Afghanistan” and “NATO: Keep the Progress Going!

Read more on the NGO complex and its role in de-stablizing nations prior to and during US, NATO state illegal interventions in this 21st Century Wire article: An Introduction: Smart Power and the Human Rights Industrial Complex

Who is responsible for the child abuse in Syria?

The children of Syria are being abused, tortured, kidnapped and murdered but it is those who claim they are working in the “interests” of these children who are responsible for their pain. The US and NATO member states, supported by their allies have imposed this brutal war upon these children and must take the majority of the blame for the consequences of this war.

The mainstream media are accessories to these crimes, as it is their propaganda and reprehensible lack of balanced reporting that ensures perpetual conflict, not only in Syria but globally.

These Syrian children are being abused by the very nations that outwardly present themselves as paragons of virtue and defenders of human rights yet who have no qualms over capitalising on the suffering of the children they claim to be protecting if it furthers their geopolitical aims and ambitions.

Syria does not need NATO member states or the US to protect its children.  The children of Syria are best protected by the Syrian national army that is keeping the NATO terrorists at bay.  The Syrian state is ensuring all children receive free medical care and education, despite the externally imposed war and US, EU criminal sanctions.

The children of Syria need us to force our governments to lift the crippling sanctions on Syria, to stop arming and funding the reported 360,000 foreign mercenaries who are destroying their homes and massacring their families and above all to get out of their country and take their criminal,mass-murdering gangs with them.

Then and only then will these children be “protected” and able to heal from the trauma of a five year war imposed upon them by our governments or be able to return to some semblance of normality in the fractured and bleeding country they call home.

k-and-f-boy2
Starving child in Kafarya and Foua besieged by US supported terrorists, Ahrar al Sham and Nusra Front. Photo: Supplied to 21st Century Wire.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Syria: No “Dusty Boy” Outrage for Seven Year Old Haider, Sniped by NATO Terrorists in Idlib Village of Foua

Report From Syria: “The Terrorists are Criminals and Killers, They Do It for Money”

September 19th, 2016 by Mark Taliano

We met Gotaibah Shabaan at a restaurant not far from the Souk.  He was smoking cigarettes, and talking to his girlfriend.

He recognized us as newcomers, and was eager to talk.

He earned scholarships in both Syria and Russia, for his Masters degree in Maths, and he hopes to continue his education and earn a Phd.  Syria, despite the war and the sanctions, is still able to pay him about $700.00 per month.

In contrast to terrorist occupied areas, he explains that “there is no school without the government” and that “there is no life without the government”.  This would be one of a myriad of reasons that explains why there are millions of internally displaced Syrians: the options are not attractive.

He states the obvious when he says that the terrorists are criminals and killers, and he explains that they do it for money. We know that Saudi Arabia and other countries allied to the West pay their mercenaries well, so it makes sense.

When I asked him how he would characterize the war against Syria, he explained that it is worse than a “regular” war that pits opposing armies against each other.

This too is consistent with reality.  House to house, inner city fighting is both dangerous and costly.  Foreign-funded terrorists have so far killed about 100,000 Syrian Arab Army soldiers.  In contrast, whereas the West carpet bombed Falluja with a view to saving the lives of American soldiers, the Syrian army excludes that option, so that it can save civilian lives, regardless of the cost.

The Syrian government is prosecuting this war so that it can grow and rebuild the future. Occupying imperial armies do not share those scruples.  For the West, it’s all about sanctions, “shock and awe”, and willful terror and destruction: total subjugation of the target population is the unstated goal. (Sanctions alone prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq killed over 500,000 children under the age of five, as well as more than one million others.) Syria, in contrast, cleanses terrorists within a framework of protecting as many citizens as possible.  Syria is fighting a war in defense of its homeland, whereas invading imperialists fight wars to destroy other peoples’ homelands. The goals are quite different.

Gotaibah asserts matter of factly that of course most Syrians like their President, Bashar al-Assad. Assad  is the protector of Syria.

Maher Bekdash (image below), who has been studying law in Syria for three years, has more nuanced opinions about Syria and the war. His thoughts, he explains, are not as common.

Religious issues, emerge, he says, when people are excluded from the political arena, so unpopular opinions should have a stronger political voice. By looking inwards, Syria can own up to its mistakes and try to fix them.

He agrees that Syrians themselves should decide who is to govern, through free and fair elections, and that he would prefer to see Assad in the government, but not as President.  That way, he says, Syria would “feel” more democratic.

When asked about those countries opposing Syria, he explained that Syria is more civilized and educated than all the Arabian Gulf countries, and that Syria doesn’t trust the West, because the West supports Israel, and he sees Israel as being a key agent of war and division in the Middle East.

More interviews, and more opinions, to follow ….

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Report From Syria: “The Terrorists are Criminals and Killers, They Do It for Money”

Russia Condemns Obama’s Decision to Conduct Illegal Air Strikes against Syrian Forces, Washington’s Objective was to Protect ISIS Terrorists

September 19th, 2016 by Global Research News

“It is highly suspicious that the United States chose to conduct this particular air strike at this time,” Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.

“It was quite significant and not accidental that it happened just two days before the Russian-American arrangements were supposed to come into full force,” Churkin added.

“The beginning of work of the Joint Implementation Group was supposed to be September 19. So if the US wanted to conduct an effective strike on Al-Nusra or ISIS, in Deir ez-Zor or anywhere else, they could wait two more days and coordinate with our military and be sure that they are striking the right people.”

“Instead they chose to conduct this reckless operation,”

“So it may well be, one has to conclude, that the airstrike has been conducted in order to derail the operation of the Joint Implementation Group and actually prevent it from being set in motion,” …

“It may well be that the United States is trying to hide the fact that they are actually not in control of the situation, that they allowed the situation to get out of control.”

“Who is in charge in Washington. The Pentagon or the White House?”  …

“Is the US Colluding Directly with ISIL?” Question of Journalist

Washington Blames Russia according to US Ambassador Power. “Blaming Russia for Everything is the line taken by Washington Post.” said Churkin

Full Presentation/press conference of Ambassador Churkin to UN Accredited Media

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Russia Condemns Obama’s Decision to Conduct Illegal Air Strikes against Syrian Forces, Washington’s Objective was to Protect ISIS Terrorists

Imperialists Misuse Religion to Serve as an Instrument of War against Syria

September 18th, 2016 by Mark Taliano

 Before the pre-planned Western dirty war on Syria, Syrians respected each other’s religions as a personal matter of the soul.  Politics and religion were separated by a healthy firewall.

But Syrians are very well educated: before the war, there was no illiteracy.  And so, for the most part, Syrians can see through the lies and manipulations of imperial powers that seek to use religion as a wedge issue between groups. They’ve seen this divide and conquer strategy play out in all of the countries that have recently been destroyed, especially in Iraq, and they remember.

When imperialists use this strategy, Syrians are generally immune.  They understand that Syria needs   to remain pluralist and secular.  They understand the imperative of tolerance, and they have no need for hate.

Syrians understand that they are protecting their homeland from those who seek to impose the  extremist, un-Islamic ideology of Wahhabism on the region.

Slogans about democracy are empty and insulting. When an American tourist questioned an elderly Syrian about democracy, the Syrian exploded with justifiable indignation. Terrorists murdered some of his loved ones – an all too familiar tragedy amongst Syrians – and he understands that Obama of the U.S., and their allies, are responsible for the foreign-funded terrorism, and that they are equally responsible for the generally unsuccessful efforts to politicize religion in Syrian.  It has nothing to do with “democracy”.

“I support my Homeland, “ asserted the visibly upset man.

He sees through the lies and confusion to the blunt truth that his Homeland needs to be defended from ignorance.

None of the terror groups, including ISIS, has the right to impose its barbarous ideology on Syria, and any efforts to do so reflects imperial ambitions to divide and conquer Syria.

When groups such as Daesch slaughter peoples of all faiths in the name of their Wahhabi ideology, they are being un-Islamic, and they are instruments of anti-religious imperialism.

Likewise, those who make weapons of war for profit are anti-religious.  Neither Islam, nor Christianity, nor Judaism, nor any other religion supports war for profit.  Syria’s Grand Mufti teaches this lesson well.

Another lesson from the Grand Mufti: When politicians use religion as part of their slogans, they are being anti-religious.  There must be a clear separation between church and state. Any state that defies humanity by supporting one religion exclusively is a dangerous state.

Syria’s Grand Mufti

Syrians support the Syrian Arab Army.  Numerous, (very necessary) military check points that slow down traffic are welcomed by Syrians, who have a friendly and appreciative rapport with the soldiers who are protecting their loves. At one checkpoint, the driver offered a cigar to a soldier, and they hugged affectionately.  The laughter and collegiality is the rule rather than the exception.

Ali Salem, a Captain in the Syrian Arab Army, also sees through the lies.  Ali, like many Syrians, and many Syrian soldiers, is well educated and intelligent.  He has a PhD, and he is a veterinarian, but when the war broke out, his compulsory military service of about 18 months was extended. He explained in Arabic, French and English, that imperial agencies exploited and augmented “Arab Spring” protests by shooting police and military personnel, with a view to creating mayhem and to initiating a war featuring un-Islamic, foreign –funded terrorists.  Salem explained that terrorists include Syrian street people, thieves, and criminals; diesel fuel and drug smugglers; and those who were forced to fight under the threat of death or the death of family members; but terrorists also include “imports” from about 80 foreign countries.

Salem thinks that after the war, schools will have to teach the truth about the war, so that the current “crisis” will not repeat itself.

Ali Salem, soldier wearing sunglasses.

Naji Wahbi, another proud Syrian, is mayor of the ancient town of Maloula, where Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, is spoken as a first language.

Terrorists destroyed and looted the ancient St. Takla shrine of Maoula before the Syrian army defeated them in a bloody battle, which cost the lives of 200 Syrian soldiers. Airplanes couldn’t assist the Syrians, since the terrorists were armed with modern anti-aircraft weaponry – courtesy of the West and its allies.

When asked who is to blame, Wahbi identified Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and of course, the U.S.A.

Syria is a holy and brilliant land, steeped in history, still offering newly discovered archeological treasures to humanity. Syrians, such as those described above, are the valiant defenders on behalf of all of us.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Imperialists Misuse Religion to Serve as an Instrument of War against Syria

Oliver Stone’s American History: ‘We’re Not under Threat. We Are the Threat’

September 18th, 2016 by James Reinl

As he launches his new TV series offering a critical view of US overseas exploits, the film director tells MEE he didn’t always see it that way

American controversies are Oliver Stone’s forte.

The Hollywood movie director has turned his cameras on the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Vietnam War and the 9/11 attacks.

But, when researching his television series, The Untold History of the United States, it was American exploits in the Middle East that left him with the most lasting impression, he told Middle East Eye on Wednesday.

“When I studied the untold history, one thing that really hit me hard was the history of our involvement in the Middle East,” Stone said.

“It was a nefarious involvement.”

Stone traces Washington’s hand in the region back to the 1930s, but he says it reached a peak when President George HW Bush sent hundreds of thousands of US troops to liberate Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion of 1990.

The Soviet Union had recently collapsed and the region was wide open to a lone superpower, he said.

“We never got out of there. Once we were in, we’re in forever,” Stone said.

“We’ve destabilised the entire region, created chaos. And then we blame ISIS for the chaos we created,” he added, referring to the Islamic State (IS) group that now rules swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Stone researched and wrote the series and book with Peter Kuznick, a scholar at the American University who specialises in the US nuclear strikes on Japan that ended the Second World War.

“It’s all about the oil. You remember the bumper sticker: What is our oil doing under their sand?” Kuznick told MEE.

Washington’s hunger for fuel underpins its alliance with Saudi Arabia, the CIA-backed coup against Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and its support for anti-Soviet religious militants in Afghanistan in the 1980s, he said.

Oliver Stone speaks at a press conference to launch his new book on American history (MEE/James Reinl)

“We create these messes, then we have a grand military plan to solve them. And the military solutions just don’t work,” he said.

The views of Stone and Kuznick are not likely to raise eyebrows on the streets of Cairo, Moscow or Paris.

But in the US they are not mainstream.

The way Stone tells it, Americans live in a bubble and are spoon-fed information by a school system, politicians and a media that portrays the US as a beacon of stability and a force for good in the world.

In one famous example, former President Ronald Reagan called the US a “shining city on a hill”.

“It’s very comforting to be an American,” Stone said.

You get the sense that you are safe and have prosperity of material goods, and that you have enemies everywhere – Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

You get into this cocoon where you have a big country, two oceans, but that you’re always under threat.

Stone says he understands this well because he lived it himself.

He was raised in New York, the son of a Republican stockbroker, Louis Stone. He was always creative – he often wrote short plays to entertain his family – but never questioned how his history teachers puffed up the US, he said.

“I had only gotten a part of the story, which emphasised American exceptionalism, America as a selfless and beneficial country to the world,” he said.

In 1967, Stone volunteered to fight in the US Army and served in Vietnam. He was wounded twice and was honoured with a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart for his service.

“I came back from Vietnam puzzled, completely confused about what was going on there,” he said.

“But I did get a heavy dose of the doublespeak, the militarese talk.”

He started asking questions and reading up on “progressive history” at the same time as he studied filmmaking at New York University under Martin Scorsese and other teachers, he said.

These ideas fed his politically orientated filmmaking in the 1980s.

Salvador (1986) was set in a 1980s war in Central America. Platoon (1986), Stone’s directorial breakthrough movie, dramatised a young soldier’s tour of duty in Vietnam, starring Charlie Sheen.

He continued probing that war in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), starring Tom Cruise. JFK (1991) showed his conspiracy theories about the former president’s killing; movies such as Nixon (1995) and W (2008) tackled subsequent commanders-in-chief.

The release of his movie about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been delayed until 2016, he said.

He has also interviewed foreign statesmen who defy Washington – from the Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro to the ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Untold History of the United States, a 10-part documentary series and a 750-page book, offers Americans an alternate perspective on US history from the Second World War through the Cold War to the present day.

Stone says he wants to counter the “educational crime” of misleading American schoolchildren.

“American exceptionalism has to be driven out of our curriculums,” he said.

“We’re not under threat. We are the threat.”

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Oliver Stone’s American History: ‘We’re Not under Threat. We Are the Threat’

Goldman Sachs, Conflicts of Interest…: The Who, What and Why of the EU Commission’s Ad Hoc Ethical Committee

September 18th, 2016 by Corporate Europe Observatory

In a belated response to the mounting tide of critical public and political opinion, the Juncker Commission last week informed the European Ombudsman that it would refer Barroso’s appointment as chairman of Goldman Sachs to its Ad hoc Ethical Committee. But what is the Ad hoc Ethical Committee, who sits on it and what is it likely to say?

What is the Ad hoc Ethical Committee?

The Ad hoc Ethical Committee is an informal body of three appointed members who provide advice to the Commission, particularly on former commissioners’ revolving doors moves, but potentially on all matters relating to the Code of Conduct for Commissioners.

The committee’s remit is extremely limited. It can only advise, but not decide, on revolving door moves, via opinions submitted to the Commission. These opinions are not pro-actively published by the Commission but can be released through access to documents, as was done in this case. Ultimately, it is the commissioners themselves who, during college meetings, are to judge their ex-colleagues and determine whether or not their new roles are compatible with the Code of Conduct and the wider EU treaty.

Aside from this, the committee is also limited in its activities as it cannot act proactively; it can only look at those matters referred to it by the Commission.

Who sits on the Ad hoc Ethical Committee?

As of July 2016, the members are Mr Christiaan Timmermans, Ms Dagmar Roth-Behrendt and Mr Heinz Zourek.

Of the three, Dagmar Roth-Behrendt is the most well-known. This German social democrat stood down as an MEP in 2014 after five terms in the EU legislature. During her time in office, she sat on the Legal Affairs committee and was rapporteur on, among other dossiers, the 2012 reform of the Staff Regulations (which contain the revolving door rules and other terms of employment for EU institution staff). She is now a special adviser to Commissioner Andriukaitis (Health & Food Safety), focussing on “assessing the situation of executive agencies of DG SANTE”. Roth-Behrendt’s husband is Horst Reichenbach, who has led several Commission departments before heading the Commission’s task force for Greece 2011-15. He is now a director of the European Bank for Reconstruction – and a special adviser to Commissioner Moscovici (Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs). Unsurprisingly, Roth-Behrendt and Reichenbach recently made it ontoPolitico’s list of “Brussels’ most notable political power couples”.

Heinz Zourek is another established EU player. He was in the Commission, specifically as director-general at DG for Taxation and the Customs Union until December 2015, after first joining the Commission in 1995. He is also a special adviser on the financial transaction tax to Commissioner Moscovici, and was inadvertently caught up in a 2015 cash-for-access scandal when he refused to meet the influential British politician Jack Straw who sought to lobby EU officials on behalf of paying clients.

Christiaan Timmermans is a former judge at the Court of Justice (2000-2010) and was previously at the Commission’s legal service.

Since members of the Ad hoc Ethical Committee for commissioners’ ethics are appointed by commissioners themselves, the committee’s independence might be considered limited. But this concern is compounded by the fact that the Juncker Commission appointed Roth-Behrendt and Zourek, both of whom had already been appointed by commissioners as their special advisers. Surely such proximity puts them in an awkward and potentially conflicting situation?

Given the heavy criticism levelled at the Commission when it appointed Michel Petite as chairman of its ethics committee back in 2009, it is particularly surprising that the Juncker Commission chose to recruit for its Ad hoc Ethical Committee in a similarly questionable manner. In 2012, then Commission President Barroso decided to re-appoint Michel Petite as Ad hoc Ethical Committee chairman, despite questions of judgement raised about Petite’s own career choices. Petite had had a controversial spin through the revolving door, from heading up the Commission’s legal service, to moving to global law firm Clifford Chance in 2008. Petite lobbied the Commission on behalf of Clifford Chance’s clients, including ones from the tobacco industry. Following an NGO complaintcriticising the re-appointment of a lobbyist as chairman of the ethics committee, the European Ombudsman protested in writing to Barroso and recommended that Petite be replaced. Petite’s ‘resignation’ from the Ad hoc Ethical Committee was announced a few days later.

What is the Ad hoc Ethical Committee likely to say on the Barroso case?

As the committee in its current set-up only ‘took office’ in July 2016, there is no precedent we could use to assess the advice it will provide on revolving door moves. Barroso’s move to Goldman Sachs will be the first time the committee is tasked with assessing a revolving door move. Previous ethics committee have approved almost all new jobs proposed by ex-commissioners, but there have been some notable exceptions.

During the 18-month period between November 2014 and April 2016 which required new roles of Barrosso II commissioners to be authorised by the Juncker Commission, opinions given by the Ad hoc Ethical Committee in its previous constellation led two former commissioners to withdraw a total of three requests for the approval of such new jobs. While the Commission refused to provide any further information on the positions concerned in these withdrawals, former education commissioner Androulla Vassiliou confirmed to CEO that the committee’s opinion had signaled potential conflicts of interest connected to her two proposed roles. She therefore decided to reject the offers and did not proceed to seek Commission authorisation for the roles.

An earlier Ad hoc Ethical Committee also issued a negative opinion in the case of former internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy who in 2010 and in the wake of the financial crash was keen to take a new role at the NBNK Investments bank. Significant controversy arose over this looming revolving door case, including critical media coverage and NGO complaints. After the Ad hoc Ethical Committee provided its negative opinion and the Commission subsequently threatened to reject the role, McCreevy ultimately withdrew his request for authorisation. Nevertheless, the Commission was happy to authorise McCreevy to take up another controversial role – with prominent European low-cost airline Ryanair.

Notwithstanding these examples, CEO’s 2015 report points to several problematic new roles taken up by former commissioners about which both the Ad hoc Ethical Committee and the College of Commissioners failed to be as critical as we would have expected.

 

The need for professional, independent and truly transparent decision-making

It is clear that the whole decision-making process around departing commissioners’ revolving door moves must be reformed – a reform that must focus on creating a truly independent and transparent ethics committee. Members of the College, who will themselves one day be ex-commissioners, should not be involved in the appointment of committee members whatsoever, nor should they have any part in the decision-making on revolving doors cases.

Instead, we need professional, independent and truly transparent decision-making. As part of wider reform of the Code of Conduct for Commissioners, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) has advised for the Ad hoc Ethical Committee in its current form to be replaced by a fully independent ethics committee of experts, who have no links to the EU institutions and are recruited from member states’ ethics and administration systems. This fully independent ethics committee should be responsible for the whole authorisation process, supported by a well-resourced secretariat with investigative powers.

The case of former industry commissioner Günter Verheugen drives home the dangers of leaving the College of Commissioners to authorise revolving door. When Verheugen left the Commission in 2010, he failed to inform the institution that he set up a consultancy firm, nor did he seek authorisation for it. Once he restrospectively did, the Ad hoc Ethical Committee did not approveVerheugen’s involvement with the consultancy. The Commission went on to authorise the role regardless, flat out ignoring the committee’s advice.

This illustrates why revolving doors decision-making on commissioners’ new roles should be taken entirely out of the hands of the College – and that will entail a serious revamp of the ethical committee.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Goldman Sachs, Conflicts of Interest…: The Who, What and Why of the EU Commission’s Ad Hoc Ethical Committee

The FBI’s Fake “Investigation” of Hillary Clinton’s Emails

September 18th, 2016 by Eric Zuesse

On September 17th, U.S. President Barack Obama, the boss of the U.S. Government’s Executive Branch — including of federal investigations and prosecutions (including of FBI decisons not to investigate, and not to prosecute) — said that, in this Presidential election,

 “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot,” and that a voter’s failure to vote for Hillary Clinton would be “an insult to my legacy.”

 This statement by him provides useful background context behind the following news-report (and readers are urged to click onto the link at any point here wherever a given allegation’s veracity is at all in doubt, to see the extensive documentation for it): 

The FBI’s ‘investigation’ into Hillary Clinton’s State Department email operation was fake in three major ways:

1: The FBI chose to ‘investigate’ the most difficult-to-prove charges, not the easiest-to-prove ones (which are the six laws that she clearly violated, simply by her privatization and destruction of State Department records, and which collectively would entail a maximum prison sentence of 73 years). The famous judge Jed Rakoff hasaccurately and succinctly said that, in the American criminal ‘justice’ system, since 1980 and especially after 2000, and most especially after 2010,

“the prosecutor has all the power. The Supreme Court’s suggestion that a plea bargain is a fair and voluntary contractual arrangement between two relatively equal parties is a total myth. … What really puts the prosecutor in the driver’s seat is the fact that he — because of mandatory minimums, sentencing guidelines (which, though no longer mandatory in the federal system, are still widely followed by most judges), and simply his ability to shape whatever charges are brought — can effectively dictate the sentence by how he publicly describes the offense.”

Columnist Debra J. Saunders put it this way: “The mandatory minimum sentencing system effectively has allowed federal prosecutors to choose defendants’ sentences by deciding how to charge them.”

If an Administration wants to be merely pretending an ‘investigation’, it’s easy: identify, as the topic for the alleged ‘investigation’, not the criminal laws that indisputably describe what the suspect can clearly be proven to have done, but instead criminal laws that don’t. Prosecutorial discretion is now practically unlimited in the United States. This discretion is an essential feature of any dictatorship. It’s the essence of any system that separates people into aristocrats, who are above the law, versus the public, upon whom their ‘law’ is enforced. It’s the essence of “a nation of men, not of laws.”

But, different people focus on different aspects of it. Conservatives notice it in Clinton’s case because she was not prosecuted.Progressives notice it in Clinton’s case because other people (ones without the clout) who did what she did (but only less of it), have been prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced for it. The result, either way, is dictatorship, regardless of anyone’s particular perspective on the matter. Calling a nation like that a ‘democracy’ is to strip “democracy” of its basic meaning — it is foolishness. Such a nation is an aristocracy, otherwise called an “oligarchy.” That’s the opposite of a democracy (even if it’s set up so as to pretend to be a democracy).

2: The FBI chose to believe her allegations, instead of to investigate or challenge them. For example: On page 4 of the FBI’s record of their interview with Hillary dated 2 July 2016, they noted: “Clinton did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not be on an unclassified system.”

But they already had seen this email. So, they asked her about that specific one:

“Clinton stated she did not remember the email specifically. Clinton stated a ‘nonpaper’ was a document with no official heading, or identifying marks of any kind, that can not be attributed to the US Government. Clinton thought a ‘nonpaper’ was a way to convey the unofficial stance of the US Government to a foreign government and believed this practice went back ‘200 years.’ When viewing the displayed email, Clinton believed she was asking Sullivan to remove the State letterhead and provide unclassified talking points. Clinton stated she had no intention to remove classification markings.”

Look at the email: is her statement about it — that “issues sending secure fax” had nothing to do with the illegality of sending classified U.S. Government information over a non-secured, even privatized, system — even credible? Is the implication by Clinton’s remark, that changing the letterhead and removing the document’s classified stamp, would solve the problem that Jake Sullivan — a highly skilled attorney himself — had brought to her attention, even credible?

Well, if so, then wouldn’t the FBI have asked Sullivan what he was referring to when his email to Clinton said “They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it.”

The FBI provided no indication that there was any such follow-up, at all. They could have plea-bargained with Sullivan, to get him to testify first, so that his testimony could be used in questioning of her, but they seem not to have been interested in doing any such thing. They believed what she said (even though it made no sense as a response to the problem that Sullivan had just brought to her attention: the problem that emailing to her this information would violate several federal criminal statutes. Clinton, in other words, didn’t really care about the legality. And, apparently, neither did the FBI. Her email in response to Sullivan’s said simply: “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” So: she knew that it was classified information but wanted to receive it so that she would be able to say, “I didn’t know that it was classified information.” In other words: she was instructing her advisor: hide the fact that it’s classified information, so that when I receive it, there will be no indication on it that what was sent to me is classified information.

3: The FBI avoided using the standard means to investigate a suspect higher-up: obtaining plea-deals with subordinates, requiring them to cooperate, answer questions and not to plead the Fifth Amendment (not to refuse to answer). (In Hillary’s case, the Obama Administration actually did plea-deals in which they allowed the person who was supposed to answer all questions, to plea the Fifth Amendment to all questions instead. This is allowed only when the government doesn’t want to prosecute the higher-up — which in this case was Clinton. That alone proves the Obama Administration’s ‘investigation’ of Clinton’s email system to have been a farce.)

A plea-deal isn’t a Constitutional process: Jed Rakoff’s article explained why it’s not. The process is informal, but nowadays it’s used in more than 97% of cases in which charges are brought, and in more than 99% of all cases (including the 92% of cases that are simply dropped without any charges being brought). That’s the main reason why nowadays «the prosecutor has all the power». Well, the prosecutor in Hillary’s case (the Obama Administration) clearly didn’t want her in the big house; they wanted her in the White House.

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

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The FBI’s Fake “Investigation” of Hillary Clinton’s Emails

Selling Australia’s Security and Refugee agenda. Prime Minister Turnbull as Fantasist

September 18th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Island mentalities do not travel well.  When their sellers hawk the agenda before world forums, these start looking ludicrous. Coming close to this ludicrous display is Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who has done what other Australian prime ministers have in previous years: sell the great discovery, the great hit of life on how best to protect borders in the face of threats.

No greater hits in the Australian record of cruelty and mania come close than the approach of outsourcing refugee obligations and the conjectures of global terrorism.  The former stance assumes that refugees are disposable on arrival, repellent jumpers of a fictional human queue who can be shifted and trafficked to global outposts that have little bearing to the recipient country.

The latter stance sees terrorism as rampant bacilli in need of urgent quarantining, notably through stretching the context of the terror charge, and assuming that anybody who gets a whiff of the seductive Quran may lose his marbles and fitfully radicalise.

At the United Nations, Turnbull has been achieving feats of visible self-inflation, readying himself for meetings and selling an Australian product on national security he knows will have some adherents. In New York, he has matters of security on the brain, avoiding any humanitarian impulse in favour of rough and ready anti-refugee measures.  In a fearful United States, the sell is on.

This all jars with the whole point of the meeting, instigated by the Obama administration on the basis of increasing funding to humanitarian and resettlement programs with various measures touching on education and “self-reliance”.[1]

Indeed, “Welcoming Refugee Week” received much fanfareon Thursday, a few days after Congress was informed that the United States would be increasing the number of refugees being accepted upwards of 30 per cent.  In the 2017 fiscal year, the administration plans to resettle 110,000 refugees gathered from Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma, among other troubled states.

None of this interests Turnbull, who has beaten off efforts to adopt a more generous approach to refugees in light of camp scandals and the litany of cruelties characterised by the offshore processing regime.  “Public opinion will not accept a strong and generous humanitarian program, a generous migration program, unless the Government is seen to be in command of its borders.”

This contrivance of policy has been intentional since the 1990s.  Fortress Australia has, since the end of the Cold War, assumed that those arriving by boat are exceptionally dangerous, incubating ill-motives and grave intentions.  They should, rather, take a number, and line up.

The point is being ventriloquised via GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has promised, should he win the White House, a stop to the refugee resettlement program from suspect countries, most notably Syria.  Conservative commentators such as Daniel Horowitz, in embracing the Trump line, see any alternative, notably that of a Clinton presidency, to be the road to localised suicide.  “Just today,” he squawked, “Germany arrested three Syrian refugees on suspicion that they have ties to the Islamic State.”[2]

The refugee is the greatest of dangers, instrumentalised as a promising threat.  “We are facing,” claimed Turnbull in New York, “an extraordinary challenge of refugee movements, of authorised movements and migrations of people around the world, greater than at any time since the Second World War.”

This means brutality and compassion, the disciplinary paternal figure accompanied by a generous maternal one.  “Strong borders, a commitment to strong borders – demonstrating that the Australian Government is in command of who comes into Australia – and at the same time one of the most generous humanitarian programmes in the world and the two go together.”[3]

For Turnbull, sealing off the global pathways to human movements should be complemented by greater channels for unregulated free trade.  It is fine to be protectionist against humans, but not against capital.

Turnbull remains dedicated ideologue and near fanatical foot soldier for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, an arrangement that finds less appeal in Washington with each day of presidential campaigning.

The prime minister has, in this venture, an Attorney-General who has single-handedly attacked the fragile corpus that is Australia’s civil liberties.  Having torn up any vestige of a human rights mentality, Senator George Brandis is now insisting that Turnbull will be bulldozing himself into the history books as being potentially one of the country’s greatest prime ministers.  “We’ve had a great week, in fact we have had a great fortnight,” Brandis insisted.

This assertion has the element of the fantastic about it. Turnbull took his government to near defeat; he miscalculates repeatedly on a range of policies, falling flat down with few hands to help him up, and finds himself at the risk of losing key votes.

In its refugee policy, his government faces the closure of one a key hub of human processing – Manus Island – urged on by the legal ruling of the PNG Supreme Court.  His record is that of a prime minister who is, as his deposed rival Tony Abbott reminded him, in office, rather than power.

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

Notes

 [1] http://sd.iisd.org/news/un-prepares-for-summit-on-refugees-and-migrants/

[2] http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/obamas-110000-refugees-only-half-the-story/

[3] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/malcolm-turnbull-talks-up-australias-border-protection-as-the-best-in-the-world-ahead-of-un-talks-2016-9

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Selling Australia’s Security and Refugee agenda. Prime Minister Turnbull as Fantasist

El libro “Fidel Castro, héros des déshérités” víctima de las sanciones económicas contra Cuba

September 18th, 2016 by Salim Lamrani

La asociación de Quebec de los amigos de Cuba no ha podido usar el servicio de pago en línea Paypal para comprar un libro sobre Fidel Castro.

El libro “Fidel Castro, héros des déshérités”, salió en agosto de 2016 de la editorial Estrella, en Francia, con ocasión del nonagésimo aniversario del líder de la Revolución Cubana. Con prólogo de Ignacio Ramonet esboza un retrato de la personalidad latinoamericana más importante del siglo XX e insiste en las tres facetas que caracterizan al hijo espiritual de José Martí, héroe nacional cubano. Así, en primer lugar, Fidel Castro es el arquitecto de la soberanía nacional que ha realizado el sueño de todos los cubanos de una patria independiente y que ha devuelto su dignidad al pueblo de la Isla. Después es el reformador social que se ha ubicado al lado de los humildes y los humillados creando una de las sociedades menos injustas del Tercer Mundo. Finalmente es el internacionalista que ha tendido una mano generosa a los pueblos necesitados y que ha ubicado la solidaridad y la integración en el centro de la política exterior de Cuba.[1]

La asociación de Quebec de los amigos de Cuba (AQAC) quiso comprar una docena de ejemplares del libro para difundirlo en Canadá. Para ello recurrió a Paypal, un servicio de pago en línea cuya sede social se encuentra en California. Con sorpresa, la ONG canadiense no pudo usar la plataforma para realizar la adquisición. En un correo del 10 de septiembre de 2016 Paypal comunicó el rechazo de la operación: “Esta transacción ha sido rechazada pues hemos detectado un riesgo asociado al pago”.[2]

Según las informaciones proporcionadas por la empresa estadounidense, dos elementos ocasionaron la cancelación de la transacción: la naturaleza del producto, o sea los 10 ejemplares del libro “Fidel Castro, héros des déshérités”, del cual Paypal exigió “una explicación detallada y completa”, así como la palabra “Cuba”. En una palabra, la AQAC fue víctima de la aplicación extraterritorial de las sanciones económicas estadounidenses contra Cuba.[3]

Denis Rémillard, miembro de la AQAC, declaró su asombro: “Es increíble. Les proporcioné una explicación detallada pero a pesar de eso Paypal canceló la transacción. Las sanciones económicas contra Cuba afectan a todo el mundo”.[4]

Este enésimo caso ilustra el carácter absurdo e ilegal de las sanciones económicas contra Cuba. Así, una empresa estadounidense aplicó de modo extraterritorial las sanciones económicas impuestas por Washington a La Habana desde hace más de medio siglo a una asociación canadiense que deseaba comprar un libro sobre Fidel Castro publicado en Francia.

A pesar del acercamiento histórico que operó Barack Obama en diciembre de 2014, a pesar de su visita oficial a Cuba en marzo de 2016, a pesar de las múltiples declaraciones a favor del levantamiento de las sanciones económicas que constituyen el principal obstáculo al desarrollo de la isla, éstas se aplican todavía de modo implacable sobre la población cubana y particularmente sobre sus categorías más vulnerables. Afectan también al comercio internacional de Cuba con el resto del mundo por su carácter extraterritorial. Así, entre abril de 2015 y marzo de 206, la imposición de este estado de sitio económico costó 4.650.000 millones de dólares a Cuba. En total, desde 1962, las sanciones han costado la bagatela de 125.800.000 millones de dólares a los cubanos. Incluso su alcance se extiende a otras naciones para impedir que los ciudadanos canadienses tengan acceso… a un libro sobre Fidel Castro.[5]

 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

 

 

[1] Salim Lamrani, Fidel Castro, héros des déshérités, París, Editions Estrella, 2016.

[2] Correo electrónico de Paypal del 10 de septiembre 2016.

[3] Correo de Paypal a Denis Rémillard, 8 de septiembre de 2016.

[4] Correo de Denis Rémillard a Salim Lamrani, 10 de septiembre de 2016.

[5] Bruno Rodríguez, «En un año, el bloqueo restó cuatro mil 680 millones de dólares a la economía cubana», Cubadebate, 9 de septiembre de 2016.

  • Posted in Español
  • Comments Off on El libro “Fidel Castro, héros des déshérités” víctima de las sanciones económicas contra Cuba

Leaked: Source Reveals Coordination between US, ISIS in Attacking Syrian Army

September 18th, 2016 by Alalam

The ISIS launched attacks on the Syrian army positions in Deir Ezzor only 7 minutes after the US-led coalition’s airstrikes on Saturday, a military source said, adding that the air and ground assault were highly coordinated, According to FNA report.

The source said after the coalition’s pounding of the Syrian army near Deir Ezzor airbase, the ISIS could take full control of al-Tharda mountain and then Deir Ezzor military base, adding that the army and national defense forces deployed near the airbase immediately won it back from the terrorists by launching a counterattack.

Noting that Deir Ezzor is now almost in tranquility and no change has occurred in the military map of the region, the source said by attacking the Syrian army positions, the US seeks to prevent military operations to break the terrorists’ siege on the city.

Leaked Document: Source Reveals Coordination between US, ISIS in Attacking Syrian Army

The source said the simultaneous raid of the ISIL terrorists immediately after the coalition airstrikes is the best evidence of the high coordination done between the US and the terrorists.

Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that four strikes against Syrian positions had been delivered by US-led coalition aircraft, including two F-16 jet fighters and two A-10 support aircraft.

The Syrian military called the bombing a “serious and blatant aggression” against Syrian forces, and said it was “conclusive evidence” that the US and its allies support ISIL militants.

Also on Sunday, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman blasted Washington over the recent airstrikes near Deir Ezzor, and said such moves serves the interests of the ISIS terror group.

“If previously we had suspicions that Fatah al-Sham Front (formerly known as al-Nusra Front) is protected this way, now, after Saturday airstrikes on the Syrian army we come to a really terrifying conclusion for the entire world: The White House is defending the ISIL,” Maria Zakharova said.

“We demand a full and detailed explanation from Washington. That explanation must be given at the UN Security Council,” she added.

Russia has demanded full and detailed explanation from Washington over the incident in Deir Ezzor, in which 62 Syrian troops were killed and over 100 injured.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Leaked: Source Reveals Coordination between US, ISIS in Attacking Syrian Army

Australian Jets Participated in Massacre of Syrian Soldiers in Deir Ezzor

September 18th, 2016 by Paul Antonopoulos

Australia’s Defense Department have admitted that its jets have participated in an airstrike against Syrian Army positions near Deir Ezzor that left tens dead.

Australia has offered its condolences to the victims of the soldiers families and has announced it will fully cooperate in the review of the incident.

“Australian aircraft were among a number of international aircraft taking part in this Coalition operation,” the Defence Department said in a statement.

Australia would never intentionally target a known Syrian military unit or actively support Daesh (ISIS). Defence offers its condolences to the families of any Syrian personnel killed or wounded in this incident.

So blatant was the airstrike against the Syrian Army that even anti-Assad mainstream media in Australia have suggested that the airstrikes purposefully attacked their positions, supporting Russia’s claim.

Australia is one of many countries participating in the illegal US-led Coalition airstrikes in Syria that are without coordination with Damascus.

Paul Antonopoulos
Deputy-Editor at Al-Masdar News, Lecturer at Charles Sturt University and Researcher at Western Sydney University. MA in International Relations. You can follow on Twitter: oulosP
  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Australian Jets Participated in Massacre of Syrian Soldiers in Deir Ezzor

A nova bomba nuclear dos Estados-Unidos foi autorizada

September 18th, 2016 by Manlio Dinucci

A B61-12, a nova bomba nuclear dos Estados Unidos destinada a substituir a B-61 instalada na Itália e outros países europeus, foi “oficialmente autorizada” pela National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA, a agência oficial do Departamento de Energia, sigla em inglês), dedicada a “reforçar a segurança nacional através da aplicação militar da ciência nuclear”.

Depois de quatro anos de projetos e experimentações, a NNSA deu luz verde à fase de execução de engenharia que prepara a produção em série. Os muitos componentes da B61-12 estão sendo produzidos e testados nos laboratórios nacionais de Los Alamos e Albuquerque (Novo México), e Livermore (Califórnia), e produzidos (utilizando em parte os da B-61) em uma série de plantas no Missouri, Texas, na Carolina do Sul, Tennessee. Acresce-se a isto a cauda de guia de precisão, fornecida pela Boeing.

A bomba B61-12, cujo custo previsto é de 8 a 12 bilhões de dólares para 400 a 500 bombas, começarão a ser fabricadas em série no ano fiscal de 2020, que se inicia em 1º de outubro de 2019. A partir daí a bomba B-61 começará a ser substituída.

Segundo estimativas da Federação de Cientistas Americanos (FAS, na sigla em inglês), os Estados Unidos mantêm hoje 70 bombas nucleares B-61 na Itália (50 em Aviano e 20 em Ghedi-Torre), 50 na Turquia, 20 respectivamente na Alemanha, Bélgica e Holanda, num total de 180. Ninguém sabe, porém, com exatidão quantas são efetivamente: existem em Aviano 18 bunkers em condições de estocar mais 70. Nessa base e em Ghedi já foram efetuadas modificações, como mostram fotos de satélites publicadas pela FAS. Semelhantes preparativos estão em curso em outras bases na Europa e Turquia.

A NNSA confirma oficialmente que a B61-12, definida como “elemento fundamental da tríade nuclear dos EUA” (terrestre, naval e aérea), substituirá as atuais bombas B61-3, B61-4, B61-7 e B61-10. Confirma, portanto, tudo o que já tínhamos documentado. A bomba B61-12 não é uma simples versão modernizada da precedente, mas uma nova arma: há uma ogiva nuclear com quatro opções de potência, com uma potência média comparável a quatro bombas de Hiroxima; um sistema de guia que permite lançá-la com distância do objetivo; e capacidade de penetrar no terreno para destruir o bunker dos centros de comando em um ataque nuclear de surpresa.

A nova bomba, que os EUA se preparam para instalar na Itália e em outros países europeus no quadro da escalada contra a Rússia, são armas que reduzem o limiar nuclear, ou seja, tornam mais provável o lançamento de um ataque nuclear. A 31ª Fighter Wing, a esquadrilha de caças-bombardeiros USA F-16 instalada em Aviano, está pronta para um ataque nuclear 24 horas por dia. Mesmo pilotos italianos, demonstra a FAS, estão sendo treinados para um ataque nuclear sob o comando dos EUA com os caças-bombardeiros Tornado istalados em Ghedi.

A aeronáutica italiana está aguardando a chegada dos caças F-35 nos quais, anuncia a Força Aérea dos EUA, “será integrada a bomba B61-12”. A primeira esquadrilha de F-35, instalada na base Hill no Utah, foi oficialmente declarada “combat ready” (prontidão para o combate). A Força Aérea dos EUA disse não prever quando a esquadrilha de F-35 será “combat proven” (provada em combate), mas que “é provável sua instalação em ultramar no início de 2017”.

A ministra italiana da Defesa, Roberta Pinotti, espera que seja instalada na Itália, já “escolhida” pelos EUA para a instalação do Sistema Móvel Objetivo (MUOS, na sigla em inglês), que “outras nações queriam”. Com a B61-12, os F-35 e o MUOS sobre seu território, a Itália também será escolhida, pelo país atacado, como alvo prioritário de uma represália nuclear.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Traduzido pela redação do Resistência

Manlio Dinucci é jornalista e geógrafo; publicado em Il Manifesto, traduzido pela redação do Resistência

  • Posted in Português
  • Comments Off on A nova bomba nuclear dos Estados-Unidos foi autorizada

Bolivian President Evo Morales Says US Drug War Benefits American Capitalism

September 18th, 2016 by Telesur

Morales pulled no punches during his speech at the NAM summit in Venezuela.

Bolivian President Evo Morales described drug trafficking as “a war that only benefits U.S.” capitalism at the Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Venezuela.

“The fight against drug trafficking is a tool of control for the United States,” said Morales, who strongly opposes the U.S. drug war in Latin America. The president added that wherever drug trafficking grows is wherever the U.S. is, and only benefits the world capitalist system.

Bolivian President Evo Morales

olivian President Evo Morales | Photo: elciudadano.gob.ec

Morales also hit out at U.S. foreign policy across the world saying that the NAM movement condemned the continued economic blockade on Cuba by the U.S. Morales also gave his support to the people of Palestine who he said have been suffering a “political genocide” at the hands of Israel and the U.S.

On Wednesday, Morales hit out at U.S. drug policy in response to U.S. President Barack Obama’s criticism of Bolivia and Venezuela’s drug policy in the annual global drug trafficking memorandum to the U.S. State Department.

Morales described the memorandum as “ridiculous” in a tweet from Wednesday, saying that the U.S. should “first suspend secret banking, eliminate tax havens, and stop producing weapons and invading countries.”

“The U.S., as the largest consumer of drugs in the world, has no moral authority to dismiss the fight against drug trafficking of other people’s,” Morales tweeted.

“You have to be neo-colonialist, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist to be recognized by the U.S. in the fight against drug trafficking,” he continued.

The U.S. has been one of the biggest critics of Bolivia’s progressive drug policies, which is the only country exempt from a ban on growing coca for medical and traditional purposes.

In the memorandum Obama said that Bolivia had “failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.”

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Bolivian President Evo Morales Says US Drug War Benefits American Capitalism

U.S., Israel Launch Airstrikes On Syrian Government Forces – Directly Supporting ISIS And Al-Qaeda

September 18th, 2016 by Moon of Alabama

The U.S.

    • refuses to publish the details of the agreement with Russia about the ceasefire  in Syria
    • has done nothing over the last days to separate, as promised, the “moderate rebels” it supports in Syria from al-Qaeda
    • today bombed a Syrian army position in support of an Islamic State attack in Deir Ezzor.

Details of the last attack:

“Today at 17:00-17:50 Moscow time, international anti-Daesh coalition (two F-16 and two A-10 jets) carried out four strikes on Syrian government forces’ units encirled by Daesh near Deir ez-Zor airport. The coalition’s aircraft entered Syrian airspace from the side of the Iraqi border,” Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.
…
As a result of the attack, 62 Syrian soldiers were killed and some 100 others were injured, according to information received from the Syrian command in Deir ez-Zor, he said.The Russian Defense Ministry said that Daesh terrorists launched an offensive soon after the US-led coalition aircraft attacked the Syrian government forces.

The death toll is likely to increase.

Earlier today the Syrian Arab Army had announced that 1,000 fresh soldiers arrived in Deir Ezzor to liberate it from ISIS.

The U.S. planes came from Erbil in the Kurdish separatist region of Iraq.

The Syrian troops were holding positions on Jabal Tharda, a mountain that overlooks Deir Ezzor’s airport. The mountain is now fully under Islamic State control. With this IS has firecontrol over the airport and the Deir Ezzor garrison as well as more than 150,000 civilians living under government protection are thereby cut off from supplies and any further reinforcements. Government forces have launched a counterattack to regain the vital position.

At the same time the Israeli air force attacked Syrian positions in the Golan height after al-Qaeda lobbed a mortar towards Israeli forces signaling the need for support. This has become the official format of Israeli support for al-Qaeda in the area with Israel claiming that the Syrian army is responsible for any and all attacks from the Syrian side no matter who initiates them.

Intense attacks from inside the surrounded, al-Qaeda occupied east-Aleppo on Syrian government positions were launched in the late afternoon local time. Fighting there is ongoing.

Earlier today artillery fire from Turkey hit Syrian army positions in Latakia.

The U.S. air attack on Deir Ezzor was certainly not a mistake but well planed.

It is a signal to Russia and Syria. I am not sure though what lunacy it is supposed to convey.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on U.S., Israel Launch Airstrikes On Syrian Government Forces – Directly Supporting ISIS And Al-Qaeda

US-Led Coalition Air Raid Strikes Syrian Army as Truce Wavers, Russia Says

September 18th, 2016 by Middle East Eye

US military says strikes were halted after Russia said they hit Syrian army; UN Security Council meeting called

Air strikes blamed by Moscow and Damascus on the US-led coalition hit a Syrian army position in the east of the country on Saturday, killing more than 60 soldiers, the Russian army said.

The situation in Syria is deteriorating, the Russian military said earlier, adding that the US would be responsible if the current ceasefire breaks down.

“Warplanes from the international anti-jihadist coalition carried out four air strikes today against Syrian forces surrounded by the Islamic State (IS) group in the Deir Ezzor air base,” a Russian army statement said.

“Sixty-two Syrian soldiers were killed and a hundred others were injured in these strikes.”

The Russian military said two F-16 and two A-10 jets flew into Syrian airspace from neighbouring Iraq to carry out the strikes. “Straight after the coalition’s strikes, IS militants launched an offensive,” said the statement, adding that “fierce fighting against the terrorists” ensued nearby. “If these strikes were due to an error in the target coordinates, that would be a direct consequence of the US’ refusal to coordinate with Russia its fight against the terrorist groups in Syria,” it said. The US military’s Central Command said in a statement it had been carrying out strikes against a suspected IS position, and called off the assault after Russia said it was Syrian army positions that were being struck, the Washington Post reported. “Syria is a complex situation with various military forces and militias in close proximity, but coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit,” US officials said. The US had denied a Syrian accusation last December that it had attacked a government army camp in Deir Ezzor, according to the BBC. Moscow will convene an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council after the air strikes, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said late on Saturday. “The Russian ambassador to the UN has been tasked with convening an urgent meeting of the Security Council over this issue,” Zakharova told Rossia-24 public television. “We demand Washington’s full and detailed explanation, and that must be made before the UN Security Council.” The IS-affiliated Amaq news outlet said IS had seized the hill where the air strike took place. Syrian state media also said coalition aircraft carried out the strike near Deir Ezzor airport and state news agency SANA spoke of casualties, without specifying a number. Britain-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 80 soldiers were killed, but could not specify who carried out the raids.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to journalists at airport in Bishkek on Saturday, saying he remains ‘positive’ about Syria truce agreement struck with US last week but calling for more transparency from Washington (AFP)

‘Situation worsening’

Syria’s army has been fighting off a fierce offensive by IS on the Deir Ezzor military airbase since last year. “This is a dangerous and bold attack against the Syrian state and army and clear evidence that the United States and its allies support the terrorist group Daesh,” the army statement reported by the SANA official news agency said, referring to IS. “The situation in Syria is worsening,” Russian General Vladimir Savchenko said in a televised briefing earlier. “In the past 24 hours, the number of attacks has risen sharply,” with 55 attacks on government positions and civilians. He said 12 civilians had been killed. Russian military officials lashed out at the US in the strongest language yet over the ceasefire struck last week in Geneva, a last-ditch effort to stop the bloodshed in Syria. The ceasefire started on Monday and has so far lasted five days. “Russia is exerting all possible effort to restrain government troops from returning fire,” senior army general Viktor Poznikhir said during the televised briefing. “If the American side does not take the necessary measures to carry out its obligations… a breakdown of the ceasefire will be on the United States.” Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Syrian rebels of using the ceasefire to regroup, as diplomatic tensions between Moscow and Washington simmered over a lack of humanitarian aid access. In New York, the UN Security Council cancelled an urgent meeting that had been called to discuss whether to endorse the ceasefire, billed as the “last chance” to end the five-year war that has killed 300,000 people.

Friday’s closed-door consultations were scrapped after Moscow and Washington failed to agree over disclosing details of the ceasefire to the council.

Extending the truce

Putin, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said on Saturday he remained “positive” about the truce, but lashed out at rebels.

“We see attempts to regroup among these terrorists, to switch one label for another, one name for another and keep their military capacity,” he said in televised remarks.

Putin said Washington apparently “has the desire to keep the capabilities to fight the lawful government of President Assad,” calling it a “very dangerous path”.

Moscow said on Friday that it was ready to prolong the truce by 72 hours, but there has been no formal announcement of an extension.

Implementing the truce has been complicated by the presence of militants – who are not covered by the ceasefire – and mainstream rebels on some of the same frontlines.

A challenge for Washington is to persuade opposition groups it backs to separate themselves from the former al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front, previously called Al-Nusra Front.

US Secretary of State John Kerry called his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Saturday and urged him to press the rebels for safe passage guarantees, the Russian foreign ministry said.

A key plank of the truce deal was the delivery of aid to areas including Aleppo, where an estimated 250,000 people in rebel-held areas of the city are living under government siege.

But 40 trucks carrying desperately needed food aid were still stuck on the border with Turkey on Saturday.

“Still no progress, but the UN is ready to move once we get the go ahead,” said David Swanson, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Under the US-Russia deal, if the truce lasts seven days and humanitarian access is granted, Moscow and Washington are to work together to target militants, including IS.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US-Led Coalition Air Raid Strikes Syrian Army as Truce Wavers, Russia Says

US Army Corps of Engineers Approves yet Another ILLEGAL Pipeline through Endangered Ecosystems in Florida

September 18th, 2016 by Jafari Tishomingo

The U.S Army Corp of Engineers has OK’d the final permits for the Sabal Trail, a pipeline that traverses trough environmentally sensitive parts of north central Florida.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that some 1,200 acres would be destroyed or impacted during construction.

Later, the agency changed that projection to less than 900 acres.Then the EPA changed their minds again and dropped significant environmental concerns over the project that included whether the potential for sinkholes and damage to the aquifer had been downplayed by Sabal Trail and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

In some cases, the EPA claimed impacts to wetlands are considered temporary and by temporary meaning it could only 50 years to revegetate.

The complete Sabal Trail project will be a $3.2 billion, 516-mile with a 3-foot-wide pipeline that will move around 1 billion cubic feet of the natural gas daily from Alabama through south Georgia and Florida.

pipeline

Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson of the Sierra Club vowed via text Friday evening: “We will use all legal means necessary to stop this fracked gas pipeline.”

Pamela Smith, president of Our Santa Fe River Inc., wrote in an email that “…there is no win for the citizens of Florida, only profits for the energy companies that will move compressed gas through our delicate and already overtaxed water ecosystem.”

This pipeline is one of many pipelines that feed America’s addiction to Natural Gas and Oil. This is another pipeline that runs through somewhere fragile, places that are more commonly becoming few and far between. There is no foresight with the people in charge of this or any pipeline. As long as it does notaffect the corporation’s bottom line nowhere is pristine enough or vital to human survival. As long as another dollar can be sucked from the Earth, so be it.

When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money. – Alanis Obomsawin

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US Army Corps of Engineers Approves yet Another ILLEGAL Pipeline through Endangered Ecosystems in Florida

Clinton Campaign in Crisis over Plunging Support among Younger Voters. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson Attract Young Voters

September 18th, 2016 by Zaida Green

The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is responding to poll numbers and other indications of declining support among younger voters by deploying its most prominent surrogates to college campuses.

The moves come a day after two national surveys, one conducted by Quinnipiac University and the other by CBS News and the New York Times, found that more than a third of voters under the age of 30 plan to vote for third-party presidential candidates.

Clinton is widely despised, especially by young people. According to the Quinnipiac University poll, Clinton has the support of just 31 percent of voters aged 18-34, with 29 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson, 25 percent for Republican Donald Trump and 15 percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Another poll, published in Bloomberg News, found that Clinton leads Trump by only 36 to 33 percent among young voters in Ohio, with Johnson drawing the support of 22 percent, contributing heavily to her overall five-point deficit to Trump in the state.

Press reports suggest that the Democratic Party was planning to refocus its efforts to reach young people by attacking Johnson and Stein and warning that any vote for one of these third-party candidates would help elect Trump as president. Former Vice President Al Gore, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders all made appearances in different venues on Friday to insist that young people must back Clinton.

The New York Times wrote, referring to younger voters, that they “recoil at Mr. Trump, her Republican opponent, but now favor the Libertarian nominee, Gary Johnson, or the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.”

The Wall Street Journal reported, “Hillary Clinton’s once-commanding lead among young voters has nearly collapsed, several polls show, a factor making the presidential race much closer in recent weeks and prompting the Clinton campaign to move quickly to keep a core Democratic constituency in the fold.

In its most visible response, the campaign has begun sending the party’s most popular stars to college campuses to urge students not to sit out the election or back third-party candidates, who are drawing support from young voters.

In Ohio, one of the most important “battleground” states, the Clinton campaign has deployed the two most prominent “left” figures in the US Senate, Clinton’s principal challenger for the nomination Sanders and Warren, to speak at major Ohio college campuses in order to corral young voters behind the Democrats.

Sanders speaks at the University of Akron and Kent State University this weekend, while Warren will appear at Ohio State University in Columbus and at Cleveland State University.

Michelle Obama kicked off the weekend campus blitz with an appearance Friday night at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Ohio is one of a number of “Rust Belt” states that have been devastated by decades of deindustrialization, and further ruined by the 2008 financial crisis. Facing a dearth of jobs, the only “viable” futures presented to young people are: enlist in the armed forces or attend college in the hope that employment prospects will be better after graduating with a degree—along with thousands of dollars in debt. According to the state’s Development Services Agency, half a million youth aged 18-34 live in poverty.

In sending Sanders and Warren to the heavily contested state, the Clinton campaign is attempting to pull one of the most disaffected demographics in the electorate back into the campaign of the Democratic Party.

Sanders has worked for decades within the orbit of the Democratic Party. During the primaries he won some 13 million voters, including large numbers of young people. The senator’s “political revolution” now consists of trying to convince his supporters to back the favored candidates of the “millionaires and billionaires” he used to denounce. He has refused to criticize the Obama administration’s bailout of Wall Street banks and has remained silent on the US’s escalating drive to world war.

Warren’s “progressive” credentials are based on her academic publications detailing the economic hardship of middle-income families, and her subsequent roles in advisory and regulatory bodies, including the Congressional Oversight Panel. She has defended the Obama administration’s assault on working conditions while spouting empty criticisms of Wall Street.

According to the campaign’s official announcement, Sanders and Warren “will emphasize Clinton’s plans to make free community college and debt-free college available to all Americans, protect access to health care for Americans, reform our immigration system … raise the minimum wage and protect our climate.”

These are all empty gestures. Clinton is pledged to continue the policy of the Obama administration, which has overseen a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the super-rich.

Not on the agenda for discussion at these campus meetings are Clinton’s plans for war. Clinton’s political record as a war hawk stretches back more than 20 years, longer than the entire life span of many of the young voters her campaign is striving to ensnare. As First Lady to President Bill Clinton, she actively supported the bombing campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.

Clinton has consistently acted as one of the most hawkish figures in the American political establishment. Since supporting the criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003, she has consistently voted against troop withdrawals and for the continued funding of a war that, to date, has killed more than a million people over the course of thirteen years. As head of the Department of State from 2009 to 2013, she played a pivotal role in prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya.

The Clinton campaign’s attacks on Republican rival Donald Trump have been based on the right-wing assertions that Trump is a puppet of Russian interests and “unqualified” to be Commander-in-Chief—that is, “unqualified” to lead the military-intelligence establishment. Her bid for the presidency has the formal endorsement of 95 retired generals and admirals.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Clinton Campaign in Crisis over Plunging Support among Younger Voters. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson Attract Young Voters

US Special Forces Flee “Moderate” Rebels in Syria: “Down with America. Get out you Pigs.”

September 18th, 2016 by Bill Van Auken

US special operations troops were compelled to flee from a village in northern Syria Friday after their lives were threatened by elements of the so-called Free Syrian Army, the amorphous group of Islamist militias that Washington has backed in its five-year-old war for regime change.

A video posted online showed a column of vehicles carrying the American special forces operatives speeding out of the village as a crowd of Islamist jihadis waving automatic weapons chanted anti-American slogans and death threats.

“We’re going to slaughter you,” the so-called “moderate rebels,” shouted. “Down with America. Get out you pigs.”

An individual who appeared to be leading the demonstration shouted,

“The collaborators of America are dogs and pigs. They wage a crusader war against Syria and Islam.” Another man shouted, “Christians and Americans have no place among us.”

The appearance of the video coincided with the first report carried by the Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon had deployed a unit of 40 special forces troops to assist the Turkish army, which invaded Syria last month in an operation dubbed Euphrates Shield. It marks the first such direct attempt at US-Turkish collaboration in Syria since the Obama administration ordered the deployment of several hundred special operations troops in the country last spring.

While ostensibly the joint operation is aimed at routing the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) from towns it has occupied in northern Syria, Ankara’s overriding aim is to drive back Syrian Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and prevent them from consolidating an autonomous Kurdish entity on Turkey’s border.

The videotaped incident took place outside the village of al-Rai near the Turkish border. It is on the road leading south to the ISIS-held town of al-Bab, which is seen as a strategic link between the predominantly Kurdish cantons of Kobani and Afin. The YPG Kurdish forces are determined to take the town, while Turkey is determined to deny it to them.

Until recently, the YPG has served as the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the principal US proxy ground forces in the war against ISIS, and had been armed, trained and supported by US special forces “advisers.” The attempt to deploy American special operations troops with the Turkish-backed militias raised the real prospect of US soldiers confronting each other on opposite sides of the battlefield.

The US alliance with the Kurdish forces was undoubtedly a factor in the anger of the so-called FSA fighters depicted in the video. These Sunni sectarian militias, however, are not only hostile to the Kurds, but also share the essential ideology of Al Qaeda.

The confrontation, which was largely blacked out by the US media, exposes the real character of the so-called “moderate opposition” backed by Washington and its regional allies—principally Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar—as well as the intractable contradictions created by the criminal and reckless policy pursued by Washington over the past five years in its systematic destruction of Syria.

The episode also provided embarrassing—from the Obama administration’s standpoint—confirmation of the charge levied by Russia that Washington is either unable or unwilling to pressure the Islamist militias that the CIA has armed and paid to abide by the terms of a ceasefire agreement reached last week between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“Despite the fact that the ceasefire regime in Syria envisaged by the Russian-US agreement has lasted for four days now, the issue of the general ability of the ‘moderate opposition’ to observe it remains open,” Russian Defense Ministry representative Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said on Friday. “All attempts by our American partners to demonstrate to the world at least some manageability of their opposition activists in Syria have now failed,” the general added.

Vladimir Savchenko, the chief of Russia’s center for reconciliation of the warring parties in Syria, reported Friday that over the previous 24 hours there had been 39 separate instances of the so-called rebels shelling government positions and civilian areas. He said that the attacks indicated that the US-backed armed opposition was “once again using the ceasefire regime to restore its combat capabilities and regroup its forces.”

Russian officials have expressed particular frustration over Washington’s failure to provide information on the exact locations and the numbers involved of the so-called “moderate rebels,” which under the ceasefire agreement are supposed to separate themselves from the Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, which recently renamed itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.

The reality is that the Al Qaeda forces are the dominant armed militias attacking the Syrian government of President Bashir al-Assad, and the existence of a “moderate,” much less secular, opposition is a propaganda invention of the US and its allies. The CIA-supported militias are largely integrated with the Al Nusra forces and could not survive independently of them.

Meanwhile, the US has attempted to foist the blame on the Syrian government and its ally, Russia, for the failure of a column of trucks bearing relief supplies to reach the besieged city of Aleppo. US officials have made it clear that Washington is prepared to utilize the delay as a pretext for abrogating the ceasefire deal, including most critically, the creation of a “joint implementation center” to coordinate US and Russian military operations in Syria.

“If, by Monday we have continued to see reduced violence and no humanitarian access there will be no Joint Implementation Center,” State Department spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday.

The blocking of the aid column is bound up with the security of the road leading from the Turkish border into “rebel”-held eastern Aleppo, which has been repeatedly shelled by the US-backed militias. The al-Nusra forces that predominate in the area, moreover, have held public demonstrations vowing to block any UN aid in protest against the ceasefire agreement.

The Obama administration has also resisted Russian proposals that the terms of the ceasefire deal be made public and be presented to the United Nations Security Council for its endorsement.

Underlying this reticence are deep divisions within the US state itself over the agreement with Russia. Pentagon officials, including the top uniformed commanders in the Middle East, have publicly expressed reservations over the agreement, indicating that they are not committed to implementing it, despite its having been approved by the US president.

Obama met Friday with Kerry, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who reportedly opposed the ceasefire, and other top security officials.

Underlying the political divisions within the US government and statements by top generals bordering on insubordination are not only differences over the crisis-ridden US strategy in Syria. More fundamentally, the US military brass is focused increasingly on a direct military confrontation with Russia, the world’s number two nuclear power, and sees the ceasefire as cutting across the preparations for such a catastrophic conflict.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US Special Forces Flee “Moderate” Rebels in Syria: “Down with America. Get out you Pigs.”

Libya, David Cameron’s “Iraq”? Damning Report Shreds Another War Monger.

September 18th, 2016 by Felicity Arbuthnot

Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron is consistent in just one thing – jumping ship when the going gets tough. He announced his resignation   in the immediate wake of the 23rd July referendum in which Britain marginally voted to leave the EU, a referendum which he had fecklessly called to appease right wing “little Englanders”, instead of facing them down.

He lost. The result is looming financial catastrophe and the prospect of unraveling forty three years of legislations (Britain joined the then European Economic Community on 1st January 1973.) No structure was put in place for a government Department to address the legal and bureaucratic enormities should the leave vote prevail. There is still none.

Cameron however committed to staying on as an MP until the 2020 general election, vowing grandiosely: “I will do everything I can in future to help this great country succeed”, he said of the small island off Europe which he had potentially sunk, now isolated from and derided by swathes of its continental neighbours – with the sound of trading doors metaphorically slamming shut reverberating across the English Channel.

David Cameron has now jumped again, resigning unexpectedly and immediately as an MP on Monday 12th September, giving the impression that he was not in agreement with certain policies of his (unelected) successor, Theresa May. He stated: “Obviously I have my own views about certain issues … As a former PM it’s very difficult to sit as a back-bencher and not be an enormous diversion and distraction from what the Government is doing. I don’t want to be that distraction.” What an ego.

Over the decades of course, the House of Parliament has been littered with former Prime Ministers and Deputy Prime Ministers who have remained constituency MPs without being a “distraction.”

DEVASTATING INDICTMENT

The following day the real reason for his decision seemed obvious. Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee released their devastating findings on Cameron’s hand in actions resulting in Libya’s near destruction, contributing to the unprecedented migration of those fleeing UK enjoined “liberations”, creating more subsequent attacks in the West – and swelling ISIS and other terrorist factions.

“Cameron blamed for rise of ISIS”, thundered The Times headline, adding: “Damning Inquiry into Libya points finger at former PM.” The Guardian opined: “MPs condemn Cameron over Libya debacle” and: “Errors resulted in country ‘becoming failed state and led to growth of ISIS.’ ”

The Independent owned “I”: “Cameron’s toxic Libya legacy”, with: “Former PM blamed for collapse in to civil war, rise of ISIS and mass migration to Europe in Inquiry’s scathing verdict” and “Cameron ignored lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan …”

The Independent chose: “Cameron’s bloody legacy: Damning Report blames ex-PM for ISIS in Libya.”

No wonder he plopped over the side.

The Report is decimating. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee concluding: “Through his decision-making in the National Security Council, former Prime Minister, David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.”

The disasters leading to that final verdict include the UK’s intervention being based on “erroneous assumption” an “incomplete understanding” of the situation on the ground, with Cameron leaping from limited intervention to an: “opportunist policy of (entirely illegal) regime change”, based on “inadequate intelligence.”

Once Gaddafi had been horrendously assassinated, resultant from the assault on his country: “ … failure to develop a coherent strategy … had led to political and economic collapse, internecine warfare, humanitarian crisis and the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) in North Africa.”

After his death, Gaddafi’s body, with that of his son, Mutassim, was laid out on the floor of a meat warehouse in Misrata. (“I”, 14th September 2016.)

“We came, we saw, he died”, then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton told the media, with a peal of laughter. (1) Just under a year later US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three US officials were murdered in Benghazi. Payback time for her words, taken out on the obvious target?

Muammar Gaddafi, his son Muatassim and his former Defence Minister were reportedly buried in unmarked graves in the desert, secretively, before dawn on 25th October 2011. The shocking series of events speaking volumes for the “New Libya” and the Cameron-led, British government’s blood dripping hands in the all.

The UK’s meddling hands were involved from the start. France, Lebanon and the UK, supported by the US, proposed UN Security Council Resolution 1973.

Britain was the second country, after France, to call for a “no fly zone” over Libya in order to: “to use all necessary measures” to prevent attacks on civilians. “It neither explicitly authorised the deployment of ground forces nor addressed the question of regime change or of post conflict reconstruction”, reminds the Committee.

Moreover: “France led the international community in advancing the case for military intervention in Libya … UK policy followed decisions taken in France.” Former Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder confirmed to the Committee: “Cameron and Sarkozy were the undisputed leaders in terms of doing something.” (Emphasis added.)

The US was then “instrumental in extending the terms of the Resolution” to even a “no drive zone” and “assumed authority to attack the entire Libyan government’s command and communications network.”

INSTITUTIONAL IGNORANCE

On the 19th March 2011, a nineteen nation “coalition” turned a “no fly zone” into a free fire zone and embarked on a blitzkrieg of a nation of just 6.103 million (2011 figure.)

All this in spite of the revelation to the Committee by former UK Ambassador to Libya Sir Dominic Asquith, that the intelligence base at to what was really happening in the country: “… might well have been less than ideal.”

Professor George Joffe, renowned expert on the Middle East and North Africa, noted: “the relatively limited understanding of events” and that:  “people had not really bothered to monitor closely what was happening.”

Analyst Alison Pargeter: ‘expressed her shock at the lack of awareness in Whitehall of the “history and regional complexities” of Libya.’

Incredibly Whitehall appeared to have been near totally ignorant as to the extent to which the “rebellion” might have been a relatively small group of Islamic extremists.

Former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Richards was apparently unaware that Abdelhakim Belhadj and other Al Qaeda linked members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group were involved. “It was a grey area”, he said. However: “a quorum of respectable Libyans were assuring the Foreign Office” that militant Islam would not benefit from the rebellion. “With the benefit of hindsight, that was wishful thinking at best”, concluded his Lordship.

“The possibility that militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from the rebellion should not have been the preserve of hindsight. Militant connections with transnational militant extremist groups were know before 201l, because many Libyans had participated in the Iraq insurgency and in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda”, commented the Committee. (Emphasis added)

Iraq revisited. Back then it was the “respectable” Ahmed Chalabi, Iyad Allawi and their ilk selling a pack of lies to the seemingly ever gullible, supremely unworldly Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Much was made by William Hague, Foreign Secretary at the time and by Liam Fox, then Defence Secretary, of Muammar’s Gaddafi’s threatening rhetoric. The Committee pointed out that: ”Despite his rhetoric, the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence.”

Further, two days before the 19 nation onslaught: ‘On 17 March 2011, Muammar Gaddafi announced to the rebels in Benghazi, “Throw away your weapons, exactly like your brothers in Ajdabiya and other places did. They laid down their arms and they are safe. We never pursued them at all.”

Subsequent investigation revealed that when Gaddafi’s forces re-took Ajdabiya in February 2011, they did not attack civilians. “Muammar Gaddafi also attempted to appease protesters in Benghazi with an offer of development aid before finally deploying troops.”

Professor Joffe agreed that Gaddafi’s words were historically at odds with his deeds: “If you go back to the American bombings in the 1980s of Benghazi and Tripoli, rather than trying to remove threats to the regime in the east, in Cyrenaica, Gaddafi spent six months trying to pacify the tribes that were located there. The evidence is that he was well aware of the insecurity of parts of the country and of the unlikelihood (that military assault was the answer.) Therefore, he would have been very careful in the actual response…the fear of the massacre of civilians was vastly overstated.”

In June 2011 an Amnesty International investigation failed to find corroborative evidence of mass human rights violations by government troops but did find that: “the rebels in Benghazi made false claims and manufactured evidence” and that: “much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events …”

CONDEMNATION; AIDING ISIS

The Committee wrote damningly:

We have seen no evidence that the UK Government carried out a proper analysis of the nature of the rebellion in Libya. It may be that the UK Government was unable to analyse the nature of the rebellion in Libya due to incomplete intelligence and insufficient institutional insight and that it was caught up in events as they developed.

It could not verify the actual threat to civilians posed by the Gaddafi regime; it selectively took elements of Muammar Gaddafi’s rhetoric at face value; and it failed to identify the militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion. UK strategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.

Moreover: “The deployment of coalition air assets shifted the military balance in the Libyan civil war in favour of the rebels”, with: “The combat performance of rebel ground forces enhanced by personnel and intelligence provided by States such as the UK, France, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.”  Lord Richards informed that the UK “had a few people embedded” with the rebel forces.

Arms and tanks were also provided to the rebels by members of the “coalition” in contravention of Resolution 1973.

Was the aim of the assault regime change or civilian protection? Lord Richard said: “one thing morphed almost ineluctably in to the other.”

The Committee summarized: “The UK’s intervention in Libya was reactive and did not comprise action in pursuit of a strategic objective. This meant that a limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into a policy of regime change by military means.” (Emphasis added.)

The Cameron-led UK government had “focused exclusively on military intervention”, under the National Security Council, a Cabinet Committee created by David Cameron.

The Committee’s final observation is:

We note former Prime Minister David Cameron’s decisive role when the National Security Council discussed intervention in Libya. We also note that Lord Richards implicitly dissociated himself from that decision in his oral evidence to this inquiry. The Government must commission an independent review of the operation of the NSC … It should be informed by the conclusions of the Iraq Inquiry and examine whether the weaknesses in governmental decision-making in relation to the Iraq intervention in 2003 have been addressed by the introduction of the NSC.

Cameron who said he wanted to be “heir to Blair” seems to have ended up as just that, pivotal cheerleader for the butchery of a sovereign leader, most of his family, government and the destruction of a nation.

Muammar Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa . However, by the time he was assassinated, Libya was unquestionably Africa ‘s most prosperous nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy in Africa and less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands. Libyans did not only enjoy free health care and free education, they also enjoyed free electricity and interest free loans. The price of petrol was around $0.14 per liter and 40 loaves of bread cost just $0.15. Consequently, the UN designated Libya the 53rd highest in the world in human development. (2)

End note: David Cameron jumped ship yet a third time – he refused to give evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

The full text of the Committee’s findings: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/11905.htm#_idTextAnchor023

Notes

  1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-on-qaddafi-we-came-we-saw-he-died/
  2. http://www.countercurrents.org/chengu120113.htm

 

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Libya, David Cameron’s “Iraq”? Damning Report Shreds Another War Monger.

Monsanto Merges with Bayer, “Their Expertise is War”. Shady Historical Origins, IG Farben, Part of Hitler’s Chemical Genetic Engineering Cartel

September 18th, 2016 by Dr. Vandana Shiva

Award Winning Author and Scientist Dr. Vandana Shiva

India is steeped in synthesised controversy, created by Monsanto on the first GM crop supposedly-approved for commercialisation in India. Engaged in litigation on many fronts, Monsanto is trying to subvert our Patent Law, our Plant Variety and Farmers Rights Act, our Essential Commodities Act , our Anti Monopoly Act (Competition Act). It is behaving as if there is no Parliament, no Democracy, no Sovereign Laws in India to which it is subject. Or, it simply does not have any regard for them.

In another theatre, Monsanto and Bayer are merging. They were one as MOBAY (MonsantoBayer), part of the Poison Cartel of IG Farben. Controlling stakes of both Corporations lies with the same private equity firms.

I.G. Farben board member Fritz ter Meer (fifth from right) explains to Adolf Hitler the significance of synthetic rubber, Berlin, 1936, © National Archives, Washington, DC (image right)

The expertise of these companies are those of war. IG Farben – Hitler’s economic power and pre-war Germany’s highest foreign exchange earner – was also a foreign intelligence operation. Herman Shmitz was President of IG Farben, Shmitz’s nephew Max Ilgner was a Director of IG Farben, while Max’s brother Rudolph Ilgner handled the New York arm of the ‘VOWI‘ network as vice president of CHEMNYCO.

Paul Warburg – brother of Max Warburg (Board of Directors, Farben Aufsichsrat) – was one of the founding members of the Federal Reserve System in the United States. He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz played a central role in the Farben empire. Other “guiding hands” of Farben Vorstand included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and George von Schnitzler. Every one of them were adjudged ‘War Criminals’ after World War II, except Paul Warburg.

Monsanto and Bayer have a long history. They made explosives and lethally poisonous gases using shared technologies and sold them to both sides in both  World Wars. The same war chemicals were bought by the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers, from the same manufacturers, with money borrowed from the same federated reserve bank.

MOBAY (MonsantoBayer) supplied ingredients for Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. 20 million gallons of MOBAY defoliants and herbicides were sprayed over South Vietnam. Children are still being born with birth defects, adults have chronic illnesses and cancers, due to their exposure to MOBAY’s chemicals. Monsanto and Bayer’s cross-licensed Agent Orange Resistance has also been cross-developed for decades.

Wars were fought, lives were lost, countries carved into holy lands – with artificial boundaries that suit colonisation and resource grab – while Bayer and Monsanto sold chemicals as bombs and poisons and their brothers provided the loans to buy those bombs.

More recently, according to Monsanto’s website Bayer CropScience AG and Monsanto Co. have “entered into a series of long-term business and licensing agreements related to key enabling agricultural technologies”. This gives Monsanto and Bayer free access to each other’s herbicide and the paired herbicide resistance technology. Through cross licensing agreements like these, mergers and acquisitions, the biotech industry has become the IG Farben of today, with Monsanto in the cockpit.

The Global Chemical and GMO industry – Bayer, Dow Agro, DuPont Pioneer, Mahyco, Monsanto and Syngenta – have come together to form Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII)  to try and become bigger bullies in this assault on India’s farmers, the environment , and democratically framed laws that protect the public and national interest.This is in addition to the lolly-group ABLE, the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises, which tried to challenge India’s Seed Price Control order issued under the Essential commodities Act, in the High Court of Karnataka. The case was dismissed.

The new Group is not “seed Industry”, they produce no seeds. And they try to stretch patents on chemicals to claim ownership on seed, even in countries where patents on seeds and plants are not allowed by law. This is the case in India, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and many other countries.

All the Monsanto cases in India are related to Monsanto un-scientifically, illegally and illegitimately claiming patents on seed, in contempt of India’s laws, and trying to collect royalties from the Indian seed industry and Indian farmers. The FSII is an “IG Farben 100 Year Family Reunion”, a federation is a coming together of independent and autonomous entities.

The Farben family chemical cartel was responsible for exterminating people in concentration camps . They embody a century of ecocide and genocide, carried out in the name of scientific experimentation and innovation. Today the poison cartel is wearing G-Engineering clothes, and citing the mantra of “innovation” ad nauseum. Hitlers concentration camps were an “innovation” in killing. 100 years later, the Farben Family are carrying out the same extermination, silently, globally, much more efficiently.

Monsanto’s “innovation” of collecting illegal royalties and pushing Indian farmers to suicide is also an innovation in killing without liability, indirectly. Just because there is a new way to kill does not make killing right, or a right. “Innovation” like every human activity, has limits – limits set by ethics, justice, democracy, the rights of people, the rights of nature.

I G Farben was tried at Nuremburg. We have national laws to protect people, their right to life and public health, and  the environment. India’s Biosafety laws and Patent, and Plant Variety Act are designed to regulate greedy owners of corporations – with a history of crimes against nature and humanity.

Industry is getting ready to push its next “gene” the  GM-Mustard (DMH-11). The GM mustard being promoted as a public sector “innovation” is based on barnase/barstar/ gene system to create male-sterile plants and a bar gene for Glufosinate Resistance.In 2002 Pro-Agro’s (Bayer) application for approval for commercial planting of GM Mustard based on the same system was rejected.

Although banned in India, Bayer finds ways to sell Glufosinate, to the tea gardens of Assam and the apple orchards of Himachal Pradesh, illegally. Sales agents show the Glufosinate sales under the ‘other’ category to avoid regulation. These chemicals are finding their way into the bodies of our children without government approval. Essentially all key patents related to the bar gene are held by Bayer Crop Science which acquired Aventis Cropscience, which itself was created out of the Genetic Engineering divisions of Schering, Rhone Poulenc and Hoechst. Then Bayer acquired Plant Genetics Systems, and entered into cooperation agreement with Evogene – which has patents on genome mapping.

Before any approval is granted to the Genetically Engineered Mustard, the issue of limits to patentability needs to be resolved on the basis of Indian law, patents on plants and seeds and methods of agriculture must not be allowed, because they are not allowed.

Pental, a retired professor and GM-Operative, will not commercialise GM Mustard seed. His Commanding Officers at Bayer/Monsanto/MOBAY will.

Given our experience with GMO cotton, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) is considering the option of putting in place guidelines for socio-economic assessment to judge proposed GM varieties on the basis of factors such as economy, health, environment, society and culture.

http://m.thehindubusinessline.com

At the core of socio economic assessment is the issue of monopolies and cartels and impact on small farmers. Even though patents on seeds are not allowed, for more that one and a half decade Monsanto has extracted illegal royalties from Indian farmers, trapping them in debt, and triggering an epidemic of farmers suicides. Monsanto’s war on India’s foot soldiers – farmers – is a war being waged by the Farben Family, on our Earth Family.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Monsanto Merges with Bayer, “Their Expertise is War”. Shady Historical Origins, IG Farben, Part of Hitler’s Chemical Genetic Engineering Cartel

9/11 Truth 15 Years Later: The Anthrax Attacks, Alleged Saudi Involvement in 9/11, The Media Campaign

September 18th, 2016 by Michael Welch

“To me, the most simple, unanswered question of 9/11 is, did the 19 hijackers act alone or were they assisted by someone in the United States?…My motivation is to try to answer that question….Did they act alone or did they have a support structure that made 9/11 possible?”

-Senator Bob Graham, April, 2015 (As quoted in the New York Times.) [1]

“While the Washington Post acknowledges the links between ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad and Osama Bin Laden, it failed to dwell on the more important question: What were Rep. Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham and other members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees doing, together with the alleged money-man behind 9/11, at breakfast on Capitol Hill on the morning of September 11?”

-Professor Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War On Terrorism (p.141)

 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Play

Length (59:25)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour continues its 15th anniversary retrospective on the 9/11 attacks by exploring two attempts at re-directing the conversation around some inconvenient facts.

In the first half hour, we explore the drama around the anthrax letter attacks which were conducted around the same time the Bush Administration was ramping up its fear campaign around the so-called “War on Terrorism” and refining its propaganda efforts around the PATRIOT ACT and the October military intervention in Afghanistan. Five people died in these attacks which suspiciously were directed exclusively at Democrats and media representatives.

Professor Graeme MacQueen of McMaster University is the founder of the McMaster’s Centre of Peace Studies in Canada and its War and Health programme, He was a member of the organizing committee of the Toronto Hearings held on the10th anniversary of 9/11 and is co-editor of The Journal of 9/11 Studies. He is also author of the 2014 book The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy. In the first half hour of the program, MacQueen expands on the significance of a now mostly forgotten episode in the war on terrorism, the connection with the likely architects of 9/11, and the need to shift the propaganda campaign away from Al Qaeda and Iraq toward a ‘lone wolf’ based within the United States Military industrial complex. The full interview with Professor MacQueen is visible below. 

(This video produced with the assistance of Videographer and technical consultant Paul Graham)

Following the Anthrax interview, we hear about the notorious 28 previously classified pages from the report of the congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11. This documentation was officially declassified on July 15, 2016, just before the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. The 28 pages ostensibly spell out connections between the 9/11 hijckers and officials, royal family members and intelligence operatives within Saudi Arabia.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky, founder of the Centre for Research on Globalization, editor of Global Research and award-winning author addresses the disclosure of these 28 pages. In particular, Chossudovsky touches specifically on Bob Graham, the former Democratic Senator from Florida and former co-Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. As Professor Chossudovsky points out, Graham’s allegations of Saudi connections to 9/11 is a ‘red herring’ and explains his reasoning in this interview.

Finally, Toronto-based veteran broadcaster, and media critic Barrie Zwicker commemorates the 15th anniversary of 9/11 with his own personal reflections on the way he has seen media effectively conceal the truth around 9/11. Barrie Zwicker was one of the first people in the world to publicly question the U.S. government’s role in 9/11, is the author of Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11, and the host-producer of The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw. (Complete Video embedded below).



 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Play

Length (59:25)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca 

Notes:

  1. Carla Hulse (April 13, 2015); “Florida Ex-Senator Pursues Claims of Saudi Ties to Sept. 11 Attacks”; New York Times; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/world/middleeast/florida-ex-senator-pursues-claims-of-saudi-ties-to-sept-11-attacks.html?_r=0 

 

Washington Maintains Economic Blockade on Cuba. “Absurd” Says Cuban Foreign Minister

September 18th, 2016 by Telesur

Despite the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, the U.S. blockade remains present. 

Cuba presented a report on Friday that claims the U.S. blockade on the island nation has cost it US$4.7 billion over the last year and US$753.7 billion over the last six decades.

To change Cuba is up to Cubans,” said Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez as he read the report on U.N. General Assembly Resolution 70-5 entitled “Necessity to End the Economic, Commercial and Financial Blockade Imposed by the United States.

Rodriguez highlighted the fact that despite the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, the U.S. blockade remains present in all areas supported with “absurd legislation” like the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Cuba

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla speaks during a news conference in Havana, Cuba, Sept. 9, 2016. | Photo: Reuters

“If the ban on trade continues, it will be very hard to make things visible, the investment of U.S. companies remains prohibited, imports and exports are prohibited … a Cuban bank is prohibited from opening an account in a U.S. bank and that makes economic relations difficult,” Rodriguez said.

Regarding the relations between the island and Washington the diplomat said that it is always good to look ahead, “but you can not forget history and Cuba’s independence will never be negotiated,” he said.

Last year the U.N. General Assembly voted 191-2 to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba, with only the U.S. and Israel opposed. However, there has been no change and Washington maintains its economic blockade on the island.

Washington imposed the blockade in 1960, after the victory of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, which overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista, a U.S.-backed dictator.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Washington Maintains Economic Blockade on Cuba. “Absurd” Says Cuban Foreign Minister

Libyan Rebels ‘Miss Gaddafi’ after Years of Chaos Created by Western Intervention

September 18th, 2016 by RT

Libyans who mounted a revolution against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi now miss the stability provided by the old order because of the savage violence into which the country has descended, it is reported.

The testimony has emerged in a number of on-the-ground interviews carried out by the Daily Mail and comes only days after a Commons Defence Committee report placed blame for the country’s collapse and the emergence of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) firmly on the shoulders of David Cameron.

The former PM, who stepped down as an MP hours before the report was published, faces calls from fellow Tories to appear before the committee to account for the “ill-conceived” 2011 war, which even US President Barack Obama is alleged to have privately written off as Cameron’s personal “sh*t-show.”

Five years on from the conflict, Libyans are lamenting the violence, blackouts, shortages, refugee crisis and general descent into chaos of the formerly stable North African state.

“I joined the revolution in the first days and fought against Gaddafi,” a former anti-regime fighter named Mohammed told the Mail.

“Before 2011 I hated Gaddafi more than anyone. But now, life is much, much harder, and I have become his biggest fan,” the 31-year-old said.

An oil worker named Haroun said getting rid of Gaddafi “was clearly a mistake because we weren’t ready for democracy and we needed support from the international community, which just wasn’t there.”

Political activist Fadiel told the paper that although “it should be better than Gaddafi’s time now,” all that remained is “chaos and everyone fighting each other, it’s just a mess.”

Entrepreneur Nuri, from Tripoli, said: “It’s not so much about being pro-Gaddafi because he was a crazy leader who was actually quite embarrassing internationally. It’s just that people’s lives are so difficult now compared to under Gaddafi.”

Benghazi, Libya © Esam Omran Al-Fetori

Medical student Salem, 26, also from Tripoli, said hopes had been quickly crushed in the wake of the US-led war in which the UK played a major part.

Far more people have been killed since 2011 than during the revolution or under 42 years of Gaddafi’s rule combined. We never had these problems under Gaddafi.

“There was always money and electricity and, although people did not have large salaries, everything was cheap, so life was simple,” he added.

Cameron did not give evidence in the committee report and has so far not responded to calls to give testimony on what the investigation has branded an “ill-conceived” operation.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Libyan Rebels ‘Miss Gaddafi’ after Years of Chaos Created by Western Intervention

America’s New Nuclear Bomb is “Officially Authorized” For Deployment Against [???]. B61-12, Equivalent to Four Hiroshima Bombs, “Harmless to Civilians” …

September 18th, 2016 by Manlio Dinucci

Though the following article by Italian anti-militarist Manlio Dinucci takes up the question of deployment of new U.S. nuclear weapons from the point of view of the deployment’s impact on Italy, it remains a condemnation of U.S. imperialist aggression and its dangers for the world. 

The B61-12, the new U.S. nuclear bomb intended to replace the B-61 deployed in Italy and other European countries, was “officially authorized” by the National Nuclear Security Administration. The NNSA is the agency of the U.S. Department of Energy that is “responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science.” (nnsa.energy.gov)

After four years of design and testing, the NNSA gave a green light to the engineering phase that prepares mass production of the weapons.

The many components of the B61-12 are designed and tested in national laboratories at Los Alamos and Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., and produced (using parts of the B-61) in a series of plants in Missouri, Texas, South Carolina and Tennessee. Added to these is the tail section for precision guidance, provided by Boeing.

The B61-12, the cost of which is expected to run about $8 billion to $12 billion for 400 to 500 bombs, will begin to be mass-produced in fiscal 2020, starting on Oct. 1, 2019. Starting in 2020, it will begin to replace the B-61.

According to Federation of American Scientists estimates, the U.S. today maintains 70 B-61 nuclear bombs in Italy, 50 at Aviano Air Force Base [in the Friuli region north of Venice] and 20 at Ghedi-Torre AFB, [near Brescia, west of Venice]; 50 in Turkey; 20 each in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands — for a total of 180.

But no one knows exactly how many there are. At Aviano there are 18 bunkers capable of holding over 70. On this base and in Ghedi, changes have already been made, as shown in satellite pictures FAS published. Similar preparations are under way in other bases in Europe and Turkey.

The NNSA confirmed officially that the B61-12, called a “fundamental element of the U.S nuclear triad” (land, sea and air), will replace the current B61-3, B61-4, B61-7 and B61-10. This confirms what we have already documented.

The B61-12 is not simply a modernized version of the previous weapons, but actually a new weapon: It has a nuclear warhead allowing selection of four power options, with an average blast power equal to that of four Hiroshima bombs.  It has a guidance system that allows it to be launched a long distance from the target, and it has the ability to penetrate into the earth to destroy the bunkers of control centers in a surprise nuclear attack.

The new bombs, which the U.S. is preparing to install in Italy and other European countries as part of its threat escalation against Russia, are weapons that lower the nuclear threshold or make the launching of a nuclear attack more likely.

The 31st Fighter Wing, the squadron of U.S. F-16 fighter-bombers stationed in Aviano, is ready for a nuclear attack around the clock.

Even Italian pilots, as FAS showed, are being trained to carry out nuclear attacks under U.S. command with Tornado fighter-bombers deployed in Ghedi, while they await the arrival of F-35 fighter planes. The U.S. Air Force plans to equip all F-35s in Europe with nuclear capability. The first squadron of F-35s, stationed at Hill AFB in Utah, was officially declared “combat ready.” (defensenews.com, Aug. 2)

The U.S. Air Force says it does not predict when the squadron of F-35s will be combat-proven, but that it is probably during one of its overseas deployments at the beginning of 2017.

Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti is hoping that Italy, which has already been “chosen” by the U.S. to install the Muos [a satellite military communications system] that “other nations wanted,” will again be chosen.

With the B61-12, the F-35 and Muos on its territory, Italy will also be chosen, by the country under attack, as a priority target of nuclear retaliation.

The article was published in the Italian web newspaper Manifesto on Sept. 13 and was translated by Workers World managing editor John Catalinotto.

Article in italian :

Obama nucléaire

La Bomba è autorizzata

 

Translation :  John Catalinotto

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on America’s New Nuclear Bomb is “Officially Authorized” For Deployment Against [???]. B61-12, Equivalent to Four Hiroshima Bombs, “Harmless to Civilians” …

Russia Has No Partners in the West. In Syria, US and ISIS Join Hands against Russia

September 18th, 2016 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The Russian government is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The Russian government keeps making agreements with Washington, and Washington keeps breaking them.

This latest exercise in what Einstein defined as insanity is the latest Syrian cease fire agreement. Washington broke the agreement by sending the US Air Force to bomb Syrian troop positions, killing 62 Syrian soldiers and wounding 100, thus clearing the way for ISIS to renew the attack.

Russia caught Washington off guard in September 2015 when the Russian Air Force was sent to bomb ISIS positions in Syria, thus enabling the Syrian Army to regain the initiative. Russia had the war against ISIS won, but pulled out unexpectedly before the job was done. This allowed the US or its agents to resupply ISIS, which renewed the attack.

So Russia had to return to Syria. In the interval Washington had inserted itself. Now the Russian air attacks on ISIS are more complicated, as is the sky over Syria. Russia notifies Washington of its planned attacks on ISIS, and Washington warns ISIS and perhaps Turkey which shot down a Russian plane. Nevertheless, the Syrian Army gained ground.

But each time victory was stymied by “peace talks” or a “cease fire,” during which the US supported forces would regroup. Consequently, a war that Russia and Syria could have already won continues, and with a new element. Now Washington has directly attacked the Syrian army.

The US military claims it thought it was striking ISIS. Think about that a minute. The US claims to be a military superpower. It spies on the entire world, even on the personal emails and cell phone calls of its European vassals. Yet, somehow all this spy power failed to differentiate a known Syrian Army position from ISIS. If we believe that, we must conclude that the US is militarily incompetent.

This is what has happened: Priot to the current “cease fire,” the Russians could attack the US-supported jihadists, but the US could not attack Syrian forces directly, only through its jihadist proxies. The US has used the “cease fire” to create a precedent for US direct attacks on the Syrian Army.

The Russians, who almost had the war won, have shifted their focus to “peace talks” and “cease fires” that the US has used to introduce Washington’s direct participation into the conflict.

It is a mystery that the Russian government believes Washington and Moscow have any common interest in the outcome in Syria. Washington’s interest is to remove Assad and put Syria into the chaos that rules in Libya and Iraq. Russia’s interest is to stabalize Syria as a bulwark against the spread of jihadism. It is extraordinary that the Russian government is so misinformed that it thinks Moscow and Washington have a common interest in fighting terrorism, when terrorism is Washington’s weapon for destabilizing the Middle East.

How can the Russian memory be so short. Washington promised Gorbachev that if he permitted the reunification of Germany, NATO would not move one inch to the East. But the Clinton regime placed NATO on Russia’s border.

The George W. Bush regime violated the ABM Treaty by pulling out of it, and the Obama regime is putting missile bases on Russia’s border.

The neoconservatives deep-sixed no first use of nuclear weapons and elevated them to pre-emptive first strike in US war doctrine.

The Obama regime overthrew the Ukrainian government and installed a US puppet government in a former constituent part of Russia. The puppet government launched a war against the Russian populations in Ukraine, causing secession movements that Washington has mischaracterized as “Russian invasion and annexation.”

Yet, the Russian government thinks Washington is a “partner” with whom it has common interests.

Go figure.

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Russia Has No Partners in the West. In Syria, US and ISIS Join Hands against Russia

Britain’s Hinkley C Nuclear Power Plant Go-Ahead: Prime Minister May Caves in to Pressure from France and China

September 17th, 2016 by Oliver Tickell

The French and the Chinese may be celebrating the UK’s decision to press ahead with the Hinkley C ‘nuclear white elephant’, writes Oliver Tickell. But the deal is a disaster for the UK, committing us to overpriced power for decades to come, and to a dirty, dangerous, insecure dead end technology. Just one silver lining: major economic, legal and technical hurdles mean it still may never be built.

Hinkley is a project from a dying era, which would saddle Britons with eye-watering costs for decades, and radioactive waste for millenia. Renewables, smart grids and energy storage are the fleet-footed mammals racing past this stumbling nuclear dinosaur.

The UK’s energy department, BEIS, today announced the go-ahead for the controversial Hinkley Point C (HPC) nuclear power plant in Somerset.

Hinkley C - it now looks as if the UK may not be saddled with this monstrous white elephant after all. Image: EDF.

Hinkley C – it now looks as if the UK may be saddled with this monstrous white elephant after all. Image: EDF.

Only weeks ago Theresa May’s government delayed the signing of the deal with EDF to confirm its subsidy package which is likely to cost UK energy users anywhere from £30 billion to over £100 billion for 35 years after it opens.

The surprise move was widely welcomed due to a broad range of concerns about the HPC project, including:

  • its very high cost, more than double the current wholesale power price and far more than the current cost of even high-cost renewable power from offshore wind;
  • security concerns over China’s involvement in core UK infrastructure;
  • the lack of any single example of a working EPR reactor anywhere in the world;
  • the severe delays, cost overuns and technical problems at all EPR construction sites;
  • the low value of HPC’s contribution to UK energy supply in the new decentralised ‘smart grid’ era;
  • and, common to all nuclear power, the continued absence of any solution to the nuclear waste problem.

Pre-announcement spin indicated that the HPC deal would be subject to a number of“significant conditions” that would address these problems. But in the event energy secretary Greg Clarke is giving the go-ahead for HPC to almost precisely the same deal that was on the table before.

Ther only difference to be found in the energy department announcement is that arrangements have been put in place to allow the Government to “prevent the sale of EDF’s controlling stake prior to the completion of construction, without the prior notification and agreement of ministers.”

In particular the price remains unchanged.

Great for France, China – but what about us? The Brexit effect

Mrs May is known to have come under strong pressure from both French and Chinese governments to give HPC the go-ahead. Both governments have strong interests in seeing the project going ahead.

In the French case, the EPR reactor has cost EDF and Areva – both companies controlled and mostly owned by the French state – uncountable billions of euros. Four EPRs are under construction, in France, Finland and China. All are running very late and billions of euros over budget, while the French reactor at Flamanville may never open due to a faulty reactor vessel.

That means that HPC represents France’s last chance to present the EPR as a viable reactor for the lucrative nuclear export market, re-establish credibility, and regain value for its so far utterly failed investment in the EPR.

The deal also offers EDF a very high return on investment of over 10% based on the expected construction cost of €24 billion, making it (and UK energy consumers) a valuable ‘cash cow’ for the highly indebted company for many decades to come.

China is also intent on capturing its share of the global export market for nuclear power and HPC is its ‘way in’ to it. As part of the deal, Chinese nuclear company CGN is to get preferential treatment to build a new nuclear power station at Bradwell in Essex to its new, untested ‘Hualong’ reactor design that it intends to promote to international buyers.

So, plenty of good reasons for China and France to want to progress the deal. But what’s in it for the UK? Answer: Brexit. By sucking up to France, the government hopes to win over France as an ally in negotiating a better deal for the UK in Brexit negotiations.

And as far as China is concerned, the UK is desperate to reach a trade deal with what is now by some measures the world’s largest economy and a major exporter to the UK. In particular the UK is seeking tariff-free access to the fast-gowing Chinese economy for UK manufactures, and the powerful financial services industry.

We can be sure that both countries leaders and ministers put the frighteners onto Theresa May and her entourage at the recent G20 summit to go ahead with HPC – and that she succumbed to that pressure at enormous cost to the UK, failing to win even the smallest concession on price.

Widespread condemnation

The UK’s craven acceptance of the disastrous HPC deal was been widely condemned. Simon Bullock, senior climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth said: “Hinkley is a project from a dying era, which would saddle Britons with eye-watering costs for decades, and radioactive waste for millenia.

Renewables, smart grids and energy storage are the fleet-footed mammals racing past this stumbling, inflexible nuclear dinosaur. The PM should act in Britain’s interests and invest in a renewable, non-nuclear electricity grid – it will give us more jobs and less pollution, at lower cost. This is blatantly the wrong decision from the PM.

Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party, said: “It is truly absurd that the Government plans to plough billions of taxpayers’ money into this vastly overpriced project, and has done so without informing Parliament of the true costs. It is even more absurd that they are doing so at the same time as reducing support for cheaper, safer and more reliable alternatives.

Instead of investing in this eye-wateringly expensive white-elephant, the government should be doing all it can to support offshore wind, energy efficiency and innovative new technologies, such as energy storage.

Even Labour’s energy spokesman Barry Gardiner – who has supported HPC against the wishes of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn under pressure from big unions – complained that the price was “far too high” and that the guaranteed price of £92.50 per MWh (in inflation-proof 2012 £) should be “tapered”.

But Lucas retorted: “Labour’s position on Hinkley is deeply disappointing. On the one hand they say that they want a decentralised energy system, yet they now back the building of this hugely overpriced, centralised piece of energy infrastructure. If Corbyn is serious about building an energy system for the future then he should reverse his party’s support for this antiquated energy source.”

It still might never happen

But despite today’s announcement there remains considerable uncertainty as to whether HPC will actually be built – among them legal challenges in the European Court to the unbelievably generous subsidy package for the project which appears to be incompatible with the EU’s ‘state aid’ regulations.

In addition both EDF and CGN, poised to take a 33.5% share in HPC, are unlikely to commit significant further capital to HPC until the Flamanville situation is resolved, and there is at least one working EPR to demonstrate that the design is constructable and operable – something that is still years away.

The highly risky (if potentially very profitable) project is also widely opposed within EDF as if it fails to ever generate power, or to operate reliably, it is likely to bankupt EDF. Also the company has yet to to line up the £16 billion (or more) it will need to finance its share of the project.

“This decision is unlikely to be the grand finale to this summer’s political soap opera”, said Greenpeace executive director John Sauven. “There are still huge outstanding financial, legal and technical obstacles that can’t be brushed under the carpet.

There might be months or even years of wrangling over these issues. That’s why the Government should start supporting renewable power that can come online quickly for a competitive price.

Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), added:“Despite this being called a ‘final decision’ to build Hinkley C, other hurdles, including technical and legal challenges, may well lie ahead for the project.

French trade unions don’t like it, nor do some of the likely candidates for the French Presidential Election next year, EDF’s finances are not the healthiest, and the French nuclear regulator is examining flaws in steel used for a similar reactor being built in France. So it may turn out not to be quite as ‘final’ as it looks now.

Although China is reportedly happy with the new position, questions also remain over its main ambition – building its own nuclear reactors at Bradwell in Essex as a route into the Western market. The Chinese reactor hasn’t even begun the process of gaining UK safety approval, which usually takes four years, so negotiating a contract for Bradwell would fall to the next UK Government, not this one.

And by then, electricity from other sources might look a whole lot cheaper than it does now.

Oliver Tickell is contributing editor at The Ecologist.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Britain’s Hinkley C Nuclear Power Plant Go-Ahead: Prime Minister May Caves in to Pressure from France and China

How “The Syrian Campaign” Faked Its “70% Fleeing Assad” Refugee Poll

September 17th, 2016 by Prof. Tim Anderson

As one might expect, during a war, misunderstandings are often driven by interested parties. In the case of Syrian refugees in Europe a US based organisation called ‘The Syria Campaign’ has helped drive some of these, including a claim that most of the refugees are ‘Fleeing Assad’. ‘The Syria Campaign’ is a Wall Street Public Relations creation and one of several interlocked, US-based groups (Avaaz, Purpose, the White Helmets) which have campaigned for a Libyan-style ‘no fly zone’ in Syria. That is, they work for NATO intervention on the side of the jihadist groups (see Sterling 2015). In any case, a careful look at the evidence allows us to see through this ‘refugees fleeing Assad’ scam.

The Syria Campaign (2015) commissioned a poll in Germany which was apparently carried out by German academic Heiko Giebler. In it, 889 Syrian refugees were said to have been interviewed in Berlin, Hanover, Bremen, Leipzig and Eisenhüttenstadt. Candidates ‘were approached on entering or leaving registration centers’. However the survey does not specify how sampling choices were made (TSC 2015). This is important because sampling error can easily undermine the representative nature of a poll. Indeed if there is no sampling error, as in this case, there is no way to assert to what extent the survey represents a broader population. The results are then almost useless, except as anecdotes.

The poll cover note, headline and graphics highlight a claim that ‘70% of refugees are fleeing Assad’. To begin with, this is a false characterisation of the actual survey (TSC 2015). It had no question at all about fleeing Assad, nor anyone else. It did have questions on whom the respondents blamed for the violence and of whom they were afraid. Of the 30 survey questions the three relevant ones seem to be number 9 (‘Who was responsible for the fighting?), number 14 (‘Who did you fear getting arrested or kidnapped by?’), and number 18 (‘What was the main reason for you to leave Syria?’). Observe that question 18 does not specify any particular threat while in questions 9 and 14 (as is made clear in the survey report) there were multiple options, so results in both cases tally to much more than 100.

The Syrian Campaign’s cover note, headline and graphics have drawn, very loosely, on some combination of those three questions. In response to question 18 69% said that ‘the main reason’ for leaving Syria was an ‘imminent threat’ to life, but without an identified source of that threat. In Question 9, 70% identified ‘Syrian Army and allied groups’ as ‘responsible for the fighting’. However as this was a multiple option question we also see that 82% have identified other armed groups (ISIS, al Nusra, FSA, YPG, other rebels). If we remove the Kurdish YPG, which has generally fought in coordination with the Syrian Army, the total is 74% anti-government armed groups. Question 14 shares the ‘multiple option’ structure of Question 9. Here 77% said they feared ‘getting arrested or kidnapped by’ the ‘Syrian Army and its allied groups’. However the combined total of anti-government groups is 82% and, if we add the YPG, 90%. The answers to both questions suggest these respondents feared the anti-government armed groups slightly more than they feared the Syrian Army. Most likely, many feared getting caught in the crossfire.

So, even before we examine the representative validity of the poll, there is no basis in any of those three questions – or anywhere else in the poll – for saying that ‘70% of refugees are fleeing Assad’. To the contrary, the poll shows that more are fleeing anti-government, jihadist armed groups. This contradicts The Syrian Campaign’s quite dishonest headline, underlined by its lead in: ‘the results are crystal clear’. A Deutsche Welle report faithfully noted: ‘Survey leaves no doubt: Syrians are fleeing Assad’ (Fuchs 2015). Apparently this reporter did not read the survey.

Further internal analysis, combined with UNHCR (2016) data for 2015 on the wider Syrian refugee population, shows The Syrian Campaign’s survey to have been quite unrepresentative, and therefore no basis for claims about the wider Syrian refugee population. As Table 2 shows, the respondents in Germany had massive over-representation from men and young men. Put together we see a 1.76 over-representation of males and a 2.25 over-representation of people between 15 and 55 (UNHCR: 18-59; TSC: 15-55). Women and children barely exist in the TSC poll. The poll also shows that 51% came alone to Europe, 61% have no children and that 68% (0.78 x 0.88) are young men between 15 and 35 years old.

 

Table: Syria refugee population profile, 2015
 

UNHCR, Syrian refugee registration (4.8 million)

TSC survey, Germany, October (889)
Male

50%

88% (1.76 over-rep)
15-35 years old

n.a.

78%
15-55 / 18-59 years old

44%

99% (2.25 over-rep)

 

Other data within the poll indicates that 74% were from areas held by anti-government armed groups, as they reported government shelling. There is no credible evidence that suggests the Syrian Army shells areas which do not contain armed anti-government groups. That is reinforced by Question 1 on area of origin, which shows hardly any respondents (just 19 people) from Tartus, Latakia and Sweida, areas which in 2015 had a combined population (swollen, from internal refugees) of at least 5 million. Respondents from Damascus (170 or 19%) are also seriously under-represented. Damascus in 2015 held over 7 million, or one-third of Syria’s population. There were many displaced people in all these areas, controlled by the Government.

On the other side, we can see an over-representation of respondents from Hasakah (164 or 19%). There are certainly a lot of refugees from the Hasakah district, in large part due to the presence of ISIS and Turkish-Kurd clashes; but its population of half a million, less than 10% that of Damascus, is represented equally in survey respondents to that of the capital. In other words, the TSC survey has a very large over-representation of men and young men, many from anti-government held areas. Quite a number of them are likely to be ex-fighters.

Putting this all together we can conclude that the poll commissioned by The Syrian Campaign (2015) did not show anything like ‘70% fleeing Assad’. To the contrary, results of the poll (TSC (2015) suggested that slightly more amongst that cohort were fearful of anti-government armed groups. On top of that, that poll was quite unrepresentative of the Syrian refugee population, as it contained a very large group of young men from anti-government (i.e. jihadist) held areas, some of them likely former fighters, and many of whom had indeed come under Syrian Army fire. Reasons for corruption of the data most likely include a combination of biased selection in Germany (selection was made by the associates of a partisan group) and a possible over-representation of young men and former fighters amongst the actual cohort of refugees arriving in those German cities. The absence of an explicit sampling process and a stated sampling error simply underlines the unprofessional nature of this survey.

Little of this seems to have registered on the western media. Like the Deutsche Welle reporter, most seem not to have even read the survey. One version or another of the fake headline ‘70% of refugees fleeing Assad’ provided by the Wall Street PR group was copied by much of the corporate media, including The Times (UK); The Huffington Post; the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek.

Sources

  1. Fuchs, Richard (2015) ‘Survey leaves no doubt: Syrians are fleeing Assad’, Deutsche Welle, 11 October, online: http://www.dw.com/en/survey-leaves-no-doubt-syrians-are-fleeing-assad/a-18775789
  2. Sterling, Rick (2015) ‘Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators’, Dissident Voice, 9 April, online: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/04/seven-steps-of-highly-effective-manipulators/
  3. The Syria Campaign (2015) ‘Care about refugees? Listen to them’, 9 October, online: https://diary.thesyriacampaign.org/what-refugees-think/
  4. TSC (2015) ‘Listen To Refugees – First Survey of Syrian Refugees in Europe’, survey results spreadsheet, The Syrian Campaign, online: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WYn4N7STdP2eW3EYdX86Gsb6lxE4VrcNvZ4aEczsFwI/edit#gid=833561282
  5. UNHCR (2016) ‘Syria Regional Refugee Response’, last updated 4 September, online: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on How “The Syrian Campaign” Faked Its “70% Fleeing Assad” Refugee Poll

US Media Ignores CIA Cover-up on Torture. How the CIA Tried to Block the U.S. Senate’s Torture Investigation

September 17th, 2016 by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

A group of U.S. intelligence veterans chastises the mainstream U.S. media for virtually ignoring a British newspaper’s account of the gripping inside story on how the CIA tried to block the U.S. Senate’s torture investigation.

 

MEMORANDUM FOR: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: U.S. Media Mum On How Your Committee Faced Down Both CIA and Obama

We write to thank you for your unwavering support for your extraordinarily courageous and tenacious staff in (1) investigating CIA torture under the Bush/Cheney administration and (2) resisting CIA/White House attempts under the Obama administration to cover up heinous torture crimes like waterboarding.

The CIA seal in the lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The CIA seal in the lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

We confess to having been shocked at the torture detailed in the version of the executive summary your Committee released on December 9, 2014.  We found ourselves wondering what additional behavior could have been deemed so repugnant that the White House and CIA insisted it be redacted; and if the entire 6,700-page investigation – with whatever redaction might be truly necessary – would ever see the light of day. We think you could take steps now to make it less likely that the full report be deep-sixed, and we will make some suggestions below toward that end.

With well over 400 years of intelligence experience under our collective belt, we wondered how you managed to get the investigation finished and the executive summary up and out (though redacted). We now know the backstory – thanks to the unstinting courage of the committee’s principal investigator Daniel Jones, who has been interviewed by Spencer Ackerman, an investigative reporter for The (UK) Guardian newspaper. The titanic struggle depicted by Ackerman reads like a crime novel; sadly, the four-part series is nonfiction:

I. “Senate investigator breaks silence about CIA’s ‘failed coverup’ of torture report”

II. “Inside the fight to reveal the CIA’s torture secrets”

III. ” ‘A constitutional crisis’: the CIA turns on the Senate”

IV. “No looking back:  the CIA torture report’s aftermath“

Ackerman’s reporting on Jones’s tenacity in facing down the gorilla CIA makes abundantly clear how richly deserved was the encomium you gave Jones when he left the committee staff in December 2015.

You noted, “Without his indefatigable work on the Intelligence Committee staff, the Senate report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program would not have been completed, nor would its 525-page executive summary have been released to the public.”

It seems equal praise might well be due to any Snowden-like patriot/whistleblower who “inadvertently” included the “Panetta Review” in the reams of material given your committee by the CIA.

Remarkably, a full week after The Guardian carried Ackerman’s revelations, none has been picked up by U.S. “mainstream” newspapers. Not the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post – not even The Hill.

(As for alternative media, Charles P. Pierce’s timely piece for Esquire whetted his readers’ appetite for the gripping detail of the Guardianseries, explaining that it would be “unfair both to Ackerman’s diligence and Jones’s courage” to try to summarize even just the first installment. “Read the whole damn thing,” Pierce advises.)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California.

And so, the culprits who should be hanging their heads in shame are out and about, with some still collecting book royalties and some blithely working for this or that candidate for president. As if nothing happened. Sadly, given the soporific state of our mainstream media – particularly on sensitive issues like these – their silence is nothing new, although it does seem to have gotten even worse in recent years.

The late William Colby, CIA director from 1973 to 1976, has been quoted as saying: “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” Whether or not Colby was quoted correctly, the experience of the past several decades suggests it is largely true. Better sourced is a quote from William Casey, CIA director from 1981 to 1987: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

In these circumstances, we know from sad experience that there is no way any of us can get on any of the Sunday talk shows, for example – despite our enviable record for getting it right. Nor does it seem likely that any of the “mainstream” media will invite you to discuss the highly instructive revelations in The Guardian. We respectfully suggest that you take the initiative to obtain media exposure for this very important story.

One additional request: As you and your investigators know better than anyone, it is essential to safeguard the integrity not only of the unredacted executive summary but also of the entire 6,700-page committee report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.

And, again, you are aware that as soon as Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, took the gavel from you, he took steps seemingly aimed at ensuring that the full report never sees the light of day. Could you ask him why, as soon as he became chair, he asked the executive branch to transfer their copies to the Senate Intelligence Committee?

Many interpreted that as an ill-disguised attempt to thwart holding accountable those responsible for the abuses. Moreover, if the report cannot be reviewed by those who might be asked to participate in activities like torture in the future, how is it even possible for anyone to learn from the prior unfortunate experience?

The public is entitled to the entire story about the CIA torture program and its lies to Congress, the White House, and to us. Any attempt to bury the fullest investigation of the torture program – an investigation that provides an example of Congressional oversight at its best – would undermine the democratic accountability that is supposed to be provided by the separation of powers.

Furthermore, as you were quoted in the Guardian series, the agency searches “may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function . . .”

Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, was exactly on point: “You either have oversight and separation of powers with the checks and balances that come with that, or you don’t. It’s amazing that, once again, no one at the CIA was held accountable.”  Consequently, the issue now is not only the cover-up of torture by the CIA but – at least equally important – the “unbridled agency that spied on Americans (including Senate Intelligence Committee staffers) as eagerly as they spied on foreign adversaries,” as the Guardian described it in referring to the Church Committee investigation in the 1970s.

Does American democracy deserve any less than an intense investigation of the CIA’s obstruction of the democratic process in the 2000s?

The Guardian revelations make it still more difficult for the kind of excuses made by those who can hardly pretend to be disinterested observers – former CIA directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, for example – who wrote Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program, published on September 9, 2015. We published our own (VIPS) critique of “Rebuttal” five days later. And before the final vote on John Brennan’s nomination to become CIA director, we tried to warn you not to trust him.

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right). (White House photo)

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right). (White House photo)

We believe you will agree that more needs to be done to replant the moral moorings of honesty that must anchor the intelligence profession to which we have given so many years. And we think that one step in that direction would be for you to seize this new opportunity to give prominence to the edifying story of how your committee and its staffers stepped up so effectively to their responsibilities in investigating and exposing the very sad and delicate chapter of CIA torture.

The play-by-play provided by the Guardian series, with its appropriate focus on the top investigator Daniel Jones, has created an opportunity we hope will not be squandered; a chance to tell a truly uplifting story sure to encourage others to behave in similarly exemplary manner.

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Jean Maria Arrigo, PhD, member of 2005 American Psychological Association task force evaluating the role of psychologists in U.S. intelligence and military interrogations of detainees (associate VIPS)

Eugene DeFriest Betit, Ph. D., DIA, US Army (ret.)

Thomas Drake, former Senior Executive, NSA

Bogdan Dzakovic, Former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security, (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF (Ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) (associate VIPS)

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Near East, CIA and National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (Ret.)

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq

Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary (associate VIPS)

Valerie Plame Wilson, former CIA Operations Officer

Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US Media Ignores CIA Cover-up on Torture. How the CIA Tried to Block the U.S. Senate’s Torture Investigation

Syria: US and Russia Exchange Allegations of Ceasefire Violations, Syrian Government Forces Offensive against (US Supported) Terrorist Groups

September 17th, 2016 by South Front

The United States and Russia exchanged allegations of ceasefire violations against both of their respective proxies on September 15th.  According to Moscow, US-led forces has violated the ceasefire 32 times.

Russia shared unprecedented live footage from one of their reconnaissance drones flying over Aleppo to monitor the ceasefire conditions below.

The Syrian Arab Army began withdrawing from the Castello Road in order to create a ‘weapons-free-zone’ in the contested region.

The Kurdish YPG forces raised the flag of the United States over Tell Abyad at the Syrian-Turkish border. The reported purpose behind the flag-flying was to discourage Turkish airstrikes.

The Islamic State dealt a blow to the Kurdish PKK in Shaddadi, killing approximately 70 troops, including their commander, “Tabur Solar.”

The terrorists also launched several rockets, which landed outside of Jayroud, Damascus.

The Islamic State suffered its own losses at the receiving end of Russian airstrikes on al-Mayadeen, outside Deir ez Zor. The terrorist militants reported 15 killed and 40 injured.

Syrian warplanes delivered a series of airstrikes in northern Hama, repelling advance of local jihadi groups on the government-controlled areas. Airstrikes were reported near Taybat Al-Imam, Souran, Kawkab, Al-Lataminah, and Kafr Zita.

There are rumors that the Syrian government forces are preparing a large-scale offensive in the area in order to re-take from terrorist groups the territories that they had lost within last 3 weeks.

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Syria: US and Russia Exchange Allegations of Ceasefire Violations, Syrian Government Forces Offensive against (US Supported) Terrorist Groups

With the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Ropes, It’s Corporate Power vs. People Power on Capitol Hill

September 17th, 2016 by Deirdre Fulton

Statements from Sen. Orrin Hatch suggest lame-duck Senate vote is not off the table

As President Barack Obama gathered high-profile supporters of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) for a meeting at the White House on Friday, the corporate-friendly trade agreement was dealt a blow as Vietnam’s parliament deferred its long-expected ratification.

Reuters reported from Hanoi Friday that Vietnam will not include ratification of TPP on its agenda for its next parliament session, which begins October 20.

This adds “to uncertainty over the future of…Obama’s signature trade deal,” the news agency wrote. “As arguably the biggest beneficiary of the deal covering 40 percent of the global economy, Vietnam was expected to be among the first to ratify the TPP, the prospect of which helped spur record foreign investment last year in its booming manufacturing sector.”

According to Reuters, Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien cited Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, the parliament chairwoman, as saying Vietnam’s ratification would depend on the ruling Communist Party, “the global situation,” and the outcome of the U.S. election.

Both major party nominees are opposed to the trade deal, along with many Democrats, some Republicans, and wide swaths of civil society.

But Friday’s meeting “is an effort by the White House to show that support for the agreement also crosses party lines,” The Hill wrote, and “the latest effort by Obama togenerate support for the pact, which would be the largest free trade deal in history and is a centerpiece of his administration’s so-called ‘pivot’ to Asia.”

Among those scheduled to be in attendance: failed Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former George W. Bush administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, and others. A press briefing is expected to follow the meeting.

CNN reports that Kasich “defended the prospect of Obama pushing the TPP toward passage in a ‘lame duck’ session of Congress”—a possibility that TPP opponents are actively workingto prevent.

“Frankly, if I have to come down here and spend some time lobbying my Republican colleagues, I’m more than glad to do that,” Kasich said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared last month that the Senate would not vote on the current agreement this year, and House Speaker Paul Ryan has said: “As long as we don’t have the votes, I see no point in bringing up an agreement.”

But watchdogs have warned that the TPP “is not dead, unfortunately.” Indeed, Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach argued earlier this month that GOP leaders are in fact “negotiating for changes to obtain even more corporate goodies—longer monopoly protections for pharmaceutical firms’ high medicine prices, elimination of an exception protecting some tobacco regulations from TPP attack, and more.”

She wrote:

The GOP leaders are not only trying to pressure the White House to meet their demands, but are trying to scare the other TPP countries off of their current positions that no changes are possible.

If the GOP leaders get what they want, they will be pushing hard to pass an even more damaging TPP in the lame duck session, despite their insincere political posturing over the unpopular agreement leading up to the elections.

Sure enough, news outlets reported this week that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) “is working with the Obama administration to resolve several lingering issues that could ultimately pave the way” for lame-duck passage of the TPP, as The Hill put it.

Inside U.S. Trade reported Friday that Hatch “said the Obama administration has promised to satisfy his demand of including 12 years of market exclusivity for biologics in the implementing bill for the [TPP], but noted that he is waiting to receive that pledge in writing.”

“They said they’d satisfy me,” Hatch told the publication on Friday.

However, Glyn Moody explained for TechDirt: “The final TPP text specifies eight years, and because of the Fast Track authority that [Hatch] worked so hard to put in place, there is no way for Hatch to get the text changed now that it has been finalized.”

That has not seemed to deter Hatch, who has floated a number of work-arounds including “binding side agreements” with TPP countries or development of a “methodology” he believes “honorable” countries will follow.

“That’s really pretty extraordinary,” Moody wrote.

“After nearly eight years of tough negotiations, concessions were made and a final text agreed by all the countries involved. And now Hatch says it’s not good enough, that the U.S. has some special right to ask for yet more, and that countries refusing to up their protection for biologics data to 12 years won’t be part of the TPP deal.”

In turn, environmentalists, public health advocates, and labor groups aren’t going to sit idly by.

“Why are we nervous? Well, we’re nervous because we’ve been here once or twice before,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “When you have the Business Roundtable and virtually every multinational corporation saying they want this, we understand that’s real power.”

Still, as Common Dreams reported Wednesday, people power was also on display this week, when a coalition of progressive organizations coordinated a national call-in day to voice their TPP opposition.

“While the president is cloistered with corporate chieftains planning how to use a lame duck session to try to pass a TPP only they love,” Wallach said, “Congress’ phones are ringing off the hook with anti-TPP calls.”

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on With the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Ropes, It’s Corporate Power vs. People Power on Capitol Hill

“The Great Class War 1914-1918”, There Is Nothing Great about War…

September 17th, 2016 by Kim Petersen

In all countries socialists renounced the class struggle and proceeded instead to go to war for their fatherland and their people. Jacques R. Pauwels, The Great Class War 1914-1918, p. 69

War is anathema. I hate war and I am sure the majority of humanity does. So why does war still happen? Earlier wars continue to evoke a mythology that pervades the public discourse. Since much of humanity remains mired in war, it is crucial to cut through the crap of disinformation that beguiles people and involves them in wars that they don’t want. If indeed a knowledge of history prepares humans to avert the mistakes of the past, then for the sake of present and future humanity learning about critical past events is important. People must also learn how to discern what best approximates the truth. When seeking to identify the etiology of monstrous events such as wars, the requisite question is: who benefits?

GCW_DVIn his book The Great Class War 1914-1918 (Lorimer, 2016), historian Jacques R. Pauwels lifts the fog of war. The Great Class War 1914-1918 identifies those who want war, those who scurrilously manipulate information, consciousness, and the citizenry to wage war.

Pauwels examines the war among nations and among classes within a nation. WWI (what Pauwels refers to as the Great Class War, and one understands what he means, but because of the double entendre, I prefer to avoid calling a war “great”) has its roots much further back in history. Pauwels takes the reader back to the French Revolution, an uprising against the aristocrats and bourgeoise, and he brings readers to the time of the Paris Commune and up to WWI and beyond.

Pauwels presents the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand as a pretext for war. However, the war was launched by elitists1 who feared the hoi polloieating into profits by forming unions and demanding higher wages, and demanding greater democracy. There was also competition among nation states to grab colonies and gain economic advantage. The elitists believed that a war would crush revolutionary zeal, aspirations for democracy, and replace socialism with nationalism.

The Great Class War discusses factors antebellum and year-by-year through WWI, the immediate aftermath and postbellum, even discussing the casus belli for WWII and connecting events to the present day. The focus throughout the book is on the classism at the root of the war. Pauwels’ thoroughly compelling narrative leads the reader to the ineluctable conclusion that elitists have been manipulating and leading the masses, unwilling or not, to the killing fields.

Lincoln in Dali-vision

Lincoln in Dali-vision

Pauwels draws on myriad threads in weaving his marvelous portrait of the class war. He draws from art, film, song, poetry and other writings. He hits at the various angles to the war, likening this to Salvador Dali’s “Lincoln in Dali-vision.” He praises Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory as a vivid depiction of classist conditions within the French military. I was spurred to watch the film, which I would urge others to watch as well.2

Pauwels explores the many-sided tensions/rivalries/fights at play: socialism vs capitalism, internationalism vs nationalism, union leadership vs the rank-and-file (“… union leaders travelled around the country to encourage the rank-and-file not to strike but to volunteer for the army.” p. 196), conservative political parties vs social democrats vs communists, officers vs soldiers, civilians vs military, feelings of one country’s troops about another country’s troops, etc. The author looks at language, propaganda (“Civilians appeared to swallow whatever authorities and the ‘yellow press’ told them…” p. 357), imperialism, monarchism, colonialism (“In many ways, the first World war thus functioned as the last phase of the “scramble for Africa.’” p. 293), religion (“The gospel of patriotism and bellicosity was preached from the church pulpits…,” p. 186), Social Darwinism, revolutions, counterrevolution, the Russian Revolution, dirigism, why the USA entered the war (“If the United States stayed out of the war, it would not be present when the Chinese prizes were distributed among the victors…” p. 449), and much more than can be a book review can do justice to. So get the book.

The Great Class War 1914-1918 is a magnificent opus. After reading it, I have to read Pauwels’ Myth of the Good War which looks at the US role in WWII.

Notes

  1. Pauwels called them “elites,” but that is another word that I would prefer to avoid since it paints people of wealth and power as being of the highest class. But the actions of these “elites” in using the peasants as cannon fodder to further enrich themselves and crush socialism and revolutionary agitation indicates that these people are “elitists” — believing that they are better than others. There is nothing elite about people who are morally bankrupt. 
  2. The film can be viewed online. 
Kim is former co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: [email protected].
  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on “The Great Class War 1914-1918”, There Is Nothing Great about War…

If Hillary’s Not Able, There’s Always Tim Kaine

September 17th, 2016 by Eric Draitser

If internet speculation is to be believed, Hillary Clinton is suffering from everything from epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease to adverse reactions to chemotherapy and Zika-West Nile-SARS-swine flu. The problem is that, like bellybuttons, everyone’s got a theory; and, again like bellybuttons, most theories are useless. Whatever the case may be with Hillary’s health, the fact is that she remains the likely winner of the presidential election, which means that a potentially sick woman will become the Commander-in-Chief.

So that raises an obvious question: what next? Put another way, the American people deserve to know who the hell Tim Kaine is, and what he would do as president. Because, after the initial “Tim who?” round of questions, citizens will want to understand who this underwhelming ex-Governor and Democratic Party hack is, and what sort of policies he’d pursue.

48970438-cached

So boys and girls, break out the crystal balls and glimpse a future with President Kaine. It may seem like some Quaalude-induced waking nightmare to envision this scenario – Clinton and Trump presidencies are, of course, already the ultimate bad acid trips – but this bitter reality must at least be considered, if not prepared for.

President Kaine: Chronicle of Many Deaths Foretold

Despite the Madison Avenue fustian about Hillary’s running mate being a “capable” and “adequate” future vice president – anyone who has ever been called “adequate” knows the implication of that back-handed insult – Kaine is, in fact, a typical Democratic Party apparatchik: self-serving, corrupt, and a liberal imperialist with all the humanitarian trimmings. And the question before millions of Americans is whether or not the country, and indeed the world, can survive another imperial presidency fronted by leaders for whom mass killing is a matter of focus groups and electoral demographic research.

History has shown the danger of mush-headed vice presidents serving under ailing presidents. When Franklin Roosevelt died and the racist mass murderer Harry Truman inherited the presidency, the door was permanently shut to peaceful cooperation with the Soviet Union and the expansion of New Deal-era economic rights, to say nothing of the death sentence for millions of innocent Japanese annihilated by atomic bombs solely to send a message to Moscow. In other words, Roosevelt’s death put in power a man who had no business running a dirt farm, let alone the most powerful country in the world. Similarly, Americans must consider just what President Kaine would do.

On the question of foreign policy – a focal point for Kaine who has served on the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees – Kaine aligns perfectly with the war hawk Clinton and her neoconservative imperialist brethren. In Syria, Kaine has advocated forcefully for No Fly Zones and “safe zones” (as if there’s a difference) which would signify a de facto declaration of war by the US in Syria. He has cheered for regime change against the Assad government, and pressed for a full declaration of war against the Islamic State. One shudders to think of the staggering level of pompous ignorance required to advocate for what would amount to the rekindling of Bush’s disastrous and criminal open-ended “War on Terror.”

In what amounts to a running theme with the Clinton-Kaine campaign, the Democratic ticket has essentially embraced every single foreign policy position of the neocon movement. As I noted previously, this Clinton-Kaine administration would be the imperial frankenstein, Obama’s head on Bush’s body. No HopeTM. No ChangeTM. But more and bigger wars.

Of course, Kaine doesn’t limit himself to warmongering on Syria alone. In Ukraine, Kaine has come out as a vocal supporter of the Kiev Government and the fascist death squads and paramilitaries under its control. He was rather hawkish on the issue in 2014 when the Senate approved a massive aid package to Ukraine. He was also rather blunt in his condemnation of Russia as an aggressor in Ukraine, despite a massive outpouring of support for Russia and anti-Kiev activism that took place in Eastern Ukraine after the coup in February 2014. He also made no mention of how he would react if he were president and half his navy were under threat from a hostile putsch government backed by a superpower.

But the critical, and very worrying, fact is that a President Kaine would have to deal with a Kremlin that may forgive but certainly never forgets. And, considering the danger of the moment, with a potential world war looming on the horizon, the danger of escalating a crisis due to pig-headed political point scoring is very real. Never underestimate the power of a Clintonista to make a bad situation disastrous.

But perhaps nothing illustrates Kaine’s neocolonial mentality in all its blood-soaked glory better than his position, or lack thereof, on Honduras. Considering the fact that he spent an extended period of time as a Jesuit missionary in Honduras in the midst of US-sponsored death squad wars in Central America, and has never bothered to comment about it, is certainly suspicious. Moreover, he now is the wing-man for the womandirectly responsible for the bloodshed and political repression now a daily norm in Honduras after the Clinton-managed coup in 2009 removed the Chavista former president Manuel Zelaya. As President, Kaine would need to account for his actions in Honduras, and apologize on behalf of himself, his colleagues, and the rest of the Democratic Party for backing a right wing dictatorship committing war crimes every single day. I won’t be holding my breath for that.

Crooked Clinton, Krooked Kaine

Aside from the apocalyptic vision of a foreign policy that speaks like an asshole and carries a big stick of dynamite, Americans should also consider the fact that Kaine has a long track record of Washington corruption: yet another subject of comradeship with Saint Hillary that likely makes for fascinating dinner conversation.

Kaine and Clinton might laugh over dinner and drinks when discussing the fact that, as Governor, Kaineaccepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from high-powered lobbyists. You can almost see Hillary, shrimp cocktail dangling from her mouth, as she cackles at the paltry sum that Kaine could be bought for. “Timmy my boy,” she might say, “It’s time for you to step up to the big leagues…maybe you should consider giving some Wall Street pep talks…or starting a foundation.”

And the retort would undoubtedly please the Goldman-Sachs girl as Timmy Two-Face would remind Hillary that he’s a banker’s boy through and through. He might recall how, as noted by The Intercept, in 2016 he:

Signed onto two letters, one to federal banking regulators and the other to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, urging them to loosen regulations on certain financial players…In the letters, Kaine is offering to support community banks, credit unions, and even large regional banks. While separate from the Wall Street mega-banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, these financial institutions often partner with the larger industry to fight regulations and can be hostile to government efforts to safeguard the public, especially if it crimps their profits. They also represent a key source of donor funds, one that has trended away from Democrats.

And just in case any liberal navel-gazers care to pretend that Kaine was simply defending the “little guy” banks, consider the fact that the second of the two letters was aimed at helping, “major firms including Capital One, PNC Bank and U.S. Bank, all of which control hundreds of billions of dollars in assets,” as noted by Huffington Post and Common Dreams. In other words, Kaine swore his oath of fealty to Wall Street and its junior partners in order to show his allegiance to Hillary and Bill, the svengalis of finance capital’s political vaudeville act.

Many Americans undoubtedly feel that Clinton’s health issues might just mean that the country could dodge a bullet for the next four or eight years. And while that sentiment is understandable given her track record of coming, seeing, and murdering, it is a false hope – a mirage distorting the vision of anti-war, anti-Wall Street crusaders.

Because, right behind Hillary is Tim Kaine, the man whose politics and ethics were made in Her image.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on If Hillary’s Not Able, There’s Always Tim Kaine

North Korea’s Nuke Test Sparks Calls for Diplomacy over Sanctions

September 17th, 2016 by Hyun Lee

The United States and South Korea resorted to tough talk and shows of force in the immediate aftermath of North Korea’s most recent nuclear test, but commentary in western and South Korean media suggests more people are beginning to recognize the futility of continuing down the same path of sanctions and escalating military tensions.

North Korea conducted its fifth underground nuclear test last Friday, merely four days after it test-launched three rounds of ballistic missiles. This is the first time that North Korea conducted a missile launch and a nuclear test in the same week, and the country says it successfully managed to put a warhead on a ballistic missile. According to North Korean state media, the country’s leader Kim Jong-un directly oversaw the September 5 missile launch conducted by “the DPRK’s strategic Hwaseong artillery unit, tasked with striking the bases of the U.S. imperialist forces in the Pacific theater in the event of a contingency.”

In response, President Obama has vowed more sanctions, and the United States flew two nuclear-capable supersonic B1-B bombers over South Korea in a show of force on Tuesday.  For her part, South Korean President Park Geun-hye accused the North of “maniacal recklessness,” and the South Korean military rolled out the “Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation” plan involving commandos and preemptive attacks with large numbers of missiles to target the North Korean leadership in a punitive and retaliatory strike at the slightest sign of a North Korean nuclear threat.

North Korea’s Nuke Test Sparks Calls for Diplomacy over Sanctions

North Korea scoffed at U.S. threats of more sanctions as “laughable” and defended its right to conduct nuclear tests in order to “protect our dignity” amid threats of “nuclear war” from Washington.  “The group of Obama’s running around and talking about meaningless sanctions until today is highly laughable, when their ‘strategic patience’ policy is completely worn out and they are close to packing up to move out,” said a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman. “As we’ve made clear, measures to strengthen the national nuclear power in quality and quantity will continue to protect our dignity and right to live from augmented threats of nuclear war from the United States,” he added.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying also had strong words for the United States on its role in the nuclear crisis. “Mr. Carter was being unnecessarily modest,”she said, referring to U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who had pointed to China as being primarily responsible for the nuclear crisis with North Korea.

“The cause and crux of the Korean nuclear issue rest with the US rather than China,” Hua continued, “The core of the issue is the conflict between the DPRK and the US. It is the US who should reflect upon how the situation has become what it is today, and search for an effective solution. It is better for the doer to undo what he has done. The US should shoulder its due responsibilities.” To fundamentally resolve the crisis, she said, “An approach that addresses all parties’ security concerns and leads to enduring peace and stability of the Peninsula must be found through dialogue.”

Growing Calls for Diplomacy

Commentary in western and South Korean media in the aftermath of last week’s North Korean missile and nuclear tests suggests more people are realizing the futility of sanctions and prefer diplomacy as a way to resolve the crisis.

The latest nuclear test by North Korea proves that economic sanctions against the regime have failed utterly,” writes Simon Jenkins in The Guardian.  Pointing out that sanctions have had the exact opposite of their intended effect in North Korea, that they have driven the country to militarize its society and hasten the acquisition of high-profile weaponry, Jenkins proposes, “The sane alternative is to do everything to open North Korea, to flood it with trade, promote cultural exchange and hope one day that, like east Germany, it will reunite with its neighbor.  This will never happen under sanctions. Ending sanctions cannot cause more harm than what is happening now. It would probably do good. So end the sanctions.

Nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, who has visited North Korea frequently to assess its plutonium and uranium enrichment programs at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, agrees. In an article published on 38 North, he writes, “The latest nuclear test demonstrates conclusively that attempting to sanction the DPRK into submission and waiting for China to exert leverage over Pyongyang’s nuclear program do not work.”  Warning that adding missile defenses in South Korea will only make China less likely to cooperate, he concludes, “What’s missing is diplomacy as much as Washington may find it repugnant to deal with the Kim regime.”

As repugnant as Washington might find the North Korean regime, its leadership is quite sane, assures the New York Times.  Political scientists have repeatedly concluded that “North Korea’s behavior, far from crazy, is all too rational,”writes New York Times columnist Max Fisher.  “Its provocations introduce tremendous danger, but stave off what Pyongyang sees as the even greater threats of invasion or collapse,” he adds. Indeed, missing in the flurry of media commentary about North Korea’s latest nuclear test is any mention of Ulchi Freedom Gardian, the massive twelve-day U.S.-South Korean combined military exercises that just ended earlier this month. The war games involved 25,000 U.S. military personnel and 50,000 South Korean troops under U.S. command and reportedly included simulated exercises to “decapitate” the North Korean leadership.

The Hankyoreh, critical of what it calls failed hardline approaches to North Korea, urges a fundamental solution.  “Of the five nuclear tests to date, four happened while Seoul was carrying out hard-line North Korea policies,” it notes and says denouncing and pressuring Pyongyang will get us nowhere. Urging all parties to move past “Cold War-style logic,” the Hankyoreh writes, “Instead of pinning vague hopes on a North Korea collapse scenario – an approach that is both dangerous and unrealistic – we need a strategic approach that can lead to a comprehensive solution.”

Civil society groups in South Korea and the United States, as well as former U.S. officials, including former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea James Laney, have advocated for a formal end to the Korean War and a peace treaty to replace the 1953 armistice. Writing for NK News, Donald Kirk cautiously raises this as a possibility.  “What about if the U.S. were to sue for peace – that is to say: ‘at last we’d like to discuss your demand for a ‘peace treaty’ marking the formal conclusion of the Korean War?’” he asks.

Priority for the Next President

Whatever the comprehensive solution may be, many seem to agree that North Korea needs to be a top priority for the next U.S. administration.  “Beyond sanctions, any lasting solution will almost certainly require some kind of negotiations, though Republicans in Congress are certain to resist such a move,”writes the New York Times in an editorial.  Noting that the Kim government issued a statement in July that could be viewed as an overture for talks, the New York Times concludes, “Since far too little has been done to contain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions in the past decade, this accelerating threat will require the urgent attention of Mr. Obama’s successor.”

Former U.S. diplomat and arms control expert Mark Fitzpatrick apparently agrees.  Speaking to Kirk for NK News, Fitzpatrick said the next U.S. president “will have to put North Korea at the top of the agenda. … He or she will have to use all the tools of American policy-making.”

If Clinton becomes our next commander in chief, picking up where her husband left off in 2000 wouldn’t be a bad place to start. Bill Clinton signed the historic joint communique, in which the United States and North Korea declared “no hostile intent” toward each other and agreed to improve bilateral relations based on the principle of “mutual respect for sovereignty and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.” He sent then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang to discuss normalizing relations but ran out of time in his administration to finish the deed.

Hillary’s recent comments, which referred to North Korea’s nuclear test as a “reckless action” and its determination to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon a “direct threat to the United States” that she “cannot and will never accept” indicate that she’s still working off of an old script. Setting the next administration on the path of dialogue towards a comprehensive resolution will likely be an uphill battle. But commentary in western and South Korean media following last week’s North Korean nuclear test gives one cautious optimism that the political landscape may be gradually changing in a direction that will make dialogue, even a peace treaty, a more palatable option.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on North Korea’s Nuke Test Sparks Calls for Diplomacy over Sanctions

Syria: CIA Vetted “Rebels” Chase U.S. Forces Out Of Town

September 17th, 2016 by Moon of Alabama

According to the WSJ the U.S. agreed to join a further invasion of Syria by Turkey and its proxy forces:

The U.S. has agreed to send about 40 special-operations troops to work alongside Turkish forces to fight Islamic State in northern Syria, U.S. officials said.
…

The joint mission will take the forces east toward the northern Syrian town of Dabiq, a symbolically significant Islamic State stronghold. U.S. special-operations forces will operate as combat advisers and generally under the same guidelines as other special -operations forces are working inside Syria, U.S. officials said.
…
Ankara first proposed the idea of U.S. special -operations forces accompanying Turkish troops late last month as it planned a joint mission into Syria’s northern city of Jarabulus.

One can reasonably assume that the planned presence of U.S. forces amid a Turkish invasion has the sole purpose of deterring Russian or Syrian moves against it. With U.S. forces around the Russian command will have to think twice before bombing any Turkish advance beyond the borders of  their agreement with the Russians.

The deployment of some 40 U.S. special forces to Al Ra’i did not go well. The Turkish “Free Syrian Army” proxies threatened to kill the U.S. forces. They called them “unbelievers” and “crusader pigs” and the U.S. forces had to retreat under Turkish cover (video). Some FSA spokesperson later claimed that the dispute was over U.S. support for the Kurdish dominated SDF, which at times had fought against the FSA. Unconfirmed reports now say that the special forces are back in Al Ra’i after certain FSA groups were ordered out of the area. There are alsoreports claiming the U.S., after the special forces were chased out of town, “accidentally” bombed some FSA group in Al Ra’i. Ooops.

However, the hostile FSA forces will be around and U.S. Special Forces are obviously seen as their enemy. If the U.S. forces proceed together with the other FSA groups they will certainly have to watch their back at any and all times.

The Turkish supported sectarian “moderate” FSA groups are the very same groups the CIA has “vetted” and provided with TOW missiles and other weapons. But nobody should be astonished that such groups, driven by religious zeal, eventually turn on their sponsors. They have done so in each historic parallel one can think of.

The current ceasefire in Syria is already breaking down. U.S. media claim that Russia and Syria are blocking UN aid to the al-Qaeda ruled areas in east-Aleppo but other media say that the “rebels” are the ones threatening the convoys. In east-Aleppo al-Qaeda demonstrators held a rally (vid) against UN aid.

Russia says that the U.S. is trying to fudge on the terms of the ceasefire agreements and pushes the U.S. to publish the full accord. That is blocked by the State Department:

On Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters in Washington that the full text of the deal worked out with Russia on the truce in Syria will not be made public. “It does deal with sensitive issues that we believe, if made public, could potentially be misused,” he said.

Translation: “It is more difficult to cheat on the agreement if the terms are public.”

The U.S. supported opposition forces are using the ceasefire to prepare for new attacks on Hama and in the north of Aleppo city. I expect those to start at the beginning of next week. They will meet prepared defenses and ferocious attacks by Syrian and Russian air forces.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Syria: CIA Vetted “Rebels” Chase U.S. Forces Out Of Town

Western Media Credibility In Free Fall Collapse

September 17th, 2016 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The latest from the Gallup Poll is that only 32% of Amerians trust the print and TV media to tell the truth. 

http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx 

Republicans, 18 to 49 year old Americans, and independents trust the media even less, with trust rates of 14%, 26%, and 30%.

The only group that can produce a majority that still trusts the media are Democrats with a 51% trust rate in print and TV reporting. The next highest trust rate is Americans over 50 years of age with a trust rate of 38 percent.

Distinguished author Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (right)

The conclusion is that old people who are Democrats are the only remaining group that barely trusts the media. This mistaken trust is due to their enculturation. For older Democrats belief in government takes the place of Republican belief in evangelical Christianity. Older Democrats are firm believers that it was government under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that saved America from the Great Depression. As the print and TV media in the 21st century are firmly aligned with the government, the trust in government spills over into trust of the media that is serving the government. As the generation of Democrats enculturated with this mythology die off, Democratic trust rates will plummet toward Republican levels.

It is not difficult to see why trust in the media has collapsed. The corrupt Clinton regime, which we might be on the verge of repeating, allowed a somewhat diverse and independent media to be 90% acquired by six mega-corporations. The result was the disappearance of independence in reporting and opinion.

The constraints that corporate ownership and drive for profits put on journalistic freedom and resources reduced reporting to regurgitations of government and corporate press releases, always the cheapest and uncontroversial way to report.

With journalistic families driven out of journalism by estate taxes, the few remaining newspapers become acquisitions like a trophy wife or a collector Ferrari. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of amazon.com, handed over $250 million in cash for the Washington Post. Jeff might be a whiz in e-commerce, but when it comes to journalism he could just as well be named Jeff Bozo.

On September 12, Washington Post reporter Cindy Boren dropped the Washington Post below the level of the supermarket tabloid, National Enquirer. One must wonder where her editor was. Drunk perhaps? The Washington Post actually reported that a Nigerian MD, Bennet Omalu, “whose credentials and tenacity are well known,” has concluded that Hillary Clinton’s obvious medical problems could be due to her being poisoned by a Putin-Trump conspiracy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/09/12/the-man-who-discovered-cte-thinks-hillary-clinton-may-have-been-poisoned/

One could possibly conclude that Cindy Boren and her Washington Post editor were having fun with Omalu, except that the article repeated the unfounded allegation that circumstantial evidence according to a UK inquiry associates Putin with the poisoning death of Litvinenko.

In other words, first Litvinenko, now Hillary.

If circumstantial evidence is to be the Washington Post’s guide, then clearly that evidence suggests that the neoconservatives, well-ensconced in high government positions and desperate for a New Pearl Harbor in order to launch their wars of hegemony in the Middle East, are responsible for 9/11.

Yet the Washington Post has a full-time reporter whose job is to disparage conspiracy theories while the Washington Post itself launches the conspiracy theory of the century: Putin And Trump Conspiracy Poisons US Democratic Candidate for President.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/09/15/washington-post-grasps-crazy-conspiracy-theory-support-hillary-clinton.html

If intelligence, or perhaps simply sufficient time in Americans’ lives to investigate the news, were not in such short supply, possibly Americans would reflect on what the benefit is of being driven by Washington into conflict with Russia and China.

It most certainly will not be victory in war, as we all will be dead.

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Western Media Credibility In Free Fall Collapse

Central Bank Digital Currencies: A Revolution in Banking?

September 17th, 2016 by Ellen Brown

Several central banks, including the Bank of England, the People’s Bank of China, the Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve, are exploring the concept of issuing their own digital currencies, using the blockchain technology developed for Bitcoin. Skeptical commentators suspect that their primary goal is to eliminate cash, setting us up for negative interest rates (we pay the bank to hold our deposits rather than the reverse).

But Ben Broadbent, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, puts a more positive spin on it. He says Central Bank Digital Currencies could supplant the money now created by private banks through “fractional reserve” lending – and that means 97% of the circulating money supply. Rather than outlawing bank-created money, as money reformers have long urged, fractional reserve banking could be made obsolete simply by attrition, preempted by a better mousetrap.  The need for negative interest rates could also be eliminated, by giving the central bank more direct tools for stimulating the economy.

The Blockchain Revolution

How blockchain works was explained by Martin Hiesboeck in an April 2016 article titled “Blockchain Is the Most Disruptive Invention Since the Internet Itself“:

The blockchain is a simple yet ingenious way of passing information from A to B in a fully automated and safe manner. One party to a transaction initiates the process by creating a block. This block is verified by thousands, perhaps millions of computers distributed around the net. The verified block is added to a chain, which is stored across the net, creating not just a unique record, but a unique record with a unique history. Falsifying a single record would mean falsifying the entire chain in millions of instances. That is virtually impossible.

In a speech at the London School of Economics in March 2016, Bank of England Deputy Governor Ben Broadbent pointed out that a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) would not eliminate physical cash. Only the legislature could do that, and blockchain technology would not be needed to pull it off, since most money is already digital. What is unique and potentially revolutionary about a national blockchain currency is that it would eliminate the need for banks in the payments system. According to a July 2016 article in The Wall Street Journal on the CBDC proposal:

[M]oney would exist electronically outside of bank accounts in digital wallets, much as physical bank notes do. This means households and businesses would be able to bypass banks altogether when making payments to one another.

Not only the payments system but the actual creation of money is orchestrated by private banks today. Nearly 97% of the money supply is created by banks when they make loans, as the Bank of England acknowledged in a bombshell report in 2014. The digital money we transfer by check, credit card or debit card represents simply the IOU or promise to pay of a bank. A CBDC could replace these private bank liabilities with central bank liabilities. CBDCs are the digital equivalent of cash.

Money recorded on a blockchain is stored in the “digital wallet” of the bearer, as safe from confiscation as cash in a physical wallet. It cannot be borrowed, manipulated, or speculated with by third parties any more than physical dollars can be. The money remains under the owner’s sole control until transferred to someone else, and that transfer is anonymous.

Rather than calling a CBDC a “digital currency,” says Broadbent, a better term for the underlying technology might be “decentralised virtual clearinghouse and asset register.” He adds:

But there’s no denying the technology is novel.  Prospectively, it offers an entirely new way of exchanging and holding assets, including money.

Banking in the Cloud

One novel possibility he suggests is that everyone could hold an account at the central bank. That would eliminate the fear of bank runs and “bail-ins,” as well as the need for deposit insurance, since the central bank cannot run out of money. Accounts could be held at the central bank not just by small depositors but by large institutional investors, eliminating the need for the private repo market to provide a safe place to park their funds. It was a run on the repo market, not the conventional banking system, that triggered the banking crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Private banks could be free to carry on as they do now. They would just have substantially fewer deposits, since depositors with the option of banking at the ultra-safe central bank would probably move their money to that institution.

That is the problem Broadbent sees in giving everyone access to the central bank: there could be a massive run on the banks as depositors moved their money out. If so, where would the liquidity come from to back bank loans? He says lending activity could be seriously impaired.

Perhaps, but here is another idea. What if the central bank supplanted not just the depository but the lending functions of private banks? A universal distributed ledger designed as public infrastructure could turn the borrowers’ IOUs into “money” in the same way that banks do now – and do it more cheaply, efficiently and equitably than through banker middlemen.

Making Fractional Reserve Lending Obsolete

The Bank of England has confirmed that banks do not actually lend their depositors’ money. They do not recycle the money of “savers” but actually create deposits when they make loans. The bank turns the borrower’s IOU into “checkable money” that it then lends back to the borrower at interest. A public, distributed ledger could do this by “smart contract” in the “cloud.”

There would be no need to find “savers” from whom to borrow this money. The borrower would simply be “monetizing” his own promise to repay, just as he does now when he takes out a loan at a private bank. Since he would be drawing from the bottomless well of the central bank, there would be no fear of the bank running out of liquidity in a panic; and there would be no need to borrow overnight to balance the books, with the risk that these short-term loans might not be there the next day.

To reiterate: this is what banks do now. Banks are not intermediaries taking in deposits and lending them out. When a bank issues a loan for a mortgage, it simply writes the sum into the borrower’s account. The borrower writes a check to his seller, which is deposited in the seller’s bank, where it is called a “new” deposit and added to that bank’s “excess reserves.” The issuing bank then borrows this money back from the banking system overnight if necessary to balance its books, returning the funds the next morning. The whole rigmarole is repeated the next night, and the next and the next.

In a public blockchain system, this shell game could be dispensed with. The borrower would be his own banker, turning his own promise to repay into money. “Smart contracts” coded into the blockchain could make these transactions subject to terms and conditions similar to those for loans now. Creditworthiness could be established online, just as it is with online credit applications now. Penalties could be assessed for nonpayment just as they are now. If the borrower did not qualify for a loan from the public credit facility, he could still borrow on the private market, from private banks or venture capitalists or mutual funds. Favoritism and corruption could be eliminated, by eliminating the need for a banker middleman who serves as gatekeeper to the public credit machine. The fees extracted by an army of service providers could also be eliminated, because blockchain has no transaction costs.

In a blog for Bank of England staff titled “Central Bank Digital Currency: The End of Monetary Policy As We Know It?”, Marilyne Tolle suggests that the need to manipulate interest rates might also be eliminated. The central bank would not need this indirect tool for managing inflation because it would have direct control of the money supply.

A CBDC on a distributed ledger could be used for direct economic stimulus in another way: through facilitating payment of a universal national dividend. Rather than sending out millions of dividend checks, blockchain technology could add money to consumer bank accounts with a few keystrokes.

Hyperinflationary? No.

The objection might be raised that if everyone had access to the central bank’s credit facilities, credit bubbles would result; but that would actually be less likely than under the current system. The central bank would be creating money on its books in response to demand by borrowers, just as private banks do now. But loans for speculation would be harder to come by, since the leveraging of credit through the “rehypothecation” of collateral in the repo market would be largely eliminated. As explained by blockchain software technologist Caitlin Long:

Rehypothecation is conceptually similar to fractional reserve banking because a dollar of base money is responsible for several different dollars of debt issued against that same dollar of base money. In the repo market, collateral (such as U.S Treasury securities) functions as base money. . . .

Through rehypothecation, multiple parties report that they own the same asset at the same time when in reality only one of them does—because, after all, only one such asset exists. One of the most important benefits of blockchains for regulators is gaining a tool to see how much double-counting is happening (specifically, how long “collateral chains” really are).

Blockchain eliminates this shell game by eliminating the settlement time between trades. Blockchain trades occur in “real-time,” meaning collateral can be in only one place at a time.

A Sea Change in Banking

Martin Hiesboeck concludes:

[B]lockchain won’t just kill banks, brokers and credit card companies. It will change every transactional process you know. Simply put, blockchain eliminates the need for clearinghouse entities of any kind. And that means a revolution is coming, a fundamental sea change in the way we do business.

Changes of that magnitude usually take a couple of decades. But the UK did surprise the world with its revolutionary Brexit vote to leave the EU. Perhaps a new breed of economists at the Bank of England will surprise us with a revolutionary new model for banking and credit.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. She can be heard biweekly on “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Central Bank Digital Currencies: A Revolution in Banking?

Standing with Syria, “US and NATO Aggressions Must be Opposed Wherever they Surface in the World”

September 17th, 2016 by Margaret Kimberley

President Obama has gotten a pass for almost eight years from self-styled anti-war elements that back his proxy war against Syria. Phony anti-warriors blame the Syrian government for resisting jihadist head-hunters in the pay of Washington and its allies. They have become supporters of state terror, and cannot comprehend that “there would not be bombs of any kind, sieges, starving children, or refugees” if the Obama had not launched his war.

“There is only one question now: when will America tell its minions to stop fighting?”

American and NATO aggressions must be opposed wherever they surface in the world. That statement ought to be the starting point for anyone calling themselves left, progressive, or anti-war. Of course the aggressors always use a ruse to diminish resistance to their wars of terror. In Syria and elsewhere they claim to support freedom fighters, the moderate opposition and any other designation that helps hide imperialist intervention. They label their target as a tyrant, a butcher, or a modern day Hitler who commits unspeakable acts against his own populace. The need to silence opposition is obvious and creating the image of a monster is the most reliable means of securing that result.

The anti-war movement thus finds itself confused and rendered immobile by this predictable propaganda. It is all too easily manipulated into being at best ineffectual and at worst supporters of American state sponsored terror.

For five years the United States, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar and Turkey have given arms and money to terrorist groups in an effort to topple Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Some of those bad actors felt flush with success after overthrowing and killing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. They had high hopes of picking off another secular Arab government. Fortunately, Assad was hard to defeat and the barbarians cannot storm the gates. Most importantly, Russia stopped giving lip service to Assad and finally provided military support to the Syrian government in 2015.

American presidents, beginning with Jimmy Carter, have all used jihadists at opportune moments when they want regime change.

The United States government is responsible for the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria. The so-called barrel bomb doesn’t kill more people than conventional weapons provided by the United States and its puppets. There would not be bombs of any kind, sieges, starving children, or refugees if the Obama administration had not given the green light to the rogues gallery.

Whatever their political beliefs or feelings about Assad, Syrians did not ask the United States to turn their country into a ruin. They don’t want ISIS to behead children, as they infamously did on camera. American presidents, beginning with Jimmy Carter, have all used jihadists at opportune moments when they want regime change. The name of the country under attack changes but the story ends with massive human suffering.

Instead of siding unequivocally with America’s victims some in the anti-war movement instead live in greater fear of being labeled “pro Assad.” Assad didn’t invade Iraq and kill one million people. George W. Bush did that. Assad did not give support to jihadists to destroy Libya, kill 50,000 people, ignite a race war and create another refugee crisis. Barack Obama did that. The list of human rights abuses carried out by the American government is a long one indeed. There is torture in the United States prison system, the largest in the world. American police are given tacit permission to kill three people every day. Yet the fear of being thought of as an Assad supporter is so powerful that it silences people and organizations who should be in the forefront of confronting their country domestically and internationally.

Of course American propaganda is ratcheted up at the very moment that sides must be chosen. Any discussion or debate regarding Syria’s political system was rendered moot as soon as the United States targeted that country for destruction. There is only one question now: when will America tell its minions to stop fighting?

The fear of being thought of as an Assad supporter is so powerful that it silences people and organizations who should be in the forefront of confronting their country domestically and internationally.

Obama didn’t start a proxy war with an expectation of losing, and Hillary Clinton makes clear her allegiance to regime change. The United States will only leave if Syria and its allies gain enough ground to force a retreat. They will call defeat something else at a negotiating table but Assad must win in order for justice and reconciliation to begin.

Focusing on Assad’s government and treatment of his people may seem like a reasonable thing to do. Most people who call themselves anti-war are serious in their concern for humanity. But the most basic human right, the right to survive, was taken from 400,000 people because the American president decided to add one more notch on his gun. Whether intended or not, criticism of the victimized government makes the case for further aggression.

The al-Nusra Front may change its name in a public relations effort, but it is still al Qaeda and still an ally of the United States. The unpredictable Donald Trump may not be able to explain that he spoke the truth when he accused Obama and Clinton of being ISIS supporters, but the anti-war movement should be able to explain without any problem. Cessations of hostilities are a sham meant to protect American assets whenever Assad is winning. If concern for the wellbeing of Syrians is a paramount concern, then the American anti-war movement must be united in condemning their own government without reservation or hesitation.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Standing with Syria, “US and NATO Aggressions Must be Opposed Wherever they Surface in the World”

Nightmarish Global Military Agenda. Threats of US Nuclear Attacks against North Korea. American Empire Is the Real Enemy of Both Koreas

September 16th, 2016 by Joachim Hagopian

Warring hotspots all over the world are flaring up in 2016 in what amounts to preparation for World War III between the military forces of the US led Western Empire against the forces of the Eastern axis led by Russia and China joined by Iran and North Korea. Let’s be clear – the globalists are the puppet masters behind the Western forces intentionally provoking catastrophic world war.

We live in a time when the earth’s ruling elite has willfully created this foreboding, seemingly suicidal endgame scenario, using US Empire to prod, orchestrate, and push the world into two enemy camps in a West vs. East showdown. Global war timed with the inevitable collapse of their Ponzi-schemed global economy will open the floodgate to unbridled tyranny brought on by their long plotted one world government. The systematic destruction of the West and its First World affluence is but part of this sinister scheme to destabilize every region on the planet in order to engineer such dire, devastating conditions that the surviving global masses will automatically seek refuge and protection from deep state’s one world governance as their only means of staying alive. Meticulously creating the conditions most ripe for war, ecological degradation leading to disease and famine ensures that the elite’s eugenics depopulation agenda will leave a slave class of a half to one billion people on earth to serve the diabolical ruling class.

Thus as the only means of escaping this horrific outcome, it’s extremely important to expose this nightmarish globalist agenda that’s using the US Empire-NATO war machine to aggressively provoke rising world tensions and hostilities as precipitating pre-WWIII events. Per last year’s UN Global Trends Report, at near 60 million, 2014 saw more people being displaced around the world than any previous time in recorded history. The elite’s carefully engineered global hotspots cover every corner of the globe, from the US-induced political and economic unrest creating havoc now in Brazil and Venezuela; a stepped up war in Ukraine flanked by the built-up deployment of hostile NATO troops at the Russian border; ongoing war with no end in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, and prewar skirmishes, flare-ups and small scale wars in Somalia, Pakistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Sudan, Burundi and Central African Republic all the way eastward to the rising tensions in the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula as well as stretching northward to the Arctic Circle, the West’s push for confrontation, aggression and domination against the Eastern alliance is making global war eminent and virtually unavoidable.

Russia, China, Iran and even North Korea do not want war. And neither do all the people living in the West. But the Western crime cabal in charge never cares what the people want. As Kissinger says, we are all just “useless eaters,” taking up precious space and consuming their “nearly depleted” 19th century energy sources. The elite has made sure the masses stay stuck in the dark, unable to get their hands on or wrap their minds around free energy technology, cancer cures, antigravity technology or the global capacity to wipe out hunger and starvation to feed a world population up to 11 billion. All because a very powerful handful amongst the near 7.5 billion people on our planet want nearly all of us dead. And they are the driving force that controls the warmongering Western despots frothing at the mouth for global war and total planetary destruction.

The US Empire has maintained an unending agenda to stir up and keep hostile relations hot between US-backed South Korea and the Chinese-backed North Korea, otherwise known as George W’s “axis-of-evil” member. As part of the post-WWII contrived divide and conquer cold war of US-led “free world” versus those “nasty evil Commies” Russia and China, the globalists who ideologically have always leaned far closer towards Communist totalitarianism than free enterprise democracy have been carving up and splitting nations, pitting humans belonging to the same ethnic group against each other from Europe to Asia into two distinct warring camps.

Be it US backed and controlled West Germany versus Soviet backed and controlled East Germany, US backed and controlled Western Europe versus Soviet backed and controlled Eastern Europe, Soviet backed and partially controlled China versus US backed and controlled Taiwan, US/French backed and US controlled South Vietnam versus Soviet/Chinese backed and controlled North Vietnam to US backed and controlled South Korea versus Soviet/Chinese backed and controlled North Korea. For centuries the globalist agenda has ruthlessly and systematically torn apart nation after nation, literally down to tearing apart family after family just to keep wars and the threat of human self-annihilation alive and US global hegemony thriving at the rest of humanity’s expense.

This presentation will focus on just one of these countless hotspots that could at any time trigger World War III. Heightened tensions this week on the Korean Peninsula have brought Cold War 2 to the near boiling point between US puppet South Korea and China’s wayward puppet North Korea. The latest North Korean launch of last week’s nuclear missile test, the second this year, has the US and South Korea ready to up their anti-North Korean ante. Despite economic sanctions supposedly intended to dissuade a targeted nation to curb its militarized activities, sanctions have only had the opposite effect on North Korea.

The six nation diplomatic talks with North Korea to curtail its pursuit of a nuclear bomb broke down eight years ago and the “most sanctioned nation on earth” as George W Bush called North Korea has been sanctioned and re-sanctioned ad nauseam to no avail. Yet recent calls for more diplomacy rather than confrontation and escalation appear to be falling on deaf ears. When North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un rightly believes that US-led forces pose a grave nuclear threat to North Korea’s very survival, no sanctions will deter a nation from doing what it believes it must do to survive.

After last Friday’s nuclear test detonation estimated to be twice the strength of Hiroshima’s blast, the international community once again lambasted the North Korean dictator. Though portrayed by Western press as an unpredictable, highly volatile, paranoid madman, US aggressions historically have forced Kim and his Pyongyang government to expend their limited resources almost exclusively on expanding its military self-defense. The much maligned so called nation pariah is simply doing what it believes is necessary to survive in an increasingly hostile world led by US Empire. An objective examination of North Korea’s history will demonstrate the veracity that it’s not North Korea that’s been the true aggressor but the US Empire.

For over five centuries from 1392-1910 under the Josean Dynasty, Korea remained a united nation with one culture and one language. Then from 1910-1945, Korea became a colonial victim of Japanese imperialism. Once Japan was defeated in WWII, since the Philippines had already been an imperialistic possession of the US and Japan itself was the vanquished enemy, they were both placed directly under postwar control of the US Empire. With Korea a lesser priority, by convenient expediency, the Korean people were once again re-victimized, arbitrarily divided by the two occupying military forces at the close of WWII, the Soviets in the north and Americans in the south.

With US interests represented by two Army colonels working as junior State Department officials, one Dean Rusk, the future Secretary of State under John Kennedy, just five days prior to Japan’s surrender in August 1945, without input from any Koreans, their nation was severed roughly in half at the 38th parallel, ensuring that the capital Seoul would remain under US auspices. The provisional South Korean government sought friendly relations with all nations, independence, social and land reform and ultimate reunification. These democratic principles and policies that were beneficial to the South Korean citizens stood in stark contrast with the imperialistic design that US military control would accept and the provisional government in September 1945 was quickly disbanded. Eventually in its place was inserted an anti-Communist oppressive dictator that suited US interests. The Truman Doctrine essentially took over where Japanese imperial rule occupation left off in both East and South East Asia. Empire’s sphere of influence included Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), Formosa (Taiwan) and Indonesia.

By the original postwar mandate the two Koreas were supposed to be reunified by 1948, but because the globalist designed cold war was already in full swing, the puppet regime in the north controlled by Stalin didn’t trust the US installed South Korean anti-Communist puppet dictator who wantonly murdered democratic opposition movements especially from the left. Stalin’s boy to the north was just as bloodthirsty. Like trained cock fights, both world powers encouraged and promoted espionage and covert aggression against the other. So by imperialistic design, Korea was never liberated and for over a century now has remained a divided and conquered people living in an occupied and divided nation for over seven decades.

Former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles organized a series of covert incursions by South Korean provocateurs into North Korean territory in 1949 and 1950 prior to the start of the Korean War. This offensive tactic of probing and war baiting is a familiar strategy in US false flag history designed to intentionally trigger wars. This same sort of false flag was used as the precursor that President Johnson jumped on to falsely accuse North Vietnam of firing upon a US Navy vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 in order to jump start the Vietnam War that his predecessor JFK had vowed to avoid. But less than 9 months after co-conspirator LBJ murdered Kennedy, he ignited what would become America’s longest running war in history, that is until the same cloak and dagger neocons came to power this century to secure their own “endless war on terror.”

With the Rockefeller funded and founded Council on Foreign Relations as well as the United Nations actively co-opted by the US government, a prior arrangement had been secretly made that authorized UN troops (of course consisting almost exclusively of US military) to come to South Korea’s aid if it was determined that North Korea attacked South Korea. Thus, the US-led incursions north of the 38th parallel were designed to provoke North Korean forces to retaliate and the case of North Korea invading South Korea could be bogusly claimed. From June 1950 until July 1953, an estimated sum of 3 million Korean civilians (some estimate as high as 4-5 million) were killed, two thirds in North Korea although North Korea cites up to one third of the total population in the north were killed as forgotten victims of US crimes against humanity. No other war has inflicted so many casualties on any one nation in history.

The nonstop carpet bombing and firebombing of North Korea with napalm mercilessly pulverized its 78 cities and countless villages in both North and South Korea. And within less than six months of the war’s outset, the US Empire began threatening the north with atomic bombs, a constantly used ultimatum weapon America has been clubbing Pyongyang with for the last two-thirds of a century. In violation of the Armistice Agreement, in 1958 the US began installing nuclear warhead missiles in South Korea aimed directly at North Korea. In 1974 South Korea (otherwise known as Republic of Korea or ROK) began preparing its own nuclear development. And over the decades Empire has upgraded and augmented its nuclear weapons systems both in and outside South Korea to destroy North Korea (otherwise known as Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK). These nukes obviously pose a direct threat to both DPRK and China. Is it any wonder then that North Korea has invested so heavily in efforts to acquire a nuclear arsenal as its only deterrent to protect itself from the nuke-powered world bully possessing the dubious distinction of being the only nation on earth to callously use such heinous WMD’s on two large human populated cities?

Korea’s “undeclared war” tripled the Pentagon budget, expanded NATO power and its anti-communist false flag Gladio operations in Europe, fueled exponential growth of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower would later warn America against, and recruited the UN as an imperialistic partner-in-crime whose co-conspiring role carries on even more so to this day. Then with the Chinese Red Army entering the conflict alongside North Korea in 1951, US war involvement fell into its first military quagmire reaching a trench war stalemate forcing a negotiated 1953 Armistice Agreement to cease hostile operations and retain the original 38th parallel demilitarized zone as an intractable artificial wedge dividing Koreans. The agreement is not a peace treaty as only military leaders from the US, China and North Korea signed it leaving out South Korea entirely. Plus it technically leaves the two nations legally in a continual state of war. A grass roots peace movement in South Korea has emerged calling for the ROK and its northern neighbor DPRK to implement a finalized peace treaty that includes stipulations for concrete steps toward reunification.

During the more than six decades since the Korean Armistice, the US Empire has operated the only permanent garrison in Asia stationed along the world’s most armed border. Under a false UN mandate, the US has continually maintained a hefty troop size from the current 28,000 to 37,000 American soldiers as South Korea’s permanent fixture occupying force. General Vincent Brooks as the recently assigned top ranking US commander in the Republic of Korea outranks even the South Korean president and top South Korean general. The entire 625,000 active duty soldiers and nearly 3 million on active reserve status comprising the ROK defense forces are also directly under US military command. According to both public print and CIA sources, South Korea’s military strength and firepower is rated 11th in the world compared to North Korea’s 25th position. Yet for US imperialistic and hegemonic reasons alone, forever colonized South Korea remains subjugated to its high command master.

The biggest arms importer in the world at last count in 2014 is none other than South Korea buying $7 billion of its $7.3 billion worth from you guessed it America. That’s 96% of its war-making materials coming from the US military industrial complex… yet another boondoggle reason the Empire will never leave South Korea. And South Korea will never be an independent sovereign nation nor will it ever reunify with its neighbor. The war-making American Empire will make certain that never happens. Neither peacemaking nor reunification have ever been part of the Empire’s foreign policy agenda. Thus, nonstop US military presence in South Korea drives the most powerful wedge against the two Koreas ever reunifying. Clearly the US stands in the way as the biggest impediment to ever achieving a lasting, peaceful, unified Peninsula with a united Korean people.

Just as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is currently flashing his “Yankee go home” card demanding the American military leave his country, so too should South Korea. But that’s simply out of the question since Seoul as a US puppet depends on US might to buffer and counter Kim’s bombastic bite. Plus way too much money is at stake. Additionally, South Koreans have been sufficiently brainwashed into believing that America is necessary to protect them from their so called menacing threat to the north.

Ever since the Korean War the United States has ensured that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea remains politically and economically isolated from the rest of the world. With layers of inhumane sanctions piled on top of one another, the US has torpedoed North Korea’s national economy including its industrial base, its agriculture and foreign trade. As a recent example of how the US manipulates and controls the United Nations, in March this year the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2270 raining yet more crippling sanctions down on the beleaguered DPRK. The basis for the latest sanctions are unfounded since they are a consequence of bogus testimony of alleged human rights violations that have been proven false. The “eyewitness” testimony came from DPRK defectors who were paid to lie as confirmed by articles in both The New York Times and The Guardian.

This overly punitive UN resolution prohibits 50% of North Korea’s export sales of its minerals like gold, titanium, vanadium and other precious minerals and metals. Moreover, the resolution bans other UN nations from teaching North Koreans advanced computer science, physics, geospatial navigation, nuclear engineering and other advanced academic and technological disciplines, effectively impoverishing the people of DPRK from learning skills required for modern development and sound medical treatment, relegating the nation to primitive healthcare service and last century technology.

Since 1998 North Korea has carried out five nuclear tests and launched six rocket carrying satellites, the latest test a week ago and the second since last January. While US Empire has vowed it will never allow DPRK to gain possession of a single nuclear weapon, since 1998 the US has been busily developing new precision guided nukes, built more non-nuclear WMD’s and spends $8 billion each year to maintain and upgrade its vast 7,100 nuclear warhead arsenal. And even though official US statements assert that all American and South Korean nuclear weapons have been removed from ROK a quarter century ago, it’s a meaningless, misleading gesture because of US capability to launch its warheads against North Korea and China from the continental United States as well as from any strategic nuke-powered submarine.

Meanwhile, a number of other nations have recently shot satellites into orbit and even tested long range ballistic missiles. Yet North Korea and to some extent Iran are the only nations singled out and attacked by the world community of course led by Empire. A blatant double standard exists when so called Western allies like Israel are given carte blanche to continue stockpiling its nukes but when countries on Empire’s shit list exercise their rights to defend themselves, they’re customarily demonized. The apartheid Jewish State just finagled a near billion dollar a year boost in US military aid to expand its nuclear threat and genocidal policies against Palestinians and the Arab world with an obscene $38 billion commitment at US taxpayer expense over the next decade. In response to near a half century of nuclear threats with US nukes aimed directly at North Korea, the DPRK withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and as such, no international law prohibits North Korea from developing nuclear weapons nor firing rockets carrying satellites into orbit. The pile-on of sanctions and hypocritical saber-rattling rhetoric against North Korea are both groundless and morally untenable.

In July Empire and ROK were at it again, instigating yet more threats to not only North Korea’s national security but Russia and China’s as well with the unveiling of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to be located inside South Korea. With its implementation in NATO members Romania and Poland on Russia’s western front already well in progress, this sophisticated radar system and ballistic missile interceptor is construed by the three targeted Eastern nations as one more reckless act of US belligerence and confrontation on the path to world war.

Like a tag team wearing down an opponent, Empire is betting on a strategy that helped bring the Soviet Empire to its knees and eventual ashes. By continuing to escalate provocation and threat by rolling out more potent weaponry like the THAAD missile defense system as part of an unbeatable arms race that an impoverished North Korea cannot begin to match, the objective is to bankrupt and destroy the poorest country in Asia. This same strategy already proved successful once against the Soviet Union. The neocons today are confident that it will once again work against DPRK. Knowing that the North Korean government will sacrifice everything in order to bolster its military capabilities to keep up with US-ROK at the expense of its own people, creating such extreme economic hardship on a destitute population, Empire’s banking on a desperate people in North Korea to rise up in rebellion triggering regime change.

This year the US and South Korea have dramatically stepped up their joint military exercises practicing war against their North Korean enemy from once a year to twice a year. And they’re bigger than ever.  Last spring’s annual drill was extended to two months in length. Three months later more war games began late last month and just ended two weeks ago. Seeing the US aggressively militarizing their homeland like never before, the latest round of drills was met by protests from antiwar peace groups within South Korea that recognize practicing preemptive war strikes on the Korean Peninsula is not making them any safer or more secure but only increasing the risk of an epic scale war and massive carnage. A growing number of Koreans on both sides of the border realize that these US-ROK war games are not about defensive deterrence at all, but are geared to launch first strike attacks on North Korean nuclear and missile facilities and to take out the Pyongyang leadership. In response, the North Korean foreign minister issued this statement:

The military drill is an unpardonable criminal act of pushing the situation of the Korean peninsula to the brink of a war as the situation there has become unprecedentedly unstable due to the US introduction of nuclear strategic bombers, THAAD and other strategic assets into the peninsula and its vicinity.

In preparation for the coming war to take out North Korea, the US military has been quietly moving its fleet of nuclear bombers to nearby Guam. In an unprecedented display of air power, last month both B-1 and B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were dispatched to join B-52 bombers for a triple joint air operation for the first time. Understandably, the Pyongyang government interpreted it as evidence of a US plan to preemptively drop nuclear bombs on North Korea. Both the Continuous Bomber Presence (CBP) and the Bomber Assurance and Deterrence Deployment (BAAD) operations being conducted now in the Pacific are indisputably connected to offensively targeting North Korea. Yet the world media ignores Empire transgressions that cannot hide its intent to start a nuclear war against DPRK. If the roles were reversed, all the world would be reacting with sheer outrage over such brazen acts of warmongering aggression. Again, always the double standard.

Then earlier this week to take it up a notch in a grand show of force designed to intimidate Pyongyang, Empire again flexed its airpower muscle with a staged flyover of strategic nuke-powered bombers just 50 miles from North Korea so all the world could see. Sanctions, saber-rattling and more threats have never worked on this poorest outcast nation on the Asian continent. DPRK is determined to exercise its right to defend itself with whatever means is necessary, and though it cannot compete in the Empire ruled nuclear arms race, for its survival it will not back down from seeking a semblance of nuclear parity.

While every North Korean action to defend itself against impossible odds is indignantly portrayed as raw aggressive insanity that must be stopped at all cost, in contrast the far deadlier, far more provocative machinations committed by the US and its ROK puppet ally are always favorably slanted as righteous efforts to protect the world by keeping the lawless rogue state in check.

Pure deceit is how the US and its globalist masters continue getting away with mass murdering our planet, multiple targeted nations at a time. Using nonstop war propaganda through mainstream media, the Empire that’s always clearly been the biggest single threat to the entire world is constantly twisting reality around to ensure that the tiny nation of North Korea is perceived to be the out of control demon bent on destroying not just ROK and US but the whole world.

The US has sought to create and maintain barriers between not only both Korean nations but also exploit potential conflicts that might weaken ties between DPRK and its closest ally China as well as Russia. Indeed a major reason why the US stations so many of its troops and weapons in ROK is to militarize South Korea as part of its aggressive “Asian pivot” strategy to encircle its other Eastern enemy China. And so status quo of yet another dissected nation and divided people prevails as American Empire remains at war really with both Koreas, subversively sabotaging whatever mutual effort or will each may possess to want to reunify and live in peace.

Growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula are but one example of the hectic pace of destabilizing events unfolding around the globe. They are near daily reminders of just how dangerous our world is becoming. The hostilities in a dozen hotspots are soaring and the likelihood of another global war has never been closer. Continuing to deny this tragic and alarming reality is suicide. The dire warnings that we realists are shouting from the rooftops are not the raving mad rants of the Chicken Littles of the world as the CIA and gov.corp would have us believe.

Since the JFK assassination whitewash, the CIA labeled those of us who question deep state lies as conspiracy theorists as its highly effective strategy to dismiss the dark truth from ever reaching the light of day. Sticking our heads in the sand playing passive and powerless will allow billions to needlessly die in the coming years. We have no choice but to stop these traitorous killers from committing the unthinkable – human genocide and slaughter of nearly 7 billion humans currently living and breathing on this planet right now. Acting purely in self-defense and self-preservation, we must imprison the guilty to save ourselves, our children, future generations and our precious planet from complete ruin. With the stakes never higher in history, it’s do or die time on planet earth.

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Nightmarish Global Military Agenda. Threats of US Nuclear Attacks against North Korea. American Empire Is the Real Enemy of Both Koreas

Selected Articles: In Solidarity with the People of Syria: The Mercenary Terrorists are Losing

September 16th, 2016 by Global Research News

Flag-map_of_Syria.svg

In Solidarity with the People of Syria: The Mercenary Terrorists are Losing.The Historic Significance of Defeating the West’s Dirty War…

By Mark Taliano, September 16 2016

Many people have wished me well and wished and wished me a safe journey.  Some people have donated money.  I am grateful for the best wishes, and the donations. In many respects, we’re all in this together.  The plight of Syria and Syrians is entwined with us as well. If the West and its proxies successfully destroy Syria as they did to so many other countries, including Iraq, and Libya, and Afghanistan, then the next country on the list will be Iran and so on.

white helmets

“Stop Supporting Terrorists in Syria”: Netflix and “White Helmets” (Fake NGO), “Hand in Hand with Al Qaeda”

By Vanessa Beeley, September 16 2016

Has Netflix revealed itself to be another deep state conscript? The recent Syria White Helmet promotional movie has caused uproar among people awakened to the US, UK state and intelligence agency involvement in this pseudo ‘first responder’ faux NGO outfit that has infiltrated Syria on behalf of its funders and donors based in the US and NATO neocolonialist “regime change” command centres.

U.S.-Russia-Syria

The Geneva Syria “Ceasefire” Agreement: Pizza and Vodka “Secrets” Coming Out…

By Israel Shamir, September 16 2016

The recent Syria agreement signed in Geneva by Kerry and Lavrov (probably it will be remembered as “Pizza and Vodka deal”, as the journalists have been served these delicacies by the negotiating teams during the time they had to wait for the results) beside the points disclosed by the foreign ministers included five documents. The US insisted on keeping the content secret, despite Russian insistence to make them known. Here is what we learned about the contents of the secret documents and the negotiation process from our usually reliable Arab and Israeli sources.

By South Front, September 16 2016

The Russian Aerospace Forces have eliminated 250 ISIS terrorists and 15 vehicles armed with machine guns near the Syrian city of Palmyra, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on September 14. Russian warplanes conducted airstrikes north of the city where a group of terrorists was preparing offensive on the Syrian army positions.

ASSAD-SYRIE

Assad’s Death Warrant

By Mike Whitney, September 16 2016

The US wants to install a puppet regime in Damascus so it can secure pipeline corridors in the East, oversee the transport of vital energy reserves from Qatar to the EU, and make sure that those reserves continue to be denominated in US Dollars that are recycled into US Treasuries and US financial assets. This is the basic recipe for maintaining US dominance in the Middle East and for extending America’s imperial grip on global power into the future.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: In Solidarity with the People of Syria: The Mercenary Terrorists are Losing

Pesticides Trigger Death of the Bees. Corporate Corruption in Pesticide Research

September 16th, 2016 by Mint Press

‘Syngenta and Bayer have a substantial amount of influence in the debate,’ said one neurobiology researcher in response to a Greenpeace analysis of corporate corruption in pesticide research.

Pesticide manufacturers have spent millions influencing researchers who are investigating the role of neonicotinoids, a nicotine-like chemical found in many major pesticides, in bee die-offs, according to a recent analysis by Greenpeace.

The analysis arrives just weeks after scientists released the results of a long-term study that shows neonicotinoids are extremely dangerous to wild bees in the United Kingdom.

A bumble bee perches on rape blossoms near Munich, southern Germany. A new study shows that scientists funded by pesticide makers downplayed the role pesticides had in decimating worldwide bee populations.

A bumble bee perches on rape blossoms near Munich, southern Germany. A new study shows that scientists funded by pesticide makers downplayed the role pesticides had in decimating worldwide bee populations.

Bayer and Syngenta, two of the world’s top manufacturers of neonicotinoid-based pesticides, gave over £2 million (over $2.6 million) to British universities engaged in research on pesticides and plant sciences between 2011 and the start of 2016, reported Joe Sandler Clarke, a journalist for Greenpeace’s Energydesk, on Aug. 29.

“Syngenta and Bayer have a substantial amount of influence in the debate,” Dr. Christopher Connolly, a reader in neurobiology at Scotland’s Dundee University, told Clarke.

Energydesk sent Freedom of Information requests to 135 universities, requesting details on studies funded by Bayer or Syngenta, and heard back from 70 institutions. Among the top recipients of corporate funding were Nottingham University, which received £557,500 from Syngenta for research into plant sciences between 2011 and 2015, and Reading University, which received £587,952 for similar research during the same period.

Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at Sussex University, acknowledged that it’s difficult to measure the exact extent of corporate influence in his field. However, he told Clarke:

It does seem to be the case that research funded by agrochemical companies rarely seems to find evidence that their products harm the environment, while independently-funded research often finds major adverse effects caused by the same products.

He further acknowledged: “Scientists are under huge pressure to obtain research funding and so are naturally likely to be keen to keep their funders happy.”

Scientists increasingly confident that ‘neonicotinoids are harmful’

While it appears some researchers were taking corporate money to follow an agribusiness agenda, others continue to document the harm caused by neonicotinoids.

Neonicotinoid pesticides were banned from use on all flowering plants in the European Union in 2013. A team of seven scientists recently compared wild bee populations to levels of neonicotinoid use on oilseed rape crops in the U.K. between 1994 and 2011. The study, published Aug. 16 in the science journal Nature Communications and led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, showed that the populations of dozens of wild bee species declined significantly as the use of neonicotinoid pesticides increased, with the populations of one species down as much as 30 percent.

“[T]he average decline in population across all 62 species was 7.0 percent, but the average decline among 34 species that forage on oilseed rape was higher, at 10 percent,” reported Kate Kelland, a Reuters journalist who attended a press conference led by Ben Woodcock, who co-led the study.

Woodcock told reporters:

Prior to this, people had an idea that something might be happening, but no one had an idea of the scale. [Our results show that] it’s long-term, it’s large scale, and it’s many more species than we knew about before.

Connolly, the neurobiologist interviewed by Greenpeace, has also authored important research into the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides. In April, he and seven other researchers released a study in the journal Scientific Reports which showed two major neonicotinoids, Bayer’s imidacloprid and Syngenta’s thiamethoxam, haveharmful effects on bee populations and the brain cells of individual bees. Surprisingly, a third chemical, Bayer’s clothianidin, appeared to actually increase the number of queens produced by a colony.

Connolly, who supports an ongoing ban on all neonicotinoid pesticides, including those containing clothianidin, praised the recent study by Woodcock and company. “The evidence against neonicotinoids now exists in key bee brain cells involved in learning and memory, in whole bees, entire colonies and now at the level of whole populations of wild bees,” he told Kelland.

Overall, there seems to be growing consensus among scientists that neonicotinoids pose a threat to bees. Dr. Nick Isaac, lead researcher of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology’s study, told Greenpeace’s Clarke:

“Neonicotinoids are harmful. We can be very confident about that.”

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Pesticides Trigger Death of the Bees. Corporate Corruption in Pesticide Research

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and The Arab Peace Initiative

September 16th, 2016 by Prof. Alon Ben-Meir

Senator Bernie Sanders’ call during the primaries for a new approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was on-point and necessary. However, his plea for the US to adopt a policy of even-handedness in dealing with Israel and the Palestinians will not suffice. In fact, even if the incoming administration changed its approach by coercing Israel to make important concessions and stop its settlement enterprise, this will not produce the necessary conditions to make peace at this particular juncture of the conflict.

Furthermore, any new approach by the EU during the current UN General Assembly meetings to restart the talks in the traditional way, either directly or through mediation, will not lead to an agreement regardless of the pressure or incentives that may be employed to persuade Israel and the Palestinians to resume negotiations in earnest.

A process of reconciliation must precede any formal negotiations for about two years, because the conditions on the ground have dramatically changed for the worse since the Oslo Accords. For the Palestinians, hopelessness has set in, mutual distrust has deepened, and extremists on both sides have gained significant traction. Perhaps most important, the political landscape has shifted to the right in both camps, making it highly unlikely to resume peace talks with any prospect of reaching an agreement.

There is no doubt that Palestinian acts of violence against Israelis are a direct result of 50 years of occupation that continues to frustrate and incite them. Consequently, the Palestinians feel they have been left with no option but to resort to violence in an effort to end the occupation and pave the way for the establishment of their own state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Conversely, the Israelis can also make a persuasive argument that the Palestinians cannot be trusted. The Second Intifada in particular was a turning point in the mind of most Israelis, which further deepened their distrust and heightened (albeit often to exaggeration) their national security concerns.

Unfortunately, successive right-of-center Israeli governments, especially those led by Netanyahu, exploited security concerns to expropriate more Palestinian territory and build new and expand existing settlements to create so-called “secure borders.”

To change the dynamic of the conflict, reconciliatory people-to-people measures becomes central to creating fertile ground for negotiations to succeed.

Such measures of reconciliation should include but not be limited to: facilitating mutual visitation, joint women activism, sporting events, student interaction, travelling art exhibitions, encouraging public discourse, hosting forums to discuss conflicting issues, and imploring the media to promote such shared initiatives.

Additional steps can be taken by leadership on both sides, including: halting mutual acrimonious public narratives, modifying textbooks, taking no provocative actions (i.e. halting settlement expansion during the period of reconciliation), and maintaining security cooperation between the two sides.

These measures are central to changing the psychological dynamic of the conflict and sociopolitical environment between them by mitigating the problem of mutual distrust, national security, and the illusion that either can rule over all of mandated Palestine. Only by adhering to such a process will they demonstrate their commitment to peace, which has been lacking but is essential to making the necessary concessions to reach an agreement.

As the process of reconciliation gets underway, the United States and the European Union should make a supreme effort to reinvigorate the Arab Peace Initiative (API) and pressure both Israel and Hamas to embrace it. The Arab Peace Initiative remains the only practical framework for peace, as it contains common denominators between Israel and the Palestinians (including Hamas) that will facilitate successful peace negotiations.

Moreover, the API is the only framework that will lead to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in the context of a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace, which the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians are seeking in order to achieve long-term stability and progress.

Finally, the turmoil in the Middle East indeed offers an opportunity to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly now that the Arab world is keener than ever before to make peace with Israel because of the common Iranian threat and the violent rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites over regional hegemony.

The United States and the EU (the only powers that can bring an end to the conflict) and certainly moderate Israelis must exploit this window of opportunity and put an end to the longest and most debilitating violent conflict in modern times.

Russian President Putin’s invitation to Netanyahu and Abbas to visit Moscow (which they have accepted) means little and will produce even less. For Putin, the invitation offers an opportunity to exploit the vacuum resulting from US disengagement; for Netanyahu, it will (falsely) demonstrate that he is committed to peace; and for Abbas, he simply doesn’t want to be perceived as an obstacle.

Given that the United States was and remains the main player, neither Abbas nor Netanyahu can dismiss it. The new administration must support France’s initiative, which seeks to convene an international conference to resume peace negotiations, and change its previous approach in the search for a peace agreement based on a two-state solution.

There is no doubt that the US must play a more assertive role toward Israel, especially because the US is genuinely concerned about Israel’s national security. Providing Israel with $38 billion in military aid over a period of 10 years is unprecedented and only attests to the US’ commitment.

The next administration must stop enabling Israel to pursue policies which are to its detriment and insist that Israel genuinely engage in the process of reconciliation, which Netanyahu and Abbas, who profess to seek a two-state solution, will be hard-pressed to reject.

In this regard, the EU is well-placed to push the peace process forward by focusing first on reconciliation and giving time to the new administration to join the French initiative, which is largely consistent with the US’ traditional position.

The new administration, jointly with the EU, must also make it abundantly clear that a two-state solution provides, more than any other security measure, the ultimate guarantee of Israel’s national security while allowing the Palestinians to live in dignity in an independent state.

After seventy years of continuing violent conflict, the time has come to end the hellish conditions that the Israelis and Palestinians have created for themselves before they are ultimately consumed by it. As Thomas Hobbes is purported to have said, “hell is truth seen too late.”

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and The Arab Peace Initiative

Did an Industry Front Group Create Fake Twitter Accounts to Promote the Dakota Access Pipeline?

September 16th, 2016 by Steve Horn

A DeSmog investigation has revealed the possibility that a front group supporting the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) — the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now (MAIN) — may have created fake Twitter profiles, known by some as “sock puppets,” to convey a pro-pipeline message over social media. And MAIN may be employing the PR services of the firm DCI Group, which has connections to the Republican Party, in order to do so.

DeSmog tracked down at least 16 different questionable Twitter accounts which used the #NoDAPL hashtag employed by protesters, in order to claim that opposition to the pipeline kills jobs, that those protesting the pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s encampment use violence, and that the pipeline does not pose a risk to water sources or cross over tribal land.

On September 13, people began to suspect these accounts were fake, calling them out on Twitter, and by September 14, most of the accounts no longer existed.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is set to carry oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from the Bakken Shale basin in North Dakota across the Dakotas, Iowa, and Illinois. Its owner, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), says it plans to talk to the Obama administration and “reiterate [its] commitment to bring the Dakota Access Pipeline into operation.” It will do so despite the administration requesting that the company halt construction “voluntarily — particularly around the contested sacred tribal sites located 20 miles east and west of Lake Oahe and the Missouri River — until further notice.”

In his memorandum announcing his company’s plans to do so, ETP CEO Kelcy Warren espoused many of the same arguments that were deployed by the Twitter sock puppets, which calls into question whether his company helped spearhead the social media campaign behind the scenes in order to create the appearance of grassroots support, a technique known as “astroturfing.”

In that memo, Warren said his company plans to engage more aggressively in the PR sphere.

“It has not been my preference to engage in a media/PR battle,” wrote Warren. “However, misinformation has dominated the news, so we will work to communicate with the government and media more clearly in the days to come.”

Vicki Granado, a spokesperson for the company, did not respond to a request for comment.

In the meantime, as all stakeholders in the debate await a definitive next move from the Obama administration, protests both on-site and nationwide have continued, with a militarized police presence at the Sacred Stone Camp intensifying. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke at a September 13 Washington, DC protest against the pipeline, while U.S. Representatives Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Raul Ruiz (D-CA) that same day called for a congressional oversight investigation of the hotly contested permitting issues which have arisen in the ongoing saga over the pipeline’s future.

With that backdrop, in came the “sock puppets” for their own September 13 day of action on Twitter — and with MAINlikely pulling the strings.

The Sock Puppets

The sock puppet profiles had names such as Ashley Lovinggood, Garnett Vreeken, Yong Fetner, and Ying Baars, and all of the profile pictures featured women. Besides tweets promoting the Dakota Access Pipeline, what links all of the bogus profiles together is that they all “follow” (similar to “liking” a page on Facebook) the company Hootsuite.

Hootsuite serves as a social media platform management tool which allows an administrator for many different social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, to toggle quickly between accounts and send out posts in the form of tweets and other status updates. One of those accounts, that of Angla Dullea, formerly followed MAIN — and like all of the other pages — also followed Hootsuite; that is, until the account became suspended.

Dullea’s profile photo bore an identical resemblance to the Twitter profile for Palma Mackerl, another bare-bones Twitter account.

Dullea also retweeted a tweet from a group called Standing Rock Fact Checker, which on its website describes itself as a project of MAIN. The website also states it is “dedicated to promoting the truth” and battling “misinformation about the approved — and nearly complete — Dakota Access project.” Five other suspicious Twitter profiles also shared Fact Checker tweets.

MAIN members include the South Dakota Petroleum and Propane Marketers Association, North Dakota Petroleum Council, Petroleum Marketers, Convenience Stores of Iowa, and others.

Reverse photo searches on Google revealed that the pictures used for other sock puppet profiles also appeared on a dermatologist website, a mail order bride website, and a hairstyle website featuring a photo of Eva Longoria, as well as images of Chinese model Crystal Wang Xi Ran, singer Keri Hilson, and the late singer Amy Winehouse.

Eva Longoria doppelgänger; Photo Credit: Twitter | Oliver Keyes

The use of political bots and sock puppets is nothing new and in fact, has become normalized by political factions worldwide, explained Norah Abokhodair of the Political Bots research program based at the University of Washington and Oxford University.

“There are many ways in which social bots can disrupt or influence online discourse, such as, spamming, phishing, distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), or other nefarious activities,” Abokhodair explained, pointing to examples such as the Syrian Civil War bots and bots used in Turkey. “They can also be deployed for sophisticated activities like astroturfing, misdirection (botnet that tries to get the audience to attend to other content by spamming the hashtag) and smoke screening (serves to hide or provide cover for or obscure some type of activity).”

MAIN and DCI Group

MAIN was the only industry group to issue a press release in response to the Obama administration’s September 9 announcement halting construction on a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Its press release contained a statement attributed to spokesperson Craig Stevens. Stevens also recently did an interview with KVLY-TV, the NBC and CBS affiliate for Fargo, North Dakota. When on TV, however, he was billed as the “spokesperson for a pipeline sort of group, if you will” by segment host Chris Berg.

Despite the lack of disclosure by KVLY and Berg, it turns out that Craig Stevens actually works as Media Affairs and Crisis Management Lead for DCI Group. His DCI Group contact information is listed for MAIN’s profile page on the website PR Newswire.

Image Credit: PR Newswire

DCI is a PR firm tied to the GOP and with roots in creating front groups on behalf of Big Tobacco, spearheading the modern Tea Party movement, and representing oppressive dictatorial regimes such as that of Burma and oil- and gas-soaked Azerbaijan. Stevens formerly worked for the George W. Bush presidential campaign, served as spokesperson for U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman for the George W. Bush Administration, and also worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 Republican Party presidential campaign.

Jim Murphy, the political director for Donald Trump’s Republican Party presidential campaign, formerly served as President and Managing Partner for DCI Group. Beyond the DCI Group connection, Continental Resources — whose founder and CEO Harold Hamm is one of Donald Trump’s top energy advisers and a potential candidate for U.S. Secretary of Energy under a Trump presidency — said in a recent investor statement that a significant chunk of the company’s Bakken oil will flow through Dakota Access.

Before DCI Group began working on Standing Rock-related projects for MAIN, it appears the PR firm LS2Group maintained the PR account for Dakota Access. A MAIN press release from November 2015 lists LS2’s Kayla Day as the contact person and her LS2 work number is also listed, while metadata for the press release’s PDF shows the document was last saved by former LS2 staffer Alex Shaner.

DCI’s Role

As DeSmog has previously revealed, LS2 also did PR work in support of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. The group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement published emails from 2014 (obtained via a public records request) showing LS2 also doing advocacy work in support of Dakota Access.

LS2’s Day told DeSmog that LS2 still does some work on behalf of MAIN, but declined to comment further on how the work is divvied up between LS2 and DCI Group. Stevens was first listed as a spokesperson for MAIN in a September 6 press release, two days after the now-infamous dog biting incident took place at the protesting Standing Rock Siuox Tribe’s Sacred Stone Camp. The Standing Rock Fact Checker website was registered the day before, and it also sent out its first tweet that same day.

Standing Rock Fact Checker

Image Credit: WhoIs.net

Stevens declined to comment on who funds MAIN, referring to the membership list and confirming he was brought on in the past couple weeks to do PR work on behalf of the coalition, “as the whole public discussion has increased and been elevated” surrounding the pipeline. He also confirmed he runs the Fact Checker portal.

Asked about whether his firm or MAIN had anything to do with the sock-puppet tweets, Stevens denied he or MAIN had any involvement.

“It’s frustrating to me because we’re working to be respectful in tone and fact-based and any tactics like these are a distraction for what we’re trying to do and that’s to bring facts and contexts to this discussion,” Stevens said. “I don’t know about the tactics themselves and I don’t know who or what is behind it, but as someone who’s trying to get facts out and trying to be respectful in tone, it was incredibly frustrating that this was going on. As far as I know, and think I know, the MAIN Coalition had nothing to do with them.”

However, noted environmental advocate and co-founder of climate group 350.org, Bill McKibben, doubts the authenticity of such claims from PR firms with a record like DCI, saying:

“There’s a word for this kind of thing, and that word is: lying. The invention of fake people to make fake arguments perfectly exemplifies the tactics Big Oil has been reduced to. They can’t win an argument on the merits, so they’ve given up trying. Instead, they literally make things up. The contrast with the steadfast straightforwardness of the tribes, and of the climate scientists, couldn’t be more stark.”

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Did an Industry Front Group Create Fake Twitter Accounts to Promote the Dakota Access Pipeline?

Syria War Report: End of the Islamic State? ISIS /Daesh Terrorists Killed in Russian Air Strikes

September 16th, 2016 by South Front

The Russian Aerospace Forces have eliminated 250 ISIS terrorists and 15 vehicles armed with machine guns near the Syrian city of Palmyra, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on September 14.

Russian warplanes conducted airstrikes north of the city where a group of terrorists was preparing offensive on the Syrian army positions.

Photos of the Syrian S-200 air-defense system deployed in southern Syria appeared in pro-government social media accounts on September 14. According to reports, the same system was used against Israeli aircraft on September 13 when Syria claimed to down an Israeli drone and a warplane over the country. However, the claim of the Syrian military has not been confirmed with video or photo proofs.

 

On September 19, the Syrian Air Force will stop to carry out combat flights in accordance with terms of the US-Russian agreement on Syria, a senior US official said during a special briefing for press held on the phone on September 13. At the same time, the US side noted that in the current period, the Syrian Arab Air Force is still technically allowed to strike on Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. After the joint US-Russian integration center will be created, new restrictions will come into force. Then the air force of the regime will not be able to strike on Jabhat al-Nusra.

The statement came amid reports that Russian and US defense officials even have not agreed a plan for military cooperation in Syria. According to Spokesman for the Pentagon, Peter Cook, the aim of recent discussions was to strengthen security measures to avoid incidents in the Syrian airspace. In this case, it’s hard to say when the US-Russian joint center will be de-facto launched.

Visit us: http://southfront.org/

Follow us on Social Media:
http://google.com/+SouthfrontOrgNews
https://www.facebook.com/SouthFrontENTwo
https://twitter.com/southfronteng

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Syria War Report: End of the Islamic State? ISIS /Daesh Terrorists Killed in Russian Air Strikes

In Solidarity with the People of Syria: The Mercenary Terrorists are Losing.The Historic Significance of Defeating the West’s Dirty War…

September 16th, 2016 by Mark Taliano

In many respects, we’re all in this together.  The plight of Syria and Syrians is entwined with us as well. If the West and its proxies successfully destroy Syria as they did to so many other countries, including Iraq, and Libya, and Afghanistan, then the next country on the list will be Iran and so on.

But the mercenary terrorists are losing.  I suspect that now the diplomats are looking for a way to help the US save face and to usher the West diplomatically out the door.  I hope this is the case.  The carnage in the Middle East, especially after the 911 false flag, is testament to the fact that a unipolar world is too dangerous for humanity.

Author and Anti-war activist Mark Taliano

Listening to diplomats can be confusing though. The Dirty War of aggression against Syria was planned well in advance.  The lies and diplomatic scripts were wrapped around the invasion plans once the plans were complete. Intelligence agencies decided well in advance to use so-called “Islamic Militants” to fight the war.  Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the West, is an incubator for these mercenaries, and Israel needs them as well to create their dream of a Greater Israel.

The story of the White/al Qaeda Helmets is particularly brazen. The White Helmets are a creation of Purpose Inc., and they, like all the fake NGOs, are embedded with the terrorists, and serve to advance the terrorist cause of regime change. Yet it is this same group that is vying for a Nobel Peace Prize.  If they win their award, it will be further testament to the contamination of the Western mind-set, to the success of fake NGOs, and to the effectiveness of Public Relations “perception managers”.

All of the different names for terrorist groups are part of the psychological operation. Syrians trying to live their lives refer to them all as “Daesch”.  Syrian writer Afraa Dagher, for instance, calls ISIS fiction.  She’s right.  It is well-documented that there are not and that there never were “moderate” terrorists.

Al Qaeda is the designated scape-goat to mislead the Western public, and to serve as a pretext to invade the world in a “war on terrorism”, which is itself a war for terrorism (since terrorists are the Western assets).

In Syria, the designated enemies are al Qaeda, ISIS etc. when in reality they are the “strategic assets”.  This is well-documented using admissions and documents from Western sources.

It is also well-documented that the West has a long history of creating, using, and supporting un-Islamic “Islamic Militants”.   Al Qaeda were proxies for the West in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Libya, in Iraq and now in Syria. The West calls them al Nursra Front in Syria.  The West uses these proxies as ground troops with a view to maintaining “plausible deniability” and distancing themselves from their assets’ crimes. The West has always claimed that it fights for freedom and democracy, and now for “humanitarian” reasons — but they are all Big Lies, and they always were.  The West is trying to destroy Syria because Syria is deemed to be an impediment to the West’s global hegemony and its projects for parasitical corporate globalization.  Public assets, including free education, free public healthcare, and values such as equality, and democracy, are enemies to corporate globalists.

This puts me in a somewhat awkward position in Syria.  Canada’s unspoken allies are the terrorists – all of them – so informed Syrians who haven’t read my articles may resent the Canadian flags on my luggage.  Terrorists, on the other hand, might welcome the sight of my flags, since the Canadian government supports the terrorists, but I have no intention to befriend terrorists operating in Syria, and every intention to befriend those who oppose the terrorists — the Canadian government doesn’t represent my views on this matter.

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on In Solidarity with the People of Syria: The Mercenary Terrorists are Losing.The Historic Significance of Defeating the West’s Dirty War…

David Cameron, Libya and Disaster

September 16th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The UK Foreign Affairs Committee was a long time coming with this judgment, but when it came, it provided a firm reminder about how far the 2011 intervention against the Gaddafi regime was not merely flawed but calamitous in its consequences.  There had been no coherent strategy on the part of the Cameron government; the campaign had not been “informed by accurate intelligence.”

For members of the committee, it was clear that the then UK prime minister, David Cameron, had to carry a rather large can on the issue.  “Through his decision-making in the National Security Council, former prime minister David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.”

The consequential nature of this bloody and ultimately catastrophic blunder of international relations triggered continental instability, with a foul global aftertaste. The collapse of Libya into territories battled over with sectarian fury and the death of Muammar Gaddafi unsettled the ground in Mali.  It also propelled violence through North African and the Middle East.

It is hard to rank the levels of severity in what went wrong in the aftermath of the Libyan collapse.  Could a finger be pointed at the militia hothouse that was created within the state? (Tripoli alone currently hosts somewhere up to 150.)  What of the external outrage stemming from it?

Near the top must be the conflict in northern Mali, precipitated by members of the Tuareg ethnic group who had long supplied Gaddafi with soldiers.  Armed to the teeth, the MNLA, with the assistance of such Islamist groups as Ansar Dine, commenced a separatist action that in turn encouraged interventions by al-Qaeda sponsored Islamist groups.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb eventually became one of the big and most menacing players, busying itself with operations beyond Mali, including Algeria, Niger, Mauritania, Tunisia and Morocco.

Meshed between these skirmishing groups were a French-led intervention in 2013 that petered out, followed by a continuing peace keeping operation which has long since ditched the word “peace” in its equation.

Not even the presence of 12,000 UN soldiers under the mission known as MINUSMA has done much to prevent the fraying of that land, despite the June 2015 peace deal. Since 2013, the mission has taken over a hundred casualties, a deal of it occasioned by the ubiquitous landmine and roadside bomb.

While Mali burned with fury, other African states felt the aftershocks, notably through a huge, easily accessible arms market that was not brought under control after Gaddafi’s fall.  Marty Reardon, Senior Vice President of The Soufran Group, a US-based security consultancy, surprised no one in telling The Independent that Libya’s implosion led to the arming of “well-armed and militant groups” in Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan and Egypt.[1]

In this belligerent free for all, jihadi groups jostle and scratch for gains, creating a further pool of radicalised fighters who will, in time, find nowhere else to go.  The Libyan collapse, in other words, has created a certain type of roving tourist jihadi, notching up points with each campaign.

Crispin Blunt, who chaired the committee, scoldingly suggested that the 2011 intervention was based on “erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the country.”  This kindergarten world view did not stop there.

Having made a right royal mess, it was incumbent on France and the UK to right the ship, with a “responsibility to support Libyan economic and political reconstruction.”  This responsibility was also a muddled one, with British and French institution builders profoundly ignorant about local matters.  Having pushed Humpty Dumpty over, they showed scant knowledge on how to put him back together.

The sense of culpability for Cameron is further compounded by the nonsense the intervention made of such international humanitarian doctrines as the responsibility to protect. There was always a sense that the French-UK led mission was struggling for a plausible alibi, but recourse to the nonsensical notion of civilian protection reared its head.

That door was opened by the hoovering effect of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorised “all necessary means” to protect that most wonderful contrivance, irrespective of what those in the host state thought.[2] Find the civilians and save the day.

While it remains the most insidious of contrivances at international law, that responsibility to protect could be said to have been discharged rapidly – after the initial round of strikes.  In the words of the MPs, “If the primary object of the coalition intervention was the urgent need to protect civilians in Benghazi, then this objective was achieved in March 2011 in less than 24 hours.”

This was not to be. Instead, the intervention ballooned into a monstrous matter of regime change, with no attempt made to “pause military action” when Benghazi was being secured.  “This meant that a limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change by military means.”  Docks in international criminal courts should be warmed by such adventurous men.

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

Notes

 [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libya-report-britain-uk-gaddafi-civil-war-david-cameron-responsible-terrorism-isis-al-qaeda-mali-a7309821.html

[2] http://www.elac.ox.ac.uk/downloads/Welsh%20Civilian%20Protection%20in%20Libya.pdf

 

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on David Cameron, Libya and Disaster

The Geneva Syria “Ceasefire” Agreement: Pizza and Vodka “Secrets” Coming Out…

September 16th, 2016 by Israel Shamir

The recent Syria agreement signed in Geneva by Kerry and Lavrov (probably it will be remembered as “Pizza and Vodka deal”, as the journalists have been served these delicacies by the negotiating teams during the time they had to wait for the results) beside the points disclosed by the foreign ministers included five documents. The US insisted on keeping the content secret, despite Russian insistence to make them known. Here is what we learned about the contents of the secret documents and the negotiation process from our usually reliable Arab and Israeli sources.

The secret documents describe what should happen in Syria after the cease-fire will come into effect. The first day of cease-fire is called Day D. The Russians wanted it to begin at noon, while the Americans preferred sunset on Monday September 12, 2016. The American view prevailed. After first two days, at D+2, if cease-fire holds, the Russians and the Americans will extend it for a longer time. This actually happened on September 14, in a telephone conversation between Lavrov and Kerry. They extended it for another 48 hours. If it will hold for a week, hopefully the sides will extend it indefinitely and proceed to the next stage.

The sides will go into delineation of territories controlled by ISIL, Nusra and the moderates. Then ISIL and Nusra will be bombed to smithereens by the Russian and American Air Forces, while the moderates will be left in peace. The delineation, or the separation of sheep from goats is an old Russian demand that the Americans never fulfilled. Now, at least, they promised to do it. While ISIL could be “delineated”, Nusra is the strongest fighting opposition force in Syria, and it is connected with almost all other rebel groups. Without Nusra, the rest of rebels have little chance.

That is why a biggish rebel group called Ahrar al Sham insisted on extending the cease fire over Nusra-held ground, and refused to join the Cessation of Hostilities regime. Other rebel groups are also much distressed over Nusra’s misfortune.

Not only rebels; the Pentagon and Israelis also want to keep Nusra as their strongest force against Damascus. Ashton Carter, the US Secretary of Defence actively participated in preparation of the document by trying to block it or derail it altogether. Like the Israelis, Carter wants more war in Syria. He is one of the strongest anti-Russian voices in the Obama administration, and he would be very happy to humiliate Russia in Syria.

During the negotiations in Geneva, Kerry called the Pentagon and the White House every few minutes. The negotiators could not proceed with even the smallest amendments without approval by Carter or Obama. And Carter tried to improve upon the preliminary agreement of Obama and Putin concluded in Hangzhou. Eventually the last word was that of the US president and (with great difficulty) the agreement has been signed, but the feeling is that the Pentagon is unhappy with it and won’t regret it if the agreement fails. Carter even made his displeasure known as soon as the deal was signed.

A Kerry-Carter agreement would be a good thing; perhaps the State Department and the DoD can also agree to a cessation of hostilities, the negotiators joked. The Pentagon is in cahoots with the rebels and tries to curry favour with them, said Lavrov. This remark was connected with the previous stage of the negotiations, with the nasty surprise served by Michael Ratney. The US Syrian envoy threw open the door to the diplomatic kitchen where the Americans and the Russians had cooked a secret deal. Our negotiations “aren’t based on trust”, said the polite envoy; he accused the Russians and their Damascus allies of acting “in bad faith”, and stressed that “The United States has not begun to coordinate with Russia in Syria, militarily or otherwise, whatever the Russians say”.

The Russians were properly annoyed. It is bad enough to see your confidential deliberations made known to every Tom, Dick and Abdul; it is worse to be accused of bad faith and to hear about lack of trust. The worst was the misrepresentation of the Russian positions. Ratney claimed Russians will enforce the no-fly zone for the government air force all over Syria; they will end the siege of Aleppo. Bashar Assad was stunned. The Riyadh-based opposition added insult to injury demanding “regime change” and “Assad must go”, while the US presented this particular opposition group as the legitimate representative of Syrian people.

Ratney demanded a “complete cessation of military operations”, withdrawal of government’s vehicles and heavy weapons, opening of Aleppo and then “stopping the regime planes from flying”. He wanted to keep Aleppo accessible not only for humanitarian aid, but for weapons as well. The Russians insisted on Syrian government checkposts on the road to Aleppo; Carter and Ratney were against it.

We can tell you that according to the signed agreement the Russian point of view prevailed. The traffic to Aleppo by Castello Road will be monitored and checked. The humanitarian loads will be checked at the point of loading into the trucks and sealed. More checkpoints on the road will check that the seals aren’t broken until the trucks unload their stuff at the UN warehouses in Aleppo. The idea is to prevent arms being delivered in the humanitarian convoys, as it happened many times with deliveries from Turkey.

The checks will be done by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, and later by a UN agency. The civilian, humanitarian and commercial traffic will be able to roll to and fro Castello Road freely, subject to checks. The rebels and the government forces will not snatch each other’s territories, will not improve their positions in the designated areas.

The Pentagon demanded a no-fly zone for the Syrian air force all over Syria, but by the agreement, the Syrian air force will stop flying battle missions only over designated areas. The Russians say this condition will not undermine their strength, as the Syrian military aviation is anyway a negligible force in comparison with the Russian Air Space Force, and the Russians will keep flying. They proved this point on September 14, as they bombed away a rebel force that took positions threatening Palmyra.

Any Syrians including armed rebel fighters can leave Aleppo by Castello Road freely to any destination whatsoever. This is an important point. If they want to fight, let them get out of the city. If they are tired of war and want to go home, let them. This was the Russian view as well, while Pentagon insisted to keep the armed and fighting groups in Aleppo. It is not clear what will happen with non-Syrian fighters; perhaps they will be able to get out after laying down their weapons.

After one week of no hostilities, the Americans and the Russians will set up the JIC, the Joint Implementation Center, where they will share information and jointly fly missions against ISIL and Nusra.

And in a short while, the political process will resume, under auspices of Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy in Syria. This is no less problematic than the military part.

The sides hold very different views: the US and its allies apparently prefer to carve Syria into a few statelets: a Sunni statelet, a radical Sunni statelet, a Kurdish statelet, and the rump-Syria containing the Alawite and Christian territories with the Russian bases. On the other hand, Damascus and Moscow prefer to keep Syria united.

Whatever is the outcome, fate of Aleppo, the second biggest city of Syria, is paramount. Some limited successes of the Syrian army and its Russian and Iranian allies in Aleppo (they cut supply routes to the rebel-held part of the city) already had caused quite a crisis in the Russian-American relations. The liberal interventionists felt fresh air in their sails and published touching pictures of suffering civilians calling for Western intervention “to save people of Aleppo”. The harsh word “ultimatum” hovered in the air, while the US administration tried to make a new record of brinkmanship. The Damascus government hoped to liberate Aleppo and consolidate the territories under its control, while the Americans wanted to keep at least half of Aleppo in the hands of the rebels to prevent Assad’s victory.

The turning point was the Obama and Putin discussion in Hangzhou. The meeting had been tense. The leaders exchanged a stare of death, much photoshopped. The Washington Post said Obama gave Russia an ultimatum, make or break proposal; Russians fumed, especially as the meeting has been preceded and followed by two rounds of additional “sanctions”, on September 1st and September 6th.

Despite these problems, the agreement was reached. What next? After the cessation of hostilities will be established, there should be negotiations between the Government and Opposition in Syria, but the US and its allies would like to keep the government of Bashar Assad out of negotiations. They actually prefer to limit negotiations to the different groups of rebels, as they say, President Bashar Assad had lost his legitimacy, he said. The Russians disagree. They say: the government representatives sit in the UN, there are ambassadors and embassies in Damascus. You may dislike Assad, but that does not make him illegitimate, said Lavrov to Kerry.

Now the arrangements of the cease fire are not proceeding smoothly. The UN personnel supposed to man checkposts should get visas; Damascus does not want to give visas to the British: they could be spies, they say. They agree to Indians, or other neutrals. The UN and the Red Crescent waited for assurances of their safety from the government and the rebels, and apparently none were forthcoming. The rebels are reluctant to move away from their positions, and the government troops were waiting for them to move. But the general level of violence has been greatly reduced.

The chances for success or failure are more or less even. Nusra keeps a low profile in the North, but they instigate other groups to refuse the cease fire. Pentagon is not keen to share information with the Russians. And the Russians can’t make peace alone. On the other side, the Syrians are very tired of war, and they are happy to have even a lull in violence. The next few days will show whether this agreement will lead to peace, or will it being used for the sides to consolidate and improve their positions for the next outbreak of fighting, as it happened in February.

Meanwhile the government forces have a new (or rather old) enemy: Israel. Israelis support Nusra forces in the vicinity of the armistice line between Syria and Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. As Nusra fought against the government army, some shells flew over and fell on the Golan territory. The Israelis used it as a pretext to attack Syrian army. The Syrians said they downed two Israeli planes, a fighter and a drone, by their old reliable Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles. Israelis deny that with unusual vehemence. It seems that an Israeli drone has been downed, while a jet, even if it was hit, succeeded in returning home.

The Syrian government gave a lot of publicity to this encounter in order to stress that the rebels fight on Israeli side against their Arab brothers. But friendship between Nusra and the Jews is hardly a secret: pictures showing Israelis helping Nusra fighters appeared in the Arab and Israeli media. And this assistance is not limited to medical help: Israelis are determined to keep the Syrian army farther away from its borders.

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Geneva Syria “Ceasefire” Agreement: Pizza and Vodka “Secrets” Coming Out…

Hillary Clinton’s Crisis: A Polling Question for History Fans: If the Election were held Today…

September 16th, 2016 by John Zogby

Here is a polling question for history fans: If the election were held today and the candidates were Republican Nero, Democrat Catherine de Medici, and Libertarian Timothy Leary, for whom would you?

An impossible match up but, in some ways, a real one. None of these are credible or beloved characters from history – at least when we think of the Black Box with the button, making a nationwide television address, or attending the G8 Summit.

But today we have the moral equivalent of each and the polls clearly reflect the public’s revulsion toward this race.

As I have noted before, there is really no good reason why this race for the presidency is even close. Hillary Clinton is running for President Barack Obama’s “third term” and voters don’t seem to mind that idea, Even though only a third or fewer voters feel the country is headed in the right direction,

Obama’s approval rating is at a respectable 52%, the unemployment rate is less than half of what it was when he entered the White House eight years ago, there is finally some credible upward movement on wages and salaries, and the country has mainly extricated itself from two disastrous and protracted wars.

Besides, the GOP has no real plan to make things better except that they will do things differently and “Make America Great Again”.  Add to that the demographic advantages and Electoral College history since 1992, and this race is the Democrats to lose.

And the problem the Democrats face is that Clinton seems, at least up to now, to be rising to the occasion to do just that. Her favorable ratings are worse than when the campaign started and she is mired in the high thirties and low forties in both the nationwide and state horse race samples. I said earlier in the campaign that there was little she could do to actually improve her image.

She has been around so long, is the best known active political figure in the country, has few people who are undecided about her, and lacks the nimble political personality needed to change her image to one that is perceived as beloved. In this context, she decided to expose Trump and his supporters.

But this year has been so different. Trump actually exposes himself, is “in your face” about how ridiculous and dangerous he can be, and has actually kept his numbers within Clinton’s range right along. Attacks from someone who is less likable than him seem to have done him no harm.

But this week has been nothing short of a crisis for Clinton and her campaign. As I wrote recently, the “basketful of deplorables” statement revealed an arrogance, a meanness, and a lack of willingness to understand her opposition that raises serious questions about her ability to govern. She has yet to adequately deal with that yet. It will haunt her.

Then the entire fainting and pneumonia issue is nothing short of a disaster and raises many questions beyond her (and her campaign’s) capacity for truthfulness.

It actually makes voters consider whether she possesses the judgment to be our President. She knew she had pneumonia on Friday, decided to not tell the American people (who would have understood), proceeded to collapse and lie to the press on Sunday, then announce she had the illness. And there is much more to all of this.

Anyone paying attention heard her staff say that she was resting and “playing with her grandchildren”, then came out later and tenderly hugged a five year old. Adorable – except she has PNEUMONIA. It is contagious, after all. And to the ardent supporters who have been telling me that she is “past the contagious phase”, then why did she pass out?

This has all been badly done. New polls have come out today that show Clinton down 5 points in Ohio, down in Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Iowa – and none of these polls reflect more than just one day’s sample. A new CBS Tracking Poll now shows her leading Trump 42% to 40%. I probably shouldn’t speculate but I suspect she will lose a few more points.


But the real crisis here is how she gets back on track.

She will most likely have a good debate performance on September 26. But then she still have to deal with the “deplorables” thing because of what it reveals about her and her supporters. And then the release of her emails in October.

She is in a tough spot.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Hillary Clinton’s Crisis: A Polling Question for History Fans: If the Election were held Today…

Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Plunges to Record Low, Gallup Poll

September 16th, 2016 by Michael Krieger

In yesterday’s post, The Death of Mainstream Media, I noted:

At the end of the day, I have concluded that my focus on Hillary as of late (vs. Trump) has as much to with my disgust for the mainstream media as anything else. To see these organs, which have destroyed this country by keeping the people uninformed for decades, now rally around a sickly, corrupt, oligarch coddling politician as the empire enters the collapse stage is simply too much to stomach…

The only positive thing to happen during this election season is the death of mainstream media. With their insufferable propaganda fully exposed, there is no coming back. 

screen-shot-2016-09-14-at-2-10-38-pm

Then today, we learned the following from Gallup:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage points from last year.

Here’s a chart.

screen-shot-2016-09-14-at-2-05-51-pm

If that’s not a trend, I don’t know what is.

Gallup began asking this question in 1972, and on a yearly basis since 1997. Over the history of the entire trend, Americans’ trust and confidence hit its highest point in 1976, at 72%, in the wake of widely lauded examples of investigative journalism regarding Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. After staying in the low to mid-50s through the late 1990s and into the early years of the new century, Americans’ trust in the media has fallen slowly and steadily. It has consistently been below a majority level since 2007.

While it is clear Americans’ trust in the media has been eroding over time, the election campaign may be the reason that it has fallen so sharply this year. With many Republican leaders and conservative pundits saying Hillary Clinton has received overly positive media attention, while Donald Trump has been receiving unfair or negative attention, this may be the prime reason their relatively low trust in the media has evaporated even more. It is also possible that Republicans think less of the media as a result of Trump’s sharp criticisms of the press. Republicans who say they have trust in the media has plummeted to 14% from 32% a year ago. This is easily the lowest confidence among Republicans in 20 years.

Meanwhile, if there is any hope for the future, it can be found here.

Older Americans are more likely than younger Americans to say they trust the media, but trust has declined among both age groups this year. Currently, 26% of those aged 18 to 49 (down from 36% last year) and 38% of those aged 50 and older (down from 45%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.

In 2001, younger Americans (55%) were more likely than older Americans (50%) to express trust and confidence in mass media. This gap emerged again in 2005 when 53% of 18- to 49-year-olds had trust and 45% of those 50 and older expressed the same sentiment. Yet in the past decade, older Americans have mostly had more confidence than younger Americans, and this year, the gap between these age groups is 12 points. And 2016 marks the first time that confidence among older Americans has dropped below 40% in polling since 2001.

screen-shot-2016-09-14-at-2-03-21-pm

Before 2004, it was common for a majority of Americans to profess at least some trust in the mass media, but since then, less than half of Americans feel that way. Now, only about a third of the U.S. has any trust in the Fourth Estate, a stunning development for an institution designed to inform the public.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Plunges to Record Low, Gallup Poll

Must See Video: Fake Ceasefire in Syria, “Hidden Military Agendas” behind US-Russia Diplomacy

September 16th, 2016 by South Front

On September 9, the United States and Russia announced a fresh Syrian ceasefire agreement. Some media already said that they agreed to a joint plan for ending the war in the Arab country. However, until the official text of agreement is not published, it will be premature to make far-reaching conclusions. The basic idea initially promoted by open sources is for the US and Russia to get the so-called “moderate opposition” and the Syrian government to stop fighting each other. So, the US and Russia can start jointly attacking both ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria more effectively. Another key part of the deal is to provide humanitarian aid for besieged areas across the country with special attention to Aleppo city.

The separation of “moderate opposition” from terrorists is likely the main soft-spot of the deal. In practice, it means that Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam and other groups have to separate from the Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) terrorist group. The first problem is that Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam military HQs and local commanders are deeply integrated into Fatah al-Sham’s military structure. This is why the suggested terms of ceasefire have been already rejected by over 20 opposition groups. Syrian experts believe that any agreements between Russia and the US will not lead to such a separation because they have no peaceful options to force the opposition to do this.

The second problem is that the main sponsor of Fatah al-Sham, Saudi Arabia, will likely continue to support the terrorist group. By now, Fatah al-Sham and its allies have been a pillar of the kingdom’s foreign policy in Syria. If it’s destroyed, all efforts of Riyadh will be wasted and the Iranian position in the region will be strengthened. Many in Saudi Arabia elites will call such result a total failure of the whole police over the conflict.

Generalizing the situation, it’s possible to suggest that the so-called “moderate opposition” will continue to operate hand by hand with terrorists despite the political agreement between Washington and Moscow. Some experts believe that the only solution of this problem is a constant full-scale military pressure on terrorists and their allies and massive diplomatic pressure on Ankara. Turkey is remaining the main logistical hub for military supplies to the terrorists despite the recent rapprochement with Russia. Turkey pursues its own interests in Syria creating a buffer zone between Jarabulus and Azaz in order to oppose creation of a Kurdish autonomous region there.

In the negative scenario, supplies of humanitarian aid to Aleppo city will strengthen the terrorist forces based there and the US will be able to sabotage the start of joint actions against the terrorists because moderate groups are not able to separate from Fatah al-Sham, again. In this case, the ongoing ceasefire is just a tactical pause before further military and diplomatic escalation over the Syrian crisis.

Will Moscow be able turn the tide in favor of the practical solution of the problem and push the US-led anti-Assad block to real cooperation against terrorists? This depends on Russia’s ability to actualize the recent military and diplomatic success in Syria and, for sure, on the unreleased parts of the US-Russian agreement.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Must See Video: Fake Ceasefire in Syria, “Hidden Military Agendas” behind US-Russia Diplomacy

Assad’s Death Warrant

September 16th, 2016 by Mike Whitney

Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria, Politico

The conflict in Syria is not a war in the conventional sense of the word. It is a regime change operation, just like Libya and Iraq were regime change operations.

The main driver of the conflict is the country that’s toppled more than 50 sovereign governments since the end of World War 2.  (See: Bill Blum here.) We’re talking about the United States of course.

shutterstock_397019095

serkan senturk | Shutterstock.com

Washington is the hands-down regime change champion, no one else even comes close. That being the case, one might assume that the American people would notice the pattern of intervention, see through the propaganda and assign blame accordingly. But that never  seems to happen and it probably won’t happen here either. No matter how compelling the evidence may be, the brainwashed American people always believe their government is doing the right thing.

But the United States is not doing the right thing in Syria. Arming, training and funding Islamic extremists — that have killed half a million people, displaced 7 million more and turned the country into an uninhabitable wastelands –is not the right thing. It is the wrong thing, the immoral thing. And the US is involved in this conflict for all the wrong reasons, the foremost of which is gas. The US wants to install a puppet regime in Damascus so it can secure pipeline corridors in the East, oversee the transport of vital energy reserves from Qatar to the EU, and make sure that those reserves continue to be denominated in US Dollars that are recycled into US Treasuries and US financial assets. This is the basic recipe for maintaining US dominance in the Middle East and for extending America’s imperial grip on global power into the future.

The war in Syria did not begin when the government of Bashar al Assad cracked down on protestors in the spring of 2011. That version of events is obfuscating hogwash.  The war began in 2009, when Assad rejected a Qatari plan to transport gas from Qatar to the EU via Syria. As Robert F Kennedy Jr. explains in his excellent article “Syria: Another pipeline War”:

The $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey….would have linked Qatar directly to European energy markets via distribution terminals in Turkey… The Qatar/Turkey pipeline would have given the Sunni Kingdoms of the Persian Gulf decisive domination of world natural gas markets and strengthen Qatar, America’s closest ally in the Arab world. ….

In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally….

Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Mid-East and the world…

Naturally, the Saudis, Qataris, Turks and Americans were furious at Assad, but what could they do? How could they prevent him from choosing his own business partners and using his own sovereign territory to transport gas to market?

What they could do is what any good Mafia Don would do; break a few legs and steal whatever he wanted. In this particular situation, Washington and its scheming allies decided to launch a clandestine proxy-war against Damascus, kill or depose Assad, and make damn sure the western oil giants nabbed the future pipeline contracts and controlled the flow of energy to Europe. That was the plan at least. Here’s more from Kennedy:

Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria.

Repeat: “the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline”, he signed his own death warrant. That single act was the catalyst for the US aggression that transformed a bustling, five thousand-year old civilization into a desolate Falluja-like moonscape overflowing with homicidal fanatics that were recruited, groomed and deployed by the various allied intelligence agencies.

But what’s particularly interesting about this story is that the US attempted a nearly-identical plan 60 years earlier during the Eisenhower administration. Here’s another clip from the Kennedy piece:

During the 1950′s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers … mounted a clandestine war against Arab Nationalism — which CIA Director Allan Dulles equated with communism — particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies which they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism….

The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 — barely a year after the agency’s creation…. Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Kuwaiti, hesitated to approve the Trans Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. (so)… the CIA engineered a coup, replacing al-Kuwaiti with the CIA’s handpicked dictator, a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za’im. Al-Za’im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him, 14 weeks into his regime…..

(CIA agent Rocky) Stone arrived in Damascus in April 1956 with $3 million in Syrian pounds to arm and incite Islamic militants and to bribe Syrian military officers and politicians to overthrow al-Kuwaiti’s democratically elected secularist regime….

But all that CIA money failed to corrupt the Syrian military officers. The soldiers reported the CIA’s bribery attempts to the Ba’athist regime. In response, the Syrian army invaded the American Embassy taking Stone prisoner. Following harsh interrogation, Stone made a televised confession to his roles in the Iranian coup and the CIA’s aborted attempt to overthrow Syria’s legitimate government….(Then) Syria purged all politicians sympathetic to the U.S. and executed them for treason. (Politico)

See how history is repeating itself? It’s like the CIA was too lazy to even write a new script, they just dusted off the old one and hired new actors.

Fortunately, Assad –with the help of Iran, Hezbollah and the Russian Airforce– has fended off the effort to oust him and install a US-stooge. This should not be taken as a ringing endorsement of Assad as a leader, but of the principal that global security depends on basic protections of national sovereignty, and that the cornerstone of international law has to be a rejection of unprovoked aggression whether the hostilities are executed by one’s own military or by armed proxies that are used to achieve the same strategic objectives while invoking  plausible deniability. The fact is, there is no difference between Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Obama’s invasion of Syria. The moral, ethical and legal issues are the same, the only difference is that Obama has been more successful in confusing the American people about what is really going on.

And what’s going on is regime change: “Assad must go”. That’s been the administration’s mantra from the get go. Obama and Co are trying to overthrow a democratically-elected secular regime that refuses to bow to Washington’s demands to provide access to pipeline corridors that will further strengthen US dominance in the region.  That’s what’s really going on behind the ISIS distraction and the “Assad is a brutal dictator” distraction and the “war-weary civilians in Aleppo” distraction. Washington doesn’t care about any of those things. What Washington cares about is oil, power and money. How can anyone be confused about that by now?  Kennedy summed it up like this:

We must recognize the Syrian conflict is a war over control of resources indistinguishable from the myriad clandestine and undeclared oil wars we have been fighting in the Mid-East for 65 years. And only when we see this conflict as a proxy war over a pipeline do events become comprehensible.

That says it all, don’t you think?

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Assad’s Death Warrant

Deadly Radioactive Dust and Dying Children: US-NATO Use of Depleted Uranium (DU) Ammunition

September 16th, 2016 by Sputnik

The fate of Frieder Wagner is a peculiar example of what happens when you stand up to the establishment’s injustice. A notable director who won the prestigious German Grimme Award, responsible for numerous documentaries for the ARD and ZDF channels, he quickly became a pariah after making a movie called Deadly Dust (Todesstaub) about the use of depleted uranium (DU) shells by NATO forces in the Middle East and in the former Yugoslavia.

In an exclusive interview with Sputnik, Wagner explained that Deadly Dust is based on an earlier documentary called The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children (Der Arzt und die verstrahlten Kinder von Basra) that he filmed for WDR. In April 2004 the movie was screened during the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. But even though that autumn it received the ÖkoMedia award, it was never screened again. And no matter what ideas he came up with, the TV channels that he previously worked with stopped sending him new orders for some reason.

“I contacted a head of the WDR editorial office whom I’d worked with before and asked him what happened. He paused for a second and then told me “The WDR editorial office considers you a ‘difficult’ person. And most importantly, the topics you suggest are especially hard. Right now I’ve got nothing more to tell you”,” Wagner explained.

He added that about a year ago he met with Siegesmund von Ilsemann, an editor at Spiegel magazine who wrote a comprehensive report about the ‘deadly dust’ and its effects, and who revealed to the astonished director that the use of depleted uranium by the military literally became a taboo subject in Germany.

“He told me that the issue of DU munitions use and its consequences became taboo in Germany. And no TV channel or newspaper would allow even him – a person who worked on this subject for a long time – to publish anything related to it,” Wagner added.

DU shells are made of byproducts of uranium enrichment. Their superior armor-piercing capabilities make them a potent anti-tank weapon, especially considering that when an armored vehicle gets hit by such a shell, the impact and subsequent release of heat energy causes it to ignite, incinerating the target’s interior. But it’s the ‘deadly dust’ produced by a DU shell detonation that is probably the most insidious aspect of this type of ordnance.

“At such a high temperature the substance – depleted uranium – burns down to nano-particles, each of them a hundred times smaller than a red blood cell. And due to their extremely small size, these particles ‘travel’ through a human body, infiltrating brain, lungs, kidneys, placenta, bloodstream and even sperm and egg cells which causes severe developmental diseases in newborns,” Wagner said.

According to him, US forces actively used DU munitions in Kosovo, Somalia, Libya and during both Iraqi campaigns, not to mention that they keep using them in Afghanistan up to this day.

“I’ve travelled to Iraq and Kosovo myself. We collected soil, water and tissue samples. All tissue samples contained depleted uranium particles, and even worse, they contained the so called uranium-236 which can only be produced artificially,” he said.

He also pointed out that the families of 16 out of 109 Italian soldiers who died of cancer sued the Italian government. During the trials, which the plaintiffs won, it was established that the fatal disease in all cases was caused by the use of DU munitions in Iraq and Kosovo.

And yet, much to Wagner’s surprise, no global wave of outrage spearheaded by the UN, Amnesty International and similar organizations took place over these developments.

“It should’ve happened a long time ago. In 2001 in Germany and in many other European nations the press wrote a lot about the first deaths among the Spanish and Portuguese soldiers in Kosovo. The then-Defense Minister of Germany Rudolf Scharping nearly lost his position. But then NATO and the UN decreed that this topic must be removed from the media – and they succeeded,” Wagner surmised.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Deadly Radioactive Dust and Dying Children: US-NATO Use of Depleted Uranium (DU) Ammunition

US Renews Sanctions and Keeps Blockade on Cuba

September 16th, 2016 by Telesur

U.S. President Barack Obama renewed on Tuesday for another year the Trading with the Enemy Act, extending the economic blockade originally imposed on Cuba more than 50 years ago.

“I hereby determine that the continuation for one year of the exercise of those authorities with respect to Cuba is in the national interest of the United States,” Obama said in a statement.

The restrictions will remain in effect until Sept. 14, 2017.

In Dec. 2014, Obama announced the normalization of relations with Cuba after more than 50 years of hostilities. The two countries reopened their respective embassies in July 2015, but the blockade remains in effect.

The law maintains the economic embargo on the island, which ultimately can only be lifted by the U.S. Congress.

President John F. Kennedy first imposed the economic blockade against Cuba in 1962. It has since been renewed every year by the following nine presidents.

Cuba presented a report last week that claims the U.S. blockade on the island nation has cost it US$4.7 billion over the last year and US$753.7 billion over the last six decades.

Last year the U.N. General Assembly voted 191-2 to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba, with only the U.S. and Israel opposed.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US Renews Sanctions and Keeps Blockade on Cuba

“Stop Supporting Terrorists in Syria”: Netflix and “White Helmets” (Fake NGO), “Hand in Hand with Al Qaeda”

September 16th, 2016 by Vanessa Beeley

Has Netflix revealed itself to be another deep state conscript? The recent Syria White Helmet promotional movie has caused uproar among people awakened to the US, UK state and intelligence agency involvement in this pseudo ‘first responder’ faux NGO outfit that has infiltrated Syria on behalf of its funders and donors based in the US and NATO neocolonialist “regime change” command centres.

Funded to the tune of over $60 million by the US, UK and EU member states, these mercenaries in beige clothing have a base of operations in Turkey, but appear to operate exclusively in terrorist-held zones in Syria, and can also be seen running ‘mop-up’ operations for Al Nusra Front and other terrorist fighting groups.

For a further reading on the White Helmets and their role in the Dirty War on Syria read 21st Century Wire’s comprehensive compilation of the most important investigations into NATO’s latest fifth column creation: Who are the Syria White Helmets

The ‘White Helmets’ documentary premiered today at the Toronto International Film Festival, and on Netflix streaming website.

The following are a few examples of the comments being left on the Netflix trailer for their White Helmets “documentary” trailer:

Dear Netflix:

STOP SUPPORTING TERRORISTS. The so called White Helmets are a transparent construct of NATO to take over Syria by stealth in the guise of “do gooders”. NO serious journalists who have been to Syria believe they are doing what this film suggests. Only journalists too lazy to think for themselves believe this. NO locals in Syria have seen these white Helmets in their white helmets – except when their very expensive cameras turn up to film them for propaganda.

And shame on any news outlet who has bought any of that footage and bought their story hook line and sinker without investigating their known connections to Al Nusra and Al Qaeda.Syrian men trying to really save children are hindered from doing so by inhumane sanctions and by the White Helmets blocking roads and villages. Local heroes have no supplies, they do not have a 90 million pound budget to get food, and first aid or digging equipment, yet nobody makes a film about these people… the real Syrian people.

Local people say these are mercenaries who wear ordinary clothes, are not Syrian, and are committing atrocities and keeping food and supplies from reaching cities and villages. Paid terrorists loaded with weapons and supplies and a 90 million pound budget from EU and NATO countries who have an obsession with illegally deposing an honestly elected president of a nation state. It is another way to take over a regime…  without using bombs..  by stealth, this is a Trojan Horse and these men are not heroes at all but murderers and thieves. ASK THE PEOPLE OF SYRIA. GO TO SYRIA and see for yourself. Do not just use footage made by terrorists and spread it all over the world when it is the opposite of the truth.

netflix-final

Image creation: Cory Morningstar of Wrong Kind of Green

“Pure propaganda.”

“In Aleppo, the most important thing to remember is that all life is precious”. So precious that the White Helmets are ready to take the dead bodies away after Al-Qaeda executes them, while the camera is still rolling!!”

“When the saint go marching in”, White Helmets are not saints, they are terrorists. When not in front of a camera, they take off their white helmets and strap on their guns.”

The white helmets are a media blitz project created by the US & UK in which they received monies from the state department & billionaires who made their fortune in the oil and gas industry.

21WIRE will be bringing you more detailed reports on the funding of the Netflix operation and of course further information on the REAL Syria Civil Defence that journalist Vanessa Beeley has recently met with and interviewed in Syria – in Aleppo, Lattakia, Tartous and the Head Quarters in Damascus.

Here is an excellent alternative to the Netflix official trailer made by Steve Ezzeddine forHands Off Syria, Sydney. Watch:

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on “Stop Supporting Terrorists in Syria”: Netflix and “White Helmets” (Fake NGO), “Hand in Hand with Al Qaeda”

“Democratic Education at Cal” (DeCal): The University of California at Berkeley Bans a Course on Palestine Following “Political Pressure” from pro-Israel Organizations

September 16th, 2016 by John K. Wilson

Suspending a course in the middle of a semester is one of the most serious actions a university can take. On Sept. 13, Dean Carla Hesse of the University of California at Berkeley did exactly that to a student-taught DeCal class about Palestine.

DeCal stands for Democratic Education at Cal, an old-fashioned tradition where undergraduate students teach 1 or 2 unit courses, pass/fail, to their peers. The instructors, called facilitators, plan their own courses, which must be approved by a faculty committee and the chair of a department.

In a statement, Paul Hadweh, the student facilitator, declared:

I complied with all policies and procedures required for creating the course. The course was vetted and fully supported by the faculty advisor, the department chair, and the Academic Senate’s Committee on Courses of Instruction (COCI).

The university suspended the course without consulting me, the faculty sponsor, the chair of the department, or the Academic Senate’s COCI, which is responsible for approving all UC Berkeley Courses. The university did not contact us to discuss concerns prior to suspending our course.

Universities should never suspend courses in the middle of a semester except under the most dire circumstances, where a course has been proven to violate university policies and cannot be fixed, or some kind of extraordinary fraud has occurred.

Nothing like that exists in this case. In fact, nothing like that has even been alleged by the administration, which relies upon bureaucratic snafus to justify suspending this course.

On Sept. 14, UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof wrote to me that “The administration was first made aware of this issue last week when students, faculty and staff noticed posters for the course and expressed concern about the syllabus and, among other things, its compliance with Regents policy.”

InsideHigherEd likewise reported:

However, the public clamor was not the tipping point for Hesse’s decision, Mogulof said. She began her inquiries into the course last week, after a colleague raised concerns about the course to the dean internally. This occurred before public criticism began.

But it was two weeks ago, on Sept. 1, that Mogulof was quoted in a Jewish newspaper responding to concerns about the course from critics.

(UPDATE: Mogulof reports that his original timeline reported in the press was inaccurate, and that the administration first heard about the course on Aug. 26 from a faculty member. But this raises still more questions about a course that began on Sept. 6. If there were legitimate academic concerns about the syllabus, why not contact the instructor about them? Why wait 19 days and then suddenly ban the course? Hesse’s whole complaint is that the failure to deposit a copy of syllabus with her office deprived her of the opportunity to examine it for problems. Now we find out that she had 11 days before the course started to examine the syllabus and she did nothing.)

The administration seems anxious to claim that their decision was made in reaction to the concerns of students, faculty, and staff on campus. But the truth is that Berkeley faced a global onslaught of organizations attacking them for allowing this course. In a letter to Chancellor Dirks on Sept. 13, 43 Jewish, civil rights and education advocacy organizations declared that the class was “intended to indoctrinate students to hate the Jewish state and take action to eliminate it:”

But interestingly, even these organizations did not call for suspending the course; they were solely focused on preventing a similar course from being approved in the future.

By this point, though, Hasse appeared to have a plan to save Berkeley from the bad publicity and put the blame on the student who proposed the course for failing to follow proper procedures. A few hours later on Sept. 13, she emailed the instructor and the faculty who approved the course, informing them that she had suspended the course. It was the first time she had contacted the student instructor.

Berkeley was quick to alert the press about the news, and to blame the student instructor.

Chancellor Dirks’ office emailed critics on Sept. 13:

It has been determined that the facilitator for the course in question did not comply with policies and procedures that govern the normal academic review and approval of proposed courses for the Decal program.

The San Francisco Chronicle on Sept. 13 reported:

The campus letter says the student teaching the course “did not comply with policies and procedures that govern the normal academic review.” A spokesman for Dirks said the student did not show his course proposal to the dean of the College of Letters and Sciences, Carla Hesse, as required.

Almost the same exact explanation was given to InsideHigherEd in its Sept. 14 story:

The university suspended the course because its proposal was never submitted to Dean Carla Hesse of the College of Letters and Sciences, said Dan Mogulof, executive director for communications and public affairs at Berkeley.

Although the dean is not required to approve the course, students must still send her a copy of the proposal. That way, she can review the course and speak to colleagues or the department chair — who is required to sign off on the course — before it is taught.

“When the dean was made aware of the course, she had serious concerns,” Mogulof said. “And she was surprised because she had not previously heard about it.”

But there was a big problem I uncovered. The DeCal website explicitly states that the Dean of Letters & Science does not need to get a copy: “Note that DeCals in the College of Letters & Science no longer need to submit a copy of their proposals to the Dean starting Fall 2014.” (UPDATE: Dean Hesse explained in an email that apparently the head of the Undergraduate Studies made this decision in 2014 without informing the other division heads in Letters & Science or the Dean of Letters & Science.)

When I contacted the Berkeley administration, Dan Mogulof got back to me with a new explanation:

The Executive Dean of Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science was never informed of any change in the review policy for Decal courses, and would not have approved of any change that would withhold information about course proposals from the Dean’s office. In addition, it has also been determined that a department chair with the authority to grant approval for courses in the fall did not review and approve this course. The existing policy of the Academic Senate’s Committee on Courses and Instruction explicitly states that the relevant department chair or the Dean must approve new courses, and that “a copy of the approved proposal form” must also be provided to the Dean. Neither of these steps were completed in this instance.

This is incorrect. What Mogulof calls a “policy” is actually a “Department Chair Checklist for Student-Facilitated 98 and 198 Courses.” It includes three sections: the first two involve verifying the substance of the course, while the “next steps” at the end are bureaucratic procedures. This checklist refers to providing copies of the “approved proposal” to various people, including the dean. This wording would indicate that the faculty, not the dean, make the decision to approve a course, which is how it should be. If the dean doesn’t have the power to approve courses, then she doesn’t have the power to suspend courses, even if she isn’t given a copy because that’s exactly what the DeCal program website says to do.

It’s notable that no Berkeley policy gives Dean Hesse the authority to suspend a course. According to Mogulof, “The course was suspended as per the Dean’s assessment of how best to handle a situation where rules and policies were not adhered to.” This is extremely alarming: the Dean asserts that if “rules and policies” are not followed, the Dean can arbitrarily suspend a class, without a hearing.

After trying to blame the suspension on the student facilitator’s failure to follow proper procedures, it is now clear that the student (and the faculty) followed the written procedures. It would be terrible to ban a class over an innocent bureaucratic error. It is far worse when there was no error at all, and the student and faculty (who are the ones responsible for informing a dean) had no way of knowing that a dean had to be informed when the official university website for the DeCal courses said precisely the contrary.

Now the administration has quickly invented a new explanation to justify why the course must be suspended. According to Mogulof: “there was an acting chair over the summer who did not have the authority to approve courses for the fall.”

Since an acting chair is normally acting as the chair, it would be very strange to say that the acting chair lacks the power of a chair to approve DeCal courses. I asked Mogulof if there is any written policy that says acting chairs cannot approve DeCal courses, and how DeCal courses would get approved in a department if no one has the authority to do it, but he hasn’t responded to those questions yet.

All of these procedural excuses cannot possibly justify suspending the Palestine class. But is there a substantive reason for objecting to the course? No.

The Regents Policy on Course Content denounces “Misuse of the classroom by, for example, allowing it to be used for political indoctrination…” The Regents Policy on Course Content is a terrible policy because a ban on “political indoctrination” is so vague and ill-defined, and can be abused to punish controversial political opinions. But it has no relevance to this controversy because political indoctrination cannot be determined solely by looking at a syllabus.

There appear to have been no complaints about the course by students enrolled in it, and no one in the administration attended the class.

Although a syllabus can reveal some indications of bias, it is almost impossible to conclude that a course is “political indoctrination” without evidence from the way that it is taught. Even a syllabus with one-sided readings can be taught without political indoctrination, if the instructor is open to encouraging dissenting viewpoints.

Nor is the course a violation of the Regents Policy against intolerance “in which dissenting viewpoints are not only tolerated but encouraged.” Actually, this policy is being violated by the Berkeley Administration in its efforts to ban this class.

The policy goes on to declare: “Freedom of expression and freedom of inquiry are paramount in a public research university and form the bedrock on which our mission of discovery is founded. The University will vigorously defend the principles of the First Amendment and academic freedom against any efforts to subvert or abridge them.”

Yet the Berkeley administration is demanding changes to the content of the course already approved by faculty.

Hadweh reported that at a meeting on Sept. 13, Dean Hesse told him three things he needed to do to have her reconsider her decision and approve the course, although approval was not guaranteed even if he did them.

First, she said that he would need to “prove that it’s balanced” because she felt it was “unbalanced.” Second, he reported that she said it was “seeking to politically mobilize students” and that was not allowed. Third, he reported that he would need to justify having the class as Ethnic Studies rather than Near East Studies or Global Studies.

There is no requirement that classes at Berkeley (or anywhere else) are “balanced,” nor should there be such a requirement for such a vague goal. There is no requirement that classes at Berkeley cannot seek to politically mobilize students (although there’s no evidence this class did that). And it is bizarre to challenge the particular department approving the course, especially since that has nothing to do with the course.

According to Berkeley’s website, Hesse’s expertise is “Early Modern Europe; 16th-20th century France; European Intellectual History, 17th-20th century.” Her books are The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern and Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810. She appears to have no scholarly expertise at all about Israel and Palestine. So it is strange that Hesse would evaluate a syllabus and order changes without any input from the faculty involved, after suspending it without any input from the faculty involved.

The InsideHigherEd article reported:

The dean will now work with the Berkeley Academic Senate to review the course and examine whether it meets the university’s academic standards. The review process will also determine whether it complies with Berkeley’s intolerance policy, which was revised in March to condemn anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

But rather than consulting with faculty, Hesse is demanding changes to fit her personal beliefs. Yet none of these changes required reflect anything that would justify suspending the course. If Hesse wanted to encourage him to alter and improve the class, she was free to do that without suspending the class. If Hesse wanted to publicly denounce the class, she was free to do that. Instead, Hesse abused her authority to ban a class without due process and without any sound justification.

Once a course has been approved and is underway, a heavy burden must be on the administration to prove that there is something fundamentally wrong with it, so completely wrong that it must be immediately halted without further review. Berkeley has not met this high standard; in fact, it has not even attempted to try to meet this standard, and does not even allege that this standard has been violated.

It is absolutely shocking that a university would ban a course under political pressure, using the violation of bureaucratic procedures as an excuse for its censorship. It is even more shocking because there was no violation of bureaucratic procedures.

If there was a breakdown in bureaucratic procedures (and there is no evidence of it), then it is the obligation of the university to fix those procedures in the future, not to ban a course and punish a facilitator and his students who reasonably followed every written rule.

This decision sends a clear message to the campus: controversial speech will be punished, especially if it is critical of Israel.

This course suspension is absolutely indefensible, completely unacceptable, and purely motivated by politics and public relations. It is a violation of academic freedom, shared governance, UC-Berkeley’s guidelines, the Regents Policies, and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on “Democratic Education at Cal” (DeCal): The University of California at Berkeley Bans a Course on Palestine Following “Political Pressure” from pro-Israel Organizations

Historical Injustices and the Dakota Pipeline: Law Is to Justice as Treaties Are to Native Americans

September 16th, 2016 by William Boardman

“Since the founding of this nation, the United States’ relationship with the Indian tribes has been contentious and tragic. America’s expansionist impulse in its formative years led to the removal and relocation of many tribes, often by treaty but also by force.” Cobell v. Norton, 240 F.3d 1081, 1086 (D.C. Cir. 2001). This case also features what an American Indian tribe believes is an unlawful encroachment on its heritage. More specifically, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has sued the United States Army Corps of Engineers to block the operation of Corps permitting for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). – (opening paragraph of STANDING ROCK SIOUX TRIBE, et al., v. U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, et al., Civil Action #16-1534 (JEB))

After seeming to quote sympathetically another judge’s oblique acknowledgement of historic injustice (above), a U.S. District Judge went on to issue an opinion perpetuating that injustice, as required by law. On September 9, 2016, Judge James E. (“Jeb”) Boasberg issued his order based on his self-described cursory review of the record (“digging through a substantial record on an expedited basis” [emphasis added]). This cursory review is again acknowledged in the judge’s conclusion that “the Corps has likely complied with the NHPA [National Historic Preservation Act] and that the Tribe has not shown it will suffer injury that would be prevented by any injunction the Court could issue.” The judge took 58 pages to justify his ruling on a likelihood rather than a finding of fact, which was not easily found given the spotty state of the evidence. Judge Boasberg’s lengthy exposition of the case is filled with surmises and, as a whole, suggests that few, if any, of the participants have consistently acted in good faith.

Judge Boasberg’s decision, to deny an injunction halting construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), appears reasonable enough on its face since the pipeline is already about half built (on private land) and the Standing Rock Sioux made no specific representations of culturally significant sites that would be irreparably damaged in the absence of an injunction, at least according to the judge, who wrote: “These people created stone alignments, burial cairns, and other rock features throughout the area to conduct important spiritual rituals related to the rhythms of their daily life. Along the region’s waterways in particular, the prevalence of these artifacts reflects water’s sacred role in their deeply held spiritual beliefs.” His decision to discount these non-specific monuments (“at least 350”) was more of apsychological defeat than a legal one for the tribe, since the Standing Rock Sioux had, from the beginning, wanted the Army Corps of Engineers to treat the entire pipeline as a single project. The Corps insisted that its legal jurisdiction applied only to unconnected bits and pieces totaling about 12 miles along the route of the 1,172-mile pipeline. Although Congress has regulated natural gas pipelines, it has passed no law putting oil pipelines under federal jurisdiction, even when a pipeline, like DAPL, passes through several states.

U.S. Justice Dept. plays both sides of pipeline issue

Whatever impact Judge Boasberg’s ruling had didn’t last long. Apparently the U.S. Justice Dept., having represented the Corps of Engineers in the Standing Rock Sioux case, had anticipated Judge Boasberg’s decision. And the Justice Dept. also apparently had mixed feelings about the likely decision, having prepared to render it moot if the injunction was denied. Within minutes of the judge’s ruling, the Justice Dept. issued a joint statement that began:

We appreciate the District Court’s opinion on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act. However, important issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations and their members regarding the Dakota Access pipeline specifically, and pipeline-related decision-making generally, remain. Therefore, the Department of the Army, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior will take the following steps….

The first step was effectively to impose a non-injunction injunction that halts construction on at least some of the contested areas where the pipeline approaches or encroaches on waterways. For now, the Corps of Engineers will withhold the permits necessary for construction to continue, pending the resolution of cultural site issues along the pipeline as well as the larger issue of how the U.S. relates to the supposedly sovereign tribal governments. This three-agency federal intervention has all the look of an attempt at political de-escalation of a situation threatening to get out of hand. Starting in April 2016 and increasing at the end of summer, thousands of Native Americans from a number of tribes across the country have gathered near Lake Oahe as “protectors of the waters,” using nonviolent direct action techniques to block pipeline construction. Both the pipeline company and the state of North Dakota have responded with force and violence, as well as apparently illegal violations of the protesters’ rights. As the Justice Dept. statement of September 9 put it:

… we fully support the rights of all Americans to assemble and speak freely. We urge everyone involved in protest or pipeline activities to adhere to the principles of nonviolence. Of course, anyone who commits violent or destructive acts may face criminal sanctions from federal, tribal, state, or local authorities. The Departments of Justice and the Interior will continue to deploy resources to North Dakota to help state, local, and tribal authorities, and the communities they serve, better communicate, defuse tensions, support peaceful protest, and maintain public safety.

In recent days, we have seen thousands of demonstrators come together peacefully, with support from scores of sovereign tribal governments, to exercise their First Amendment rights and to voice heartfelt concerns about the environment and historic, sacred sites. It is now incumbent on all of us to develop a path forward that serves the broadest public interest.

Despite the reasonable rhetoric, the only action proposed by the Justice Dept. is to “invite tribes to formal, government-to-government consultations.” This is an ancient paradigm that has rarely turned out well for the tribes. The Justice Dept. agenda for the consultations has just two items: (1) “to better insure tribal input” into decisions affecting tribal lands and rights “within the existing statutory framework,” and (2) to consider proposing new legislation to Congress. Implicitly, the first point contradicts Judge Boasberg’s conclusion that the Corps of Engineers “likely” complied with the law. But what the Justice Dept. proposes will take a long time to reach any satisfactory solution, if it ever does. This is in direct opposition to pressures on the ground, where the white population (roughly 90% of North Dakota) is restive and the owner of the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, faces a contractual obligation to start delivering oil in early 2017. There is no middle ground here.

Once again, it’s the American empire versus interfering outsiders

Energy Transfer Partners represents the tip of the corporate oligarchy that has no profitable stake in alleviating climate change. The international banks (38 of them according to Bloomberg) that have put up more than $10 billion for DAPL and other oil projects are, in reality, underwriting the burning of more and worse fossil fuels as far as the planet is concerned. Mainstream media coverage, when it exists, typically focuses on protest and confrontation over the local water issue, without meaningful context and without going deeper into underlying issues. For detailed coverage of both events on the ground and wider context, Democracy NOW has been covering the story in depth since early August, as tensions were building.

On July 25, 2016, the Corps of Engineers issued an environmental assessment that found that the pipeline would have “no significant impact” on the tribe’s burial grounds or other cultural landmarks. The Corps also instituted a “Tribal Monitoring Plan,” under which DAPL was required to notify the tribes when working on sensitive areas so that the tribe could monitor the work. This was roughly seven years since work began on the pipeline, by which time almost half the pipeline had already been built without monitoring.

On August 4, the tribe filed for an injunction to stop work on the pipeline. Judge Boasberg held a hearing on the motion on August 24, promising a decision on September 9. The judge noted that 90% of the clearing and grading, the work most damaging to tribal sites, had been completed in North Dakota. He added: “One of the few exceptions is the crossing leading up to the west side of Lake Oahe, which has not yet been cleared or graded.”

On September 2, the tribes filed a supplemental declaration with Judge Boasberg, identifying a number of cultural sites both within and near the pipeline route, areas that had been untouched by construction. The following day, Saturday, September 3, DAPL bulldozers moved in and plowed up the area, without regard for any tribal sites in their way. To get this done, DAPL brought in private security forces from out of state. Local and state law enforcement withdrew and watched, or went away. Caught by surprise, tribal protesters belatedly but peacefully swarmed the site to stop the bulldozers. There they were met by aggressive private security forces who used dogs and pepper spray, as well as personal violence, to hold protestors at bay while the bulldozers finished their work. An unknown number of protestors were hit, shoved, pepper sprayed, maced, bitten by dogs, and otherwise attacked by DAPL workers and security. And the state of North Dakota responded by issuing a warrant for the arrest of journalist Amy Goodmanfor criminal trespass.

In his ruling a week later, Judge Boasberg covered this event in a single sentence: “The next day, on Saturday, September 3, Dakota Access graded this area.” In the same section, Judge Boasberg went to much greater lengths to minimize the findings of previously unidentified cultural sites. He also conflated them with others that were not in areas that needed permits. His writing sounds like a brief for the pipeline, showing not the slightest displeasure with DAPL’s actions. Another judge, faced with pre-emptive bulldozing of property in active litigation might have had a word or more to say about actions in contempt of court.

Tribal suffering makes a great panopticon for shows of caring

Later in his decision, where he finds that the tribe will suffer no irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, Judge Boasberg wrote without apparent irony of “the likelihood that DAPL’s ongoing construction activities – specifically, grading and clearing of land – might damage or destroy sites of great cultural or historical significance to the Tribe.” The judge does not consider whether this is exactly what happened on September 3. Instead, in a growing fog of mock respect, the judge quotes the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council chairman, Dave Archambault II:

History connects the dots of our identity, and our identity was all but obliterated. Our land was taken, our language was forbidden. Our stories, our history, were almost forgotten. What land, language, and identity remains is derived from our cultural and historic sites…. Sites of cultural and historic significance are important to us because they are a spiritual connection to our ancestors. Even if we do not have access to all such sites, their existence perpetuates the connection. When such a site is destroyed, the connection is lost.”

With breath-taking sanctimony, the judge then ignores not only the future possibility of irreparable harm from DAPL construction, but also the actual irreparable harm of September 3 as well. Judge Boasberg writes: “The tragic history of the Great Sioux Nation’s repeated dispossessions at the hands of a hungry and expanding early America is well known. The threat that new injury will compound old necessarily compels great caution and respect from this Court in considering the Tribe’s plea for intervention.” Whereupon the judge exercised no caution whatsoever, denied the request for an injunction, and left the tribe at the mercy of the pipeline company (until the Justice Dept. intervened). In his order, the judge then justified his choice with an argument of inevitability as to the destruction of tribal sacred sites: “any such harms are destined to ensue whether or not the Court grants the injunction the Tribe desires.” [emphasis added] But later the judge admitted that “there may be many sites that … the Court has missed.”

Judge Boasberg, whatever his personal qualities, appears here as an agent of the state, a state that has been hostile for centuries to those who lived here before. Despite his lip service to Native American suffering, Judge Boasberg is little different in cultural representation from Jack Schaaf, 60, the white, angry, North Dakota rancher who is mad at the tribes for legally trying to defend their rights, as reported inthe New York Times September 13, showing no awareness of self-contradiction:

Mr. Schaaf said he had no problem with people standing up for a cause, but he was tired of navigating a police checkpoint if he wanted to drive into Mandan for a pizza. He complained that closings at Lake Oahe had prevented him from boating. And he said the protesters had no right to march on a public highway. “I think it’s totally wrong,” he said. “If they want to protest, they should be in the ditch.”

This, like Judge Boasberg, is the voice of the conqueror whose denial of who he is requires him to deny the conquered their rights. This is class war and race war. This is the power to attack the living and disturb the dead without remorse, without hesitation, without even awareness. This is the continuity of American genocide that underlies everything America says it wants to stand for. This is the bedrock of American entitlement. This is entitlement that sees no contradiction in denying some of the public access to public roads. This is entitlement that enables law officers to lie about pipe bomb threats when tribal leaders talk about loading up their peace pipes. This is entitlement that shows itself in the actions of a pipeline company that, while waiting for a judge to rule on the protection of a burial ground, sends in its goons and bulldozers to rape the land and then argue that there’s no burial ground left to protect. It’s like the boy who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

Entitlement that robs a grave for a skull to use in ritual kissing

This is the deeply pathological American entitlement that has no difficulty sharing blankets laced with smallpox, no difficulty wiping out men, women, and children at Sand Creek or Ludlow, Colorado, no difficulty slaughtering guards and prisoners at Attica, and no difficulty waging war crimes in countries sorely in need of disentitlement, at least in American eyes.

And strangely enough, Judge Boasberg has been beautifully cast by fate as the embodiment of the American pathology as it attacks the tribes once more. Jeb Boasberg is a child of American privilege. From St. Albans School to Yale to Oxford to Yale Law School and on up the federal judicial ladder, there is nothing apparent in his published life story that prepares him even to understand tribal realities, much less deal fairly or compassionately with them.

Judging by Jeb Boasberg’s answers to the U.S. Senate before being confirmed for his next federal judgeship, he is the antithesis of an activist judge. He had no objection to mandatory sentencing. He wrote: “I have not presided over cases in which my desired outcome was contrary to the law.” He answered that he does not consider his own personal values (unstated) relevant. With regard to the right to bear arms and to the death penalty, he said he would follow current law as determined by the Supreme Court. He said he does not believe the U.S. Constitution is a living document that can evolve with society. He said a federal judge must do as the Supreme Court says. He said more, much of it repetitive, none of it suggesting any inclination to deviate purposely from current legal doctrine, whatever it might be.

These answers create an impression of a legal automaton, insofar as it’s possible for a human to be robotic. Judge Boasberg portrays himself as a man who only follows orders. He does not bring up the way “only following orders” runs against the Geneva Conventions (but he is not a soldier being ordered by judicial authority to make fundamental moral choices, the same choices he flees from). Asked for his view of “the role of a judge,” he answered: “A judge should fairly and impartially uphold the law as it is written and apply it to the cases that appear before him or her.” With perfect consistency, he does not address the problem of how to uphold the law fairly when the law itself is unfair (a longstanding, common problem with American law).

The ruling class does as the ruling class does

The ruling class writes the law and the ruling class is not concerned with the law’s fairness to others than themselves. Jeb Boasberg, when he was at Yale College, was a member of a secret society of the ruling class, Skull and Bones (familiarly known as “Bones”), founded in 1832 by William H. Russell, heir to an opium-trade fortune. A great many of its members have served the American empire, especially in the CIA. Bonesmen as President include William Howard Taft and both Bushes (and their father/grandfather Prescott Bush). Other Bones alumni include William F. Buckley, William Sloane Coffin, Averill Harriman, Lewis Lapham, Henry Luce, and Secretary of State John Kerry among a long list of other notables.

Judge Boasberg’s deference to law, to government agencies, to oil pipeline companies is all consistent with his membership in a ruling class club. What is especially neat about this club is that, by credible legend, it has long been directly involved in Native American grave desecration. As the story goes, Prescott Bush was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1918. The Apache warrior Geronimo had died at Fort Sill in 1909. Bush and fellow Bonesmen dug him up and brought his skull and other bits back to the Tomb, the New Haven home of Skull and Bones. A lawsuit in 2009, seeking the return of Geronimo’s skull to his heirs, ended in dismissal by a federal judge before the truth of the skull could be established. The judge ruled that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, under which the suit was filed, did not protect any graves desecrated before 1990, when the law was passed. That let Skull and Bones off the hook. And left Geronimo in limbo, or New Haven.

Assume the legend is literally true: then, as a Yale senior joining Skull and Bones, Jeb Boasberg kissed Geronimo’s skull. Metaphorically, that act of atavistic triumphalism shines through in his legal decision against the Standing Rock Sioux. Kissing the skull of an enemy is just another way of showing who’s in control here, whose burial is sacred, and whose is not.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Historical Injustices and the Dakota Pipeline: Law Is to Justice as Treaties Are to Native Americans

The Existential Madness of Putin-Bashing

September 16th, 2016 by Robert Parry

Official Washington loves its Putin-bashing but demonizing the Russian leader stops a rational debate about U.S.-Russia relations and pushes the two nuclear powers toward an existential brink, writes Robert Parry.

Arguably, the nuttiest neoconservative idea – among a long list of nutty ideas – has been to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia by weakening its economy, isolating it from Europe, pushing NATO up to its borders, demonizing its leadership, and sponsoring anti-government political activists inside Russia to promote “regime change.”

This breathtakingly dangerous strategy has been formulated and implemented with little serious debate inside the United States as the major mainstream news media and the neocons’ liberal-interventionist sidekicks have fallen in line much as they did during the run-up to the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Except with Russia, the risks are even greater – conceivably, a nuclear war that could exterminate life on the planet. Yet, despite those stakes, there has been a cavalier – even goofy – attitude in the U.S. political/media mainstream about undertaking this new “regime change” project aimed at Moscow.There is also little appreciation of how lucky the world was when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 without some Russian extremists seizing control of the nuclear codes and taking humanity to the brink of extinction. Back then, there was a mix of luck and restrained leadership, especially on the Soviet side.

Plus, there were at least verbal assurances from George H.W. Bush’s administration that the Soviet retreat from East Germany and Eastern Europe would not be exploited by NATO and that a new era of cooperation with the West could follow the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Instead, the United States dispatched financial “experts” – many from Harvard Business School – who arrived in Moscow with neoliberal plans for “shock therapy” to “privatize” Russia’s resources, which turned a handful of corrupt insiders into powerful billionaires, known as “oligarchs,” and the “Harvard Boys” into well-rewarded consultants.

But the result for the average Russian was horrific as the population experienced a drop in life expectancy unprecedented in a country not at war. While a Russian could expect to live to be almost 70 in the mid-1980s, that expectation had dropped to less than 65 by the mid-1990s.

The “Harvard Boys” were living the high-life with beautiful women, caviar and champagne in the lavish enclaves of Moscow – as the U.S.-favored President Boris Yeltsin drank himself into stupors – but there were reports of starvation in villages in the Russian heartland and organized crime murdered people on the street with near impunity.

Meanwhile, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush cast aside any restraint regarding Russia’s national pride and historic fears by expanding NATO across Eastern Europe, including the incorporation of former Soviet republics.

In the 1990s, the “triumphalist” neocons formulated a doctrine for permanent U.S. global dominance with their thinking reaching its most belligerent form during George W. Bush’s presidency, which asserted the virtually unlimited right for the United States to intervene militarily anywhere in the world regardless of international law and treaties.

How Despair Led to Putin

Without recognizing the desperation and despair of the Russian people during the Yeltsin era — and the soaring American arrogance in the 1990s — it is hard to comprehend the political rise and enduring popularity of Vladimir Putin, who became president after Yeltsin abruptly resigned on New Year’s Eve 1999. (In declining health, Yeltsin died on April 23, 2007).

Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Putin, a former KGB officer with a strong devotion to his native land, began to put Russia’s house back in order. Though he collaborated with some oligarchs, he reined in others by putting them in jail for corruption or forcing them into exile.

Putin cracked down on crime and terrorism, often employing harsh means to restore order, including smashing Islamist rebels seeking to take Chechnya out of the Russian Federation.

Gradually, Russia regained its economic footing and the condition of the average Russian improved. By 2012, Russian life expectancy had rebounded to more than 70 years. Putin also won praise from many Russians for reestablishing the country’s national pride and reasserting its position on the world stage.

Though a resurgent Russia created friction with the neocon designs for permanent U.S. world domination, Putin represented a side of Russian politics that favored cooperation with the West. He particularly hoped that he could work closely with President Barack Obama, who likewise indicated his desire to team up with Russia to make progress on thorny international issues.

In 2012, Obama was overheard on an open mike telling Putin’s close political ally, then-President Dmitri Medvedev, that “after my election, I have more flexibility,” suggesting greater cooperation with Russia. (Because of the Russian constitution barring someone from serving more than two consecutive terms as president, Medvedev, who had been prime minister, essentially swapped jobs with Putin for four years.)

Obama’s promise was not entirely an empty one. His relationship with the Russian leadership warmed as the two powers confronted common concerns over security issues, such as convincing Syria to surrender its chemical-weapons arsenal in 2013 and persuading Iran to accept tight limitations on its nuclear program in 2014.

In an extraordinary op-ed in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2013, Putin described his relationship with Obama as one of “growing trust” while disagreeing with the notion of “American “exceptionalism.” In the key last section that he supposedly wrote himself, Putin said:

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is ‘what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.’

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Offending the Neocons

Though Putin may have thought he was simply contributing to a worthy international debate in the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal,” his objection to “American exceptionalism” represented fighting words to America’s neocons.

Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy

Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy

Instead of engaging in mushy multilateral diplomacy, muscular neocons saw America as above the law and lusted for bombing campaigns against Syria and Iran – with the goal of notching two more “regime change” solutions on their belts.

Thus, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist fellow-travelers came to see Putin as a major and unwelcome obstacle to their dreams of permanent U.S. dominance over the planet, which they would promote through what amounted to permanent warfare. (The main distinction between neocons and liberal interventionists is that the former cites “democracy promotion” as its rationale and the latter justifies war under the mantle of “humanitarianism.”)

Barely two weeks after Putin’s op-ed in the Times, a prominent neocon, Carl Gershman, the longtime president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, issued what amounted to a rejoinder in The Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2013.

Gershman’s op-ed made clear that U.S. policy should take aim at Ukraine, a historically and strategically sensitive country on Russia’s doorstep where the Russian nation made a stand against the Tatars in the 1600s and where the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa, the devastating 1941 invasion which killed some 4 million Soviet soldiers and led to some 26 million Soviet dead total.

In the Post, Gershman wrote that “Ukraine is the biggest prize,” but made clear that Putin was the ultimate target: “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

To advance this cause, NED alone was funding scores of projects that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ukrainian political activists and media outlets, creating what amounted to a shadow political structure that could help stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired, i.e., when elected President Viktor Yanukovych balked at a European economic plan that included cuts in pensions and heat subsidies as demanded by the International Monetary Fund.

When Yanukovych sought more time to negotiate a less onerous deal, U.S.-backed protests swept into Kiev’s Maidan square. Though representing genuine sentiment among many western Ukrainians for increased ties to Europe, neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist street fighters gained control of the uprising and began firebombing police.

A screen shot of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland speaking to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, at an event sponsored by Chevron, with its logo to Nuland’s left.

A screen shot of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland speaking to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, at an event sponsored by Chevron, with its logo to Nuland’s left.

Despite the mounting violence, the protests were cheered on by neocon Sen. John McCain, U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland, the wife of neocon stalwart Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, which was a major promoter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In a speech to Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, Nuland reminded them that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.” By early February 2014, in an intercepted phone call, she was discussing with Pyatt who should lead a new government – “Yats is the guy,” she declared referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Nuland and Pyatt continued the conversation with exchanges about how to “glue this thing” or “midwife this thing,” respectively.

A Western-backed Putsch

The violence worsened on Feb. 20, 2014, when mysterious snipers opened fire on police and demonstrators sparking clashes that killed scores, including police officers and protesters. Though later evidence suggested that the shootings were a provocation by the neo-Nazis, the immediate reaction in the mainstream Western media was to blame Yanukovych.

Though Yanukovych agreed to a compromise on Feb. 21 that would reduce his powers and speed up new elections so he could be voted out of office, he was still painted as a tyrannical villain. As neo-Nazi and other rightists chased him and his government from power on Feb. 22, the West hailed the unconstitutional putsch as “legitimate” and a victory for “democracy.”

The coup, however, prompted resistance from ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine, particularly in the east and south. With the aid of Russian troops who were stationed at the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, the Crimeans held a referendum and voted by 96 percent to leave Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation, a move accepted by Putin and the Kremlin.

Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine's Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)

Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)

However, the West’s mainstream media called the referendum a “sham” and Crimea’s secession from Ukraine became Putin’s “invasion” – although the Russian troops were already in Crimea as part of the basing agreement and the referendum, though hastily organized, clearly represented the overwhelming will of the Crimean people, a judgment corroborated by a variety of subsequent polls.

Ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine also rose up against the new regime in Kiev, prompting more accusations in the West about “Russian aggression.” Anyone who raised the possibility that these areas, Yanukovych’s political strongholds, might simply be rejecting what they saw as an illegal political coup in Kiev was dismissed as a “Putin apologist” or a “Moscow stooge.”

While Official Washington and its mainstream media rallied the world in outrage against Putin and Russia, the new authorities in Kiev slipped Nuland’s choice, Yatsenyuk, into the post of prime minister where he pushed through the onerous IMF “reforms,” making the already hard lives of Ukrainians even harder. (The unpopular Yatsenyuk eventually resigned his position.)

Despite the obvious risks of supporting a putsch on Russia’s border, the neocons achieved their political goal of driving a huge wedge between Putin and Obama, whose quiet cooperation had been so troublesome for the neocon plan for violent “regime change” in Syria and Iran.

The successful neocon play in Ukraine also preempted possible U.S.-Russian cooperation in trying to impose an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that would have established a Palestinian state and would have stymied Israel’s plans for gobbling up Palestinian territory by expanding Jewish settlements and creating an apartheid-style future for the indigenous Arabs, confining them to a few cantons surrounded by de facto Israeli territory.

Obama’s timid failure to explain and defend his productive collaboration with Putin enabled the neocons to achieve another goal of making Putin an untouchable, a demonized foreign leader routinely mocked and smeared by the mainstream Western news media. Along with Putin’s demonization, the neocons have sparked a new Cold War that will not only extend today’s “permanent warfare” indefinitely but dramatically increase its budgetary costs with massive new investments in strategic weapons.

Upping the Nuclear Ante

By targeting Putin and Russia, the neocons have upped the ante when it comes to their “regime change” agenda. No longer satisfied with inflicting “regime change” in countries deemed hostile to Israel – Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, etc. – the neocons have raised their sights on Russia.

Billionaire currency speculator George Soros. (Photo credit: georgesoros.com)

Billionaire currency speculator George Soros. (Photo credit: georgesoros.com)

In that devil-may-care approach, the neocons are joined by prominent “liberal interventionists,” such as billionaire currency speculator George Soros, who pulls the strings of many “liberal” organizations that he bankrolls.

In February 2015, Soros laid out his “Russia-regime-change” vision in the liberal New York Review of Books with an alarmist call for Europe “to wake up and recognize that it is under attack from Russia” – despite the fact that it has been NATO encroaching on Russia’s borders, not the other way around.

But Soros’s hysteria amounted to a clarion call to his many dependents among supposedly independent “non-governmental organizations” to take up the goal of destabilizing Russia and driving Putin from office. As a currency speculator, Soros recognizes the value of inflicting economic pain as well as military punishment on a target country.

“The financial crisis in Russia and the body bags [of supposedly Russian soldiers] from Ukraine have made President Putin politically vulnerable,” Soros wrote, urging Europe to keep up the economic pressure on Russia while working to transform Ukraine into an economic/political success story, saying:

…if Europe rose to the challenge and helped Ukraine not only to defend itself but to become a land of promise, Putin could not blame Russia’s troubles on the Western powers. He would be clearly responsible and he would either have to change course or try to stay in power by brutal repression, cowing people into submission. If he fell from power, an economic and political reformer would be likely to succeed him.

But Soros recognized the other possibility: that a Western-driven destabilization of Russia and a failed state in Ukraine could either bolster Putin or lead to his replacement by an extreme Russian nationalist, someone far-harder-line than Putin.

With Ukraine’s continued failure, Soros wrote, “President Putin could convincingly argue that Russia’s problems are due to the hostility of the Western powers. Even if he fell from power, an even more hardline leader like Igor Sechin or a nationalist demagogue would succeed him.”

Yet, Soros fails to appreciate how dangerous his schemes could be to make Russia’s economy scream so loudly that Putin would be swept aside by some political upheaval. As Soros suggests, the Russian people could turn to an extreme nationalist, not to some pliable Western-approved politician.

Protecting Mother Russia

Especially after suffering the depravations of the Yeltsin years, the Russian people might favor an extremist who would take a tough stance against the West and might see brandishing the nuclear arsenal as the only way to protect Mother Russia.

Still, Official Washington can’t get enough of demonizing Putin. A year ago, Obama’s White House – presumably to show how much the President disdains Putin, too – made fun of how Putin sits with his legs apart.White House spokesman Josh Earnest cited a photo of the Russian president sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “President Putin was striking a now-familiar pose of less-than-perfect posture and unbuttoned jacket and, you know, knees spread far apart to convey a particular image,” Earnest said, while ignoring the fact that Netanyahu was sitting with his legs wide apart, too.

Amid this anything-goes Putin-bashing, The New York Times, The Washington Post and now Hillary Clinton’s campaign have escalated their anti-Putin rhetoric, especially since Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has offered some praise of Putin as a “strong” leader.

Despite the barrage of cheap insults emanating from U.S. political and media circles, Putin has remained remarkably cool-headed, refusing the react in kind. Oddly, as much as the American political/media establishment treats Putin as a madman, Official Washington actually counts on his even-temper to avoid a genuine existential crisis for the world.

If Putin were what the U.S. mainstream media and politicians describe – a dangerous lunatic – the endless baiting of Putin would be even more irresponsible. Yet, even with many people privately realizing that Putin is a much more calculating leader than their negative propaganda makes him out to be, there still could be a limit to Putin’s patience.

Or the neocons and liberal hawks might succeed in provoking a violent uprising in Moscow that ousts Putin. However, if that were to happen, the odds – as even Soros acknowledges – might favor a Russian nationalist coming out on top and thus in control of the nuclear codes.

In many ways, it’s not Putin who should worry Americans but the guy that might follow Putin.

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 and barnesandnoble.com).

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Existential Madness of Putin-Bashing

Selected Articles: Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food And Agriculture Just Took A Turn For The Worse

September 15th, 2016 by Global Research News

monsanto_bayer_750

Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food And Agriculture Just Took A Turn For The Worse

By Colin Todhunter, September 15 2016

The mergers would mean that three companies would dominate the commercial agricultural seeds and chemicals sector, down from six – Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow, Monsanto and DuPont. Prior to the mergers, these six firms controlled 60 per cent of commercial seed and more than 75 per cent of agrochemical markets.

australian-flag

Australia’s Global ‘Exit’: Tribalism and International Institutions

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 15 2016

It all begins with a promise. A promise, less for a better future than a reclaimed past.  Reclamation of the familiar, in fact, being the fundamental idea.  “As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I’m here to discuss with the chamber and the Australian people how we will rebuild our great nation.” These words from the inaugural speech of One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts set the trend in the Australian Senate Chamber.

Strange Washington Post “Conspiracy Theory”: Renowned Medical Doctor Claims that Putin or Trump Could Have Poisoned Hillary Clinton

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, September 15 2016

The Washington Post published an article claiming that a well-known doctor is accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump of possibly poisoning Hillary Clinton. Dr. Bennet Omalu discovered ‘Chronic Traumatic encephalopathy’ (CTE) in the brains of deceased players of the National Football League (NFL). CTE is a degenerative disease caused my repeated blows to the head that effects athletes involved in contact sports such as boxing and American football.

Members of al Qaeda's Nusra Front gesture as they drive in a convoy touring villages in the southern countryside of Idlib

Al Qaeda’s Ties to US-Backed Syrian Rebels

By Gareth Porter, September 15 2016

The new ceasefire agreement between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which went into effect at noon Monday, has a new central compromise absent from the earlier ceasefire agreement that the same two men negotiated last February. But it isn’t clear that it will produce markedly different results.

Ocean

Record High Temperatures: Toxic Slime Spreads Across Oceans as Climate Disruption Continues

By Dahr Jamail, September 14 2016

It is August 30. I’m in Anchorage, Alaska, and it’s hot. Very hot. In fact, it’s the fourth straight day of record high temperatures, amidst a year that has seen record high temperatures becoming normalized across the entire state. Two days ago, this city (the most populous in Alaska) saw a record high temperature of 78 degrees, which beat the previous record by a whopping seven degrees.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food And Agriculture Just Took A Turn For The Worse

Strange Washington Post “Conspiracy Theory”: Renowned Medical Doctor Claims that Putin or Trump Could Have Poisoned Hillary Clinton

September 15th, 2016 by Timothy Alexander Guzman

The Washington Post published an article claiming that a well-known doctor is accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump of possibly poisoning Hillary Clinton. Dr. Bennet Omalu discovered ‘Chronic Traumatic encephalopathy’ (CTE) in the brains of deceased players of the National Football League (NFL). CTE is a degenerative disease caused my repeated blows to the head that effects athletes involved in contact sports such as boxing and American football.

Dr. Omalu became famous (at least in the U.S.) when Hollywood produced a film called ‘Concussion’ (actor Will Smith plays Omalu in the film) based on his discovery and how the NFL tried to silence him. Dr. Omalu is now suggesting that Hillary Clinton was possibly poisoned by either Putin or Trump. Fame can be addictive to some people; maybe Dr. Omalu likes the spotlight so he decided to join the Main-Stream Media (MSM) “conspiracy theory” bandwagon. The Washington Post article titled ‘The man who discovered CTE thinks Hillary Clinton may have been poisoned’ said that Omalu recommended that Clinton should receive a ‘toxicologic analysis’:

Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who has made the NFL so uncomfortable with his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased players, suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign be checked for possible poisons after her collapse Sunday in New York.

Omalu, whose story was famously told in the movie “Concussion,” made the suggestion on Twitter, writing that he advised campaign officials to “perform toxicologic analysis of Ms. Clinton’s blood”

The Washington Post is not a truth seeking news source that the public can trust any more than The New York Timesor MSNBC. The story reeks of “Conspiracy Theory” all over it. One of the reasons Dr. Omalu gives us is that he does not trust Putin or the Republican front-runner Donald Trump:

He wasn’t giving up on Twitter, adding that his reasoning is that he does not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee who has expressed admiration for Putin

Wow. What an accusation for a certified doctor who has done a good deed for American football players in the NFL. Dr. Omalu in now jumping head first into the conspiracy theory realm which brings us into the death of Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned with Polonium- 210. The Washington Post conveniently mentions the Litvinenko case in the article:

Putin, as The Washington Post reported, was implicated by a British inquiry in January in the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB operative, in London in 2006.

The Post’s Griff Witte and Michael Birnbaum wrote at the time:

Although the inquiry stops short of conclusively blaming Putin — noting the opaque nature of Kremlin politics — it finds that there is “strong circumstantial evidence that the Russian State was responsible for Mr. Litvinenko’s death.” And citing the high-stakes nature of an operation to assassinate a former KGB officer on British soil, it finds that the operation would probably not have gone ahead without Putin’s direct approval

The murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent who was engaged in anti-Russia propaganda, primarily against Putin who he claimed committed the 1999 apartment-building bombings in Russia for political gain killing scores of people including children.

The British government ran with the Livinenko story which said he was poisoned on British territory by the Russians while sipping a cup of tea laced with a dose of highly radioactive “Polonium-210.” Why? Because it is well known that Polonium-210 is produced in Russia, so it is convenient to blame Russian intelligence services. It is important to understand that Polonium-210 is highly radioactive and highly toxic that would have contaminated airports and the planes from Moscow to the UK and everyone in close proximity to the deadly radioactive substance. If the FSB wanted to kill Livinenko, there would have been numerous ways to do so, but by placing Polonium- 210 in his cup of tea? What about the waiter or waitress or the person who served him the tea or the customers around him? Wouldn’t they have been contaminated as well? The FSB agents or Putin for the matter cannot be that stupid. Why would the Russian government commit a crime with a highly toxic substance that can be traced from Europe all the way to the door steps of the Kremlin?

According to ‘The Litvinenko Inquiry: Report into the Death of Alexander Litvinenko’ by the Chairman of the investigation Sir Robert Owen which was conducted in secrecy stated 

“Put very shortly, the closed evidence consists of evidence that is relevant to the Inquiry, but which has been assessed as being too sensitive to put into the public domain.”

Owen claimed the evidence is “too sensitive” for the public domain? Perhaps there was no evidence in the first place. I would go further to say that the evidence or the accusations they had is “too ridiculous” or “too stupid” for the public domain. That is why the investigation was conducted in secrecy in the first place. Maybe Sir Robert Owen wanted to avoid embarrassing himself from public scrutiny. According to an article in 2006 by the ‘The Independent’, a London-based news source titled ‘Litvinenko ‘smuggled nuclear material’ claims that Litvinenko was smuggling nuclear materials out of Russia for the FSB:

Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former Russian agent, told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organised the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers.

Mario Scaramella, who flew into London yesterday to be interviewed by Scotland Yard officers investigating Mr Litvinenko’s death, said Mr Litvinenko told him about the operation for the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB

We don’t know how true Mr. Scaramella’s statement is, but it does make more sense than FSB agents dropping Polonium -210 in Litvinenko’s cup of tea. However, Russian authorities denied any involvement with a nuclear smuggling operation carried out by Litvinenko.

As an FSB agent, Litvinenko investigated organized crime. He was also involved with Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky who had ties to organized crime figures. The Guardian published a story in 2009 titled ‘US embassy cables: Spain’s investigations into the Russian mafia’ which claims that Litvenenko provided Spanish authorities with information regarding their illegal activities and their whereabouts:

Following the Troika arrests in June 2008, details began to appear in the press on the group’s alleged activities and how the investigation developed. Less than a month after the arrests, Spain’s flagship daily, center-left El Pais, published a detailed article claiming that Alexander Litvinenko – the former Russian intelligence official who worked on OC issues before he died in late 2006 in London from poisoning under mysterious circumstances – tipped off Spanish security officials on the locations, roles, and activities of several “Russian” mafia figures with ties to Spain. He allegedly provided information on Izguilov, Zahkar Kalashov, and Tariel Oniani to GOS officials during a May 2006 meeting

For any criminal organization, someone like Litvinenko would be considered a “snitch” and suffer the consequences. Litvinenko’s murder has two possibilities that seem more plausible. The first possibility is that he mishandled the nuclear material he was importing to the UK and got himself exposed to the deadly substance or the Russian mafia put out a contract on his life. Either explanation is more believable than dropping Polonium-210 in his cup of tea right in the city of London.

The MSM accuses the alternative media of spreading “conspiracy theories” on Hillary Clinton’s health issues. But it was all put to rest after the ceremony for the victims of September 11th in New York City when Hillary nearly passed out. The MSM will continue to cover for Hillary Clinton any way possible even if it means spreading more conspiracy theories. It’s amazing how the MSM is promoting Dr. Omalu’s accusations that are absolutely ridiculous. I guess this is what to expect from a media that can’t even follow journalistic principles of reporting the truth, but hey, at least the MSM is becoming more entertaining with stories that make us laugh. Reminds me of what you find in the supermarket tabloids like The National Enquirer.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Strange Washington Post “Conspiracy Theory”: Renowned Medical Doctor Claims that Putin or Trump Could Have Poisoned Hillary Clinton